Only one of the sec men was still conscious. He had been at the back of the press, saved from instant slaugh-ter by the bodies of his fellows. Now Ryan could see him lying, like a discarded puppet, thrown into the smolder-ing undergrowth near the trail.
“That’s it,” Ryan said, standing up. He tried to brush himself clean, but found that his hands were covered in blood.
Krysty climbed the steep bank, dusting off her clothes. “Gaia! The smell of gas!” she exclaimed. “The world’s filled with it.”
J.B. was next up. He’d taken the precaution of tucking his fedora into the front of his jerkin, and he pulled it out and beat it on his knee, placing it carefully back on his head. “Worked well,” he said. “Where’s your brother?”
Jak answered him. The boy wore only a thin shirt, having sacrificed his own jacket to help fool the sec men. “Seen fat Harvey. On horse there.” He pointed toward the high earth bank, near where the dying man lay and moaned to himself. “Gone now. Hill would protect him an’ horse.”
Ryan nodded. He, too, had seen his brother’s gro-tesque hat bobbing above the top of the slope just before he’d squeezed the trigger on the M-16. “Probably halfway back to the ville by now.”
“Where we should be,” the Armorer said, looking down at his hands and clothes. “Be good to wash up some on the way.”
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Ryan looked around the stinking shambles. The land was littered with pieces of stone and fragments of twisted metal. And the bushes and torn trees around were draped with what looked like the contents of several butchers’ stores, draggled and dripping.
In all his years with the Trader, which had encom-passed much chilling, Ryan had never seen such a totally appalling slaughterhouse.
Jak wandered around, picking his way between the puddles of watery mud and blood. He called out that one or two of the sec men still retained a kind of life. But only the man flung against the bushes was still conscious.
“Lost arm an’ leg!” Jak shouted. “One eye gone. Other leg broke an’ bits o’bone showing.”
Ryan joined the boy and looked down at the remnants of his brother’s soldier. The moaning was low, bubbling through the crimson froth that dribbled from the slack jaws.
“Mum, Mum, want… to bed. Stop, Mum…”
Ryan gently inserted the tip of the M-16’s muzzle be-tween the jagged, chipped teeth. The man closed his lips on it like a babe at the bottle, the moaning stopping. Ryan squeezed the trigger once, feeling the gun buck against his wrist. The impact bounced the sec trooper’s head hard against the earth. The leg kicked and then the body was still.
Ryan straightened. “Nothing to keep us here.”
“We going back to the big house?” Krysty asked.
“That’s where Doc an’ Lori are.” He paused. “And that’s where my brother is. Come this far to settle up the account. Might as well walk the last mile to finish it.”
A quarter mile away from the scene of the explosion they found a pool of pure, still water, unsullied by gas or by blood. In turn they knelt and washed away as much of
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the human detritus as they could. Jak rinsed out his mouth, spitting away the taste of death.
J.B. was stooped on the ground, hands cupped, the others around him, when Krysty suddenly snatched at Ryan’s arm.
“Listen!”
“What?” he asked, swinging around to probe the for-est with the carbine.
“Someone there.” Krysty pointed into the deepest part of the undergrowth where Ryan could just make out a dark silhouette. The figure stood, watching them.
Before he could challenge the stranger, the branches of the witch hazel parted and out walked Nathan Freeman, holding his Smith & Wesson.
“The goodest of afternoons, Uncle Ryan,” he said, half bowing. “Would that great explosion be something to do with you?”
The Virginian told them about Doc Tanner and Lori Quint’s abortive attempt to infiltrate the ville, how it had gone wrong and how the word was they were held pris-oners in the cells of the guardhouse. Nate also outlined what he had done, waiting for news of Ryan and the oth-ers. Hearing of the death hunt, he had followed the killer dogs and sec men.