James Axler – Rat King

responded to the pressure of her touch by muttering incomprehensibly, opening

his eyes for a second but not really seeing.

Krysty moved the poultice, made from rags she had persuaded Abner to give them.

The wound underneath was cleaner than before, pus and a clear discharge being

drawn from it and onto the rags. A cauldron of lukewarm water—boiling when left

by Mac earlier—stood to one side of the hut. Krysty stripped the pus-covered

rags from the outer covering of the poultice and threw them into the cauldron.

“Water’s next to useless,” she commented. “Too cool to be any good, and we’ve

got no more rags. Time to find our own.”

Without comment Ryan, Jak and Dean all started to strip down to their underwear.

Having acquired it at the redoubt the day before, it was relatively clean, and

having been under their other clothing, was protected from the ravages of the

dust and dirt that had assailed them in the storms.

All three men took off the regulation military white T-shirts and handed them to

Mildred. Jak also handed her one of his leaf-bladed knives, with which she

sliced the material into strips, handing it to Krysty. The material formed a new

dressing on the poultice, which was replaced on J.B.’s injuries.

“Will he make it?” Ryan asked, speaking for the first time since their

imprisonment.

Mildred shrugged. “This gunk is working by the look of it, and he should be past

the crisis of his fever before too long. If he gets through that okay, then

he’ll live. The question then is how fit will he be to move when we make a

break.”

She tried to keep her voice even, to sound offhand about J.B.’s chances. But she

was fooling no one: they all knew how much it was eating into her.

“I’m just wondering if we should make a break,” Ryan said quietly.

Dean looked at his father sharply. “We’ve got to, Dad. There’s J.B. to get out

of here, and Doc to get after. Besides, I don’t want to be chilled as part of

some dumb-ass ritual to the frigging sun.”

Ryan regarded Dean coldly. His one eye blazed anger. “Remember who’s in charge

here, boy. The only chance we have is if we work together, not pulling

separately. Before you jump to conclusions, hear me out. I’ve got no intention

of being chilled, either. Trader used to say that when your time was up, you had

to go down. Well, I don’t feel like going down without fighting. But there’s

more than one way of fighting.”

“Sorry,” the boy muttered.

Jak put an arm around his shoulders. He was only a few years older than Dean,

and yet in terms of harsh experience he was an old man.

“More one way skin mutie rabbit. Mebbe not best blast way out—’specially when no

blasters.”

Dean bit his lip and smiled. It was a good point. Still stunned by Abner’s

pronouncement, none of them had been ready for the sudden swarm of ville

dwellers, who had taken it as their cue to rush forward and disable the

outlanders, moving like a mass of ants that engulfed their enemies, sheer weight

of numbers pinning them to the ground and enabling the ville dwellers to strip

them of their weapons.

Or almost all of their weapons. Jak’s throwing knives were so well hidden in the

patches and folds of his coat that it would have taken a long and thorough

search to uncover them.

There hadn’t been time for such a search. They had been picked up by the swarm

and rushed into the hut.

Once in there, Mac and his mute sec men had trained their blasters on them while

Abner had told them that he would assist them, in whatever way his people could,

to heal J.B.’s wounds. It was important that the sun receive a “whole”

sacrifice, and not a damaged one.

And so they had been left here. At least, as he had warned them that the outside

of the hut would be guarded, Mac had had the grace to look embarrassed at his

behavior.

“Why can’t we make a break for it?” Dean continued impatiently.