James Axler – Rat King

he played it right.

Finally he spoke. “I don’t usually do deals. I like to clean the mess up and get

out of the bastard ville before the shit starts to spread. But I’ll make an

exception for you.”

Abner looked relieved, but still had to ask. “Why?”

Krysty answered. “J.B.’s sick and needs time to recover. That coldheart Wallace

also has one of us still in the redoubt. You want them out of your face. We want

them out of the way so we can get our man back and leave this bastard place. So

we need manpower. You need more fighting skills.”

“A deal?”

Ryan nodded. “A deal. You don’t chill us. You help us get our man out.”

“And in return?”

“We teach you things you never dreamed of. You’ll have a chance of ridding

yourselves of Wallace, Murphy and their sec men. More, you’ll have a better than

even chance of beating away any other attackers you might get.”

Abner scratched his chin through his beard and rubbed absently at his dangling

belly.

“Guess I’m not in any position to say no, even if I want to,” he mused. “I don’t

agree, you just chill me and go.”

“That’s about it,” Ryan assented. “Thing is, at least the other way we both get

a chance for what we want.”

Abner nodded. “That’s true, boy. I don’t say I trust you, but I guess I’ll go

along with it.”

“I can’t say that I trust you, either,” Ryan replied. “We’ll just have to live

with it.”

SUN UP CAME as a wan light reflected red through the light mist of dust. The

inhabitants of the ville rose to go about their tasks only to find that

something radically different had happened in the night.

At Abner’s request, the bodies of the two sec men and that of the young girl had

been laid out in the rough square at the center of the ville. They lay in the

early-morning sun, starting to swell in the rising heat.

Abner stood at the head of the corpses, with Ryan, Krysty and Jak behind him.

The old man carried his blaster, and the companions had their own blasters,

retrieved from the shack that laughingly passed for an armory. It had crossed

Ryan’s mind that J.B. would have wept to see blasters stored in such a way, had

he been able.

Instead the Armorer lay in Abner’s bed, attended by Mildred and Dean. The two of

them acted as security for each other, as well as nursing J.B. on his route to

recovery. The Armorer had passed the crisis of his fever during the night and

was now lying peacefully. Once he recovered his strength, the real problem would

be in how long it took his ankle to heal. In the corner, not forgotten, lay Mac.

The sec man was still unconscious.

Outside in the rough square, the curious ville dwellers gathered to hear Abner

speak.

“Listen here, all of you. These good people, who were to be our sacrifice to the

sun, did this last night…” He spread his free hand to indicate the corpses.

“They chilled these folk without a second thought, and spared me only because

they propose a bargain.”

“What bargain could be enough to appease the sun?” came a voice from the back of

the crowd.

“Good question, friend,” Abner said with a note of ice in his voice that didn’t

escape Ryan’s notice. “What do we need more than anything? To rid ourselves of

the mother insiders. These good people have a man inside that they want back. We

help them, they train us so that we can grind the mothers into the dirt once and

for all. That seems fair to me. After all, the sun must have sent them—look what

they did to two of my best sec men without even trying.”

There was a thoughtful silence from the crowd. Any doubts were kept unspoken in

deference to Abner’s underlyingly sinister air of command.

“This should be an interesting experience, lover,” Krysty whispered to Ryan.

Chapter Seventeen

Doc found himself standing in a room similar to the one in which his corporeal

form was lying prone. Blurring and wobbling at the edges of his vision, the room