James Axler – Road Wars

“Had a way with buffalo meat, though. One of Loz’s bison stews lasted you about a week, what with all the bits you kept on picking out between your teeth.”

“Could be we might run into one of the big herds up Colorado way.” J.B. was cleaning his fingernails with a saguaro spine. “Rumors a couple of years ago said the buffalo were coming back in a big way. Like they used to do in the middle 1800s before the hunters came along with the .50-caliber Sharps and butchered the lot.”

“Be a sight to see.” Ryan stretched. “Fireblast! I’d almost rather ride a lame mule than that white-nuked wag. Yeah, even that red-eyed Judas that Jak has at his spread.”

“Wouldn’t go that far. Though old Doc finally seemed to reach an understanding with the long-eared brute. Beats me. I’d have slit its throat, first hour out.”

Ryan stood and walked a few yards away, unzipping and taking a leak, hearing the powerful stream of liquid hiss into the dry sand. He had once heard of a man on one of the wag trains west who’d done the same thing and had a rattler rear up out of the blackness and bite him on the end of his dick. And not a man there was prepared to try to suck out the poison.

So, he kept extra alert until he’d rejoined J.B. by the welcoming fire.

“I sometimes wonder, specially round the outskirts of big old villes, what it must’ve been like before skydark, whether there were any more folks around here.”

The Armorer shook his head, the firelight reflecting off the lenses of his spectacles. “Read old guidebooks and stuff like that,” he said. “Even in the last olden days, there wasn’t much activity around here.”

“Only group we saw were those flagellants. What were they called?”

“Slaves of Sin.”

Ryan scraped a couple of spoonfuls of the rich gruel from the bottom of the cooking pot, still hanging over the flames on its iron tripod.

“Trader would probably have simply chilled the lot of them,” he said.

“Probably.”

After a companionable silence, Ryan yawned. “Think I might turn in now.”

“Sure.”

Ryan paused, climbing up onto the LAV. “Mebbe we should’ve chilled those religious sickos.”

“Mebbe. Too late now. Good night, Ryan.”

“Night.”

Chapter Nine

The mule rolled its red-rimmed eyes and turned its head to peer at the old man sitting perched on the saddle.

“Look at me like that, you spawn of Satan, and I break my ebony cane across your brainless skull!”

Doc had been unsettled ever since Ryan and J.B. had driven off in the clumsy eight-wheeler, heading northwest to their date with the Trader.

If pressed, he’d probably have said that the inside of his brain was itching and his skin felt like it belonged to somebody else.

Now, with the sun sinking far away across the blank wilderness beyond the Lauren spread, he’d decided to try to get himself a little exercise.

He got Judas out of the barn, neatly avoiding a halfhearted attempt from the mule to break his knees with a sideways kick. Supper was still a couple of hours off, and Doc had chosen to ride toward the low foothills.

Over the past few days, the animal and the man had reached a sort of compromise. Judas wouldn’t try too hard to bite or injure Doc, and the old man wouldn’t smash it across the rawboned, angular skull with his sword stick.

Neither of them was particularly happy with this revised arrangement, but it was working fairly well, with just the occasional lapse from grace on one side or the other.

The whole house had been prickly and uneasy since the departure of the two men the previous morning.

Mildred had been waspish and snappy, and Dean had been slapped hard across the side of the head by Jak for carelessly leaving a corral gate open and allowing a couple of horses to escape.

Krysty had taken her troubles into herself.

Doc had come across her three or four times, sitting on the swing seat out on the porch with her emerald green eyes fixed on the distant horizon.