“Whoa back, Buck,” she said, the narrow branches scratching on the stones of the path. “Gets spooked when he sees strangers. What’s your business with old Meg?”
“Just passing through, lady,” Trader said. “Though there’s a good smell of baking coming out of your front door.”
“No time,” Abe whispered, getting increasingly antsy at the thought of the murderous vigilante posse storming up the trail after them.
“Always time for some food, Abe. Take it while you can, has always been my motto. Bread gets you through times of hunger better than hunger gets you through times of no bread.”
Abe considered pointing out to Trader that this made no sense at all, but decided against it.
The woman dropped her broom, instantly losing interest in it and kicking it with her bare feet.
“Pretty hair, Meg,” Trader commented, edging toward the door of her home.
“Rosemary for forgetting and rue for laughter. And here’s the Deathlands daisy with its white coat and heart of gold. But it’s sorely withered.”
“Watch her, Abe.” Trader slipped into the house, emerging ten heartbeats later with two fresh loaves in his arms, half a smoked ham dangling from his right hand.
“You thieving bastards.”
“Dogs closing on us, Trader.” Abe had his Colt Python drawn.
The nude woman dashed into the house and came out again almost immediately, brandishing a long carving knife with a serrated edge. “Cut your fucking balls off and braise ’em with gilly flowers!” she screamed.
“Bust her, Abe.” Trader had the Armalite strung across his back, his hands filled with the food.
“Oh, shit.”
Though he’d been a gunner on both war wags One and Two, Abe’s speciality had been machine guns, wasting people who were some distance off. Not a crazed naked woman, who was so close he could taste her sweat.
There wasn’t time for any argument. If he didn’t pull the trigger, then the mad woman was going to open up Trader’s guts and spill his tripes all over the track.
Abe pulled the trigger.
The blaster kicked in his hand, the jolt running to his shoulder.
The woman screamed, higher, louder and longer than Abe had ever imagined possible. The bullet had struck her beneath the right arm, sending the knife spinning away, striking a tiny fountain of golden sparks from the wall of her house. The .357 round exited near her spine, not touching any vital organ, punching out a hole the size of a man’s fist.
She staggered backward, away from Abe, toward the Trader, blood gouting onto the path. Her mouth was jammed open in that piercing, endless cry.
“Again,” Trader snapped.
It was nightmare city for Abe.
The noise of the hounds seemed so much closer, almost as though they were just around the last bend in the trail. Someone was yelling out “Blood for blood!” Abe could almost feel the whisper of the dark man’s scythe.
The blond woman lifted her hands and tore wildly at her own face, gouging great scarlet furrows down her cheeks with ragged nails.
“Again, Abe!”
The Python boomed again, this time with greater success.
The heavy bullet hit the screaming Meg through the top of her right breast, smashing the shoulder bone on the way out. The impact was far more devastating, spinning her completely around through three hundred and sixty degrees, giving Abe a glimpse of the two massive exit wounds in her back.
She staggered to her right, stumbling over her own feet, disappearing over the brink of the drop with a startling speed. One moment she was there, whirling like a demented dervish, her shrill scream tearing the air apart.
As she vanished, she stopped screaming.
All that they could hear, above the northerly wind, was the wet flopping as her body bounced off the jagged rocks all the way to the bottom of the ravine, ending in a distant clatter of loose boulders and smaller pebbles.
“Took you long enough,” Trader said, as Abe bolstered the warm blaster.
“Let’s go,” the skinny gunner replied. “Sons of bitches getting closer by the minute.”
Trader was off, his long legs eating up the ground, toward the top of the steep incline, Abe at his heels. As he ran past the open door of the little house, he was surprised to see a pair of small children peering silently out at him.