James Axler – Road Wars

Whereas with Trader, it was always first choice.

Trader grabbed at Abe and pressed his mouth to his ear. “Play the cards lucky, and we can get that raft into the river and be away ‘fore anyone sees us.”

At that moment the door swung open and a man stepped out, holding a long-barreled musket, staring straight at them. They were less than thirty yards away from him.

“Single shot,” Trader said. “Means he can only chill one of us. The other’ll get him.”

Abe had spotted the torn curtain across the square window of the hut twitch as though someone were peering out. “Think there’s at least one more inside,” he said.

“Damn!”

The man with the musket had a long beard, flecked with white. His blue shirt had been crudely patched around the collar and cuffs with some flowered pink material.

“Help you, outlanders?” The muzzle of the musket was steady in their direction. The little window creaked partly open, and the barrel of another blaster poked through, instantly confirming Abe’s suspicion.

“Hire your boat to go downriver a spell?” Trader shouted, the Armalite swinging loose in his right hand, pointedly not threatening anyone.

“Nope. Not for hire.”

The voice was hard and inflexible, not the kind of voice that you wanted to waste time arguing with. Trader reached that conclusion immediately.

“I’ll take out the one hiding in the building, behind the curtain,” he whispered to Abe, at his shoulder. “You get the one with the musket.”

“He could waste one of us first.”

“You chicken-shit little bastard. I’m opening fire on the count of three, and if you don’t back me then we both likely get chilled.”

“What you whispering about, mister?” Suspicion grew with each word.

“One,” Trader said.

“Shit,” Abe whispered, wishing that his hand wasn’t so wet and slippery.

“Means trouble, Carl!” the man yelled to whoever lurked inside the cabin.

“Two and three,” Trader spit.

Abe had been right to worry. As he snatched the Colt Python from the damp leather of the holster, it slipped through his fingers, clattering on the stones by his feet. He started to stoop to grab at it, wincing at the uncertainty of a ball through his skull. Trader had begun shooting, and Abe heard the tinkling of broken glass and a yelp of pain.

As his hand finally found the reassuring weight of the Magnum, he glanced up, seeing the man with the musket seemed frozen, shocked into indecision, torn between the eruption of lead from the Armalite, and the sight of the small man with the limp mustache dropping a big handblaster in the dirt.

Before he could make up his mind, and before Abe could squeeze the trigger, Trader drilled him twice through the middle of his chest.

“‘He who hesitates is lost,'” Abe said, quoting something he’d once heard Doc Tanner say.

“Hey, I like that.” Trader grinned. “Wish I’d said that, Abe. I do.”

“You probably will, Trader,” Abe replied, covering his own panic attack with a broad smile. “Shouldn’t we see to whoever’s inside the cabin?”

“Got him. No way he can take three rounds from this” he patted the Armalite, “and carry on living.”

The man with the musket lay still on his back, arms spread, eyes wide open, a dark stain at the crotch of his pants leaking into the dirt.

Trader stalked past him and into the hut. Abe looked behind them, wondering if he’d spotted a flicker of movement high on the ridge.

“Yeah. Smacked him through the mouth and throat,” Trader shouted. “There’s some food in here, Abe. Come and stock up and then we’ll raft off.”

“Could be after us,” the little gunner called, bolstering his unfired piece.

“Not yet. We’ll be twenty miles downstream before those dipshit hicks get here.”

Abe looked again, but the sun was well behind the top of the cliffs and it was impossible to make out any details in the splashes of black shadows.

He wandered over to look at the raft, his heart sinking at the thought of riding it along the murderous river. Downstream the walls of the gorge were glistening with silvery spray. It was impossible to see whether the run was navigable at all. Even the short stretch that Abe could see was a frothing maelstrom of saw-toothed boulders.