James Axler – Road Wars

As Robby stumbled backward, drowning in his own blood, he tripped over his brother’s corpse and fell dead on top of him.

Chapter Thirty

J.B. lay facedown, blood seeping from his right ear, nose and mouth, forming a small puddle on the dusty carpet. His glasses had fallen off and were glinting a couple of feet away from him, close to his fedora.

Ryan checked first that the two brothers were indeed chilled, pressing a finger to the arteries in the neck. In the case of Robby Tenbos there wasn’t very much artery left.

Then he knelt by J.B., doing the same, finding a slow but steady pulse. The blow with the baseball bat had been ferocious, but it now looked like the Armorer might have spotted it coming at the very last second and just managed to dodge enough to deflect the worst of the impact.

Ryan rolled his friend onto his side, making sure he hadn’t swallowed his tongue, picking up the glasses and the hat. Below him he caught the sound of boots mounting the staircase toward the top of the tower.

Not wanting to get chilled by a trigger-happy sec man, Ryan called out.

“You can come ahead. But there’s a lot of death up here. Baron and both his stepsons caught the last train west. My friend’s injured.”

“Who did the chilling and the injuring up there, you?”

“Brothers wasted the baron. One of them decked J.B. I chilled the brothers.”

“Both?”

“Both.”

“You got a blaster up there?”

“Not of my own. I used a flintlock pistol. It’s empty now. There’s a panga of mine down the stairs someplace. Look out for it.”

“How bad’s your friend, outlander?”

“Knocked out. Needs some care.”

There was a muttered discussion. “We’re coming up. Just stand by one of the windows and keep your hands where we can see them and don’t make any sudden movements.”

“You believe me?” Ryan shouted.

A pause. “Yeah. I guess we do, all right. This has been coming for a long time.”

“I’m waiting for you,” Ryan said, moving to look out through the shattered window, breathing in the cool, fresh air of the morning.

THERE WERE six men in the sec team, moving through the carnage with an exaggerated care, trying to pick their way around the sticky blood, and the shards of splintered glass, shaking their heads over their dead leader. One of them spit into Robby Tenbos’s open eyes.

“Bastards. They were sack-jack bastards, Cawdor. You done real good here. Shame is that the baron had to get himself snuffed as well.”

“Can you get help for J.B., here, before you start shifting the bodies? They can wait. He can’t.”

The local medical help turned out to be a wise woman from one of the wrecked condominium buildings nearby. But, by the time she came fussing into the bedroom where J.B. had been carried, the Armorer had recovered a sort of consciousness.

Ryan called for a large bowl of clean water and some linen rags, bathing away the crusted blood from his friend’s face, gently probing the duck-egg swelling on the side of his narrow skull. The wound felt hard, without the unmistakable softness that meant a fracture.

Touching the spot brought J.B. around, his eyes blinking open, trying to focus on the figure looming over him. “That you, Ryan?”

“Yeah. Lie still.”

“What happened? Can’t remember.”

“Got whacked.”

“Who by?”

“Terrible twosome. Robby and Teddy Tenbos.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Don’t move, while I try and bathe some of this blood out of your hair.”

“Ouch! They hit me? What with? Feels like they used an implode gren on my head.”

“Baseball bat. They were waiting for us at the top of the tower. By the time we got up there, they’d already slit the throat of the baron.”

“Who had?” Ryan noticed that the Armorer’s voice was peculiarly flat and toneless, and that his eyes were struggling to come into focus.

“Robby and Teddy. The stepsons. How’s your head feeling? Or is that a stupe question?”

“Stupe question. So, what happened to me?”

The repetition made Ryan certain that his friend was suffering from concussion.

“Robby and Teddy knocked you out.”