“Guess not.”
“What?”
J.B. turned from the window. “They could do this. How come they’re so frightened? I reckon they’ve had a run-in with the stickies and mebbe lost folks to the shitting sickness. Make sense to you?”
“Could be. No point in wondering. We know what we have to do and where we have to go to do it.”
MORNING BROUGHT platters of fish chowder and thick slices of fresh-baked bread, a crock of salted butter and a glass jar of strawberry preserve.
“Could drag this out for another three days and still have time to tie up with Trader,” J.B. said, easing his leather belt open a notch.
There was a faint scratching sound at the outside of the door of their hut. Ryan glanced across at J.B., who moved silently to pick up the Uzi. He drew his own SIG-Sauer, then stepped over to the door, flattening himself against the white-painted log wall. “Who is it?”
“Me. Maggie. Open up quick before anyone sees me comin’ to call.”
The old woman limped in, her hair covered in a dark blue shawl, a layer of snow dusting it. She gestured for Ryan to push the door shut.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I’m a Christian woman, outlander. And I can feel the Good Lord a-tappin’ on my shoulder, whisperin’ in my ear at night, tellin’ me that it’s close to my time. Race is near run, and I ain’t goin’ to stand before His gold throne unless I’m full justified. Won’t have deaths on my conscience.”
“The muties?” J.B. asked, puzzled at her meaning.
“Stupe! You and one-eye here. Not that losin’ an eye makes you less fancy, mister. If I was a year or two younger I’d gladly have let you park your boots under my bed.”
“You trying to tell us that the good folk plan to chill us?” Ryan said. “After we do the job for them?”
“Course. Get your pretty blasters and their gas returned and that hunk of armasteel parked out back. Now I told you and I’m goin’ out again.”
“How? When?” The Armorer glanced out of the window into the blurred mix of sleet and snow that was falling steadily over the ville.
“For me to know and you to guess. For a shrimp you ain’t so bad lookin’, neither.” As she pushed past J.B., she made a grab at his crotch, cackling at the rosy blush that flooded his cheeks. Before either of them could say any more, Maggie was gone.
“What now, bro?” the Armorer asked, taking off his glasses and furiously wiping at them.
“Well, we could be well warmed with her if we wanted it.” Ryan grinned. “One of those old ladies that I somehow believed right out. How about you?”
“Yeah. So?”
“We go and chill the stickles. Come back and watch our backs. Don’t stay a second night. Head out in the wag. That sound like a good plan?”
J.B. replaced his glasses. “Yeah.”
“TOO EASY,” J.B. whispered, putting his hand over his mouth to check the plumes of breath streaming out into the bitterly cold morning.
The stickies’ camp was a collection of ragged tents and brushwood huts, built in the lee of what had probably been the main south wall of the old veterans’ hospital. It was the only section of the scattered complex of buildings still standing, the rest of them having been destroyed either by nuking or by earth movements in the following years.
Ryan and J.B. had worked their way within fifty yards, close enough to smell the fires that smoldered in several places around the squalid site. They’d been waiting, hidden in some snow-covered ferns, watching and counting.
“Eight,” Ryan said finally.
“Yeah. Six men, one woman and one toddler. We taking the woman and child out?”
“Why not? That’s what we’re paid for. You know what Trader used to say about stickies.”
“Course. The boar and the sow and the cubs. Today’s cubs are tomorrow’s boars.”
Ryan blew on his fingers to keep them warm. “Way they look down there, I reckon another three days or so’ll see all of them dead from cholera.”
The sickness was glaringly obvious. Even in the short time they’d been watching, two of the male stickies had crawled from their shelters, dragging themselves through the snow, helplessly throwing up. The woman had walked unsteadily toward the hidden norms, squatting less than ten yards away from them, voiding a stinking mess of foul liquid.