After she’d returned to rejoin the other stickies, Ryan nibbed his finger along the stock of the hunting rifle. “Could tell them we’d done it.”
“They might come take a look.”
“We’ll be gone.”
“True.”
Neither of them liked chilling for the sake of it. Stickies were the most vicious and murderous breed of muties in the land, and it would normally be a positive relief to see a tribe of them, however small, down and dead in the dirt. But these poor, staggering creatures were so wretched, tainted by the killer disease, that it seemed pointless to butcher them. Admittedly they’d taken the load of gas as a part of the deal. But if the victims were dying anyway, Ryan felt no compunction in screwing the cowardly folk of Mitchell Springs.
“Put them out of their misery,” J.B. suggested.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. We might as well do it.”
He eased the rifle’s walnut stock to his shoulder, squinting through the Starlite night scope with the laser image enhancer, waiting for the moment when most of the eight would be out in the open. At such short range he figured that it was highly unlikely that he’d need to use all of the SSG-70’s ten rounds of 7.62 rounds.
“Want me to fire a burst and bring them out from cover?” J.B. asked.
“Could do.”
There was a gust of wind blowing from the surrounding mountains, whisking up a flurry of the frozen, lying snow. Ryan waited until it had settled before getting ready to give the signal to the Armorer.
“No.” The single quiet word came from J.B.
“What?” Ryan kept the rifle to his shoulder, the sight centered on the chest of the little toddler.
“Half left.”
Ryan lowered the blaster and moved his head slowly to look in the direction that the Armorer had pointed, seeing that they were no longer the only players in the game of living and dying.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The first light of the false dawn jerked Abe awake. He moaned at the sudden sharp pain that racked his shoulders, elbows, wrists and thighs. The tying had been done well enough to cramp every muscle and tendon in his body. It was like liquid fire coursing through every vein, scorching his heart and lungs when he tried to find a less agonizing position.
One of the gang had come out some time in the previous hour and spit on him, gloating over the helpless prisoner, warning him of the pleasures to come once they got him back to their home ville in the hills.
“Luke got kin that sent us after you and the old bastard. We’ll get him an’ all. Blood for blood’s what we swear by.”
If Abe could’ve gone back a ways and altered time, he might have decided not to bother setting out after Trader at all. It seemed there’d been not much more than hardship, chilling, blood and running.
Now it was going to be an endless time of pain where the final curtain would be dropped on him by the old guy in the hood with the long scythe.
Despite the biting cold and the swirling pain, Abe slithered back into a kind of sleep.
“COME ON, Ryan.”
The voice in his ear, breath hot, tickled him, making Abe wince away from the speaker. “Fuck off.”
“Quiet, or we both buy the farm. They beat you bad, Ryan, have they?”
Now he was back again in the land of the living. “Trader. That you?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not Ryan.”
“What?”
“Not Ryan.”
“Who is?”
“Me.” Abe was becoming more and more confused, not knowing what was happening.
“Who are you?” Trader shifted, the butt of his beloved Armalite scraping on the rocks that Abe had been leaning against. “Fuck that!”
Abe was sliding inexorably toward the ragged edge of panic. Since meeting up again with Trader, he’d noticed several times that the old man was not quite so sharp as he’d once been, subject to the occasional lapse of concentration or memory. Normally it didn’t matter that much.
Right now it could easily get both of them butchered by the sleeping gang, only a few paces away near the glowing ashes of their small fire.