James Axler – Road Wars

Road Wars

Road Wars

23 in the Deathlands series James Axler

Chapter One

The piece of paper was crumpled and stained, but it was still perfectly legible.

Ryan laid it out on the kitchen table and read it through, for the twentieth time. It was now two days since the seedy packman, passing through the small ville of Patriarch, had handed it to Ryan Cawdor.

Success. Will stay around Seattle for three months. Come quick.

Abe.

The note had been on the road for just over six weeks before it eventually found Ryan, which gave him about a month and a half to make the long and dangerous overland trek to the far northwest of Deathlands to try to meet up again with his old friend Abe and his old leader, the Trader.

THE FIRST FRAIL LIGHT of dawn had been edging over the jagged crests of the mountains to the east of Jak Lauren’s homestead when Ryan slipped from his bed. Krysty Wroth had still been sleeping, her flaming red hair fanned out across the floral pillow, seeming to glow with a vivid fire of its own. Her bright green eyes were closed and one hand lay, fist clenched, across the top of the covers.

They had made love three times during their last night togethertheir last night together for a limitless time. Ryan’s hope was that he and the Armorer, J. B. Dix, would be able to make the fifteen hundred miles to the northern Cific coast in a week or so, trouble permitting, take a few days to contact Trader and Abe, and then all return securely to old New Mexico. Call it three weeks, at the outside. That was the theory.

As soon as he’d set his eye on the note, Ryan had known that he would have to go. Since he couldn’t use the gateway to make a jump to Seattle, it was going to mean some hard traveling, cross-country. It wasn’t the kind of journey where he’d want to take Doc Tanner, Mildred Wyeth or his son, Dean, with him. Jak needed some time to get his head together again after the brutal slaying of his wife and baby.

That meant someone had to stay behind and keep an eye on things. Krysty was unarguably the best for that. And he needed someone to go with him on the road.

Trader used to say that a man traveling alone traveled fastest, but that two good men traveling together would travel safest.

John Barrymore Dix and Ryan Cawdor had ridden and fought together for more yearsmostly with the Traderthan either cared to remember. Five feet eight inches tall and one hundred and thirty-seven pounds soaking wet, J.B. had forgotten more about weapons than most people in Deathlands would ever know. Sallow, bespectacled and terse, he seldom used one word where none would suffice.

In bed, the previous night, with the noises of the house quietening for the dark hours, Ryan had begun to try to explain the plan to Krysty Wroth.

THEY WERE NAKED, close together, yet back to back, a thousand miles apart. There was the faint golden glow of an oil lamp flickering under the bedroom door, and outside the window they could see the sickle moon, floating behind ragged clouds, low in the black velvet sky.

“Want to sleep, lover?” he whispered.

Krysty didn’t answer him at first, but he could tell from the fast, shallow sound of her breathing that she was still very much awake.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

She turned to face him, her breath warm on his skin. “We’ve talked it through, Ryan, talked this kind of thing through a hundred times since we met.”

“I have to go.”

“You stupe bastard. Think I don’t know that?”

“Then”

Krysty stretched an arm across his chest, then nuzzled her face into the hollow of his neck. Her right hand touched him, feather-light, on the lips, then traced a firm line down his throat, brushing past the legion of seamed scars and weals, over the flat muscular wall of his stomach.

Lower.

“Sure you want to?”

Krysty stopped him with her mouth, the tip of her tongue darting between his parted lips. Her hand grasped him firmly, bringing him to an instant diamond-hard readiness.