James Axler – Shadowfall

Trader grabbed the single for himself.

The sec man told them that they were left to their own devices. “You can do what you like,” he said. “Come or go, be drunk or sober. Sleep or wake. The ville’s yours. Talk about a recce patrol tomorrow.”

Ryan stopped him. “We heard stories that Weyman was a bad baron. Doesn’t seem that way to me.”

Rainey laughed bitterly. “Like he said. The wolves gather when they scent a weakness. Weyman’s not the man he was, and I know better than anyone how standards have fallen. Time’ll come when some wolf’s-head bastard walks in and plucks all the tender fruit from off the branches.”

RYAN SAT ON THE BED, pulling at a loose thread from the patterned coverlet. Krysty stood by the window, wiping away dusty spiderwebs from the leaded glass.

“What do you feel, lover?”

“Sadness. That above all.”

Ryan nodded.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Breakfast was every bit as good as the meal they’d eaten the previous day clam chowder that lined the stomach, followed by a fry-up of eggs and pork sausages, with a tureen brimming with crisp hash browns; a bowl of corned beef with a hot pepper sauce, as well as a huge patterned dish of grits with unsalted butter; fresh-baked bread with a range of preserves and a pitcher of cold milk.

“Could stay here some time, Dean,” Ryan said, sitting opposite his son, who was tucking into a pile of hash browns, with three eggs squatting on top of it.

“That would be wonderful!” exclaimed Jamie, who’d poached the seat next to Dean.

Once again, Ryan was struck by the similarity between the two boys; both with dark curling hair and brown eyes, both with the same kind of quickness, the sort of brightness of spirit that burned like a flame.

The main difference lay in the types of education that the two boys had received.

Jamie wasn’t a soft child, but he lacked the essential core of hardness that was so self-evident in Dean. He had been taught reading and writing at an early age, as well as principles of math and some knowledge of the sciences. His use of language was far more adult and sophisticated than Dean’s, and he had also been taught far more history and geography.

Dean’s wisdom came from the school of life and hard knocks. Ryan doubted that the baron’s son had ever taken a human life, or fired a blaster in anger. If Dean cut notches on the butt of his 13-round Browning, there would certainly have been more than twenty.

Far more than twenty.

“Would you like to stay here, Dean?” Abe asked.

The boy shook his head, sullen. “No. Screw that! Stay with all of you.” He sliced into the eggs, letting the lava of golden yolks flow down the side of the potato peak.

Jamie laid down his knife and fork in a perfectly symmetrical pattern.

“I would so like it if you could stay here, Dean. Even if it were only for a week or two.”

“Can’t.”

“There’s no real rush, son,” Ryan said.

“We have to move on and go all over Deathlands,” Dean insisted, glowering at his father.

“Nobody knows why the old United States of America came to be called Deathlands, you know,” Jamie informed them, steepling his fingers together in a habit that Ryan guessed he’d probably picked up from one of his teachers. “It became a current phrase sometime during what is known as the long winters. But there is no record of who came to use it first. I believe that it is now the name for our country, all over the world.”

“How come you know so much?” Dean asked. “I was just taught things,” the other boy replied, surprised. “Weren’t you taught things like that?”

“Dean never had much time for training to be a scholar,” Doc said, wiping a smear of milk from his mouth with his sleeve. “So don’t go asking him about Manifest Destiny or Watergate or Boston Common or any of those turning points in history. All right, laddie?”

Jamie nodded. “Of course. I’m sorry if I seemed to be pompous or arrogant. Truly I am, Dean.”