James Axler – Starfall

Annie was a fit-looking woman in her late fifties or early sixties, Ryan judged, though she could have passed for ten or fifteen years younger. With her gray-and-black hair pulled back in a long ponytail, her body tight from hard living and a complexion the color of a fawn’s coat, she was a handsome enough woman. The skin tone spoke of several possible heritages, or a mixture of them. She wore dunga­rees and a rawhide vest that clung to her ample bosom.

“By the Three Kennedys,” Doc exclaimed in a low voice, “now, there walks a handsome woman.”

“Put a lid on it, you randy old goat,” Mildred snapped.

Doc shot Mildred a glower, but didn’t say anything.

Annie approached Ryan without hesitation. She carried a sawed-off, double-barrel shotgun in the crook of her left arm, her right hand fisting the triggers. Both the hammers were eared back. “First sign of trouble from you,” she told Ryan, “and I’ll put you in the compost heap. That’s a promise.”

Ryan nodded. “We’ll get our trading done, then be on our way.”

“Keep your eye on business all the time, Mr. Cawdor?”

“Yeah.”

“I like that in a man.”

“Don’t give a damn what you like,” Ryan said. “One of Trader’s hardest and most fast rules was to get business done ASAP. Once it was done, there was no reason to hang around unless somebody was fishing for information. Or wondering if they were big enough or bad enough to take you.”

“Trader was a smart man. Come on inside the house. Hospitality can be quick, too, and I want to have a look at those blasters before we sit down to dicker too hard. Got some sipping whiskey inside that I brew myself. Make it out of potatoes, but it carries a hell of a kick.”

“We’ll see,” Ryan said.

ANNIE LET THEM into the main house, and Ryan was sur­prised at the decor. Where the exterior of the house was rough, the interior showed the effects of considerable hard work. The floors were wood, but carpets covered them in places, all of them depicting outdoor nature scenes: wood­lands and creatures, fish and rivers, snow-topped moun­tains. Looking at them, Ryan knew the influences had come from the land around the trading post.

He followed the woman through a narrow hallway off the main door, set between two rooms that had large Xs cut in them for blasterports. Evidently the woman took her security measures to heart.

As they stepped into the big room, he signaled to J.B. and had the Armorer step away to the right, then signaled Jak and Dean to step to the left. By the time they stopped, they formed a half circle around Annie and her people. Some of the trading post’s gunners were still behind them, but they weren’t bunched up.

The room was massive, filled with handmade furniture that sported overstuffed upholstery. Two of the walls held floor-to-ceiling shelves that were filled with books. A third wall was a taxidermist’s dream, lined with the heads and bodies of wild game. Ryan scanned the assembled mount­ings, spotting bears, cougar, fish, snakes and other mutie animals that he wasn’t so sure of.

There were also seven human heads. Five of them had belonged to men, and two to women. All of them looked terrified, and the flesh hadn’t been as easily preserved as fur. Skin stretched taut over bone, and stitches showed on the faces of two men, showing where wounds had been closed up after death.

A huge fireplace occupied the fourth wall. There were no windows.

Annie stopped at a large table cut from tree trunks. Smooth river stones covered the tabletop, all of it leveled off by a flawless lacquer that held a suet-yellow color. She flipped a switch under the table, and electrical lights flooded the room.

“Make yourselves to home,” Annie said. “Those that I let inside the trading post I take pride in showing hospitality to.”

Ryan took a seat on one of the three large couches in the center of the room around the big table. J.B. sat across from him while Jak and Dean hung back. There were plenty of seats for Morse and his boys, Elmore and the others. Doc walked straight across to the shelves.