James Axler – Starfall

Dean Cawdor shifted at the end of the building. The boy shaded his eyes as he peered at the dust cloud. His stark black curly hair and vivid blue eyes, as well as the rangy build, clearly marked him as his father’s child. The holster on his hip was empty because the Browning Hi-Power he carried was in his hand.

“Fifteen, mebbe twenty,” Dean called out.

“Riders?” J.B. asked.

“Yeah.”

J.B. processed the information. Horses meant some kind of ville. A man out ranging the land with no home would be hard-pressed to keep a horse’s belly full. An expert trav­eler could get by on some ring-pulls and self-heats that he raided or traded for in arid country. Few who regularly traveled Deathlands wandered far from their home twenty on horseback. A horse was a valuable animal, capable of a lot of work and needing a lot of care. Besides being vul­nerable to the harsh climate, a horse was also an item worth stealing or killing for.

A dozen or more horses meant whoever was riding them could take care of them. And they wouldn’t be out traveling unless it was important.

“Carrying some kind of flag,” Dean went on.

“See what it is?” J.B. asked.

“Not yet.”

“Let me know.” The Armorer kept focused on the ter­rain ahead of them. Going back and crossing the paths of the riders wasn’t a good plan. Better to take their chances losing themselves in the detritus ahead of them.

“John Barrymore,” Doc said, shifting close and keeping a low profile, “I fear we are much too far away to offer succor to Ryan should he need it.”

“Way Ryan wanted it,” J.B. replied. “We got the back door.”

“That was then,” Doc said stubbornly. “This is now. He surely did not know about the riders closing in on this location.”

“We hold.” J.B. forced himself to stay at rest, his hands wrapped securely around his Uzi. His Smith & Wesson M-4000 shotgun lay strapped against his back.

“Then someone should be with Krysty,” Doc said. When he had been born in South Strafford, Vermont, on February 14, 1868, he had been christened Theophilus Al­gernon Tanner. He’d earned a science degree at Harvard, then a doctorate at Oxford University in England.

He was tall and lean, and his silver hair blew around his shoulders. His clothing was Victorian, including a frock jacket showing a green patina from age, and cracked leather knee boots. He held a Le Mat percussion pistol in one hand and a black walking stick with a silver lion’s head in the other.

Though well over two hundred years old by the count of a conventional calendar, Doc’s actual age was much more bizarre than that. He’d been seized from 1896 by a time-trawling experiment conducted by Operation Chronos near the end of the second millennium. Chronos had been merely one facet of The Totality Concept, an organization that had explored arcane avenues for future warfare.

In the 1990s, Doc hadn’t given up hope of being returned to his wife, Emily, and their children. In spite of the fact that his transfer from the past was the only known success, and that no one had survived any attempts at being sent back, he worked to take the chance. Ultimately the re­searchers affiliated with Operation Chronos had marked Doc as a security risk and had trawled him a hundred years into the future. Both experiences had left their mark on the old man, leaving him with episodes of disassociative de­mentia.

“Krysty’s a big girl,” Mildred said. “She can take care of herself.”

“Still,” Doc grumbled, “I would feel better if one of us was with her.”

“Dad wanted it that way,” Dean said. “So did Krysty. Less risk to the rest of us if she was kept isolated. Till we find out what’s wrong with her.”

Despite Dean’s attempts to keep his feelings to himself, his worry was immediately apparent to J.B.

The Armorer said, “It’s going to be just fine.” But he couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder at the approaching column of dust from the riders. Then he cut his gaze to the sky.

It was going to be a race to see what went wrong first: the arrival of the riders, or the arrival of the chem storm.