James Axler – Trader Redux

But not now.

Arkadin led them in, stepping over the corpse of a dog that lay across the front step, flies gathering around the sockets of the opaque eyes.

Apart from the stench of the dead animal, Ryan wrinkled his nostrils at the stink of decaysweat, urine, wet clothes and rotting food.

The lobby was in semidarkness, its furniture tawdry and filthy. The floor was so dirty that the soles of their combat boots stuck to it as they walked after the sec man. Their heels crunched among splinters of shattered glass.

“Christ on the cross!” Trader exclaimed, stopping to peel a sheet of greasy paper from his foot. “I never saw a place so triple unclean and unsanitary. Your baron ever think about getting some people with brooms and pails of water?”

Arkadin spun, finger to his lips. “Quiet, Willard! Baron Torrance can be friendly. Certainly used to be that way. Lately he But it’s better not to say anything kind of critical of the place. Much better.”

“Sure. Get the picture.”

“Just follow me. Best keep both your eyes open and” He trailed off, suddenly aware of Ryan’s condition. “Sorry, Danny. Kind of forgot you lost an eye.”

“Mebbe if we keep all three of our eyes open,” Trader suggested.

A LOG FIRE SMOLDERED in the hearth, the damp wood spitting and cracking. A boy of about ten was sitting by it, poking at a large spider with a long meat skewer, trying to pin down one leg at a time. He didn’t look up as the sec man led the two outlanders past him.

“Bastard kitchen-bred brat,” Arkadin said quietly. “Got all his father’s gentle charm and all his half sister’s kindly ways with living creatures.”

“Where is the baron?” Ryan asked, looking out of a smeared window that opened across the dizzy red-orange expanse of the canyon.

“Probably on the top floor. Named it the games room up there. Likely with the ‘little girls,’ too.”

“Why do you call them that? The ‘little girls’?” Trader stopped, wiping dog shit off his boot on a piece of ragged carpet. “Some sort of joke?”

“No. Not a joke, Willard. One thing that the Torrance ladies aren’t is a joke. Quickest way to reach the fucking river in twelve seconds flat is to laugh at them. Remember that, both of you.”

“You fetched them, Arkadin?” The voice was like hydrogen sulfide bubbling through warm nitric acid.

Ryan glanced at Trader. “Mebbe we shouldn’t” he began.

“Yeah, agreed. Too late now.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The grass in the hollow was damp, with long, thick tussocks. A narrow stream flowed over the top of the cliff, turning the area below the rim into a swampy morass.

Abe stood in it, aware of the wetness, aware of the bright sun that glittered down on his head and the beads of sweat that had been trickling off his mustache, aware that J.B. wasn’t all that far behind him.

But, overwhelming all other sensations, he was aware of the cottonmouth that was coiled around his feet.

A normal cottonmouth, or water moccasin as some people call them, would probably grow to six feet in length, its body not much thicker than the forearm of a muscular adult male. Though not as lethally poisonous as the desert rattler, the cottonmouth has a bite that could kill.

The snake that lay basking there, in the warmth of the hollow, lazily enjoying the remnants of its last meala full-grown wild burrowas at least twenty-five feet long, with a body that was as big around as a beer cask.

It wasn’t taking much obvious notice of Abe, its head turned away, its eyes hooded, its mouth slightly open. The tip of its tongue was in constant, flickering movement, tasting the air around itself. But the last six or seven feet of its powerful body had lazily encircled the man’s ankles, clamping them together.

“J.B.,” Abe said, finding that the air had been sucked from his lungs and his tongue had become dried and swollen all in less than ten seconds.

“I see it.” The Armorer’s voice was calm and reassuring, coming from a dozen yards behind Abe.

The huge mutie snake responded to the sounds, opening its mouth wider, making a faint hissing noise. Abe stood perfectly still, not daring to go for his blaster. He could see the curved, hollow teeth, knowing that they would act like hypo needles, pumping poison into his flesh.