James Axler – Trader Redux

Torrance snatched at the microphone, making it howl and whistle. “Will someone get here who knows how to work this fuckin’ machine?” he roared. “So we can get this bastard wedding rehearsal on the road?”

“WEDDING?” J.B. REPEATED. “Did he say ‘wedding,’ Abe?”

“Yeah. That’s what he said.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“You both got to read this and remember it, ready for the ceremony tomorrow.” Arkadin handed each of them a piece of ragged paper, torn from the back of some predark book. “You both got reading?”

Ryan nodded. “Sure we do. Don’t we, brother Willard? Got the reading.”

Trader scowled. “Course we got fucking reading. Think we’re stupes?”

The sec man smiled. “Marrying the little girls tomorrow? Course you aren’t stupes. Likely the best thing ever happened to you two.”

Trader had been staring out of the window, across the soaring deeps of the canyon, now tinted deep crimson and orange as the sun began to set behind it. “Sure. Thanks a bunch.”

“Welcome. Make sure you get to bed good and early tonight. Want to be fresh and chipper tomorrow. Ready for the big dayo.” He grinned. “And the big nighto afterward.”

He closed the door behind him. Trader turned and threw a finger. “Can we fucking read? That son of a bitch has it coming when we get out of here, Ryan.”

“Doing his job is all.”

“Yeah. Sure. Like a dog does its job by eatin’ its own puke.” Trader looked at the piece of paper. “Come on then. Read it and tell me what it says.”

“Sort of thing like swearing an oath.”

“Read it.”

” ‘I, Willard King, swear that'”

“Hold it. If you’re reading it, then how come it’s got my name on it?”

“There’s two of them, Trader. One with my name on it and one with your name. All right? Right. ‘I swear that I will take the daughter of Baron Torrance, christened Chrissie’mine’ll say Bessie, Trader’as my lawful wedded wife, from this day forth.'”

“They’re serious!” Trader could hardly believe it. “Now it comes to the line, they’re really goin’ to get us to marry those scum-sucking sluts!”

“Goes on a bit about being loyal to the ville of Hightower and loyal to our wives in sickness and health. Until death parts us. Note that bit, Trader.”

“Sure. If I have my way about chilling, this’ll be one of the shortest marriages in the whole history of all Deathlands.”

“Last bit is about us swearing eternal loyalty to the ville and to Baron Torrance. In the event of his death, then the little girls take joint control.”

Trader sniffed. “You don’t think this might be worth while taking over, do you, Ryan?”

“Take over Hightower ville, you mean?”

“Yeah.” He pointed a bony finger at Ryan. “We can easy take the women and get us blasters from a couple of the sec men. Chill Torrance, if he don’t drop dead and shit himself from fright. Then it’s ours.”

“Trader,” Ryan said, moving toward the window that still stood open.

“Yeah? Good idea, huh?”

“One thing is that I want to get back to Krysty, Dean and the others. Second thing is that this fire-blasted place is going to fall into the river anytime in the next few months. If I ever want to get to be a baronwhich I don’tthen I want to be the baron of something more than a rotting pile of waterlogged planks and buckets of broken glass.”

Trader slapped himself on the thigh. “That’s why you were so good as my Number Two, Ryan Cawdor. You stopped me from making a triple stupe of myself.”

“I tried.”

A small bat came flapping in through the open window and circled the room, its high-pitched cry barely audible to the two men. While they watched it, the little creature managed to gain control of its surroundings and flew back out over the balcony into the pinon-scented dusk.

“Way to go,” Ryan said.

“LOOK AT THE BATS,” Abe whispered.

“I seen them like this a lot of times, down toward the Grandee. Places they come boiling out of the caverns like steam out of a kettle.”

J.B. and Abe had worked their way closer to the main building of Hightower ville as the light faded.