James Axler – Watersleep

The boy clammed up. Ryan gestured with the pistol. “Do I have to shoot you in the leg to help your memory?”

“Rollins is the boss of all bosses,” the boy recited in a chant. “Gonna take over all of Deathlands some­day.”

“Oh,” Ryan said sarcastically. “King of the Deathlands. Now there’s a title for you.” The one-eyed man shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “How’d you get in here, anyway?”

“Through the door, you old fart.”

Ryan’s free hand lashed out, cuffing the boy’s head.

“Watch your smart mouth, stupe.”

“Th-this place was open. Been open for months. Doors were broken up in a quake. You should know! You had to have—”

Then Breaux’s gaze fell on the partially opened elevator, and a look of understanding fell across his face. His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“You came from down below!” It was an accu­sation, not a question.

“Good eyes. Wrong assumption. There’s no ele­vator there. Just an empty shaft. I was in here al­ready—came through Greenglades park. Got lost in the swamps. After I nearly had one of my feet gnawed off by a mutie frog, I decided to look in here for some shelter,” Ryan lied, making up the story as he went along. Not that he cared one way or another if the boy believed he’d come up from the bottom of the redoubt, but why give the scoop to a child who’d previously tried to stab him in the gut with a hidden shiv?

“How old are you?” Ryan asked.

“Fifteen.”

“Got any folks?”

“Got an older sister.”

“Any message you want sent after I’ve chilled your flannel-wearing ass?”

“Fuck you,” the boy snarled.

“I can spell that. She can chisel it on your tomb­stone.” Ryan raised the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer and pointed it directly between the boy’s eyes.

Damnation! Fifteen-year-old murderers with pistols and knives. This might have been Dean’s future if Ryan hadn’t come along when he did, or if Sharona’s plan to see to the boy’s welfare had fallen by the wayside. Ryan tried to smother the flicker of guilt that raced up the back of his spine, a flicker that whispered aloud his doubts about letting this boy rejoin his cara­van and report to his boss, the elusive Mr. Rollins.

Ryan sighed audibly. “I guess I have no choice,” he said aloud. “Turn around and start running, and don’t stop until you’re long out of Florida.”

Breaux, already considering himself dead and bur­ied, blinked in shock. “You’ll shoot me in the back!” he squeaked.

“If I was going to chill you, I would have done it already. Now scram.”

“But my blaster—”

“Wrong. My blaster. And I’ll have your balls as a keepsake, too, if you don’t pack up and roll out of here. Now go on, get out of my sight.” Ryan took a step forward and gestured with the blaster.

Breaux glared back at Ryan for a few seconds, his face a mix of fear and distrust, then he was around the corner and out of the redoubt in a matter of sec­onds.

Ryan stepped softly around the bend of the hall­way, listening as the boy’s footsteps retreated. He holstered his blaster and stepped back to the elevator.

Krysty was already up and out. Ryan extended a helping hand, which she took to pull herself to her feet. She looked around the corridor at the bodies among the debris.

“And I thought this redoubt couldn’t get any sor­rier,” she commented.

“We need to move. That kid may be back with buddies soon.”

“You let him go,” she said curiously.

“That’s right. So?”

“Why?”

“Why not? Only a scared boy running with the big dogs. Been enough chilling for one day. Besides, by the time he gets back to wherever he’s headed to tell about discovering us inside, we’ll be long gone,” Ryan said.

“You saw Dean, didn’t you?”

Ryan didn’t answer.

“You took a long look and saw your own son perched at the receiving end of a blaster, and you couldn’t blow him away,” Krysty said flatly.

Ryan kept silent and turned away, walking over to the elevator. He peered down in the darkness of the shaft and waved at a shadowy J.B., who had contin­ued to cling patiently to the ladder in wait for a signal.