James Axler – Watersleep

Ryan spun in the direction of where the words had come from, dropping to one knee and pulling out his blaster with practiced ease. Other members of the group followed suit, taking out their own assortment of weapons and aiming in the same direction as Ryan.

The sudden appearance of firepower was more than overkill for the sad sight they discovered they were confronting.

A lean man dressed in a yellow shortsleeved sport shirt and threadbare plaid shorts was standing next to the entranceway of the ride formerly known as The Whirling Upchuck. He wore a pair of well-used tan leather sandals, and the top of his bald head was beaded with raindrops as he looked at the plethora of weapons aimed at his face, neck and groin. He raised a liver-spotted hand in a universal sign of greeting.

“You can put away the cannons, young fella. I’m not packing any heat today. Left it inside where I was watching you. Too wet out.”

“That’s a good way to get chilled fast, old man,” Ryan said.

“So what? I’m one foot in the flippin’ graveyard anyway. You’d be doing me a favor,” the man snorted. “What happened out in the swamps? I thought I heard gunfire, but it was too muffled for me to be sure. Course, you hear all kinds of things from out in the swamps these days.”

“We made some new friends,” Ryan said crypti­cally. “But they weren’t too friendly.”

“What, the man-eatin’ frogs? Killer snakes? Mutie cranes? I’ve seen ’em all.”

Ryan chuckled mirthlessly. “You make all that sound almost funny.”

“Well, it is, unless you’re the one with your balls caught in their teeth.”

Dean piped up, “Naw, all we had to contend with was a couple of giant leeches. Almost sucked Doc but good and dry.”

The old man blinked. “Goddamn, that’s a new one on me,” he said. “Giant leeches. Hell’s bells.”

“So, you think you know us?” Ryan stated.

The old man nodded.

“Well, I don’t remember you,” Ryan replied. “You must be losing it—happens with age.”

“Nope. Uh-uh. I may look like a decrepit old rip to you people, and I’ll be the first to admit I’m no­where near as fast as I used to be, but my eyes are still sharp and the mind’s clear. I used to work in the now nearly extinct art of creating illegal identification cards and access passes, and I was always good with faces.

“Let’s see now,” he muttered, nodding to each member of the group as he spoke. “A black woman beside a white man with spectacles, a tall drink of water with long white hair, a beautiful woman with flame red hair, and a boy on the shirttail of a grim man wearing an eye patch. Don’t recognize the pink­eye—he’s new, and the boy’s grown a bit, but still…yeah, you were the outlanders who passed through here when that son of a bitch fairy was trying to take the place out from under Boss Larry.”

Ryan’s keen warrior senses, developed over the long years of survival in Deathlands, had gone into triple red from the time the man appeared. There were plenty of spots for a sniper’s nest in this part of the park, along with ample cover if one wanted to plan an ambush. The wrinkled man in the ugly summer clothes could be a diversion.

Still, none of the danger signs had come creeping across his skin.

“Krysty…?” Ryan didn’t need to verbalize the rest of his request. He knew the woman would already be using her “seeing” abilities to check for any kind of hidden presence or threat.

“Not feeling a thing, lover,” she replied. “I’d say the old coot is exactly what he appears to be.”

“No need to be insulting, young lady,” the man said. “The name’s William B. Chapman. You can call me Wild Bill, if you can say it with a straight face.”

Actually to say the man was an “old coot” was about as accurate as referring to the nuke war that had brought about skydark as a “friendly pillow fight” William B. Chapman looked like a walking frame­work of bones and sinew, topped off with a sunburned raisin for a head. He made even the skeletal Doc Tan­ner look as young and rosy as Dean.