James Axler – Watersleep

“Well, what’s your big hurry?” Jackson asked in a snide voice.

Ryan decided he’d had enough mouth. “Trying to get away from pricks like you. To be honest with you, pretty boy, I don’t need the aggravation.”

“Ryan,” Krysty warned from his right. The timbre of the one word said it all.

The one-eyed man had the ability to read a situa­tion, although his own gifts weren’t the result of mu­tation, as was the case with Krysty. In his years of roaming Deathlands, encountering the good and the bad in people from all walks of life, Ryan had become a keen observer of human nature. Not universal na­ture, although he understood quite a bit about what drove a person to act in a manner to injure his fellow, but more of a face-to-face understanding of what a man would do under the right circumstances.

Mildred would have termed it an ability to read body language. Others might have said Ryan pos­sessed a sixth sense: observation and comprehension; the manner in how a person spoke, whether the tone was tinged with even the slightest hint of menace or friendship; the posture of his back and how he held his body; even the way his eyes cut back and forth— all of this could offer the crucial tip Ryan needed in knowing how to play a situation.

One bad guess or false move could mean a crip­pling wound, a loss of limb and property and, more often than not, instant death from the barrel of a blaster or the blade of a knife. Ryan Cawdor enjoyed being alive. From time to time, he liked to tell himself he was getting pretty damned good at staying that way.

The Green boy was trouble—handlebar mustache, fancy duds, dyed hair and all. Some burst of testos­terone had flooded his brain. Now the conversation had dropped all pretense of being civilized and had gone the way of a pissing contest.

“Mebbe I’ll just chill your one-eyed ass and take what I want,” Jackson snarled, leaping to his feet and hoisting the Uzi.

In response, Jak’s right arm snapped down like a released cobra, spitting out one of the albino’s wafer-thin throwing knives. The blade spun at an angle, singing across the standing man’s throat in a near in­visible blur of movement, ultimately embedding itself in one of the orange seat cushions of an empty booth across the dining area.

Jackson’s neck split open in a yawn of crimson, spraying the table, the plates and his three compan­ions in a fine mist of blood.

“One way to shut him up,” J.B. muttered philo­sophically, whipping out his own scattergun to back up Jak’s play.

Before his friend hit the floor, Constantinople was moving. While he was as fat as any of the barons Ryan had ever encountered, at the same time he pos­sessed that smooth grace of movement and natural agility that many large men have at their command.

In other words, while he looked lumbering and slow, his moves in a pinch proved otherwise.

His gleaming side arm was out of its side holster and in his hand. He had time for only a single shot, which went wild, before Ryan’s group responded in unison.

The companions, well versed in working as a unit when a threat presented itself, split into two groups.

One half went for the shelter of the orange-topped bar that stretched along the back wall of the eatery. The other half stayed with their leader. J.B. assisted with his shoulder when Ryan pushed down on the edge of their dining table with all of his upper-body strength. The move caused the dishes and utensils to flip up, spinning in the air as a temporary distraction, while also giving them the back of the overturned table as badly needed cover.

“Goddammit!” Constantinople bellowed over the roar of his blaster as he pulled the trigger again and again. “There was no cause to cut his throat!”

Jackson, he of the formerly smart mouth, was roll­ing around on the checkered linoleum, gagging loudly and making unintelligible gasping noises as his hands squeezed together on his own throat, trying to hold his slit neck together. Wet red oozed from his fingers, and drops of spittle mixed with blood were being coughed up by the dying man.