James Axler – Way of the Wolf

The five men in the room besides the gunsmith were all hard and rangy. They kept their eyes on him.

“Same as most other people in the ville who kind of want to run their own lives,” Phillips replied. “He keeps us here, won’t let us go.”

J.B. swept his gaze around the room. “Seems like you got yourself a small army here. Don’t see how you could be kept from leaving if that’s what you decided you wanted to do.”

“Looking on the face of it, that’s what you’d think. But that’s just looking on the face of it. My momma, God rest her soul, popped me out of her belly after being exposed to a hot-rad area on an overland trip my daddy took when he should have been seeing to it she stayed comfortable. You look at me now, you see a man been down some hard roads. Can you imagine what I must have looked like while I was some pissant newborn? I mean, we’re born into this world ugly anyway. But me?” He barked harsh laughter.

“Must have been a sight,” J.B. agreed.

“Damn straight, it was.” Phillips rubbed his hump as if trying to massage away the old memory. “My daddy, he was all ready to stove in my head and be done with it. Only Momma didn’t let him. Said she’d buried enough dead births, and I was the first one born live. Figured she had something wrong with her insides. He left her, but she managed to keep us both alive. Turns out I was real good with my hands. By ten and twelve years old, I was helping feed us by working on things other people brought to us.”

J.B. nodded. “You going to eat, or did I take your plate?”

“We eat in shifts,” Phillips replied. “Against getting poisoned.”

J.B. understood immediately. “You trade out for food?”

“Yeah. No room for a garden down here, and got no place to raise beef, either. Gives us a certain vulnerability.”

“So you eat far enough apart that the symptoms would show up?”

“Yeah.”

J.B. scooped up more beef and beans, chewing it thoroughly. “And if somebody gets poisoned?”

“Simple. I blow up the building and go out of business. Want some coffee sub to go with that meal?”

J.B. nodded.

Phillips looked at one of the young men, who got up and took the coffeepot from the stove. He poured a ceramic cup full, then handed it to the Armorer.

“So what’s keeping you here?” J.B. asked.

“The plague,” the gunsmith answered. “You mean to tell me you haven’t heard of it?”

Chapter Nine

Jak maintained his hold on his hostage with difficulty as the horse reared and staggered under their combined weight. He kept a steady pressure on the reins, holding the horse from bolting and running. The burning horse raced through the brush ahead of them, leaving fiery sparks in its wake. Some of those sparks fanned to life as fires all on their own.

The albino locked his right arm under his hostage’s chin. Warm blood flowed down his hand from a wound the leaf-bladed knife had made on the man’s throat during the brief struggle. “Move, and die,” Jak promised, his lips close to his captive’s ear.

“Gonna be chilled in a minute anyway,” the man argued in a strained voice. “Hiram ain’t gonna crawfish. And he don’t give a fuck if he kills me, too.” But he didn’t move against the threat of the knife.

Jak watched the man bringing his horse around to face them. The man had lost control over his mount for a moment when the burning man had dropped at his horse’s hooves. He pulled his long blaster to his shoulder.

The albino kicked the horse in the sides and yanked savagely on the reins. The startled animal, given its head, burst into a gallop. It vaulted over the burning man still rolling around on the grass, then it crashed against the horse carrying the man with the long blaster.

The muzzle-flash ballooned from the rifle, reaching out over a foot. Jak heard the bullet break wind beside his ear. Expertly he flipped the leaf-bladed knife at the rifleman. The blade flicked into the man’s eye, burying deep into the brain tissue beyond.