them, under any circumstances. Didn’t trust them. He’d had a kid brother who had
been shot up in the legs years back and had been put to the knife. But the doc
had bungled. The kid had gotten gangrene, had died in terrible agony, rotting
away before the Trader’s eyes. Since then, forget it—no quacks.
Ryan didn’t know what to do. For once in his life he felt helpless, useless. The
Trader had taken him in, had given him back something he thought he’d lost
forever, and now, when the Trader needed help desperately, there was no way of
giving it to him.
Ryan went down the steps, clinging to the rail as the big war wag lurched.
Crouching in his gun port, the dark-faced kid called Ell glanced around at him
as he approached and shook his head.
“Nothing. This is an easy one, Ryan. No problems.”
Ryan’s mouth twisted slightly.
“Don’t put the hoodoo on us, kid. We’re not there yet. These hills we’re
entering…” He made a thumbs-down gesture. “Bad muties. Full of them.”
“They won’t bother us. Ain’t no marauders got half what we got. We could cream
’em up.”
“Hasn’t stopped others from trying.”
Ryan stared bleakly out of the gun port. It was still dark, but dawn raced up
behind them. And Mocsin was getting closer by the minute. His mouth twisted up
again as he thought of the gross figure of Jordan Teague, self-proclaimed Baron
of these territories. Ryan hated the thought that they were carrying arms to
him, but he acknowledged that the Trader was right: you kept your word even to
scum, unless they really crossed you. If you began breaking your word, folks’d
start getting edgy with you, even if they knew all the circumstances. If you
broke your word once you could do it twice.
Trouble was, that fat bastard Teague was probably buying guns from other
traders, was probably building up an awesome armory. Rumor was strong, too, that
in the past couple of years Mocsin had become a hellhole, a dirty beacon that
beckoned only the most viciously depraved of men, rad-rats, cannibals, barely
human creatures who because of their terrible mutations and deformities had been
squeezed dry of any kind of humanity whatsoever.
It sounded to Ryan as if Jordan Teague was gathering muscle for some grim
purpose, and the more you traded stuff to the guy the more quickly that purpose
would be achieved.
He said, “You keep your eyes wide open, kid. First moving shadow you see, hit
it. Hit it hard. Take no chances.”
He turned abruptly. He moved back toward the steps and began mounting them. And
froze as he caught the sudden shrill squawk from the radio in the cabin above,
the glitz of atmospherics, the harsh yell of shock that cracked across the
airwaves.
Even as he vaulted up the last remaining steps, the alarm started howling and he
heard the Trader shouting, “Brake!”
Ryan slammed across the cabin, reaching up for and grabbing his automatic rifle
as he did so, flicking the selector to three-shot and slinging it as he reached
the driver’s area, clutching the back of Dix’s chair as the huge vehicle lost
its forward motion.
Cohn was gabbling into his mike, men were tumbling down from the upper chambers
and Ryan could hear the thud of boots behind him as more men disgorged from the
bunk rooms, the jittery MG-like rattle of rifle checks and mag slams.
“Teague?” he snapped.
“Who knows. Doubtful. Muties, more like.” The Trader was ramming a mag up into a
battered-looking Armalite rifle as he spat the words out, his face drawn, his
eyes flickering around the cabin.
Ryan stared forward. The road ahead, seen through the narrow windshield, was
empty of movement—human movement; otherwise, it was alive with tracer streams
from the cabin-roof machine gun as the gunner sent firelines exploding up and
down the potholed surface, hammering into the rocks that loomed all about.
They were still moving slowly forward, but then Cohn said tensely, glancing
around from the radio, “She’s out of it. Maybe immobilized.”
“Tell ’em to hold on.” The Trader gestured to Ches. “Closedown.” He turned to