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There were four more men: three were sec men, heavily built and wearing broad-brimmed hats to protect them from the worst ravages of the heat. They stood at points that covered the area surrounding the building. All held blasters, muzzles pointing down. Two had Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless rifles, while the third was carrying an Uzi. All weapons were in fairly good condition.
The fourth man stood out among the others. Standing at somewhere around six-four or six-five, he was sparsely clad, with a loose cotton shirt open to the waist, loose cotton pants that ended around his shins and leather thonged sandals. He was slim, with the loose clothing hiding most of his body, but the open shirt revealed a tightly muscled chest and stomach. He had long, raven-black hair that fell in a single thick plait almost to his waist, the plait shot through with threads of silver-gray that betrayed the encroaching middle age of its owner. On his head was perched a black stovepipe hat with a few oily feathers from a desert buzzard attached to the crown. The brim shaded his eyes, throwing them into shadow, and making the aquiline sweep of his nose and the thin, impassive set of his lips the only clues to his mood. He had walnut-brown skin, tanned and textured like supple leather, and his coloring betrayed his ancient Native American roots.
Yet despite all this, the most striking thing about him was that he carried no blaster. Even the eight-man team swarming over the roof had handblasters holstered and attached to their clothing. But this man, standing as still and silent as a ghost in the burning desert air, carried only a long-bladed knife of his own making, with a finely honed blade and an intricately carved handle that appeared to be of bone.
The sec man covering the area to the east turned and hollered across the space between himself and the silent giant.
“Yo! Crow, y’all ain’t gonna believe this, but there’s a whole bunch of people walkin’ out of the desert.”
The giant said nothing, but the shout led to hilarity from the men working on the roof.
“Shee-it, you been chasing them desert mushrooms again, Petey?” yelled a thickset, heavily scarred man with sandy hair thinning on his scalp, not pausing in his task of rapidly resetting the thick asphalt tiles as he spoke.
“Shut up, Hal,” the sec man countered. “Just take a look-see.”
The sandy-haired man stopped momentarily and looked up. Squinting into the desert haze, he could make out the straggling line of the companions as they approached slowly.
“Well, I take it all back, Petey,” he said. “Where in hell did they all come from?” He looked down to where the impassive giant stood. “Hey, Crow, y’all hear that? And they got blasters out,” he added.
There was a pause—not long enough to denote that the giant was ignoring the exchange, but long enough to impose his sense of authority. Something that was emphasized by the manner of his reply.
“I heard. They’ll all be exhausted. Must’ve walked for days, no matter which way they come. And they don’t know if we’re friendly folk. They’ll be too exhausted to be a threat.”
His voice was quiet and low, almost a rumbling whisper that carried across the hot desert air despite the almost inaudible volume.
It was a voice that commanded respect.
“What you wantin’ me to do about them?” Petey asked.
The giant spoke again without turning. “Let them come. Keep your blaster ready but down, like theirs.”
“How the hell you know that?” Petey asked, looking back at the approaching line to double-check.
There was the ghost of a shrug from the giant, but his voice was still impassive. “’Cause we’re as suspicious of them as they are of us. Stands to reason. We don’t spook them, they’ll be fine.”
“’Kay, you’re the boss,” Petey said, turning back to them.
“Sure am—and you boys on the roof remember,” the giant continued, indicating by tone alone that he had noted the way in which the work crew had stopped in order to watch the approaching line.
The hardness in his tone made them start work with alacrity.
“THEY GOING TO BE a problem?” J.B. whispered, his voice barely audible.
“Looks like they’re wary rather than hostile,” Ryan called over his shoulder.
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Krysty added. “I don’t think any of us are up to a firefight right now.”
“I’ll second that,” Mildred commented.
Ryan continued on, his people following, until he was a few hundred yards from the waiting sec man. Noting that the large and muscular sec man had his blaster held across his chest but with the barrel pointing down, Ryan took one hand from his Steyr and waved slowly and carefully. He called out in a hoarse and cracked voice that barely carried across the space between them.
“Hey! We’ve been in the desert for three days. We don’t want a firefight, just a little water and direction to the nearest ville….” His voice petered out into a cough, the sheer number of words too much for his damaged and dry throat.
“Okay,” the sec man replied, his voice strong and clear across the distance. “Y’all just put those blasters down and leave them before you come any farther, and we’ll be just fine.”
Ryan stopped his people and held ground at the distance. Coughing heavily and hawking a dry phlegm ball that made it hard to speak, he croaked, “’Fraid we can’t do that, friend. I appreciate you don’t want strangers coming on you with blasters out, but we can’t just leave ourselves defenseless.”
The sec man didn’t reply at first. The one-eyed man’s refusal, albeit in a nonthreatening manner, left him nonplussed. Ryan took note of the work party’s leadership order by the way in which the sec man looked toward the tall, dark figure who had been standing all the while with his back to them.
The giant turned slowly and took in the companions with a long, slow gaze. Despite the distance, and despite the fact that the giant’s eyes were ostensibly hidden by the shade cast from the brim of his hat, Ryan felt his eye and those of the giant meet. He felt that he was being assessed and hadn’t been found wanting.
The giant spoke to both the sec man and the companions, and the quiet voice carried across the still desert air.
“It’s okay, Petey. You people can keep your blasters, just holster them and don’t move too fast. The sec boys here can be a mite jumpy.”
Ryan paused for a second, then assented. “Okay, we’ll do that,” he said simply, swinging the Steyr across his shoulder. Behind him, the rest of the companions holstered their blasters. Ryan waited until they had all complied, then turned back. “Okay to come on now?” he asked.
The giant nodded. It was the slightest of movements, but against the stillness of his stance was an almost shocking movement. “I appreciate your caution,” he added cryptically.
As they began to move the last hundred yards to the cinder-block house, the workers on and around the roof stopped to watch. Sensing that they wouldn’t work properly until their curiosity was satisfied, Crow called a halt to their work and the beginning of a rest break.
The men had all descended and were in the shade of a camp built to one side of the newly begun extension, the tentlike structure forming a shelter from the blazing sun. They were drinking water from large drums that had been insulated to keep them cool.
Crow strode away from the men and toward the oncoming group. His stride was lengthy, his gait loping with an easy animal grace. Ryan noted that the man carried no blaster, but was sure from the look of him that he would be no easy competition.
The giant Native American held out his hand to Ryan.
“They call me Crow, and I’m the foreman here. You screw with me and I’ll chill you before you know what’s happened. But you treat me and my boys with respect, and we’ll help you if we can.”
Ryan took the proffered hand, noting the strong but easy grip. In his weakened condition, Crow could easily have ground his knuckles to dust, but he didn’t take the advantage. Ryan immediately felt sure that he could trust the man not to chill them out of hand. But he also knew that the Native American would take any precaution necessary to defend his position.
“Name’s Ryan,” the one-eyed warrior returned in a painful whisper, then naming all his party.
Crow introduced his party by name. Apart from Petey, the other sec men were Coburn and Bronson. Turning to where the work party were gathered, he pointed out the others as Hal, Ed, Mikey, Molloy, Tilson, Rysh, Hay and Emerson. To the tired and dehydrated Ryan, the members of the work party were hard to distinguish from one another. They were all muscular, scarred and tanned. They all looked like men who had built muscle from hard work and could more than hold their own in hand-to-hand combat. He also noted that they all had blasters on their hips.
In their current condition, his people would stand no chance if they really were in any danger…and despite the fact that he trusted Crow not to chill them, there was something that niggled at him.
“So how come you people end up out here in the middle of nowhere, looking like buzzard food?” the bronzed giant asked.
“Damn wag we traded for jack and food back in New Mexico,” J.B. said before Ryan had a chance to answer. “Tank was rigged so that they could fool us on the gas, and the engine bearings were shot to shit ’cause the oil was full of crap. Had to leave the bastard thing or die with it.”
Ryan smiled inwardly at the sudden outburst from the taciturn Armorer. It was a good cover story, as all of them knew the importance of keeping the mattrans system as secret as possible. His own cover story would have been similar, but he was surprised at the sudden acting talent shown by his old friend.
Crow settled a level gaze on J.B., trying to assess his story.
“Seems to me that mebbe you’re not that stupe,” he said finally, “cause y’all seem too battle-wise to be taken in that easily. On the other hand, I guess we all get screwed over sometimes. So where were you headed?”
“Anywhere,” Ryan answered. “We don’t belong to any particular ville, and I guess we’re just looking for somewhere. We were headed in this direction when we got stranded, so I figured that we’d just keep going. There was nothing for several days back, so we just kept going forward. Bastard of a place to get stranded.”
Crow nodded slowly. “Uh-huh. Just unlikely to see anyone coming out of that desert alive. There are old stories from way back beyond skydark about that place among my people. Travelers don’t come back.”
“Mebbe we just got lucky,” Ryan said evenly.
Crow nodded again. “Mebbe. And mebbe the best thing you can do right now is get some salt and water into your bodies, mebbe some rest.”
Ryan assented. “If you don’t take offence, we’ll take our rest in shifts. You can never be too careful, right?” And he fixed the giant with his piercing blue eye.
Crow returned the stare evenly. “I can see that. Join the others and eat. Take water. We have a supply delivered from Salvation every two days.”
“Salvation?”
“The ville we come from.” With which he led them toward the sheltered area where the workers were drinking and eating from a pot of some indistinct stew that bubbled over a small heater. “Please, partake with us,” he said, indicating the food and water, and also deflecting any further inquiries about Salvation.
The companions took dishes from a small table, and also plastic cups that were beaten but well scrubbed, despite the dust that seemed to drift into the shelter from the air outside. They took food from the pot and water from the insulated tank.
“Water running low,” Jak remarked to Crow as he scooped a cupful. “You sure this okay?”
“Delivery’s due,” the Native American answered simply.
Jak nodded and joined the others as they sat and ate between mouthfuls of water that tasted sweeter and more intoxicating than any brew that they may ever encounter.
“I fear first watch may be beyond me,” Doc said weakly. “In point of fact, I have a notion that I may not even reach the end of my meal.”
“It’s okay, Doc, I’ll cover you,” Dean said.
“I don’t think any of us are up to it,” Ryan husked, his throat raw despite the soothing coolness of the water. “But anyway, I’ll take first.”
“I’ll go second,” J.B. put in.
“Play it by ear from there,” Mildred added, addressing Ryan. “I don’t know if you could really plan a watch right now, as some of us may be more heat affected than others.”
Ryan agreed, casting a glance at Jak, who was beginning to fade into semiconsciousness even as he tried to eat and drink.
“Reckon as you’re right,” he said. But even as he spoke, he became aware of a leaden feel in his limbs that hadn’t been there before—a numbness that was beginning to spread. His speech had been slurred, which it hadn’t been before, despite his fatigue.
He looked at Krysty, but the Titian-haired beauty was already beginning to fall into the same state as Jak. Changing the direction of his gaze, which in itself seemed to drag, as though he were moving in heavy, deep water, he could see that Doc had slumped into unconsciousness.
“Dark night,” he heard J.B. curse. Slowly, like dragging himself through molten lead—an impression heightened by the burning fatigue in his limbs—he looked to the Armorer.
J.B. had noticed Jak slide into unconsciousness and Dean begin to shake his head slowly, as though trying to clear it. The boy tried to rise to his feet, but slumped forward as his legs failed him.
“Tranks…in the…in the water…or the food…” Mildred stammered, her plaits shaking in futile motion as she tried to clear her head.
“Fireblast, Crow,” Ryan cursed. “Why did you lie?”
The giant Native American shrugged. “Got the boys to slip something into what was left of the water. Couldn’t take any chances. You’d do the same,” he added.
Ryan knew the foreman was right, and he was more angry at himself than at the giant. He should have known this would happen. The only excuse he could give to himself was that his acute sense of danger, and his survival instincts, had been dulled by the dehydration and the effects of the sun.
But that would be no consolation if they were chilled.
Ryan managed to stagger to his feet. From the corner of his rapidly blurring vision he could see the workmen going for the blasters they had holstered, but they were stayed by the subtlest of hand gestures from their foreman.
“Leave him,” Crow said softly. “He has every right to be pissed. But he’s no danger to us now.”
The words became strung out and distorted as the drug took effect. Ryan swayed on his feet, trying to reach for his SIG-Sauer. Every movement seemed to take an eternity, and his numbed hand failed to respond, even though his arm did move, albeit at an incredibly slow rate. He could see J.B. fumble with his Uzi, falling forward to the ground before the blaster was fully in his hands.
The world narrowed and darkened around Ryan. The one thing that cut through his befuddled mind was why they hadn’t just been chilled there and then? What did Crow intend for them?
As the blackness descended, even that question became an irrelevancy that drifted into the void.
Chapter Five
The pounding in his head made J.B. open his eyes. He knew that the light pouring in would hurt like the darkest night, but he figured that if he could see who the rad-blasted hell was pounding his skull he could at least fight back against them.
The outside world was a blur as he squinted and gradually opened his eyes, but at least he was soon reassured of the fact that he wasn’t under attack. There were two shapes in front of him that stood out from the light around—one was stocky and light, the other tall, thin and dark. Neither was in an attacking position, as both were several feet away from him.
The Armorer furrowed his brow in concentration as he tried to recall what had happened. Everything was clear up until the time that they had been fed and watered by the workers they had stumbled upon. After that, there was only drowsiness, the insanity of the nightmares that troubled him and the thumping at the forefront of his skull.
J.B. groaned, and not only from the pain. It suddenly occurred to him that all of them had fallen for the oldest trick going. While low and in need of water and salt, unable to really focus or concentrate, they had been disarmed by the apparent friendliness of the workers and hadn’t questioned the willingness of the party to share valuable water.
But why weren’t they chilled?
His speculations were halted by Crow’s low yet penetrating voice.
“Is that a groan because you’re hurting, or because you were duped?”
The Armorer groped instinctively in his breast pocket for his spectacles and registered surprise that they had been carefully placed—obviously with some thought—where he usually kept them when they weren’t being worn.
As he pushed them up the bridge of his nose, he noticed that Crow was smiling, almost to himself.
“Better now you can see? You’re the first to come around, so I guess you didn’t drink as much as the others. And I wouldn’t try that yet, either,” the foreman added as J.B. tried to raise himself to his feet, finding that he hadn’t recovered enough equilibrium to do more than make the covered shelter spin dizzyingly around his head. J.B. slunk to the floor again.
“I guess I should mention now that we stripped you of all your weapons when you were unconscious,” Crow continued, “just in case you get a little angry when you try and check for them. Left you all the medical supplies, though. I’d love to know where you got them, but I guess you’ll tell us if you want. You’re certainly a mysterious group, and if you thought I bought that story about the wag, then you didn’t reckon much to me—”
“Why not? I’d believe it,” J.B. interjected, tacitly acknowledging his lie.
Crow laughed, a deep, rumbling sound. “Sure, you would. So would some of these boys. But they—and you—weren’t bought up on the legends of this area before skydark.”
J.B. gestured his acknowledgment, then asked, “So why aren’t we chilled? That’d be the obvious thing.”
“If that was the idea, then I tell you, my friend, that you wouldn’t have got within a hundred yards of this site. I would’ve let the sec boys cut you down afore you had the chance to raise your blasters. And let’s face it, you were in no shape.”
“Okay,” J.B. said, rubbing his aching forehead and looking at the ground intently as he tried to focus his spinning vision. “So what do you want from us?”
Crow shrugged. “Don’t want anything from you, really. I meant what I said. I don’t want to have to chill you, and I guess if I’m honest I didn’t like having to trick you. But you’ve got to understand that I know jackshit about you, and I couldn’t let you walk around with all that hardware. And let’s face it, there was no way on this or any other world that you were ever going to give them up without a struggle. By the by, my friend, I take it from the amount of ammo, plas-ex, grens and blaster power that we took from you that you’re the dude who keeps this outfit in working order when it comes to the hardware?”
J.B. nodded. “You could say that.”
