Hanging Judge. James Axler

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      It came up with a dingy-looking Davis .380 hidie handblaster, which rose to aim square at Cutter Dan’s broad chest.

      But the first motion had triggered the sec boss’s bowstring-taut danger sense. Before her little pistol came to bear his Smith & Wesson 627 slid out of its holster and spoke first.

      She reeled back as the .357 Magnum jacketed hollowpoint slug took her in the chest. Because she didn’t go down or drop the piece right away, he shot her twice more. Her knees finally gave way.

      Shaven-headed Belusky stepped up behind the girl and caught her in a bear-hug from behind before she could collapse all over her chilled mom.

      “Who’s wastin’ good ammo on road trash now, Cutter Dan?” he asked, grinning beneath his blond mustache. “And modern smokeless cartridge, too.”

      “Shut your pie hole, Belusky. I already used my knife. As you would’ve noticed if all the blood hadn’t run to your two-inch hard-on.”

      The sec man’s grin never flickered. “Might not be long, Danny boy,” he said. “But wide? Lord, is it wide!”

      “You call yourselves lawmen!” the daughter screamed from his unfriendly embrace. “But you’re nothing but a bunch of murdering coldhearts!”

      “Yeah, well,” Cutter Dan said, emptying the cylinder, with its three spent casings and three live rounds, into a palm. “We are the law hereabouts, see? So the law’s what we say it is.”

      “Us and Judge Santee,” Scovul called from the back of his horse, which was so used to blasterfire it hadn’t even reacted to the shots, loud as they were. The two plugs hitched to the wag were sure tossing their heads and rolling their eyes, though. But with the handbrake set, they weren’t going anywhere. “And since he ain’t here—”

      “See, the boys’n’me have suffered an emotional blow, recently,” Cutter Dan told the distraught girl. “And we’re naturally frustrated because the criminals who wronged us have so far managed to elude justice. So it’s just natural we need to let off a little steam.”

      “And you had to go and chill the better-looking snatch, C.D.,” Hammer said. “Even if she was an oldie.”

      Dan laughed. “Not like the bitch left me much choice there, did she? But I tell you what. Just for that you can take your place last in line.”

      “But why are you doing this?” the cross-eyed girl shrieked.

      “Some folks’re resisting the rightful restoration of law and order under us and Judge Santee,” Dan said, stuffing both the loose cartridges and empties in a pocket and reloading his handblaster from a speedloader. “So we gotta provide ’em object lessons in the terrors of living under all this anarchy.”

      He snapped shut the cylinder of his beefy stainless-steel blaster. Then he smiled at the girl.

      “Just think of it as doing your patriotic duty. Everybody’s gotta make sacrifices.”

      Holstering his blaster he began unbuttoning the fly of his jeans.

      “Today is yours. Get her stripped and bent over the wag box, boys. Time to dispense some justice, American style!”

      * * *

      “FIREBLAST,” RYANSAID.

      The giant hog glared blood and death at him and gouged deep grooves in the red dirt of the stream-bank with a sharp black hoof. It stood a good four feet high at the peak of its back, which was topped with bristles like ten-penny nails. Its body had to be as long as Ryan was tall or longer. Its jowly head was the size of a beer keg, and it brought back memories of the horrible hogs they had faced a while back in Canada.

      All of the companions had blasters, but Ryan’s Steyr Scout was the only one in the bunch with a lost child’s chance in a scalie nest of dropping the monster in a single shot. It was slung across his shoulder, and he knew that those huge feral porkers could move like a high-power bullet when they dug in and launched themselves.

      As one this old and bad and mean surely would, the instant its little bloodshot eyes saw any of them make a move.

      Ryan had just resolved to draw his SIG Sauer P-226 and try for the hog’s beady eyes anyway when he saw a stirring in the leaves of the vines near the immense creature.

      A living wave of scuttling shapes boiled from the vines at the top of the cut. They closed on the hog from both sides. The centipedes climbed up one another’s segmented bodies, forming a sort of living pyramid.

      Too late, the hog realized the danger. It began grunting furiously. It shook its massive head and stamped with its hooves. Its jaws and tusks shredded the many-legged creatures and sent parts and yellow ichor spraying in all directions.

      “Well, now, that’s a mite unusual,” J.B. observed mildly.

      The hog began to squeal like a steam-train whistle as the monster arthropods’ mandibles began to find ways through its dense fur to rip into its hide.

      Ricky raised the fat barrel of his longblaster to aim at the beast, now all but completely invisible beneath the surging brown bodies. Ryan promptly grabbed it and twisted it skyward.

      “But I was going to put it out of its misery!” the youth protested.

      “Not this time, son,” J.B. said. “The fact it’s fighting back is mostly what’s putting those little monsters out of ours.”

      For a moment the Ricky’s dark eyes blazed rebelliously, then he swallowed and nodded.

      “Right,” he said hoarsely.

      Ryan let go of the blaster. Ricky obediently turned it to the side, making sure the muzzle never covered his friends on the way.

      “Compassion always loses to survival,” Mildred said. “Welcome to the Deathlands, kid.”

      “Time to haul ass downstream,” Ryan told them. “Those bastards aren’t our only problem.”

      Ricky yelped shrilly. Ryan turned to see a giant centipede that had apparently decided it was too late for the raw-pork feast and jumped down from the vines on the bank above, clutching Ricky’s right arm with its hundred talons. It sank its huge hooked jaws into the exposed skin of his forearm.

      “Oh, my God!” Mildred yelled.

      Ricky whipped his arm to the side. The centipede flew away, to hit the bare clay slope on its back. As it slid down, J.B. destroyed its head with a blast of buckshot from his M-4000.

      Ryan didn’t say a word to his friend about the ammo expenditure. J.B. was the Armorer. He was more sensitive about all things blaster than even Ryan was. If he thought this merited a shell, it did.

      Mildred sprang for the stricken youth.

      “Hold still,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm despite her burst of frantic activity. “Hold your arm down by your side.”

      Numbly Ricky obeyed. He continued clutching the DeLisle’s foregrip with his left hand. His olive face had already gone an unhealthy ashy-yellow.

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