Damnation Road Show. James Axler

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      “As it stands,” Mildred added, “this whole deal is balanced on a knife edge.”

      J.B. nodded in agreement. He slipped his glasses back on. “Every one of those carny chillers over there has a centerfire blaster,” he said. “The odds were bastard bad even before we lost Doc. If the rest of us aren’t at one hundred percent, and on the same page, we don’t have a chance in hell here. We’re all gonna end up in a shallow hole with dirt in our faces. Mebbe the smart thing would be to slip over there once it gets dark and put a slug in the back of that big cat’s head.”

      “Jak won’t let us down,” Ryan said with conviction. “He never has and he never will. He knows what we have to do, and why.” The hard edge to his voice said for the time being the discussion was over.

      Inside, Ryan was as concerned as Mildred and J.B., and for the same reasons, but he couldn’t show it. His confidence had to shore up theirs; it was a simple matter of survival. He had to be the calm in the eye of the storm.

      He sat cross-legged on his bedroll and with a scrap of lightly oiled rag began to brush the dust from the scope and action of his treasured predark longblaster. In silence, the others started going through the contents of their packs, sorting and gradually assembling a small pile of trade items so they could all eat and drink at the ville’s hostelries.

      Ryan’s hands moved over the rifle automatically, his fingers programmed by countless repetitions of the same vital task. Trader had taught him that a fully functioning weapon was the difference between being dead and cold by the side of the road, and walking on. As he worked, Ryan thought about their long journey, about how they had followed the wheel tracks from the looted hamlet to Perdition ville. The trail ended on the outskirts of Perdition where they found a wide circle of deep holes pounded into the ground, holes made by carny tent’s massive stakes. Exactly the same circle they had found in the looted ville.

      From a stooped old man poking around in the pile of worthless, half-burned trash the show had left behind, the companions had learned that the Gert Wolfram show had spent three days and nights entertaining the good folks of Perdition. The trash picker had described the strange and wonderful acts, the rousing music, the feats of strength and daring. There had been a terrible joy and satisfaction in his rheumy eyes as he told them about his favorite part of the show: the part where the two-headed scalie ate a live goat from both ends at once.

      Legs first.

      If the troupe hadn’t stopped over for those extra days, Ryan and the companions never would have caught up to them. The question was, why were the folks of Perdition still breathing air, and not buried in a ditch?

      Compared to the unnamed ville where the mass chilling had been done, Perdition was a major metropolis. Which led Ryan to speculate that mebbe it was just too big for the chillers to tackle, and that’s why they had left it alone. Or mebbe they just skipped some villes along their route to throw any possible pursuit off the track.

      The carny’s performance schedule had been posted on the side of a fire-gutted, semitrailer near the circle of tent holes. It turned out that the circus company was heading to a large ville several days southwest of Perdition before moving up the long, dry valley to an engagement at another big hamlet at its northern end.

      The companions had taken the difficult, cross-country shortcut to try to intersect the caravan’s route. The hills and mountains that framed the dry valley were impassable by wags; once the carny entered at the southern end, the only exit was far to the north. When Ryan and the others had seen the towering spirals of dust in the distance, they knew they had found their quarry.

      By the time Ryan had finished detailing his longblaster, the mound of trade goods on Mildred’s bedroll had grown impressively. She had put in a few .38-caliber cartridges. J.B. had added two empty mags and a minitoolkit for an M-16—a weapon they didn’t carry. Krysty had tossed in a pair of compact binocs with a cracked left lens, and Dean had given up a plastic-handled can opener that was near mint.

      J.B. scowled at the carny’s circled wags and said, “Mebbe the Magus himself is hiding over there. Like a nasty old spider, waiting for the fun to begin.”

      “Be just like him,” Krysty said. “Crouching in the deep shadows while his puppets do all the dirty work.”

      “The Magus may not have anything to do with the carny anymore,” Ryan said. “Not since Wolfram went west.”

      “From what it looks like the carny is doing,” J.B. said, “it seems right up his street to me.”

      “Mebbe,” Ryan said. “But looting the odd, shit-poor ville would be a big step down for him. The Magus has always been into mass slavery of muties and norms, mostly to support his mining operations and his jolt factories, but also for breeding stock.”

      The companions all knew the Magus was into animal husbandry. He specialized in the careful crossbreeding, and perhaps bioengineering, of new mutie races. Rumors abounded that he had “made” the first stickies. It was also rumored that he had acquired the power to travel forward and backward in time. That he had done evil deeds long before any person now alive had been born, and would do evil long after they were dust.

      Deathlands was a place of little certain truth and much wild speculation. The only thing anybody knew for sure was that the Magus was a league of chiller above and beyond the run-of-the-mill, gaudy house backstabber.

      “He’s back!” Dean exclaimed, pointing at the berm gate. “Jak’s back.”

      The albino trotted across the compound at the same easy pace. Over his shoulder, its short front and long back legs trussed, was a skinned, dressed-out, thirty-pound mutie jackrabbit.

      There had been no gunshot echo rolling over the valley. Ryan figured Jak had used one of the many leaf-bladed throwing knives hidden on his person to dispatch the rabbit.

      “Why did he bring us dinner?” Dean asked his father. “I thought we were going to eat at the gaudy?”

      The lion let out a blood-curdling roar that put an end to conversation.

      It became clear that it wasn’t their dinner the albino had brought when he turned hard left and made a beeline for the row of trailered cages. Ignoring the crudely lettered Danger: Don’t Feed The Muties sign, Jak passed the fresh carcass through the bars to his brother beast.

      The mountain ate the offering greedily, crunching up the bones with no more effort than he used to chew the flesh. A thirty-pound jackrabbit was a mere snack for an animal his size—it was gone in a few seconds. But it had to have been mighty tasty if the diesel-wag purring noise the cat made as it licked the blood from its huge paws was any measure.

      “Say, Dean,” Ryan said, nudging his transfixed son with a gentle elbow. “I think someone’s trying to catch your eye….”

      Dean turned to look. Instantly, a wide smile lit up his face.

      Standing at the far end of the plant bed was a sun-browned little girl in a too big cotton dress with a crown of daisies in her golden-streaked brown hair. She smiled back at him, tooth for gleaming white tooth.

      Chapter Six

      “My name’s Leeloo. What’s yours?”

      The twelve-year-old boy beamed down at her. “Dean,” he said.

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