LITMIR.BIZ

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roared, blowing the door off its hinges in an explosion of lead and splinters.

      “Hold it right there, Brinkman!” a gruff voice bellowed, and there came the sound of a scattergun being worked.

      Instantly the entire tavern went still, until the only sound came from the crackling log in the fireplace.

      His hands only inches away from the blasters on his belt, the man stopped moving, then slowly turned his head to see the bartender aiming a predark 12-gauge in his direction.

      “What’s the jam in your breech?” Brinkman demanded, puzzled, his fingers itching to reach for iron. “I paid for the meal already, and the fat slut, too!”

      “Don’t know, don’t care,” Mark replied, leveling the scattergun. His friendly smile was gone, replaced with a grim expression of raw hatred. “But last summer I was in a convoy that got jacked by some coldhearts. My wife got shot in the belly and took a week to die.”

      “Nothing to do with me,” Brinkman answered, sweat appearing on his brow. “I ain’t never been to the Great Salt.”

      Both Ryan and Derby Joe grunted in disgust at the amateurish gaff. The feeb had just confessed to everything.

      “Didn’t say where it happened, Brinkman,” Mark whispered, moving the barrel of the weapon down a little to point at the stomach of the other man. “Hey, Joe!”

      “Right here, Mark,” Joe, replied, easing out his weapons. The blasters were big-bore Ruger .44 Magnums, the muzzles pitted and worn from constant use.

      “You want him?” Mark asked, his sight intent upon the coldheart.

      “I’d be happy to have him dance in the air for ya, but the outlander ain’t done anything wrong in Hobart,” Joe answered truthfully. “So if you shoot him cold, then I gotta take you in. The baron won’t stand for it.” Then he smiled coldly. “Unless it’s a fair fight, of course.”

      “Understood,” Mark stated, dropping the primed weapon and immediately going for the small blaster holstered behind his back.

      Instantly, Brinkman went for the blasters on his hips, then both men drew and fired in unison. The double explosion of the black-powder weapons filled the smoky tavern with dark fumes so thick that it was nearly impossible to see what had happened.

      Chapter Two

      A cold breeze wafted through the shattered door, thinning the acrid gunsmoke in the tavern until the air was relatively clear. With a low moan of pain, Brinkman crumpled to the floor, the twin Colt .45 blasters tumbling from his limp hands to clatter on the wooden floor.

      Standing behind the counter, Mark looked down at the red stain spreading across the sleeve of his shirt and grunted. “Crate! I need you to take over the bar!” he shouted, shifting the smoking S&W .38 revolver to his left hand and awkwardly tucking it back into the holster. “I gotta go see the healer!”

      “No prob!” she called back, stepping out of the kitchen, sliding a .22 zipgun into the pocket of her patched dress. “And the name is now Catherine.”

      Clutching the bloody wound in his arm, Mark merely raised an eyebrow at that, then shrugged in acceptance and shuffled away through the muttering crowd.

      “All right, boys, divvy up his possession,” Joe commanded, holstering his weapons. “The baron gets any live brass, I want his knife, and you can keep everything else.”

      “Then find something to block that damn door,” Catherine added tying on an apron, “and get that garbage out of here!”

      Grinning in avarice, the sec men abandoned their game of dominoes and pushed their way to the corpse to start stripping off his weapons and boots.

      “That was a nuke of a good shot, old buddy,” Joe said, sitting.

      “Nothing to do with me,” Ryan muttered, putting away the warm SIG-Sauer.

      Fanning himself with his derby, Joe smiled tolerantly. “Now that’s funny, because Mark couldn’t hit the ground if he fell off a mountain. That’s why Crate…er, Catherine, bought him that scattergun last winter.”

      Taking a sip of his warm beer, Ryan said nothing, waiting to see where this line of questioning would eventually end.

      “How much do you want to gamble that if I was to dig the slug out of that coldheart,” Joe continued, “it would be a nine, the exact same caliber of your blaster?”

      “Lots of 9 mms in the world,” Ryan said, lowering his arm so that his hand rested on the checkered grip of the blaster. “Think that’s gonna happen?”

      “Nope,” Joe said amiably, laying the hat on the table. “But it’s just another good reason to get you the frag out of my ville.” Fumbling inside the hatband, he removed a small piece of folded paper and passed it over. “Okay, you saved me from stickies when Trader passed through Broken Neck, and now we’re even. That pass is good until nightfall. So, use it right quick. Because I’m suppose to arrest you at midnight.”

      “Arrest me for what exactly?” Ryan asked, tucking away the paper.

      The sec boss scowled. “For using too much air. Spitting on the sidewalk. Treason, murder, the charge doesn’t matter, Ryan. Hell’s bells, Baron Harrison wants your fancy blaster more than a jolt addict wants another fix!” he stated forcibly. “So go far, and fast, old friend. I swore an oath to obey my baron, and if he sends me after you, I’ll have to hunt you down.” He frowned. “I won’t like it, but I’ll put you on the last train west.”

      “You can try,” Ryan answered coldly, pushing back the chair to slowly stand. “For old times’ sake, it was good to see you again, Joe.”

      “Same here.” The man sighed, wiping the inside sweatband of his hat with a cloth. “Now make sure it never happens again.”

      Since there was nothing more to add, Ryan simply grunted in reply and strode from the tavern. But the man somehow felt that he was leaving behind more than just a friendship. A small piece of his life with the Trader had just died, and that disturbed him more than expected.

      Stepping onto the brick sidewalk, Ryan looked around the busy ville and soon found three of his friends across the street leaning against a battered old school bus that had been converted into a crude war wag. Cobbled together from a dozen other wags, it was a formidable little brute. Barbed wire covered the roof and sides, spikes lined the bumpers, and steel plates had been welded over the tires to protect them from bullets or arrows. The glass was gone from the windows, replaced with louvered shutters that protected the passengers from attacking muties, while still letting them shoot at any coldhearts who attacked. The bus was short, but looked more than ready to handle anything the Deathlands threw its way. The sec men and civies passing by gave the group of heavily armed outlanders a wide berth, some of the wiser people actually crossing the street to stay as far away as possible. He headed that way.

      Built from the ruins of a mining town, Hobart had paved streets, although the roads were now so heavily patched it was damn near impossible to tell which sections were the original pavement and which were the replacement. Ryan had heard that the baron sometimes sent out gangs of slaves to rip up other roads and bring back the slabs of asphalt to use in his town. That sounded like mighty hard work for a pretty small return, but then, Ryan had met several barons who had more than a touch of madness.

      “Hey, lover, how did it go?” Krysty Wroth asked, her arms casually crossed with hands on her elbows.

      “I got the pass,” Ryan replied

      She smiled. “Thank Gaia.” Almost as tall as the one-eyed man, Krysty possessed an abundant wealth of flame-red hair that oddly seemed to always be stirring by an unfelt wind, almost as if the filaments were alive. She was dressed in an old olive-drab jumpsuit and a bearskin coat. A canvas gunbelt was slung low across her hips, a S&W .38 revolver holstered in the front for easy access. A knife was strapped to one of her shapely thighs.

      “How

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