LITMIR.BIZ

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have room for us scattered like that?” Ryan asked.

      As Ryan spoke, J.B. sauntered over to join the discussion, the cigar wedged in his mouth. “He’s right,” J.B. added, talking around the stub of cigar. “Some of these wags look pretty worn.”

      Croxton nodded favorably, smiling at the Armorer. “The wags’ll hold up, and we’ll make room,” he assured them. “We’ll be moving out in ten minutes. You okay with that?”

      Ryan nodded. “The sooner the better.”

      Croxton looked thoughtfully at Ryan, picking his words with care. “It’s mighty gen’rous of you to accompany us like this,” he said. “We’re just sod busters. No real money worth speaking of, nothing much of value. Can’t pay you for what you’re doing.”

      Ryan remained emotionless as he listened to the man relieve his conscience.

      “But mebbe you’ll find something you need in Baby, too, right, Mr. Cawdor?” the farmer continued. “I don’t rightly know what the healin’ properties of this spring are, but mebbe it’ll be able to fix your scars. Not so sure it can replace that there something what you have lost.”

      Ryan realized that the round-faced farmer was looking not at him but at the leather eye patch he wore over the empty socket of his left eye. “I’m not much of a believer in miracles,” Ryan told Croxton shortly. “I’ve seen too much horror with the one eye I have.”

      “Then what you are doing is that much more brave, sir,” Croxton said gratefully, before turning to organize his own people.

      Shaking his head, J.B. turned to Ryan. “This whole setup stinks worse than a gaudy on threesome-special day,” he muttered.

      Ryan agreed, but all he said was, “Doc’s been a good friend to all of us.” It served to remind J.B. of where their loyalties had to lie.

      RYAN HAD CONSIDERED how to distribute his people the night before, lying in bed with Krysty sleeping in his arms, his lone eye staring at the ceiling. Like J.B., he was skeptical of the miracles that Babyville promised. However, he held a great deal of respect for Doc, and he could see that this was a dream that the old man needed to follow. Indeed, Ryan suspected that Doc would have gone alone with the travelers, rather than miss the incredible opportunity that Croxton had presented.

      Before dawn, Ryan had taken Mildred quietly aside while Doc busied himself with his morning ablutions.

      “I trust all of you,” Ryan had said firmly, his voice low. “Couldn’t ask for better companions for the long road. But I know that a man can get to thinking and obsessing if he’s left too long on his own with too heavy a weight on his mind, and I don’t want that to happen to Doc.”

      Mildred had nodded, understanding what Ryan was getting at.

      “You keep an eye on him for me,” Ryan continued. “Make sure his head stays in the here-and-now. Okay?”

      Mildred nodded again.

      Doc came striding out of the inn’s bathroom at that point, his hair combed and his chin shaved. “Are we all ready to experience a miracle?” he asked cheerfully.

      “Count me in on that, Doc,” Mildred replied.

      Ryan just turned away, fidgeting with an ammo cartridge as he awaited the dawn rendezvous. At least Mildred was open-minded to Doc’s dreams, he thought. She wouldn’t rattle the old man without due cause.

      The other crucial choices for Ryan were who would sit up front and who would protect the rear.

      The Armorer took backstop, well-armed and mean-tempered enough to ensure that any attack from the travelers themselves could be averted or swiftly curtailed. It was always a risk traveling with strangers; people played a lot of tricks to get what they wanted out there in the middle of the Deathlands, where trust was in short supply. Still, it appeared that the convoy was only lightly armed and was what it appeared to be—a group of elderly farmers looking for the miracle two youngsters were promising.

      Ryan had asked Jak to guard the front vehicle, despite his urge to take the position himself. Jak’s keen eyes and preternatural senses made him an ideal scout; he would pick up on things quicker and spot indicators that others in Ryan’s team might miss.

      Chapter Five

      In silence Jak observed everything through the windows of the lead wag. It was a six-wheeler truck rig, preskydark technology, and it belched foul black smoke into the atmosphere as it trudged along the wreckage of the old roads. The ancient vehicle had been patched up using items from numerous sources, including metal drain pipes and bottle glass. The open drain hole from a bathtub could be seen in the right-side door, where Jak rested his knee. Sometime in the distant past, the engine had been retrofitted to run on moonshine, though it grumbled at the effort of pulling the monstrous weight of the rig up any significant incline, mostly managing a top speed of no more than twenty mph and howling like a banshee the whole bastard time.

      The driver, Jeremiah Croxton, kept his eyes firmly on the shattered roadway as the wag bumped over ruined blacktop, and the worn suspension offered little comfort as the vehicle thundered over each pothole and crevice. Beside him, resting against the far door, Jak watched the dry landscape pass by through the dirt-smeared side window, frequently peering ahead to see what was coming. After a while, Jak drew his blaster—a .357 Colt Python—and began taking it apart so as to oil its inner works using a finger-size bottle of oil he carried in his jacket.

      From behind Jak, sitting in the cubbyhole in the rear of the cab, surrounded by what amounted to all of Croxton’s negligible belongings, the blond-haired Daisy peered over the back of Jak’s seat. She was watching Jak’s practiced, economical movements as he field-stripped his weapon.

      “What ya doing?” Daisy asked, her languid voice close to his ear.

      Jak ignored her, glancing ahead at the low rise that the broken road poured over, past the last of the emaciated wheat fields.

      A half minute passed in silence before Daisy spoke again. “Hey, mister,” she drawled, “I asked what ya doing? You deaf as well as weird-looking? Don’t see much point in a deaf sec man.”

      Jak turned to face her, his ruby eyes boring into hers. “Here guard, not jabber,” he told her.

      At the steering wheel, Croxton guffawed. “Boy’s got a point, Daisy,” he said, not bothering to look behind him.

      “I was just trying to make nice,” Daisy whined. “Thought a weirdo like him would ’preciate that.”

      Oiling his blaster, Jak ignored her. But his mind was considering Daisy’s words carefully—not because they hurt, Jak was above such petty concerns, but because of the way in which she phrased them. It nagged at him that the girl had called him “mister.”

      THE SECOND WAG IN THE convoy was similar to the first, a rusty old truck rig that had been converted to run on moonshine. Krysty had taken the shotgun seat next to a dark-skinned woman called Nisha Adams, who looked permanently tired. Nisha’s husband, Barry, a man in his midforties, with the tanned, leathery skin of someone used to working outside, drove the rig with an easygoing nonchalance, remarking on things that caught his attention at the roadside, keeping his hands in a four- and eight-o’clock grip on the rig’s large wheel.

      Three other people shared the cab, sitting in the sleeping compartment behind the main seats—another older couple called Julius and Joanna Dougal, and the old farmer who had been attacked by one of the hounds outside the trading post and now wore a bandage across his wounded arm. The five of them seemed to get along well—they were old friends, full of anecdotes and not above teasing one another in a lighthearted way.

      Krysty sat quietly, her green eyes watching the cracked strip of road and the surrounding landscape as they lumbered along, following Croxton’s rig at a steady pace.

      “So, where are you from, long and tall?” Julius asked from the back of the cab.

      Krysty

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