LITMIR.BIZ

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expires at dark,” Ryan said, glancing at the darkening sky. “So we better haul ass.”

      “Good, I don’t like this place,” Krysty said, openly scowling in distaste at a group of armed sec men walking by with a prisoner in chains. The old man had been badly beaten and he was dragging a twisted leg that would probably never work correctly again.

      “Damn straight,” Jak agreed, both hands resting on his belt buckle to stay close to his blaster. A true albino, the lean teenager was pinkish-white, as if the savage Deathlands sun never reached his pale skin. His long hair was the color of fresh snow, his eyes as red as the dawn after a storm. A pair of sunglasses poked out of his shirt pocket for when needed, the bridge repaired with a piece of duct tape. A knife was sheathed at his side, another at the small of his back, and a third jutted from the top of his left boot. Several others were hidden all over his body. A big-bore Colt Python .357 Magnum blaster rode in a leather holster at his side, the brass in his gunbelt an odd combination of both .38 short rounds and the slightly larger .357 Magnum Express rounds.

      “Then let us make haste, Hermes, and outrace the golden apple of yore!” Doc Tanner rumbled in a deep bass.

      “Come again?” Jak asked, blinking.

      “Let’s blow this pest hole before nightfall,” Ryan said by way of translation.

      The albino teen smiled. “Fucking A.”

      “Quite so, my young friend. Quite so,” Doc stated in agreement, dourly watching the sec men shove the prisoner into a tan brick building. The faded lettering on the side proclaimed that the place had once been the Hobart Public Library, but now it served as the city jail, an internment facility from which few, if any, ever departed still requiring air to breathe.

      Tall and slim, Theophilus Algernon Tanner was neatly dressed in clothing from another era: a frilly white shirt with a black string tie, and a swallowtail frock coat. Everything he wore was patched, but clean, and his fingernails were neatly trimmed, which set him apart from most people in Deathlands. His long face was heavily lined, but not from age, and his luxuriously thick hair was a deep silver in color. A massive Civil War blaster called a LeMat rode on his hip, the pouches of his gunbelt bulging with black powder and other items needed to feed the monstrous handcannon. A small eating knife was sheathed behind the revolver, and an ebony stick with a silver lion’s head was thrust into the gunbelt like a Japanese war sword.

      Born in the nineteenth century, Dr. Theophilus Tanner had been an unwilling participant in a time-trawling experiment. Ripped from the bosom of his family into the late twentieth century, Doc had been deemed too difficult a subject and was sent one hundred years into the future to what had become Deathlands. Alone and confused, Doc had nearly gone insane struggling to survive in the savage reality of the shockscape until Ryan rescued him from the slave pit of a sadistic sec chief named Cort Strasser. Sometimes, Doc’s mind slipped a little, and he briefly imagined that he was safely back home in the loving embrace of his wife, but he always rose to the occasion if there was trouble. Doc was a valuable member of the group with his mental encyclopedia of arcane knowledge, and a deadly fighter. However, the companions knew for a fact that the man would abandon them in a heartbeat if he ever got a chance to go back home to his children and beloved wife, Emily.

      Going to the folding door of the bus, Ryan yanked it open and climbed inside. The wag was empty. “Where are J.B. and Mildred?” he growled, sliding into the driver’s seat. The man had fully expected them to be asleep in the back.

      “Just down the street,” Krysty replied, slipping into the gunner seat opposite the man. “There was a commotion down at the local healer’s, so Mildred wanted to see if there was anything she could do to help.”

      “And J.B. went along to guard her six.”

      “Exactly, my dear Ryan,” Doc stated, taking a place alongside Jak. “He is the Daemon to her Pythius.”

      Understanding the obscure literary reference only because the time traveler had used it many times before, a brief flood of anger filled Ryan, then he forced it aside and accepted the simple bad timing. There was nothing else to do in the matter. Dr. Mildred Weyth, a freezie from the twentieth century, had her own set of priorities, and helping folks in need of medical attention was at the top of that list.

      “All right, let’s find them fast, then roll,” Ryan said, pulling the lever to close the door. It cycled shut with a hiss of working hydraulics.

      “No prob,” Jak said confidently, cracking open the cylinder of his Colt Python to start removing the .38 rounds and replace them with the much more deadly hollowpoint .357 Magnum cartridges. One reason the teenager carried this particular model blaster was that it could use both size brass, a unique feature that had saved his life many times.

      Working the throttle and gas, Ryan fought the old diesel engine into life, then rumbled away from the curb and started down the middle of the road. Kids and barking dogs scattering at the advance of the rattling vehicle while adults went to hide inside homes and stores, and mounted sec men fought to control their frightened horses at the sound of the sputtering engine.

      “Rad-blasted bastards,” Krysty muttered, reading the lips of a passing guard. “These local boys really hate us.”

      “We not slaves. Of course hate,” Jak stated, closing his blaster. “They try capture, we fight. Easier ace drunks and crips.”

      “How true, lad,” Doc agreed, thumbing back the hammer on the single-action LeMat. “Too long have these cowardly poltroons feasted upon the flesh of the weak, and the taste of an honest fight fills their bowels with Hobbesian turpulence.”

      “They still outnumber us fifty or sixty to one, Doc,” Ryan reminded him, turning the wheel sharply to take a corner. “So stay razor, people!” Then he added almost as an afterthought, “And if a man wearing a derby hat comes at you, chill him fast.”

      “Isn’t that your friend who got us the exit pass?” Krysty asked, her animated hair curling in confusion.

      “He was,” Ryan growled, going around a huge pothole before angling into the parking lot of a large brick building with a lot of tiny windows set high off the ground.

      Once, long ago, the place had been a carpet warehouse. But now the ville used it as the slaughterhouse for the animals they raised to feed the baron and his army of sec men. Supposedly, it was also what passed locally for a hospital. There was a strong smell of blood and excrement in the air, and from somewhere inside the building came the agonized squealing of a hog that abruptly stopped, only to be followed by the dull thuds of a butcher’s hatchet.

      “By the Three Kennedys, this is an abattoir!” Doc said in utter repulsion.

      “Not our business,” Ryan stated, braking to a halt. Briefly, the man checked the plastic mirrors to make sure nobody was lurking outside the wag, before cycling open the door. “Let’s just find our people and jump out of this rad pit.”

      “Agreed, lover,” Krysty said, removing the tape from the handle of a gren. Gaia, the Earth Mother, said that all living things were precious, but the woman also knew that sometimes the only way to save an innocent life was to chill an enemy. She saw no contradiction in this. It was merely common sense, a question of balance in maintaining the circle of life.

      After checking their weapons, the companions dutifully clambered out of the vehicle, and Jak went behind the wheel.

      “I stay,” the teen announced, slipping on his sunglasses. “Keep engine hot in case we run fast.”

      “Just remember the codes,” Krysty warned, and the teen scowled in reply as if such an event was beyond impossible.

      Heading past a low corral full of bleating sheep and a couple of three-eyed goats, the companions walked into the slaughterhouse and were instantly assaulted by the nearly overpowering reek of bodily fluids. The concrete floor was covered with a mixture of sand and sawdust clotted with feces and spilled blood. Clattering chains hung overhead, the dressed carcass of a cow going by, the warm meat steaming slightly in the afternoon chill.

      Lining

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