LITMIR.BIZ

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of this trading post. The women, like the goats outside, were tethered together by their collars so that they could go no farther than two feet apart. Also, much like the goats, they looked hungry. Much like the dancers, the patrons seemed to be mostly disinterested, more concerned with feeding their own bellies than watching this lackluster floor show.

      Tables were dotted across the room, twelve in all, and customers from all walks, young and old, sat at them, eating and drinking, passing the evening. These were traveling men, like Ryan and his companions, just passing through on their way to pastures new. The group from the caravan had taken up a couple of larger tables to the right of the room; twelve of them in total, plus the baby. They were tending to the wounded mother and her child, bandaging the old man’s bloodied arm. The mother had a wadded bandage across her throat now, but apart from looking pale with shock, she seemed to be all right. With Ryan busy checking on Krysty’s well-being, J.B. touched his index finger to the brim of his hat in acknowledgment as he passed the group. One of them, a man in his fifties with a shaved scalp and peppering of white stubble on his chin, nodded and offered a few words of thanks, but he was drowned out by the poorly tuned piano, and, regardless, J.B. hadn’t bothered to stop and listen. The man with the shaved scalp continued to watch the companions as they made their way toward the main service counter.

      A large mirror lined the far wall, overlooking a long countertop that served as bar and trading area. The counter was crowded with things for sale—fur pelts and ammunition, religious symbols and homemade lucky mascots, a writhing box of maggots that was labeled as “live bayt”—all of it presided over by a fat man sitting on a high stool, picking at his teeth with a splinter of wood. The whole lot probably didn’t amount to much of value, even out here in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, and it was obvious that the trading post’s main trade was in food, drink and the scrawny excuse for gaudies that were currently dancing for the passing trade.

      In one corner of the room, at the end of the long countertop, stood a lean-looking, skinny girl of maybe fourteen, stirring a big metal ladle in a steaming pot as big as a bathtub. She wore her dark hair long, and her arms were bare where the burgundy sleeveless T-shirt she wore didn’t cover them. Scars were pitted down her arms, from burns and perhaps blades, it was hard to tell. An open fire cracked and spit beneath the huge pot, casting its fractious, flickering light across the room.

      “Well.” Doc clapped his hands together, looking at his companions with a bright smile on his face. “Who’s up for some dinner?” He turned to Krysty, thinking that, after drawing upon the Gaia power, she would be ravenous.

      The companions looked at Doc as he stroked his chin unconsciously and his eyes lost focus, seemingly in deep thought. “Though with our journeying of late, mayhap it is lunch. It can get so frightfully confusing when one is ever hopping about from place to place.”

      Mildred stepped over and took the older man’s elbow, smiling up into his clear, blue eyes. “Let’s break our fast, you old fool,” she said affectionately.

      Doc nodded, smiling agreeably. “Breakfast it is,” he announced before leading the way over to the countertop where the fat man continued picking at his teeth.

      As Doc, Mildred and Jak stepped up to the counter, the remaining companions headed for an empty table on the farthest side of the room from the door. The table allowed a good view of the whole room, and J.B. pushed one of the wooden chairs far back until it was pressed against the wall. Once it was, he sat down on it, the brim of his fedora low as he silently scanned the room. Exhausted, Krysty wearily sat beside him while Ryan took a seat facing him, his chair at an angle so that he might turn easily if he was required to face the room.

      The patrons seemed a mismatched bunch. Some were quite clearly local farmhands, others just traveling through. There was a sense of hostility, all too familiar in the Deathlands, but it came from the raucous conversations and lewd floor show more than any specific antagonism between parties.

      “Lots of ordnance in here,” J.B. said quietly, “not all of it on show.”

      Beside the Armorer, Krysty was beginning to regain her usual healthy appearance, the color returning to her cheeks. Her green eyes were sifting through the weapons she could see tucked beneath the tabletops. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she decided, telling of her findings in a low mutter. “Guy left of the door looks like he has a flamer maybe.”

      “No,” J.B. corrected her. “That’s a crop duster, sprays pesticide.”

      With his back to the room, Ryan glanced up at the mirror behind the bar, searching for the man in question. “Would it work as a weapon?” he queried.

      “Depends what’s in it,” the Armorer admitted. “A face full of bug spray could blind you, burn the skin off your face, or worse.”

      “What’s worse than that?” Krysty asked, furrowing her brow.

      “Put some industrial-strength shit in there, and you’d be tripping the rest of your short life, see the flesh peeling from your skull whether it was really happening or not,” J.B. explained disinterestedly, his eyes still scanning the room.

      At the counter, Doc was addressing the proprietor in his rich, sonorous voice. “Your sign outside promises good eating, sir,” he began, “perhaps you would care to explain what delicacies you have to offer to a band of weary—and hungry—travelers?”

      Behind the counter the round man’s tiny eyes widened at Doc’s elaborately phrased request, and he worked his spike of wood with his fingers, pulling something from his teeth, before he spoke. “We got meat,” he said, gesturing to the alcove where the teenage girl was stirring at her large pot, “fresh today and stewed up all nice and tender. That do you an’ your trav’lin’ buds?”

      Doc glanced across to the girl in the alcove and nodded, scenting the air in an effort to determine what meat it was. “It most assuredly would,” Doc told the barman. “We would like six bowls of your finest stew. It smells delicious,” he added, turning to check for the approval of his companions.

      The overweight barman went over to talk to the rake-thin girl at the bathtub-size cooking pot, and when Doc turned back, he was returning to his post as the girl began reaching for bowls and wiping each with a cloth before placing them in turn on the table beside her. As Doc checked through his pockets for some jack or spare ammunition that might serve as currency—nothing was more valuable in the Deathlands than a live round—the bartender gestured for him to come closer. Leaning forward, Doc bent close to the bar, looking at the bartender curiously as the fat man spoke.

      “What’s up with whitey there?” the barman asked, not looking at Jak Lauren. “He a mutie? We don’t much like serving their kind in here. Not for me, y’understand, just that the locals get sore about it and it’s liable to bring trouble.”

      “No,” Doc said, shaking his head, “Jak’s as normal as you or I.” Doc considered explaining the nature of albinism but thought better of it. “He just stays out of the sun, that’s all,” Doc finished somewhat lamely.

      Which wasn’t to say that they didn’t have a mutie among their band. Few people picked up on Krysty’s mutations, despite her prehensile hair being on show for all the world to see. Doc smiled to himself. In two hundred years, humankind hadn’t changed so very much. People would look past a lot if you were that rare and wonderful combination of facets—tall, striking and a woman.

      The man behind the counter told Doc to find a table and his daughter would bring the meals over. As the three companions shuffled past the group from the caravan, one of its crew called to them. The companions turned, and Mildred accompanied Doc as he strode a few paces to join the group. Wary, Jak watched for a moment before slipping through the other patrons and making his way across the room to join Ryan’s table.

      A sturdy-looking man addressed Doc as he walked closer, standing up to grasp his hand in a firm, friendly grip. The man looked to be in his fifties, with thinning white hair atop a tanned face and a patchy white beard on his chin. He looked to Doc like a farmer, a man used to working outside.

      “You were out there with those what

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