“Shit,” Sim breathed. “How the hell did he get there? Come to that, who is he? Don’t look familiar to me.”
“Y’know what? I don’t care if he’s your fucking cousin. He’s the block in the well and we need to get him out.”
“Sure we can’t just leave him there?”
“Yeah, right—and have Xander ask us why the water’s dried up or why it’s diseased when this fucker rots?”
Sim sniffed. “Yeah, guess so. Tell you what, I’ll let you down, then you tie the rope round him and clear that mud jam around his legs while I pull him up.”
“Great plan,” Hafler muttered sarcastically, though in truth it was the only thing that could be done.
Sim lowered Hafler down until the small man was standing in the shallow stream. There was barely room to stand beside the prone body and it was hard for him to untie the rope, squat and tie it around the limp body in the confined space. But he did find out one thing…
“Take him up,” he yelled, tugging on the rope when it was secured around the prone man. “And guess what—the fucker’s alive,” he added, giving the unconscious J.B. a savage kick in the ribs to vent his anger at having to move him. The impact made the Armorer stir. “Yeah, and there’ll be more of that, you awkward fuck,” Hafler muttered.
He flattened himself to the side of the well while the body, jerking, was tugged past him. He had the flash fixed into his belt, shining downward, and the light from above was blocked by the prone figure, which kept bumping into the walls. Scatterings of earth and pebbles fell from the construction, dislodged from the body’s upward journey.
“Careful, you old fuck, or you’ll bring it down on me,” Hafler muttered to himself before turning his attention to the floor of the well. The water was now running more freely, although uncovering the Armorer’s legs had brought down a little more mud. The depth was up to the tops of his workboots and his wet feet told him that the boots weren’t in the good condition he’d thought they were. Ignoring this, Hafler set to work clearing the obstruction and shoring it up with the slabs of rock—dislodged by the arrival of J.B.—that had been used to form a channel in and out of the well, the smaller channel being on the outward flow, acting as a dam to build the water level. While he worked, he tried not to think about the fact that he was at the bottom of the well, without any lifeline to the land above.
Up top, Sim was straining, face reddened and veins popping on his neck, as he hauled J.B. toward the surface. He was older and less fit than he cared to imagine and was having problems getting the deadweight to the surface. As the body reached the top of the wall, it caught on the uneven surface, and Sim had to strain with every ounce, bracing his feet in the dusty soil that provided little grip, to get him over the lip.
The unconscious form flopped over the wall around the well and crashed to the ground, raising a cloud of dust as it hit the earth hard, feet and arms bouncing upward with the impact. A grunt escaped from the Armorer but as he was still comatose, it was a question of air being expelled rather than acknowledgment of pain. Sim drew several deep breaths, feeling his heart pound like a hammer as he tried to return to normal. Finally, he trusted his strength enough to walk over to the prone body and bend to retrieve the rope. He lifted J.B.’s head, looking at the battered and bloody face.
“Bastard,” he hissed, slamming the body’s head back down. “More trouble than you’re worth. Let’s see what Xander has to say ’bout you.”
He poked his head over the lip of the well, staring down at the point of light below. “How you doing?” he yelled down.
“Nearly finished. Where’s that fucking rope?” Hafler shouted in reply.
Sim let an evil grin cross his face. “Can’t get that fucking knot you tied around that other bastard out,” he yelled. “Can’t get the rope down—you’ll have to climb up without it.” He chuckled as he listened to the stream of abuse that came up from the bottom of the well.
“That’ll teach you,” he said to himself before tossing the end of the rope down the well.
When Hafler had pulled himself up, they stood over the body looking down on it.
“Reckon we should just chill the fucker now?” Hafler asked. “It’d save us a lot of trouble.”
Sim hoicked up and spit on the Armorer. “Nah. Let’s see if he comes around first. Take him back and see what Xander says. I reckon he’ll be interested to know just how this fucker ended up down there.”
“Shit,” Hafler cursed, kicking J.B. again. “I know you’re right, but that means we’ve got to carry this son of a bitch back to the ville.”
Between them, the two men picked up the Armorer’s body and began the long haul back to the ville. The sun was still high, although beginning the long journey into night and the heat beat down on them. J.B. was out cold, a motionless deadweight. Hafler had hold of his legs while Sim had hold of his shoulders. The thin, rat-faced man cursed without pause, railing at the fate that had led him to be assigned to Sim, to have to cover someone else’s ass on the south sector, to find this motherfucker stupe at the bottom of a well and for him to actually have the audacity to be alive.
“That’s it, that’s enough,” Sim said, unceremoniously dropping the body onto the dirt and turning to face his companion. “I’ve had enough of you moaning all the fucking time, boy. You want this guy chilled, so we don’t have to drag him back? Okay, you chill him.” The big man took an old Colt .44 six-shot blaster from the back of his waistband. The blaster was vintage, but highly polished and well maintained. It was obviously more than just a weapon to Sim, it was an object of some pride. This was clear from the way he checked that it was fully loaded and handed it carefully to Hafler.
Hafler had his own blaster, but he knew what this piece of hardware meant to his companion and he took it almost nervously, a slight tremor in his hand.
“Don’t do that, boy, it might go off in the wrong direction,” Sim murmured in a calm voice.
“Nah…nah, I’m not using this,” Hafler said, shaking his head violently and handing back the blaster with something that approached urgency.
Sim took it, shrugged and pointed the barrel at the Armorer’s skull. “Whatever you say, boy. But you moan anymore and I’ll take him out right now. And you’ll have to explain to Xander why we didn’t bring him back for interrogation if he ever gets to find out.”
Hafler sucked in his breath. “Don’t be stupe. You know I wouldn’t want that…Okay, okay, I’ll keep it shut, right?” He managed a pathetic attempt at a smile.
Sim’s own grimace of a smile was broader: round one to him. “Good. Then just pick the fucker up and let’s get rolling.”
The two men picked up the Armorer as before and resumed their trek. Hafler couldn’t stop the muttering under his breath that came as second nature, but made sure it was low enough not to annoy Sim.
Gradually, the landscape changed a little. The scrub became a little denser as they hit the remains of an old, predark woodland. A few hardy specimens had survived and they provided what little cover there was for the small, reinforced sec post, dug down into a trench and reinforced to two feet above ground level.
“Hey, what you two assholes got there?” yelled the sec man in the trench, his head alone visible above the reinforcements.
“They got something?” a second voice queried, his head also appearing above the reinforcement. Whereas the first sec man had a lean face framed by long, greasy black hair, the second had a bullet head on which the hair was savagely cropped. He also had what looked like a cigar clamped in his jaws, billowing a foul smoke.
“How d’you know it was us, Deke?” Hafler whined.
“The man Upton here says assholes, can only mean you two,” Deke replied with a beatific