“He was a good shot?” Krysty prompted.
Anita sniffed. “Fucker wanted me to be mommy to my new little sister. Would have been if he’d got his hands on me. Sweetest shot I ever made, right through the bastard’s dick. Now, you gonna give me a ride back, or do I have to walk in front of that wag of yours?”
Doc gathered the horses and drove the wag into the ville, Anita sitting beside him to indicate that all was well. They made the short journey in silence, the friends gleaning what they could from the view out the back of the canvas wag cover.
There was little to see that wasn’t familiar to them. Station Browns ville was almost too small to have a center as such; rather, it had a few buildings that radiated from the hub, which was a cluster of about five buildings. It was difficult to tell, as they hadn’t been well-constructed, and the rider’s ordnance had wreaked more havoc here than the ville they had recently left.
The ville had looked fine from a distance: no smoking wreckage, and now they could see why. Any fires had long ago burned themselves out. The flattened center section of the ville was nothing more than rubble and corpses. Some of the gaudy sluts, incongruously still dressed for trade, were working to clear the corpses.
“How many of you are left, my dear?” Doc whispered.
“No more than fifteen, all women and girls. Every male, young or old, is chilled. Criminacs, or somethin’, that was what he called them.”
“Criminals, my dear. An old word, of no real meaning now.”
Anita sniffed. “Figure it must mean somethin’ if it makes him chill all our menfolk. That what he did where you come from?”
“Almost. A larger population, perhaps not enough time for him. We must find out all we can, I think, and quickly,” he said over his shoulder at Ryan.
The one-eyed man was in agreement. They had another two villes to get to. Chances were, on this evidence, that the coldheart rider had already paid them a visit. It was not a time to stand on ceremony.
Their approach had attracted the attention of those still left alive, and it was no problem for Anita to gather them together to explain who the strangers were and what they wanted. There was no shortage of information. What emerged was that the mystery rider’s visit to Station Browns ville followed the same pattern as the other event: ride in, speak of arcane things in a strange pattern, and when he didn’t get the reaction he wanted, he started firing—except that he refused this time to fire on any women, believing them to be innocents. As employees of the gaudy house, they weren’t allowed to carry blasters. A pity, as his leaving them alone would have given them a clear shot at him, and maybe avoided this destruction…and the destruction where they had come from, as it seemed that this attack had occurred before the one they had stumbled on.
The only other thing of note was that there was no sign of the napalmlike substance in this ville. Had he considered this ville too small to make that necessary, or was he limited by numbers as to how often he could use it? That question would only really be answered if they found the next ville had also been attacked.
There was little they could do to help here. The women had the situation as under control as was possible, and there was little medical help needed. The stark truth was that those who would buy the farm had already done so by this time.
There was little else they could do but leave, with the words of the gaudies ringing in their ears—pleas to wreak revenge.
It was when they were out on the empty expanse of desert once more that Krysty started to get that sense of being watched.
IT WAS WITH A SINKING HEART that they made the slow trek across the wastes to their next destination. The ville had been wiped out. No survivors.
But at least one important thing was evident at their last stop: this ville had been attacked in the time between the other two attacks, which meant that the rider wasn’t working his way around an arc, but was more likely to be at some point equidistant to all three villes.
Two down, one to go. They set off with a little more information, but not enough to reach any real conclusions. After a two-day drive across the desert and dustbowl, they found themselves with a ville that had been the first to be visited by the rider. Those that had been chilled had been disposed of. The infrastructure had been restored as much as was possible, and there had been no orange chem here. Again, the people talked of the rider’s strange language and undreamed-of ordnance. Their descriptions were sketchy, as had been those of the other villes, but they were enough to tell J.B. that the man had been using a limited range of weaponry so far. It didn’t mean he didn’t have a wider range available, but it did say much about his thought process.
They left the final ville on their arc with a little more information than when they had started, but not as much as Ryan would have wished.
“Not much good,” Jak commented tersely.
“On the contrary, dear boy, I would say that we have something that John Barrymore could work with,” Doc commented.
J.B. grimaced. “Okay, so if he starts from one point and attacks them, but not in any order of progression, then if we drew a line from the villes, we might get a central point, but only if the four villes form enough of an angle from which—”
“Yeah, okay, I get it—it won’t be accurate. But it would give us an area to start looking,” Ryan pointed out, “and that’s better than where we are now.”
“Mebbe,” J.B. breathed, “but you figured how big that area could be?”
Ryan sighed. “It’s about all we got right now.”
Jak exchanged a look with Krysty. “Ryan, head right direction, figure scum look for us. Knows where are,” the albino said.
“You sure of that?” Ryan questioned, dividing his gaze between them.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure of that,” Krysty said with a shiver, her hair flicking around her shoulders nervously. “I don’t know where he’s hiding out there, with no cover, but he’s been watching us. All the while. I can feel it.”
Ryan nodded, almost to himself. “Okay. Let him bring it on, then. We plot a rough course, and we start out first thing. If that’s how it’s gonna be, let’s draw the bastard out.”
Chapter Four
“I am on a line going thirty-three by seventeen. The fourth quadrant. They are at rest for the evening, operating a watch rotation system. They seem to be very lightly armed, which has surprised me given their reputation. However, I shall still use long-distance search and recover tactics, and take no chances. Further reports after operations commence, which should be at 0400 by my chronometer. Message ends.”
Thunder Rider flipped up the slim mike that came down from his goggles and adjusted the long-range infrared recon scope before lifting the eyepiece to his left eye. The darkness of the surrounding desert now became a relief in grays and greens. The figures and the wagon in the distance, barely visible by the naked eye even in the light, now came into sharp focus. He adjusted the range with the slightest touch of his index finger, and the figures grew larger in the scope. He could see that the small albino and the famed Armorer were on watch. The others were sleeping, clustered around the fire. The red-haired woman was close up against the one-eyed man. For a moment, Rider felt a twinge of something in his chest, and was baffled. He truly had no idea what bothered him, only that something did. No matter, it did not fit in with the plan.
The scope had a long-range directional mike attached. Thunder Rider activated the facility. The receiver was attached to a small speaker in the goggles, relaying directly to his ear all that could be heard from such a distance. Not that there was much. The old man and the black woman were snoring. The albino was silent, and prowled like a wolf ready to spring. He was the most immediate danger. Not relevant now, but a point worth noting. The Armorer was muttering softly to himself, possibly as an aid to concentration. It was almost inaudible, and certainly under