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"Sure. Yeah, sure."
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
EVEN AFTER THE BETTER PART of a day with them, Ryan still found it hard to
reconcile himself to the idea of there being intelligent, capable, organized
stickies.
The sun was setting, and they'd covered about fif-teen miles over tough
terrain.
And Charlie had con-stantly been taking precautions to ensure that any pursuit
would be slow and laborious. Again and again they would detour to walk over
exposed granite, avoiding the softer paths.
Each time they came to water they would deliber-ately try to pick their way
along the center, sometimes altering the direction they were moving in to
ensure that anyone trailing them would waste a lot of time.
Once Ryan pretended to stumble, hoping to leave some clue for Jak and J.B.
Charlie took him by the arm, gripping him by the elbow, suckered fingers
digging in with frightening power.
"Try that again, Cawdor, and I'll use my hands on the woman's breasts. Think
she'd look as good with-out any nipples?"
Ryan didn't try it again.
Chapter Eighteen
They passed a large open space, with light gravel partly covered with
thimbleberry bushes and sagebrush. Be-yond it the trail meandered past a row
of burned-out buildings so totally destroyed that it was impossible to even
guess at
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate what they might have been.
Beyond that was another, much more substantial ruin, the windows missing, dark
marks of smeared carbon showing that it had also been ravaged long ago by a
ferocious fire.
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"It was a place called a Visitor Center," Charlie explained.
"Seen them in the old wilderness parks," Ryan re-plied.
The last dying daggers of crimson sunlight bounced across from the high
sandstone cliffs opposite, re-flecting from the dangling golden medallions on
the hairless chest of the leader of the stickies.
Krysty had moved a few steps away from Ryan, shepherded by the guards, leaving
him alone with the skeletally tall mutie.
"What's going down?" Ryan asked quietly.
"How's that?"
"What happens now?"
"We go to the houses."
"Then?"
"Meet the rest of the community."
"Come on."
"What?"
"Fireblast! You know what I'm talking about, Charlie."
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
"There'll be eats for all."
Ryan felt the pulse of anger beating at his temples, and the long scar that
seamed his face began to throb.
"When do we get chilled?"
"Ah. Get your drift now, Cawdor. Good question. Real good."
The toothless mouth was stretched in a beaming, God-bless-you smile, the
protruding eyes half-closed in delight. The stickie's whole body was tense,
like someone straining toward a distant orgasm.
Only at that moment did Ryan realize the total ha-tred the mutie felt for him.
"Krysty doesn't have anything to do with the cards lying between you and me,
Charlie." He knew how barren and futile the words were, even before they left
his mouth, and knew what the response would be.
"She's your woman, Cawdor. Walks in your shadow. Sleeps in your bed. Fucks
you. Eats with you. Her life is your life, Cawdor, and her death will be your
cold death."
Ryan took in a slow, deep breath, fighting down the blood rage. "Yeah. I
understand."
Charlie patted him on the shoulder. "But first you get to eat and meet some
other& visitors, I guess they are."
"Why not chill us right off?"
"Like I said, they " he gestured toward the armed men that ringed Krysty
" back me, long as I chill norms. More norms I chill, more they think I'm
close to a god. If I come up with good way of doing the chilling, then they
like it even more. You'll go out with a big bang, Cawdor. That I promise you.
Real big bang."
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
DURING HIS ODYSSEY through Deathlands, Ryan had visited any number of villes
and camps, from the richest to the poorest. He'd also seen stickie
settle-ments.
They were filthy and squalid, with oily fires and open middens. Huts leaked
raw sewage, with rotting food in stinking heaps. Lousy mongrels fought over
scraps, and naked children tormented those weaker than themselves.
Charlie's small empire wasn't anything like that.
There was a winding trail down from the ruined buildings, the lush vegetation
on either side cropped back. In the steepest parts it became a sequence of
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crumbling steps.
Ahead of them they could see a towering cliff, looming over the ravine. The
farther they descended, the darker it became.
Charlie pointed toward the wall of orange rock, smeared with chemical stains
of black and gray. "You know that this remained hidden for hundreds and
hundreds of years. Local Indians were fearful of it. Bad place. Wasn't found
until the middle part of the 1900s. Cowboys were chasing lost cattle. One fell
over the edge and broke his neck. Others came down and found this."
He waved the Uzi as they reached a wider curve in the track, gesturing toward
the amazing sight below them.
It was like a town, almost buried under a gigantic overhang, a hundred feet or
so from the base of the cliff.
At first glance, there seemed to be a limitless num-ber of little dwellings.
But a second, slower look showed that there were about forty of them. Many
were linked together, some in ruins.
There were plenty of cooking fires burning as well as dozens of oil lamps,
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate hanging in the gloom like golden
eyes.
"How many you got in this place?" Krysty asked, hardly able to believe the
organization of what she was seeing.
"Last count there were ninety able men and forty-four women. Eighteen little
ones." There was a note of bitterness in his voice. "Stickies aren't great at
breeding, Firehead. Chromosome chains are faulty. Some young doctor told us
that. Just before we filled his ass with black powder and blew his cock over
the mountain."
Now the commune had seen them.
Ryan had checked on security, spotting silhouettes on the cliff top, against
the pale yellow sky. And he was certain there'd been other sentries in among
the trees.
There was whooping and cheers. Someone stirred up the largest of the fires so
that a great fountain of bright sparks went whirling into the evening sky. The
sight produced even louder yells from the crowd of stickies.
"Still like flames," Ryan said.
"Bred into us in the bone," Charlie replied. "Ex-plosions, lights and flames.
Not even I can stop that."
RYAN AND KRYSTY had their ropes cut, but they were replaced with old steel
handcuffs that clicked shut, keeping their wrists bound in front of them.
"Got them from a traveling gaudy wagon we took a month ago," Charlie told them
proudly. "Twenty sets of cuffs. Portable gallows. Leg stretchers. Plenty of
high boots with spurs. Whips of all shapes and sizes. Stuff I never seen the
like of.
Couldn't figure what it was for. By then the gaudy sluts were all chilled, so
I
couldn't ask them."
Older women stickies brought them food in wooden dishes. The suckered fingers
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