“What are you doing here, Doc?”
“I assumed that we were going to mount a rescue effort.”
“Who told you that?”
“A gypsy woman read it for me in tea leaves and chicken innards.”
Bart Masters led two destriers around the security gate while lugging a handheld mining device over his shoulder. “Don’t listen to him, Jem. Anna told me when I went to pick this contraption up from Adam Wells.”
“What the hell is that, Bart? You planning on drilling them to death?”
Bart unslung the laser’s barrel and held it like a rifle. “That boy Adam is one mechanically inclined son of a gun, boy, I’ll tell you. When it’s time for me to show you what this puppy can do, just stand back and find something to hold onto.” Bart looked over Jem’s shoulder and said, “Didn’t you bring anybody?”
“Claire’s husband Frank wanted to come, but I told him he needed to stay and protect her. I think he’s patrolling the front yard with a shotgun as we speak.”
“Christ, we’re gonna get crushed,” Bart said.
“Jem and I have been through this type of thing before, young Bart, so look on the bright side,” Halladay said. “You will probably be the first to go.”
They set out into the wasteland. Halladay inventoried the ammunition in his belt and checked the spare battery packs in his vest. He removed the rifle from his saddle and worked the action several times then inspected both of his pistols by spinning the cylinders to make sure there was a bullet in each chamber. Halladay had a small Mantis revolver tucked into the front of his waistband, and when he showed it to Jem, Jem nodded approvingly and showed him the one hidden under his shirt.
Halladay drew a knife from his shoulder holster that was the length of his forearm and he held it up in the sunlight to inspect the edge. Jem shook his head at the sight of the weapon and said, “Guess we’re covered in case a sword fight breaks out, then.”
“I am a practitioner of the surgical arts, young man. One never knows when he will encounter a tumor that needs to be removed.”
Both men looked over at Bart Masters. Bart confidently patted the mining laser’s barrel lying across his lap.
“Is that really all you brought?” Halladay said.
“Just wait and see, old man. Just wait and see.”
Halladay laughed out loud. “This is quite a crew indeed. A sick old man, a miner with a homemade space laser, and an outlaw with eyes as blue as the oceans of Luatica.”
“Can’t you be serious for just one moment?” Jem said. “There’s at least four men down in that canyon aiming to kill us, one of who has some sort of unholy weapon powerful enough to make us shoot ourselves before we even get there.”
“Forgive me, Jem,” Halladay said. “I will try summon the appropriate dread at our imminent demise.”
“Whatever,” Jem said. “Just forget it.”
They rode across the grey flatland in silence. The long row of mountains ahead seemed to reach high enough to scrape the sun. The first trail up the mountain was blockaded. “What the hell?” Bart said. “It was fine last week.”
“Expect all of the other paths to be blocked off as well, save for the one at the far end of the canyon. It makes perfect sense to force us up that hill,” Halladay said.
Bart Masters rode ahead of them and Royce Halladay waved for Jem to wait for a moment. “I do apologize if my attitude is distracting you.”
“It’s nothing, Doc. I’m just wired pretty tight right now. I don’t like these odds.”
“I have been a dead man walking this planet ever since that awful night so many years ago. Not a single day passes that I do not ask myself why the hell I’m still alive. This is my twenty-second year with a fatal disease, Jem. It is like God prefers to see me suffer.” Halladay leaned close to Jem and said, “So forgive me if I do not pay much attention to the odds. And perhaps, as I ruminate on it a bit, I come to wonder if the Lord kept me alive all this time just so I could be at your side at this particular moment.”
“That’s a long way to come just to be outnumbered and outgunned, Doc.”
Royce Halladay’s eyebrows raised. “Pardon my correction, sir, but while there have been many occasions when I have been outnumbered, I have never once been outgunned.”
Hank Raddiger lifted his binoculars to check the path, but all it did was give him a sharper view of the thick brush he was hidden under. He propped up on his elbows, keeping the assault rifle steady in one hand and the wireless remote device in his other.
He was alone on the overlook, the sole guardian of the beaten up wagon that the Customs Officers left in the center of the path. It was the only access road to the canyon that hadn’t been blockaded, and whoever tried to get close around that wagon was in for a hell of a surprise, Hank though. The assault rifle was for whoever survived.
Except for Jem Clayton.
Clayton was not to be harmed under any circumstances. If Hank’s first round hit Jem Clayton, the second round was going into his own mouth, Hank thought. To hell with trying to explain a screw-up to Elijah or Little Willy or whoever the hell he thought he was.
Hank heard something and froze, seeing a lone figure come walking up the path. The man was unarmed except for a large industrial device strapped over his shoulders with a long hose connected to it. Was it a flamethrower? Hank wondered. It looked like something farmers used to spray down their crops.
Bart Masters paused to look over the wagon and the rocky cliffs on either side of it. He even looked in the area where Hank was hidden, but gave no notice of seeing him. Hank raised the wireless remote and held his breath, counting the number of steps the man would have to take before he pressed the detonation button.
Bart flipped a switch on his backpack and it came alive with a growling, vibrating noise like an engine. He aimed down the length of the hose at the wagon and squeezed a trigger underneath it. There was a high-pitched whine and a red circle of light appeared on the surface of the carriage.
“What the hell?” Hank whispered. The red circle started to smoke and the side of the carriage melted and caught flame. The light painted the interior of the carriage, directly over the stacks of plastic explosives hidden within.
The explosive’s sticky linings turned to ash and the fuses and wires connecting them sizzled as they melted. Hank tried to slam the button on the remote in time but nothing happened. He cursed and threw the remote aside, lifting the rifle to aim at the head of the idiot with the backpack. He was about to pull the trigger when the sole of a boot crushed his hand against the ground.
Hank lifted his head to scream but a large blade flashed in the sunlight and all he saw was a lean, ghostly looking man holding the knife. The ghost smiled cruelly and plunged the knife in as he whispered, “Ave atque vale.”
Jimmy McParlan could not tell if it was dusk or if the clouds had just rolled over the sun momentarily. He wondered if his eyesight had weakened to the point that he could no longer tell day from night. He could only take small, shallow breaths and felt excruciating pressure on his chest from his suspended shoulders. Both shoulders had already popped out of their sockets, and his arms were numb to the point that he no longer felt the pain of the steel bolts driven through his wrists.
The steel bolts in his feet still hurt, especially when he moved and they ground against his bones. The buzzards had returned. Jimmy McParlan panted like a dog and waited for death. Death was slow in coming.
Something burned brightly, high above him. He managed to lift his head enough to see flames lighting the mountainside. Whatever was on fire creaked as it rocked back and forth until finally it tumbled over the side of the cliff and smashed against the rocky walls. It fell like a dead phoenix to the desert floor.