J.B. checked the rear window. "Nothing out here. If the stickies had come into the ville and started a fire, the whole place would have gone up like tinder. Wooden houses, close together. Unless they're cleaned out, Ryan, they'll do that. Only way you stop a stickie is by chilling it. No other way to do it."
"I'm dying," Rick moaned. "Have kaddish sung over me. And put my baby shoes away, Mama."
"Shut up and drink," Jak said, returning with a tumbler.
Ryan whistled through his teeth. "I reckon this is coming up to a good time to shake the shit of Snakefish off of our boots, friends. Stickies that close in those numbers mean serious bad news. Like I've already said, I'm sorry for that fat little baron. No doubt in my mind that the Motes'll run him out of the ville. Probably in the next few weeks, the way it's shaping. But that isn't our fight. Never was. Never will be."
J.B. looked as if we were going to argue, but they were interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Ruby Rainer, her face smeared with soot and dirt, her "feeding" clothes stained and torn, the hem of her skirt sodden with what looked to be congealing blood.
"Shedskin!" she panted. "You outlanders all made it back safe? There's a hollow-tooth miracle. Azrael himself must have been looking after you. In all that death..."
"You all right, Mrs. Rainer?" Krysty asked.
"I'm delivered, mercy be to the coil and the scale," she replied, leaning against the wall to recover her breath. "But there's many a dozen good folk of this ville who won't see the sunrise tomorrow."
"How many chilled?" Ryan asked.
The elderly woman shook her head, the electric lamp casting deep shadows across the stark bones of her face. "I'd count on two dozen or more. There was the whole Locke family burned when one of those mutie spawn poured gas over them all. Dancing in the flames they was, and all their flesh was melting and dripping away from them. Danced until they fell, they did. Every one. And there was Miriam..."
"How many stickies done for?" J.B. interrupted.
"I don't know. There seemed to be hundreds. One gripped my dress and pulled me down. May the hollow tooth feed John Dern for saving me. He blasted the monster back to the pit, but its blood went all over me and... Forgive me," she said, on the edge of tears.
"Most escaped?"
"Yes, Mr. Cawdor. I think..." She stopped and blew her nose noisily on a kerchief she pulled from her sleeve. "So many hurt and chilled. I saw poor Mr. Vareson, his whole face scorched black, eyes bubbling holes in... Oh, dear, dear. I must go and lie down. I don't think I can prepare any food tonight, if you don't..."
Krysty patted her on the arm. "We can raid the larder if we feel hungry, Mrs. Rainer. You go and take a rest. I don't think any of us are going to feel much like eating tonight."
As the door closed behind her, Jak turned to Krysty. "Speak for self. I'm real hungry."
Nobody else was staying at the hotel, and Ruby Rainer kept a well-stocked pantry. It was an indication of the wealth of the ville, with all its processed gas, that she was able to store so much. And so little of it grown locally.
A rare sight in the Deathlands was a freezer, yet Ruby had one, humming away to itself in a room off of the kitchen. It was filled with beef, pork and chicken, several different sorts of fruit and steaks of some large and unidentified fish.
Jak and Lori set to, frying some of the fish in oil and serving it with potatoes and tender green peas. They dished out some large raspberries, but they hadn't thawed properly so most of the group chose to leave them.
"Not bad," Rick said. "Not quite as good as Mom used to make, but it comes close. Best thing I've eaten since I've been in these Deathlands."
"You should appreciate, my dear young friend, that this is also one of the best meals that I have eaten in Deathlands. And I have been here a great deal longer than you."
Doc's comment cast a pall over the freezie, and he refused a second helping of the bullet like fruit. "Maybe I should have stayed frozen," he said. "Or never gotten frozen at all. The cryo business isn't all they say."
"You said there were other cryo centers, Rick?" Ryan said.
"That's right. One up on the Lakes and one some place in south Texas. It'll come back to me, I guess."
"Could be this is a good time to tell us just what you know about jumps and gateways," J.B. suggested.
Rick put down his coffee mug. "If I could remember what it is I know about gateways, J.B., then I'd be happy to tell you."
"How 'bout how to control where you go?" Jak asked.
"No. Sorry, guys. That wasn't my scene. I can perhaps help out in ways of detecting faulty gateways and how to return. I know I knew all that stuff. Knew it. Once."
It was a disappointment. Ryan had, at the back of his mind, the hope that some day, somewhere, they might come across some piece of information that would reveal how to master the gateways. And the freezies had been one of his hopes.
Time had drifted by.
It was around ten o'clock and the bedlam out on Main Street had died down. Just as the seven were beginning to think about bed they heard the noise of several of the Last Heroes' two-wheel wags rumbling through the night from the old funfair.
"Company," Rick said unnecessarily as the motorbikes came to a halt immediately outside.
"Or trouble," J.B. said grimly.
Finally they heard the front door crash open and booted feet drum along the hallway. Except for the freezie, all were wearing blasters and all went for them.
"In here!" Ryan shouted, taking the initiative away from the bikers. "If you're coming to assassinate someone, you don't make so much noise about it."
Zombie stomped in, backed by Riddler, Harlekin and Freewheeler.
"You in here?" Zombie said.
"Looks like it," Ryan replied calmly.
"Nobody chilled or injured?"
"No."
"Come from the ville's council."
"Who's that?" J.B. asked, standing near the table.
"Your friend Carla and the baron. And the Reverend Mote and his lady and Josh Mote."
"Since when?" J.B. said.
"Since long enough," Riddler replied defensively. "Keep free, bro. This isn't your fight. Remember that, huh?"
"So everyone tells me. Bro."
"What did the council decide?" Ryan asked, easing the tension.
"That at dawn we all go out and blow the shit out of those fucking stickies."
"Who's this 'we' you mentioned?" Krysty asked.
"Baron Edgar, his nephew and his brother. And a few others. And us. And Josh Mote. Oh, and you outlanders, of course."
"Why us?"
Riddler answered. "You took the jack from the ville and food and beds. Now the council says you gotta ride with us after the stickies. Sort of pay the debt, Ryan." He shrugged his shoulders as if to explain that it wasn't his idea.
"How did the council vote on this?" Ryan asked. "No, let me guess. Wouldn't be three to two in favor, would it?"
"No." Harlekin laughed.
"No?"
"No, Ryan, you too-smart fucker. It was three to nothing. Carla and the old baron didn't bother to vote at all!"
"If..." J.B. began, hand blatantly on the butt of his Steyr blaster.
"Forget it." The wolfish smile disappeared from Zombie's face. "Your gaudy's fine. Nobody hurt her or Edgar. They're fine as sunshine, Mr. Dix!"
"Dawn, you said?" Ryan asked. "We'll leave the woman and the free... and Rick here in the ville."
"Please yourself. Don't matter. Just so long as we waste the stickies."
"Ryan. I don't..." Krysty began, stopping as he turned and looked coldly at her. She knew better than to push it. For the time being.
"So be there," Riddler said.
"Or be square," Rick concluded.
"Not you, feeb," Zombie sneered. "The others. Be there or be fucking dead!"