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!"
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Layton Brennan flew so low over their heads that they could see his amiable face, grinning at them over the edge of the cockpit of the Sopwith 1 1/2-Strutter, his goggles glinting in the dawn sunlight. He waved a cheery hand, then angled the plane away, heading across the dusty desert toward Death Valley.
The search was on for the stickies.
The inbred muties didn't have anything that resembled an organized camp. They burrowed into the sides of hills, or took over old, abandoned houses and buildings, staying sometimes for only a few days. Sometimes for months. It all depended on how long it would take for them to strip the region around their nests of anything edible or useful. Then they would move on.
Ryan had been pressed by Zombie and by Norman Mote about how many stickies he thought might be in the area. In the panic during the feeding ceremony only three of the muties had been chilled.
"I've seen them alone, and often seen them hunting in packs around ten to a dozen. Biggest nest I saw was probably forty or fifty. Trader once told me of a kind of ville of stickies he'd come across. Said there could easily have been two hundred or more. If I was a guessing man I'd say that we'd probably find us around fifty. Good-size pack."
As the airplane shrank to a tiny dot in the pink, cloud-dappled sky, Norman Mote called his hunting posse to order.
"Quiet, brothers. You all know why we're here. You've seen the sad corpses lying there in the temple. We don't want any stickies left alive. Not a single one."
Ryan made a quick count: eight of the Last Heroes; himself, with J.B., Jak and Doc; Edgar Brennan with his brother and his nephew, off in his plane; and twenty-seven other men from the ville. The only one Ryan recognized was the gun dealer, John Dern.
Everyone was armed, many carrying a variety of patched and repaired scatterguns. Ryan's warning that the only way to be sure of downing a stickie was to blow its head apart had been passed all around the group.
Ryan had faced a bitter argument from Krysty during the night and on into the early hours of the morning.
"Why?"
"You know."
"Tell me, lover. Tell me why you four get to go and I'm left here holding the baby. No. Check that. Holding both the babies. Lori and the freezie. Why is it me?"