"We ought talk."
Ryan, like the others, had immediately swung his gun toward the stranger, who showed no awareness of his own vulnerability.
He was the strangest person that Ryan had ever seen, even in ten years of traveling through the Deathlands, with its many nuke-ravaged muties.
Around nineteen years old, Ryan guessed. Very short. Barely five three, weighing around 120 pounds. But "thin" wasn't the right word; "lean" was a lot better. The lad looked well-muscled and powerful. He wore pants and a vest of leather and canvas, dyed in irregular patches of brown, gray and green, giving a camouflage effect. Ryan had a keen eye for a fighting man, and he instinctively felt that, despite the boy's slight stature, he was someone to be reckoned with. He held himself well, leaning against the door, his body tensed like a steel spring. Ryan also noticed that the thick material of his clothes glittered here and there, and he guessed there were small pieces of keen-edged metal sewn in. There was no sign of a concealed blaster. But Ryan's intuition told him that the stranger would be a knife man.
But above all it was the head and face that drew attention.
The face was thin and pinched, like a starved rat's. The nose was narrow, with a crooked scar sliced across it. Another jagged, cicatrix seamed the left cheek, tugging the corner of the mouth upward in a crooked smile. The most startling feature of the face was the eyes. Set in caverns of wind-scoured white bone, they were a brilliant glowing red. Like twin rubies set in ivory. The lad's skin was pallid beyond belief, like some creature that had spent its existence beneath a damp stone. And the hair.
A tumbling mane of purest white, fine as spun silk, dazzling in the dim light.
"You're the snow wolf," said Ryan.
"That question?"
"No."
"Yeah. That's what call me." He seemed more economical with words than even J. B. Dix.
"Spray painter. Run West Lowellton."
"Yeah."
"And you are no friend to Baron Tourment?" asked Doc Tanner.
There was the first sign of a smile. "If'n he was drowning, I'd piss in his face. That answer it?"
"Why are you here? And what's your name?"
"Jak Lauren. I'm here 'cause sec men taken women. See why you're here. See if you help us. We help you."
"My name's Ryan Cawdor, Jak. This is J. B. Dix, Finnegan, and Doc Tanner."
Each of the party got a long blank stare from the penetrating eyes and the briefest of nods.
"Where from, Ryan?"
The answer was a finger, pointed roughly north.
"Going?"
The finger swiveled and pointed roughly south. The gesture got a snatched grin.
"Want help?"
Ryan glanced at the others, seeing the faint gestures of agreement. "Could be, Jak. First we talk some."
"Sure."
Lori awoke, already struggling against the tight cords that bound her to the table. She realized immediately that it was useless. The monstrously tall figure of Baron Tourment loomed over her, his right hand between her spread legs.
Before she could speak, the girl saw Krysty staring intently at her from the table at her right.
"Try not to tell him anything," hissed the flame-haired girl.
"No," replied Lori, her voice trembling as she fought against nausea from the hangover of the grens that had scrambled her brains.
Tourment turned to look at Krysty, his voice calm and serene. "Open your mouth again, slut, and I'll rip your tongue out from its roots."
She closed her eyes again, using all her self-control to maintain her breathing and not panic. Maybe Finnegan had escaped, she told herself, and Ryan would find some way of rescuing them.
Krysty swallowed hard at the realization that she had never felt so frightened or so helpless in her entire life.
Ryan and the others listened to the albino boy rattle off his account of life in West Lowellton. How Baron Tourment controlled the whole area, apart from a section of West Lowellton. Some of what he told them they already knew, or had guessed. The baron made his headquarters in another big abandoned motel, not far away. Jak Lauren's gang consisted of about forty fighters. Most of them men, was all he'd give out. He was also careful about his weapons.
"Broke in armory year back. Baron knows what we got. Knows we got enough to stop him looking for firefight. Mebbe beat us, but take knocks that'd cripple him. So it's a standoff."
Ryan was fascinated by the boy's talk about his plans for West Lowellton and Lafayette, once the tyrannical fist of Tourment was removed from the land.
It revealed a spirit that somehow reinforced all the good things he and Krysty had talked about. Why it was important that they didn't give up. Why there was a point in going on. Because there was already a kind of future. All a man could do was strive to make it better. Move on through the land and leave it just a little cleansed.
"Lafayette's got big library. Lotsa books. Old vids. Got the viewers working again. We got big plans, Ryan. Set up windmills to bring power. Got some gasoline, but not enough. Baron don't have that much gas. We can make 'lectrics with wind. There's ways using tides and all. We gotta try."
"Sure," interrupted Doc. "What you say, young fellow, is feasible. Can be done. Only if you got peace."
Jak nodded his head, the veil of fine white hair floating about his narrow face like a drift of snow.
"Sure. That's it. But we can't beat Tourment. Less'n we got help."
"From us?" asked J. B. Dix.
"Yeah. We help get women back. You come in with us and wipe out the giant."
"And set up your windmills?"
The lad shook his head angrily. "That's not all. You outland stupe! Drain the bayous. Bring back good land for crops. Stop the way we live. Moving and blasting and eating and moving on."
Doc Tanner coughed. "Classic piece of optimistic sociological growth, gentlemen. Boy wants his people to have time and freedom to make the quantum leap from being primitive hunter-gatherers to having a settled agrarian culture."
"That's what we want, old man?" asked Jak. "You understand all them words. I read 'em. Taught myself. I heard them words. Yeah, that's what we want."
Ryan sat quietly, listening and thinking. This raggedy kid, not yet twenty, had plans and ideals like nothing he'd heard before Ч not in all his time in Deathlands. If ever they had found a case, a reason to live, this could be it. He blinked his good eye as he realized that for a moment he'd forgotten about Krysty and Lori, so deeply had he been affected by this broad picture of purging the area of Baron Tourment and his evil.
"You help us with the women, and we'll help you? That the deal?"
"Sure. We got a base in an old vid-house a mile from here."
"Kid?" said Finnegan.
"Yeah?"
"You run this pocket army? You run it?"
"Me."
Finn sucked at his teeth. "How come a kid like you is boss blaster?"
"I killed more sec men than anyone else."
When baron Tourment unzipped his pants and un-peeled his cock, holding it in his right hand, standing near the head of the table where Lori was tied, the girl screamed.
Once.
Krysty winced as the massive man slapped Lori across the face, the blow as sharp as thunder. The girl's cheek reddened, and blood trickled from her nose. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, and she moaned, knocked stupid by the force of the blow.
"Keep it quiet, whore," he said, still showing no anger in his voice. "I'll have every tooth in your jaw knocked out with a hammer. Then I'll fuck you in the mouth so hard you'll feel it in your fucking guts. It'll choke you to death if I don't drown you when I come. So why not be good?"