demented throwbacks. Even barbs treated captives better than that, though not by much.
Just then, a large number of horses galloped over the horizon, the riders bent low in the saddles. Instantly, one of them shouted something, and the entire group changed direction, to head straight toward Dean.
Controlling his breathing so as not to appear frightened, he allowed the riders to come to him. He had five, mebbe six seconds to gauge who these folks were before the confrontation. In life and death, timing was everything.
The riders seemed to be norms, not muties, and there were only men, no women in sight. That wasn’t good or bad. The horses appeared to be in fine shape, not underfed or overly whipped, which meant the riders weren’t fools. However, their clothing was scraggly and heavily patched, with a wild mismatch of predark fabric, fur and what looked like tent canvas, as if the men had been scavenging through the ruins of some predark city, taking whatever they could find. Only a few of them wore boots. Most were wearing wraparounds, thick animal fur held in place with wide leather straps. It was the kind of clothing Dean would have expected to see barbs wearing.
Or clever folks pretending to be barbs, he thought, which might be the case, as every rider had a longblaster in a gun boot alongside his saddle, and was carrying another slung across his back. They were dressed like outcasts, but armed better than most sec men in a ville. The odd mixture made Dean suspicious of the group, and just for a second he wished that he had made a dash back to the river.
As the pack drew near, he raised his blaster and fired a round into the air both to catch their attention and let them know he had live brass. A lot of people carried empty blasters, and tried to avoid fights through sheer intimidation. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it made you a passenger on the last train west.
Reining in his chestnut stallion, a tall man stopped a dozen or so yards away, and the rest of the ragged group came to a halt close behind. Dean grunted at the display. There was no doubt who was in charge.
The leader was a thin man of mixed Asian descent, his skin faintly golden, but his face heavy with black stubble. He was wearing a black knit cap and buckskin shirt, and had numerous weapons—a Walther PPK .38 in a shoulder holster, an AK-47 slung across his back, and what looked like a Remington shotgun tucked into the boot near his saddle. There were a lot of AK-47 assault rifles in the group, and a few men with 40 mm gren launchers attached. All looked to be in fairly good condition.
“Morning,” the skinny man said, resting an arm on the pommel of his saddle. “What are you doing this far from Donner ville?”
Instantly, the gesture put Dean on the alert. It seemed casual, but effectively hid the newcomer’s gun hand from observation. These folks like tricks too damn much to be anything but coldhearts, he reasoned, and swiftly changed his tactics.
“Looking for you,” he lied, trying to sound like his father. “The name’s Cawdor, Dean Cawdor, and I want to join the gang.” That statement caused an expected ripple of smirks and snorts.
“Looking for us, way out here, on foot?” the leader asked skeptically, shifting slightly in the saddle.
Sheathing the knife and blaster, Dean shrugged. “Lost my woman, both horses and my best dog, trying to cross that rad-blasted river.” Then he patted the checkered grip of the Browning. “Still got my blaster, though. Held on to that like a cross-legged virgin in a gaudy house.”
Now the group of coldhearts guffawed, and Dean felt some of the tension ease. It was just like his father had always said—make the other fellow laugh and you’re halfway done making a deal.
“Mighty bad luck,” the leader drawled, removing his arm from the pommel.
“Sounds more like mutie shit to me,” snarled a fat man with a cloth tied around his head in lieu of a hat. He was wearing one ragged shirt over another, clearly too stupe, or lazy, to sew on a patch, and around his throat was a necklace of dried ears, some from norms, a few from muties.
“Wasn’t talking to you, tubby,” Dean said, not even glancing at the corpulent rider. “So, you them, or not?”
“Them?” the skinny man asked, feigning innocence.
“The coldhearts that have been hounding Donner,” Dean continued, struggling to recall the name of the ville they had just mentioned. “I’ve had enough of the baron, and wanna join.” Then he tilted his head as if challenging them to give the correct answer.
Studying the distant foothills and weedy fields as if expecting an ambush of ville sec men, the skinny man said nothing for a few moments. “Yeah, we’re them,” he said at last. “I’m Wu-Chen Camarillo, and this is my gang, the Stone Angels.”
“The Stone Angels,” Dean repeated without inflection
“Nuking A! And we rule this fragging valley from Glass Lake to the Iron Mountains!” a bucktoothed man added fiercely, a scarred hand resting on a throwing hatchet sheathed on his thigh.
An old friend named Jak had taught Dean about that particular weapon, and he now marked the short man as one of the most dangerous in the group. It took a long time to learn how to control the unwieldy weapon, which meant the coldheart had a lot of patience and determination. That was a powerful combination.
As the rest of the coldhearts muttered their agreement to the declaration, Dean nodded along, as if it were a well-known fact, even though he had never heard of the gang before. One blaster against fifty made for triple-bad odds. His only real weapon here was intelligence. He hoped that would be enough to survive.
“Yeah, so I heard,” he said. “Wasn’t interested in joining up with a bunch of gleebs.”
That caused more smiles from the riders. Clearly, they had nothing to fear from one youth, and if he did want to join, well, they always needed fresh boots in the saddles.
“What was your name again?” Camarillo asked, a touch of humor slightly warming the demand.
“Look at them clothes and hair!” The fat man chortled. “Mud Puppy, his name be Mud Puppy!”
“Shut up, Bert,” Camarillo snapped. The youth was barely old enough to grow fuzz on his face, yet he stood facing the Angels without the slightest sign of fear. If nothing else, the kid had iron, and that was always in short supply in this line of work. Too many gleebs thought a blaster made a person brave. But a blaster was just a tool, nothing more. Just a tool, like a hammer or a shovel. It was a cold heart that made you truly dangerous.
“Mud Puppy. Funny, that’s exactly what your mother called me,” Dean said in a smooth, even tone, “just before I parked my tool in her drawer and we fucked in the gaudy house that employed her.”
The crowd of coldhearts laughed uproariously at the joke, and even Camarillo smirked, but Bert looked as if he were going to explode.
Reaching into a pocket, Dean withdrew an empty brass shell. “Here. I forgot to pay for her services,” he said, flipping the valueless shell toward the red-faced man. “Keep the change.”
“Mutie-loving freak! Gonna chill you twice for that!” Bert roared, sliding out of the saddle while drawing a monstrous remade Colt .45 revolver.
As the man landed on the ground, Dean drew and fired the Browning in a single motion. Startled, Bert flinched as his handblaster went spinning away from his grip to land in the weeds. Immediately, the cicadas went silent,
