that got away.
Using the razor edge of the panga, Ryan cut into the still-warm flesh, slicing through the inside of the thigh, making sure he didn’t nick the musk gland near the base of the tail. Squadrons of black flies buzzed around his head. They landed on his bare hands and forearms, lapping up the red splatter. There was plenty of it to go around—no need to bite into him to get a meal.
Bloody-fingered, he tossed the separated haunch onto the pile he’d made in the shade of a rock slab. Under his sleeveless black T-shirt, beads of sweat dripped from the sides of his chest and along the middle of his spine. They trickled around his eyepatch and rolled down his cheek. To his left, Mildred and Krysty were dragging yet another 150-pound, limp coyote corpse over to J.B. and Jak for skinning. They were selecting animals for butchering that hadn’t been gutshot. Exploded bowel contents tainted the flesh even worse than butt-gland musk.
Ryan watched J.B. and Jak set to work on the fresh carcass. They had the skinning down to a science. After making incisions above the rear feet, they cut the pelt away from the lower legs. Then Jak held the back paws pinned while J.B. used brute strength to peel the animal’s entire skin forward on the torso, turning it inside out as he went, covering the mutie orange head with inverted hide. J.B. stopped peeling back the skin at the middle of the rib cage. There was no reason for them to skin the whole carcass as most of the meat was in the hindquarters. For the same reason, there was no point in gutting the coyotes, either.
Doc kept an eye on the crater’s rim through the Steyr’s scope, watching for signs of unwanted company, animal or human. The newcomer sat in a spot of shade beside him, fanning away the flies with his prosthetic hand.
“When we get on up to Meridianville,” Big Mike said in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “we’re gonna be treated like nukin’ barons. It’s the biggest settlement left on that stretch of the Snake. Busted dams on nukeday washed away old Boise, and Twin Falls took a full-on groundburst—there’s nothing left of it but a glow-in-the-dark skeleton. Haven’t been to Meridianville for a long time, but I know a lot of folks there, and they all owe me.”
When no one responded to the boast, the big man pressed on. “Me and the whoremaster go way back,” he said. “I used to be his gaudy’s number-one scout. Grew up in the business, you could say. I traveled the hellscape sniffing out fresh talent for his stable. You know, the daughters of dirt farmers who wanted something more out of life than working their fingers to the bone and turning old before their time. I’d stop by their plot for a cup of water or to ask directions and take the lay of the land, see if they had any female younguns running loose. I could tell by the look in their eyes which girls were ripe for what I was offering, when they wanted some fun and frolic while they still had all their teeth. As soon as their mamas and papas suspicioned I was up to no good they run me off, but by then I’d already talked the talent into meeting me later on in the woods.
“Sometimes I had the whole dirt-farm brood out there, naked as jaybirds, lined up on their backs in the grass, waiting their turn. I’d give ’em all a full, ten-round tryout, and if they had the knack and were eager to learn new tricks, I’d sneak ’em away from their farm after everyone else went to bed. Take ’em on over to Meridianville to get broke in good and proper by the gaudy master and his sec crew. Got top jack per tail as my bounty. Those were the days.”
Big Mike reached over and gave Doc a nudge with his prosthesis. “How about you, old-timer? You look like you seen the world and then some. Ever done gaudy scouting? I tell you it’s the best damn job in the hellscape.”
“So I have heard,” Doc said without enthusiasm. “Despite the obvious compensations, it does seem to require rather a lot of repetitive effort.”
Big Mike paid no attention to Doc’s reply. Ryan reckoned he’d asked the question just so he could catch his breath.
“Trouble was,” Big Mike went on, “I was so good at stealing away younguns that pretty soon I wore out my welcome. Sod monkeys would see me coming down the path and they’d go straight for their blasters. No warning shouts, no warning shots. They just opened fire. Weren’t trying to wound me, either. They aimed at my head.
“In the end I had to travel so far from the gaudy to find homesteads where they didn’t know me that it wasn’t worth the time and trouble of hauling the little sluts back. Got to feed and water them the whole way, you know, and worst of all, you got to listen to them talk. Nearly broke my heart to give up that job, but things always seem to change, and for the worse, don’t they?”
Ryan turned the coyote carcass to give himself a better attack angle on the surviving hip joint. He was irked by the bastard’s buoyant tone, like he thought the companions were going to swallow his line of crap, adopt him as one of their own and nursemaid him from here on.
Sure, in order to get along they had taken up the causes of other helpless victims in the past, and put their lives on the line in the process, but the people they’d helped weren’t accomplices to—and profiteers in—slavery and mass murder. The people they’d helped had done nothing to deserve the injuries they’d received, or the mortal danger they’d been put in. Ryan felt no moral responsibility for the care and safety of the likes of Mike the Drunkard, but he was thankful they hadn’t chilled him the last time they’d met. If they had, chances were they would have learned about the she-hes too late to do anything about it.
Ryan stopped listening to the braggart’s jabber and concentrated on splitting bone.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER the last, campfire-ready coyote haunch hit the meat pile. As water was now in too short a supply to use on hygiene, Ryan scrubbed his fingers and arms semiclean with handfuls of fine dirt, while J.B. and Jak tied the hindquarters in pairs, foot to foot. Each cleaned haunch weighed about ten pounds. Even though they hadn’t discussed it, there was never any doubt as to who would be carrying them. The companions were already toting forty-pound backpacks and weapons.
“Get up,” Ryan told Big Mike. When he did, the one-eyed man stepped closer, drew his SIG and aimed it at his forehead. The distance to target was less than two feet.
“Oh, Mama,” Big Mike moaned, looking down the barrel.
“Don’t move,” Ryan said. At his signal, J.B. and Jak started draping paired haunches over the man’s shoulders.
“What is this!” Big Mike exclaimed, staggering to keep his balance under the full eighty pounds of deadweight. “You can see I’m a goddamn cripple!”
“You sure as hell can’t shoot a blaster anymore, but your legs work just fine,” Ryan told him.
“You’re taking advantage ’cause I can’t fight back anymore,” Big Mike said. “How low-down, sorry-ass is that?”
“As I recall,” Doc said, “fighting back never was your strong suit.”
“More like, roll up in a ball and beg for mercy,” Krysty added.
“If there’s more trouble ahead,” Ryan said, “that extra weight will slow us down. Mebbe slow us down enough to get everybody chilled. You want to follow along, you want to drink a share of our water, you want to eat later on, you’ll carry the load.”
“This ain’t right,” the big man said, but nobody was listening and he didn’t try to shrug off the garlands of meat.
After the companions had shouldered their packs, Ryan took the lead, setting off for the crater’s south rim.
“Now, wait just a nukin’ minute!” Big Mike shouted
