jack.”
“Need smash.”
“What are they saying?” Krysty asked.
Ryan shook his head. “I’m not sure, but it sounded like jack…”
“And smash.”
“What happened to bang?” J.B. asked.
“We don’t have any to give you,” said the taller of the two women. “Check our clothes, and you’ll see it’s the truth.”
Two of the muties riffled through a small pile of clothes on the riverbank, then threw them to the ground in disgust when it was obvious that it was just the women’s clothes and no more. “Nothing.”
“There has to be something there, check the pockets again.”
“There’s nothing, I tell you!”
“What about blasters!” the leader demanded.
The two men began to search the ground around the clothes, then check under a pile of neatly stacked rocks. In no time, each was lifting what looked like decent-quality remade blasters. “Whoo-eee! Look what I found!”
All four of the muties were laughing now.
“These we can trade for bang!”
“You can have them,” the older woman said. “Just leave us alone.”
The leader stepped forward. “We’ll be taking them all right, but before we go, we’ll be wanting something else from the two of you…” He leered as he approached the smaller woman. One of the others put a remade in his free hand and he pointed it at the younger woman as the other mutie neared.
She trembled in fear and wanted to run away, but there was no place for her to go. They were surrounded.
“Should we do something?” Krysty asked.
“Not our fight,” Ryan answered.
“Yeah, but I don’t like the odds.”
After a moment’s silence, Ryan said, “Me neither.” He carefully leveled his SIG-Sauer at the leader, who was now gesturing to the others to help him.
“Hold her down so I can give her a—”
The man never finished his sentence. His last words died in his throat as a thundering round from Doc’s huge LeMat blaster took out the man’s neck and a large chunk of his shoulder.
The mutie holding one of the blasters turned and squeezed off a single round before he was cut down by blasterfire from Mildred Wyeth’s Czech-built ZKR 551. The onetime Olympic target shooter caught the vile man with a perfectly aimed round that hit him between the eyes and slightly above the eyebrows.
With two of their fellows down, the survivors looked scared and confused. They turned to run, but were torn apart by blasterfire from the rest of the friends. Jak’s powerful Colt Python struck one of them in the shoulder, sending him tumbling heels over head into the river. And the last mutie fell to a round from Ryan’s SIG-Sauer that caught him in the back of the neck. Although it was impossible to know if it was a round from Ryan’s blaster or Krysty’s Smith & Wesson .38 that actually took the sorry man’s life, one thing was for certain—he was chilled and on the last train west before he hit the ground.
In the moments after the volley of blasterfire, all that could be heard were the muted sobs of the two women, who had gone from nearly being raped and killed, to being rescued by a band of outlanders, all in a matter of seconds.
“Anybody hurt?” Ryan called out.
At first no one answered, and then, “Yes.”
Ryan looked at each of the friends, searching for the wounded one.
“It’s Jak,” Mildred said. “Caught him in the shoulder.”
Ryan ran to where Mildred was kneeling down beside the white-headed teenager. Even though Ryan could see Jak had suffered a wound in the shoulder that was leaking blood and causing him pain, he deferred to the doctor for a better assessment. “How bad?”
“Bad enough,” Jak answered.
Ryan waited to hear from Mildred.
“Bullet went through the shoulder and tore up the flesh pretty good. Can’t be sure if there’s any damage to the bones unless I get a proper look. I can close the wound easy enough, but there’s always a chance the flesh could turn.”
Ryan nodded.
“Be fine,” Jak said, grimacing in pain as Mildred began giving the wound a field dressing. “Not worry.”
Ryan turned toward the two women and saw Doc stepping into the clearing. “It is okay,” he said. “You two are going to be all right.”
The older of the two women picked up her clothes and covered herself in modesty.
“Ah, excuse me, my good woman, I did not mean to offend,” Doc said, turning away slightly. “By all means take a moment to cover yourself if you wish.”
The older woman nodded, then hurriedly slipped into her clothes, a pair of loose-fitting pants and long-sleeved sweater with repair patches on the elbows and a picture of a mouse stitched into the fabric over the breast.
The younger woman got dressed more slowly, watching Ryan and the others warily as they slowly moved into the clearing. “Who are you people?” she asked.
“Just passersby,” Ryan said, joining Doc and the two women. “Who are you?”
The older woman put a hand on her chest, then gestured to the younger one. “My name is Eleander, and this is my daughter Moira.”
“Strange you’d be out here with just the clothes on your back and a couple of remade blasters.”
“We were on our way—” Moira began, but she stopped abruptly when her mother put a firm hand on her shoulder.
“We were out for a swim,” Eleander said, smiling. “It was such a beautiful day that we thought it would be nice to come out to the river and enjoy the good weather.”
“Alone?” Ryan questioned.
“With marauders around?” Krysty asked.
“Foolish of us, I know, but life is hard in the ville and sometimes it’s worth the risk just to get away and enjoy life…even if it’s just for a little while.”
Ryan suddenly became aware of some movement in the trees behind them.
The friends turned in time to see three sec men standing at the edge of the clearing. They had large-caliber longblasters and a few handblasters. All of their weapons were trained on the friends.
“Put down your blasters,” the man in the middle of the three said, obviously the leader of the small group of sec men. He stood under six feet tall and was bald on top with a ring of long black hair circling
