you didn’t have that blaster…” Bert muttered, rubbing his stinging hand.
“I would still have taken you,” Dean said, trying to sound bored. “Mr. Camarillo, you want this feeb alive, or not?”
“That’s your choice,” Camarillo replied, swinging around the AK-47 and working the arming bolt. “But if you want to ride with us, then you gotta chill him without blaster or blade.”
Weighing his options, Dean said nothing as the rest of the coldhearts pulled out blasters. He had upped the odds, and now the numbers were falling. Handle this wrong, and the next thing he saw would be an eternity of dirt. Warily, he gauged the adult as twice his size, and easily a hundred pounds heavier. Some of it was obviously fat, but there had to be a lot of muscle, too, as the bastard still moved with the speed of a jungle cat. Big and fast, he’d be a formidable opponent even to somebody with a blaster. Dean wondered if this was this some sort of a test to join the gang, just to see if he had any iron in his guts. Unfortunately, there was only one way to be sure.
“Fair enough,” he said, clicking on the safety and tossing aside the blaster, then the bowie knife.
The weapons were still in the air when Bert charged, his huge arms spread wide to prevent the youth from escaping.
For the moment, Dean did nothing.
“Don’t get too much blood on his boots!” a laughing coldheart added, cradling a lever-action Winchester. “They look just my size!”
“I want that knife,” the ugly coldheart added, sucking on his oversize teeth.
Roaring in victory, Bert closed on Dean, but at the very last second, the young Cawdor ducked out of the way and savagely drove the toe of his combat boot into the groin of his attacker. Gasping in pain, Bert staggered, then unexpectedly pulled a machete from behind his back.
Startled, Dean threw himself backward. Bert almost gutted him anyway, the blade slicing open his damp shirt and leaving a bloody gouge across his chest. Ignoring the minor pain, Dean tried to rush the man and grab his arm, but Bert fended him off, delivering two more slashes across the youth’s chest.
“Thought this…was supposed…to be a fair fight,” Dean panted, frantically dodging to the left, then the right.
“That wouldn’t tell me anything about how good you are, now, would it?” Camarillo replied, tracking the combatants with the fluted barrel of the deadly Kalasnikov.
Constantly shifting about, Bert was swinging the machete as if swatting flies, wild and unpredictable. Ducking out of the way again, Dean bent low, then grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it at the fat man, but deliberately missing. As Bert easily dodged the clumsy attempt to blind him, Dean dived into the cloud and came out with the bowie knife. Spinning, he thrust the point of the blade forward, and Bert backed off with blood on his dirty cheek.
“That be cheating!” the bucktoothed man cried, hefting the throwing hatchet.
“Cheating would have been going for the blaster,” Camarillo said, resting the AK-47 rapidfire on his shoulder. “Blade against blade is a fair fight.” Then he added, “If that hatchet grows wings, Hannigan, you’ll be the first one chilled.”
Scowling darkly, Hannigan gave no reply, but his hate-filled gaze never left the frantically moving youth.
Thrusting and lounging, Dean tried to slash the fat man in the belly, or the armpit. Steel slammed into steel with an audible clang as the big knife met the predark machete. The two combatants stood locked together for a long moment, then Bert spit into Dean’s face, and the youth brutally swung the knife downward, the razor-sharp blade slicing off several pudgy fingers. Shrieking in pain, Bert dropped the machete and backed away, trying to staunch the geyser of life with his other hand.
Flipping the bowie into the air, Dean caught the blood-streaked blade and threw it. Turning over once, the knife slammed into the fat man’s chest, going all the way into the guard. Staggering, Bert gasped and wheezed, crimson spurting from his ruined hand.
“End it,” a short coldheart commanded, working the lever action of his Winchester longblaster.
Saying nothing, Dean looked at Camarillo.
“Do as you’re told, boot,” the chief coldheart ordered.
Dean grunted at the term. Boot as in boot camp. Military slang for a new recruit. He was in. Retrieving the Browning, he inspected the blaster to make sure it was undamaged. Then, from fifty feet, he aimed and fired, putting a single round into the left temple of the floundering Bert. The fat man jerked from the impact of the 9 mm Parabellum round, then dropped onto the churned grass, trembled and went still forever.
Dean was shaken at the coldblooded chilling, but it was survival, plain and simple.
Holstering his blaster, he then retrieved the bowie knife and wisely cleaned it on the grass, instead of using the shirt of the corpse as he usually would have done. A wise man only insulted people he planned on chilling, and he needed the cooperation of these coldhearts for a little while to help him stay alive.
At least until I can get someplace where I can try to build a life, Dean added privately.
“Bert was a friend of mine,” Hannigan said through gritted teeth, his fist clenched on the shaft of the hatchet.
“Get better friends,” Dean growled, sheathing the bowie. “Anybody want his stuff, help yourself, blaster included. The clothes are too big, and I have a better knife.”
Greedily, a couple of the coldhearts glanced at their chief. Camarillo gave a nod, and they slid off their horses to start eagerly looting the warm corpse.
Going over to the riderless horse, Dean briefly inspected the mare and found her to be in decent shape, just desperately in need of a good curry.
“Easy, girl, easy,” he whispered, patting the muscular neck of the animal to try to calm her. Horses didn’t like the smell of blood, and he needed the goodwill of the animal even more than he did that of the coldhearts. Still recovering from his ordeal in the river, he was exhausted from the short fight, and way too close to falling over. But he had to appear strong in front of the others. Any weakness now would result in an endless series of challenges, and eventually he would tangle with somebody faster. Or get a knife in the back, which he considered to be far more likely.
Finished with their grisly task, the two coldhearts returned to their horses carrying various personal items from the dead Bert, including the horrid necklace of dried ears.
Dean noticed that a lot of the coldhearts wore similar decorations—ears, tongues, fingers.
“I owe ya one, boot,” a scraggly coldheart gushed, tucking away his new possessions. “The name’s Natters.”
“No prob,” Dean replied casually.
The other coldheart said nothing, then gave an open-mouthed grin showing that he lacked a tongue.
“He’s McGinty,” Natters said with a jerk of his thumb. “Lost his tongue in a bar fight. Nobody seems to know why or how.”
“And he ain’t talking,” Dean finished, climbing into the saddle. He tried not to flinch, feeling the residual warmth of the prior owner. Bert may have been a fat bastard,
