the effort of staying perfectly still than from the rising desert temperatures. Once, his ragged shirt snagged on a barbed needle and the breath caught in his throat, his heart pounding wildly. Turning ever so slowly, it took Patches a good hour to cut himself loose. Too tired to turn about again, he simply continued on in the new direction. There was food in this part of the grove, too. There was always fruit here. It was why they stayed.
Then again, he added ruefully, maybe Suzette had caught a lizard today. Meat for dinner! She hadn’t caught one since the last acid rain, over a dozen moons ago, but there was always hope.
Soon, another plump fruit was added to his bag and Patches snorted in mild annoyance at the memory of finding it. The leather bag seemed perfect for the job of harvesting. However, the faded lettering on the side read “Mail,” or so his wife said. And since he was the male she reasoned it should be his job to gather the fruit, even though she was much smaller and could slip through the lethal needles with much greater ease.
They had argued over the matter, of course, but Suzette was the granddaughter of a whitecoat, and much smarter than him. He went into the grove to gather fruit while she went into the sand dunes with their crossbow to hunt rats and lizards. The rats weren’t edible; the meat would put a man on the last train west.
“You playing or working in there, old man?” Suzette called from the direction of their hut.
Their home was a predark wag of some kind, the tires long gone and the engine a rusted lump block. But the body was a big box of metal that even the spring sandstorms couldn’t get through, and with the door shut tight, the howlers couldn’t seem to find them. If they kept very quiet.
“You back already?” Patches demanded suspiciously, craning his neck to try to get a glimpse of his wife. But the cactus completely blocked his view. “Hunting that bad?”
“That good!” she retorted happily. “Besides, it takes a long time to skin a lizard.”
A lizard? Hot damn, meat for dinner!
“Then don’t waste time talking to me. Get back to your cooking!” Patches laughed, returning to his own task. With luck, there might even be enough of the lizard to spare some for Trio.
His mind on dinner, the old man started to gather another plump globe when his ratskin moccasins slipped on the loose rock in the sand. Jerking back to try to stay upright, Patches went motionless at the cool touch of a needle pressing against his wrist. Nuking hell! If the tip broke the skin…
Moving with glacial speed, the wrinklie moved away from the needle until he was clear. Then he stood perfectly still for a few minutes, waiting for his heart to stop pounding. Idiot! Fools always die, that was rule number one. Stay alert, stay alive.
Taking a small fruit from the bag, Patches allowed himself a tiny bite as a reward. The juicy pulp was as sweet as canned peaches, but with none of the metallic aftertaste. Licking his cracked lips clean, Patches tucked the fruit away and began his slow creep toward the edge of the grove and his waiting wife. There was no fast exit from among the plants, so he might as well gather as much food as possible along the way.
Patiently, slowly, the one-eyed wrinklie worked his way through the grove of death, gathering the tiny harvest of life.
WITH THE RED DUST WIND blowing around him, the outlander stood on top of the rocky hill watching the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride along the horizon. Delphi almost smiled at the literary reference. Then he did smile at the idea that he was probably the only person in ten thousand miles who did know the allusion.
Except for Tanner, Delphi added, the smile quickly fading. Professor Theophilus Algernon Tanner. “Doc” to his friends. Experimental test subject No. 14 to his former captors.
High above the lone man, the polluted clouds in the fiery sky roiled and rumbled with endless thunder, the sheets of heat lighting cutting across the orange clouds like an executioner’s ax, bright and sudden, then gone, leaving nothing behind.
Formerly a lush woodlands, this section of the wasteland was now only a barren desert of hard rock and windblown sand. However, in the secluded valley below this hill there was a small forest of succulent cacti. Two old people were living in a rusted courier service truck that hard-crashed at one time, and seemed to have learned how to safely harvest the edible fruit growing on the deadly cactus.
Reaching into a pocket, Delphi pulled out a cigarette and tapped the end on the back of his hand. A moment later the tip glowed red and he drew the thick sweet smoke deep into his artificial lungs.
It was a good location, Delphi admitted. The rad pits were few and far between, plus there was even a small creek of clean water trickling from a rent in the side of a nearby mesa. In comparison to the rest of the shattered world, this was almost an Eden, a lost paradise. Such a pity that somebody else wanted it, too.
Allowing the pungent smoke to trickle out of his nostrils, Delphi tilted his head at the sound of singing coming from the old woman skinning a fat Gila monster. Singing. Now that was a very rare sound these days. Or rather, happy singing was uncommon. The cannies often cut their victims in special ways to make the people scream in what they called death songs. But Delphi didn’t approve of cannibals, and killed them on sight, despite the standing orders from his superiors at TITAN to never hurt a gene-pure norm. Orders were orders, yes, but there were limits to his tolerance. And to his grudging obedience.
Briefly he wondered if the people in charge of TITAN even knew that Department Coldfire existed. Wheels within wheels. A secret wrapped in a mystery, a conundrum lost in the fog, and everything cloaked in total denial. As far as Delphi knew, only about a dozen people in the world had ever known what his department was trying to accomplish—nine of them were operatives, and one was a test subject who had gotten away. Doc Tanner. But if all went well…
A movement on the horizon caught his attention and Delphi turned to focus his silvery eyes on the four horsemen galloping along the desert at full speed. Their bodies were bent low over their animals as they whipped the beasts on to greater speed.
So they understood wind resistance. Good. They aren’t as stupid as they look, Delphi thought.
The four men rode without saddles or bridles, using only blankets and ropes. Although they were heavily armed, no sunlight glinted off the weapons in their hands, the ax blades and one blaster were wrapped in cloth to prevent any reflection that might reveal their presence too soon.
That was also good, Delphi admitted, removing the cigarette to exhale slowly. They were smart, but cautious. And the four moved well, working together as a unit. Excellent.
Hopefully these four coldhearts would be the end of his search. The previous thirteen groups Delphi had tested all proved to be useless. They were always too eager, too bloodthirsty or too stupid. Delphi needed operatives who could be trusted. Soldiers to be where he could not be, and to do what he was not allowed to do. Although perhaps the more colorful term of mercenary was more accurate for their job description, though “mercie” was the current term. From mercenary to mercy, what a misnomer! The irony was delicious.
Suddenly a blaster shot rang out and Delphi saw the old woman fall to the ground, blood pouring from her shoulder. All four horsemen began to whoop a war cry as the rest fired their crossbows. The flight of arrows missed the woman as she stumbled into the truck, the shafts stabbing into the loose sand all around her.
Crossing his arms, Delphi frowned. Was she seeking refuge?
Then the woman reappeared with her own crossbow and fired. The arrow just missed
