sec chief glanced at his friend. Gill gave a nod, and Stirling lit the powder.
There was a blinding flare and Gill gave a muffled scream, every muscle going rigid. He became lost in the searing glare, but as the harsh light died away, Stirling saw that the smoldering vine lay twitching on the ground. A neat line of holes went across the sec man’s arm, but the bleeding had already slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely.
“Bet you could use that drink now.” Stirling snorted, angrily stomping his boot to grind the charred vine into the ground. The smoking length crumbled apart with a crunchy noise, and finally ceased to move.
“Gill?” Stirling asked, raising his head.
But the sec man lay slumped over on the mound of earth.
Worried, Stirling checked the man’s pulse, but found it strong and steady. The sec man had just fallen unconscious from the pain. Gently rubbing the old wound on his shoulder, Stirling really couldn’t fault the man. He’d done the same thing himself once.
“Should we let him sleep?” Nathan asked, stepping closer to offer one of the new med kits. “We could build a fire, and there are plenty of blankets.” The kit was just a lumpy canvas bag with the letters M*A*S*H carefully stitched into the fabric. Mildred had showed the ville healers a lot of tricks for keeping people alive, shine to wash wounds, boiled white cloth for bandages, and such. These crude duplicates of her predark med kit were the result. With one of these, a sec man had a hundred times better chance of surviving a wound than ever before. Just another of the countless debts for which they could never completely repay the outlanders.
“Hell, no. We get moving,” Stirling declared, opening the canvas bag. “The smell of blood is in the wind, and soon this place is going to be overrun with animals and muties fighting over the scraps of the drinker.”
From high above there came a screamwing cry, and in the distance a stickie hooted.
“Mebbe even a second drinker,” Alton stated, checking the load in the scattergun. He closed the breech with a snap and set the lock. “We got enough bombs to stop another one, but not while we’re also fighting screamwings!”
A blaster shot sounded, then another, and Renée appeared, reloading her revolver.
“Okay, vines fell on two of the horses and I had to ace them,” the sec woman stated without emotion. “So we’ll have to double up, or drop supplies.”
“We drop nothing,” Stirling barked, pouring shine over the sec man’s arm. The raw alcohol washed the open wounds and became tinted with red. Gill gave no response. Satisfied, the sec chief put away the bottle of shine and started to wrap the forearm.
The cloth strips had been immersed in boiling water for as long as a man could hold his breath. Something about killing stuff called gems, or germs. Whatever. Mildred had taught them this. Tying off the bandage, Stirling packed the med supplies into the canvas bag. Everybody Mildred treated got better ten times faster than seemed possible, so mebbe she was right about germs. Chilling was his job, not putting folks back together afterward.
“Okay, we’re short on rides,” Stirling said, slinging the canvas bag over the pommel of his horse. The animal whinnied nervously at its master, and he tenderly scratched it behind the ears. “Divvy up the food, keep all of the ammo, and we’ll travel in pairs. Renée rides with me, Nathan with Gill, Alton gets all of the extra bombs and water.”
The hooting sounded again, closer this time, and down in the ravine something started savaging the tattered chunks of the dead mutie.
Without comment, the Two-Son ville sec men rushed to their assigned tasks and were soon galloping away from the ravine. Taking the lead, Stirling realized that he had lost all sense of direction fleeing from the drinker. Arbitrarily, he chose the largest object in sight to guide them through the night, and headed the group straight for the jagged peaks of the Mohawk Mountains.
There was a thick copse a few klicks away that they could bed down in for the night. The sec men should be safe enough there. Hopefully.
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