Residents fleeing the smoke bombs and confusion by the gallows scattered before them like quail.
Ricky moved back and held his longblaster behind his body in shadow. No point in getting spotted and ratted out to the sec men of the crazy man known as the Judge. It might seem strange to think of people disobeying the Judge’s orders to look to do the man a service. But among the many things Ricky had learned since joining Ryan Cawdor’s band and leaving his home island of Puerto Rico, high on the list was to be careful whom he trusted.
And strangers—especially strangers who might be looking to get back in the good graces of authority after disobeying in panic—weren’t high on the list of trustworthy souls.
Those thoughts flew fast through his mind by reflex—pure survival. At once his body flooded with a warm sensation of relief. His best friend, Jak, had been rescued from certain death!
A trio of sec men burst out of the smoke. One shouted, pointing after the pair of men rapidly riding away. Another threw a lever-action longblaster to his shoulder.
It was a stupe trick, Ricky thought, taking the shot, but Ryan had told him in no uncertain terms to avoid killing unless it was absolutely necessary.
Now he got a flash picture over the iron sights of his DeLisle carbine’s fat barrel. His finger squeezed the light trigger, smooth and fast. The longblaster gave a cough and the buttplate thumped against his shoulder.
The barrel jerked to the side. Ricky heard a clang of copper-shod .45-caliber bullets on a blued-steel barrel. The self-proclaimed marshal yipped a curse and dropped the blaster as if it was hot.
The others stopped in their tracks and stared at him. “What?”
“I think somebody shot my piece!”
Ricky had immediately thrown the bolt to chamber a fresh round when his first shot went downrange. The smooth Enfield action and Ricky’s long practice made it incredibly fast. He fired another bullet in front of the boots of the marshal closest to him, who had an impressive bandit mustache.
“Hey!” the third sec man shouted, pointing. “I saw something. He’s in that alley!”
The first man was staring at his longblaster as if still trying to figure out what was going on. Ricky’s shot might have bent the barrel. The other two immediately opened fire with handblasters.
Ricky ducked back into the narrow walkway as bullets sang by. A ricochet moaned by his ear.
Have I done enough? he wondered. Have I done my job? Ryan and Jak got away clean.
As Ricky hastily backpedaled, he slung the DeLisle and drew his Webley revolver.
A sec man appeared in the mouth of the passageway. Ricky shot him in the shoulder and he reeled back, yelling that he’d been hit.
Something hard hit the backs of Ricky’s lower legs. He tumbled backward over it. As he fell onto the foul-smelling, slimy dirt, the mustached sec man sidestepped with his semiauto blaster leveled.
The only thing that saved Ricky from instant death was the fact that the marshal wasn’t looking for a target on the ground. Ricky knew his reprieve wouldn’t last. He tried to get his Webley up and around in time, but there was no hope.
From just beyond where he had fallen Ricky heard two quick crashing sounds. The sec man jerked and fell. Ricky saw a dark, wet patch already appearing on the front of his tan shirt.
“What the nuke are you playing at, boy?” Ryan demanded. “You eager to find out what it’s like having dirt hit you in the eyes?”
Ricky managed to disentangle himself from the upturned wheelbarrow that had tripped him. Its wheel was missing. He scrambled to his feet.
“You told me not to chill anybody—”
“Unless it was necessary,” Ryan finished. “I’d say not getting a faceful of lead is necessary.”
“Is Jak with you?” Ricky asked as they headed toward the far end of the narrow alley.
“He rode right off into the weeds with his hands tied behind him,” Ryan said. “Forget about it. Right now we need to power out of here so we don’t wind up on the rad-blasted gallows ourselves.”
“Where the nuke did you go?” Ryan demanded.
Krysty looked at Jak. The albino had stepped into the circle of yellow glow cast by their campfire in a tiny clearing in the middle of a thorn thicket tangle in the Wild as casually as if he’d just gotten back from stepping away to piss.
“Got weapons back,” Jak said. He was wearing his camouflage jacket once again. “What cooking?”
“Squirrel,” Mildred said. “What’s it look like?”
Jak shied away from the fire and the several small, skinned forms browning on spits over it.
“Squirrels not mutie?” he asked.
“Not as far as I know,” Mildred said. “I know for sure that they didn’t have two assholes each or anything like that.”
The sturdy, black, predark physician was testier than usual this night. Everyone had been on edge wondering where Jak was and whether their elaborate and risky rescue plot had been all for nothing. It didn’t help that Ryan had spent the hour since they made camp at the agreed-upon rendezvous site pacing like a tethered wolf.
Neither did it help that the night and the dense thorn-studded growth around them was alive with furtive motion, strange cries and the occasional glowing eyes.
“Answer the question,” Ryan grated.
“Did,” Jak said, sticking out his jaw mulishly. “Got stuff.”
He meant his weapons, jacket and shoes, Krysty knew. He had cached his pack in a place where the others would be sure to see the special secret marker, before haring off on his own mission and getting himself caught by the Second Chance sec men. It was waiting for him beside the others’ right now.
Ryan narrowed his eye.
“Where and how?”
Jak just glared at him.
“Jak,” Krysty said. “Why not tell him?”
“Went to rich guy’s store. Broke in, cut throat, got my stuff back. Paid bastard.”
“Nuking hell!” Ryan said. “You left us waiting here while you pursued your personal vengeance. And if he was the one who was fondling your jacket by the gallows, he’s one of the ville’s big shits. If they weren’t gunning for us before, they sure as burning nuke death are now.”
“Easy, lover,” Krysty told him. “I think we made enough of an impression on the Judge and his sec men that we need to be moving on to new territory soon, regardless.”
Ryan shook his head. “Jak, what you’ve been doing for the past few weeks, ever since Heaven Falls,
