Chapter Seven

The mutated scorpion was two and a half feet long, its body amber and black. In the heat of the day, it moved incredibly fast: legs a blur, wicked front pincer claws raised and curved stinger, which was longer than Hun’s SOG blade, held high over its back, poised to strike.

Unlike its prenukecaust ancestors, this creature was an aggressive daytime hunter, and its preferred food wasn’t other, smaller insects, but mammal meat—size no object. That was thanks to an adapted venom, which was a thousand times more potent than that of its forbears, enabling it to kill in a matter of seconds literally anything that walked the hellscape that was Deathlands. It feared nothing, and it never retreated.

“Shit! Damn!” Hun cried, trying to line up the scuttling, scrambling thing with the bead sight of her scattergun.

“I got it!” Poet said, shouldering his CAR-15.

“No!” Ryan barked. The edge of command in his voice was so powerful that it made both of his companions hold their fire.

Ryan already had his panga drawn, and he held it by the tip of the blade, paused, then made a lightning-fast throw. It was hard enough for a man with two functioning eyes to hit a fast-moving target, but for a man with only one, it was a real feat. Ryan had spent a lot of time adjusting to his terrible injury, learning how to compensate for the loss of stereoscopic vision, and for the resulting changes in his depth perception. He developed an uncanny ability to anticipate in a millisecond what an opponent was going to do, where it wanted to be, how it intended to get there.

The massive blade gleamed as it turned over in the air, its track coinciding perfectly with the movement of the huge insect. With a crunch, the point skewered the creature’s back, the blade slid through to the hilt, pinning it to the ground.

“Yow!” Hun exclaimed as she lowered her 10-gauge.

“No need to waste a round.” was Ryan’s terse, after-the-fact explanation.

The big scorpion was still alive.

Legs scrabbling on the rocks, it humped up against the panga’s cross guard, trying to break free of the ground. Creamy yellow gore oozed out around the blade, and the curved ebony point of its stinger struck the panga’s pommel over and over. Click. Click. Click.

Ryan stepped up, and, without ceremony, stomped the scorpion’s palm-sized head flat with his boot heel. After a few more reflexive stings, it shuddered and died.

“Not a very big one,” he said as he reached down and jerked his panga free. He wiped the blade and handle clean with handfuls of dirt before brushing it off on his pants and sliding it back into its leg sheath.

“Hey, have a look at this,” Hun said, waving Ryan and Poet over to where she stood. She pointed down at a dark hole in a pile of rocks.

The hole was filled with small scorpions, roughly six inches long. There were about fifty of them, squirming over one another, waving their claws and stingers.

“The big one was hunting food for them,” Poet said.

“No food coming now,” Hun stated. She lowered the muzzle of the 10-gauge to the edge of the hole and, smiling, touched off the left barrel.

The shotgun boomed and belched flame. Double-aught buckshot and high-brass concussion shredded the packed mass of baby scorpions into a fine mist. White gun smoke poured out of the much widened opening in the earth.

“Lots more where they came from,” Poet said, apparently struck by the futility of the act.

“So what?” Hun snapped back as she ejected the spent hull and reloaded.

“So, nothing,” he replied.

After a pause, she said, “Hey, Poet, why don’t you have a look-see over that far rise?”

“A look-see at what exactly?”

“At whatever the fuck is over there. Just leave me and Ryan alone for a few minutes.”

The gray-haired man glanced at her bright eyes and burning cheeks, then at Ryan, whose face was as cold and impassive as steel. He shrugged. “Yeah, why don’t I scout on ahead, then,” he said, laying his CAR-15 along the top of his shoulder and heading away from them across the boulder field.

Ryan knew if there’d been any real strategic point to the long recce, Poet would never have agreed to break up the threesome. Ryan and Poet had been sent out in the hottest part of the day to hoof it five miles over some rad-blasted ground because the Trader was tired of hearing them battle over the defensive strategy. It was his way of saying to his two war advisers, “Go out there and don’t come back until you’ve worked it out.” Ryan took satisfaction in the knowledge that as far as he could see, Poet had no more interest in “working it out” than he did.

Hun, too, was making the others in the crew nervous. She was still way amped from the gaudy set-to—talking wild, acting wilder. Homicidus interruptus.

Of course, Ryan knew what was coming as soon as Poet nipped out of sight. But it pleased him to act like he didn’t have a clue. He stood on the edge of the hill, surveying the far shore of Virtue Lake with his telescope, doing his job.

To his back, Hun said, “Sure is helhsh warm out here.”

Ryan didn’t turn. He didn’t have to. Out of the corner of his one good eye, he could see her carefully set her shotgun against a rock and kick out of her well-worn boots. Then she unfastened the waistband of her BDUs and started rolling them down over her hips. Underwear was one of those predark “luxuries” Trader was always going on about.

“You got something I want, Ryan.”

“Lucky me,” he said through a half smile, still not turning. He pretended to concentrate on the view downrange, Hun moved up against him from behind. She had taken off her sleeveless gray T-shirt, as well. He could feel her bare breasts, which were small and very firm, push into the middle of his back, and over his shoulder he caught the cinnamon smell of her hot skin. She reached around his waist for his belt and unbuckled it.

“You’re damned right you’re lucky,” she told him. “I could always get it from Poet.”

“Why don’t you, then?” he said flatly.

Hun exploded with laughter. “It was his turn last night. I think it nearly chilled him. Besides, you know I like a change of pace.”

With a practiced jerk, she dropped his fatigue pants down around his boot tops.

Foreplay with Hun was virtually nonexistent; she liked nothing better than to get right down to it. Though they’d had an off-and-on thing going for many months, she and Ryan had never kissed, and they had never touched each other except in a purely sexual way. There was no real tenderness between them, only intense desire.

Fury.

And fulfillment.

Ryan laid her on her back on a big flat rock and plunged into her, without further preamble. The sun blazed against his back, and her interior was just as meltingly hot; sweat poured down his spine as he thrust, parried, thrust.

Beneath him, Hun made none of the typical woman sounds, none of the shrill whimpers, the soft moans. She gasped hoarsely for breath, grunting from the effort as she rose to meet him. And when she opened her eyes inches from his face, they were crazy. Not seeing him. Or anything.

Once Hun got the heat all the way up, the way she had it up now, she was hard to cool down.

Given his young years, Ryan had already been with more than his share of women, some prettier than others. Hun wasn’t all that much to look at, but there was something about her. Something magical, electric. A buzzing excitement that she could pass on with a look, a touch. When it came to sex, Hunaker had the power to raise the dead.

She raised Ryan three times in short order, using her skin, her tongue, her teeth, her fingertips. Then it was his turn on his back on the blisteringly hot rock while she rode him, hard, their bodies lathered and slippery.

With drops of her falling sweat spattering his face and chest, Ryan stared up into the endless blue sky. For an instant, he caught a glimpse of the edge of infinity; in that same instant, he glimpsed his own death. Then, arching violently up from the stone, he drove into her.

POET KNELT OUT of sight on the far side of the boulder field, watching the two of them go at it. Though the distance was better than forty yards, he could still clearly hear their panting and the wet slap of their colliding flesh.

He had no proprietary feelings when it came to Hunaker. Only a fool could. After all, Hun’s appetite for both men and women, singly and in various combinations, was legendary among Trader’s crew. Nor did he covet Ryan’s youth or his awesome staying power. It was like he’d happened on a pair of lions mating in some clearing in the jungle bush. He had to stop and stare.

He was called Poet because of the way he saw things, not because he could write verse, or even write his own name, which of course he couldn’t.

Because he was who he was, he didn’t view Ryan’s taking over his war captaincy as a defeat. He saw it as inevitable. Like death. He harbored no ill will toward the man. Even so, he was determined to fight to keep his position as long as he could; he had earned it through hard work and his own spilled blood. For him, it was a matter of personal honor.

Over the years, Poet had faced many men with murder in their eyes. There was a different kind of fire burning in Ryan, a fire of pure hate, rather than one of ambition or lust for power. And it seemed to flare up most violently whenever Trader took Poet’s advice over his, or whenever Trader pulled Poet aside for a private confab. It wasn’t simple jealousy, though Poet had thought as much in the beginning. Jealousy would have been something understandable. Even natural. Expected. This seemed more like outrage at some ultimate unfairness, at some awful betrayal. At times the anger appeared as much directed at Trader as at him. As if the sight of the two of them together forced Ryan to replay some horrible events from his past.

No one had ever asked Ryan about it. Certainly not Poet. In the company of road warriors such questions were best left alone.

In his entire life, Poet had come across only a few others so afflicted, so conflicted, so full of rage. Each one had lost everything of value in his life. Possessions gone. Families horribly chilled. All they had left was the desire for self-destruction. To push, and push, and push the limits, until death finally found and released them from their torment. Unlike the others, whom he’d watched flare briefly and then burn out, Ryan’s bottomless, barely controlled anger was coupled with an array of incredible physical skills—speed, strength, agility. Poet had realized many months ago that Ryan was the most dangerous man he had ever met.

Given that fact, and Ryan’s feelings toward him, Poet had little doubt that someday the final question between them would be decided with knives or blasters. He knew that Deathlands offered much worse ways for an old warrior to check out. A clean chill from a skilled hand in combat was a merciful and comforting thought.

Poet frowned. Watching other people rut, no matter how enthusiastically, had a limited fascination for him. His mind was wandering.

He pulled back silently, leaving Ryan and Hun to it.

He followed a gully to the saddle of the next overlook, then used the back of his hand to shield the sun from his eyes as he scanned the road. The breeze had picked up. Squadrons of dust devils danced toward Virtue Lake.

Poet knew the long-range recce wasn’t necessary under the circumstances. The convoy’s present position dominated the terrain, and it had overwhelming firepower at its command. The recon was more of Trader’s way of getting Ryan, Hun and him out of the way, while the crews moved the vehicles and prepared for the exchange of goods.

The trade was supposed to take place before sundown. Raising his binoculars from their neck strap, he could see Zeal’s transport wags lined up along one flank of the refinery. Six wags were being loaded with metal drums. They would haul the gas up the road to the meet site. After the swap, Trader planned to hunker down overnight on triple red, then pull his wags out at first light.

The rumble of a powerful engine drew Poet’s attention to the barricade. He refocused his binoculars. A single wag drove past the barrier and started up the road. From the high ground clearance and huge knobby tires, he figured it for an off-roader. He could see four people inside, but at the distance he couldn’t tell if they were men or women. The driver shifted gears and started to accelerate around the lake shore. Poet watched the wag as it followed the snaking road, then it disappeared around a deep curve.

He waited, but it didn’t reappear around the bend.

Poet lowered the binoculars and listened. He could still hear the engine howling, but it was growing fainter.

It had to have cut off cross-country, he thought. He didn’t really consider it a potential threat. It wasn’t anywhere near Trader’s encampment.

Maybe ten minutes later, something caught his eye as he looked over toward the convoy. On the back slope of the hill, beyond the circled wags, a flock of birds suddenly took flight. Flushed from cover, they wheeled away, screaming, white bellies and underwings flashing in the sun.

Poet grunted like he’d been booted hard in the guts. He saw the panic of the birds and he instantly knew where the people in the off-road wag had disappeared to. Spitting a torrent of curses, he turned and ran to fetch Ryan and Hun.