Chapter Fourteen

It soon became clear to Ryan why Guy-ito wanted to take his payment early and slip quietly away. Finding the wags was the easy part of the job. From the cover of the shantytown, they had had a safe observation post. Not so with the jails. To reach them, they had to travel along the ville’s main streets, keeping to the shadows. As they got closer to the residential area where the bosses all lived, the number of other pedestrians dwindled, even as the number of slowly patrolling sec wags increased.

Guy-ito started to lead them across the main avenue to the other side of the street, but suddenly changed his mind, turning and pushing Ryan back into the darkness. “Down!” the boy whispered urgently. The headlights of a crawling sec wag appeared around the bend ahead. As it advanced, the driver turned on the rooftop spotlight and moved it slowly over the opposite side of the street. It stopped moving when it illuminated a man leaning up against a no longer functional lamppost, in the act of relieving himself. The light pinned the drunk like a startled deer, and like a deer he froze, swaying to keep his balance.

The sec wag roared up to him, screeched to a stop and its doors flew open. Three sec men jumped out with truncheons in hand. They didn’t ask any questions; they just started pounding on the man. They beat him to the pavement, then beat him senseless. And when he was totally rag limp, one of the sec men stepped back and popped open the wag’s trunk. The other two pitched him in and slammed the lid shut. Then the wag zoomed away.

“Seen the last of that one,” Guy-ito said with certainty. “He’s rat food.”

“Pretty harsh sentence for pissing in public,” was Hun’s comment.

“It’s not for that,” the boy said. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he was too shit-faced to run when the sec men caught him with the spotlight. We’re getting near where the bosses live. They don’t like to see his kind wandering around at night. Even when it’s just one at a time, it makes them real nervous in their beds.”

When the boy moved on, Ryan and the others followed. There was no clear demarcation line between the commercial and residential zones of Virtue Lake. An area of warehouses, some of which had collapsed in on themselves, was intermixed with small groups of predark dwellings. As the street climbed the hill, the dwellings got more and more elaborate

Guy-ito didn’t take them in the uphill direction, though. He headed through the warehouse district, toward the lake shore. The boy hopped over a low concrete-block wall that formed the streetside border of a cluster of six small bungalows: three facing three, separated by a badly cracked and heaved-up concrete walkway. He crept along the inside of the wall with Ryan on his heels. When he reached the break in the wall where, in happier times, a wrought-iron gate had once stood, and where now only the spalling hinges remained, he stopped.

“The jails are just over there,” he told Ryan, hooking a thumb toward the opposite side of the street.

Ryan rose up and had a look. The only light was from a gas lantern hanging from the roof of a little shack. Under the lamp, four men sat on plastic buckets and ate their suppers, which smelled like MREs to Ryan. One of the men was passing around a glass jug. Next to them was a stretch of open land, steeped in darkness.

“Don’t see any cells,” Ryan hissed at the boy.

“They’re set in the ground,” Guy-ito replied, popping up to point them out to him.

“Yeah, I got them,” Ryan said. He dropped back behind the wall and unslung his longblaster. “Going to go over and see what’s what,” he told Poet as he carefully laid down the Remington.

“Too risky, Ryan,” Poet said. “Don’t do it.”

“We have to know if our crew is in there, don’t we? Can’t tell that from here.”

With that, the one-eyed man was up and running, his .357 Magnum Ruger in his fist. He passed through the break in the wall and angled across the street, right at the jailers. All had their backs turned to him. They were laughing, slapping their thighs, stuffing their faces, pouring white lightning down their throats. They didn’t hear the sound of his footfalls.

He made it standing up to the first row of cells, then dropped into a low crouch. He worked quickly, moving between the pits. A bunch of them were empty. Those that held prisoners, didn’t hold any of Trader’s crew. Ryan had just completed his search when he heard the rumble of a sec wag’s engine. It was growing louder in a hurry, coming down the street in his direction. There was no place on that side for him to hide. As he had no choice, he abandoned the jail and beat feet back over the road.

He was nearly all the way across when he was hit by the brilliant glare of headlights from his right. Pressing on, he vaulted the low wall and dropped down behind it, beside his companions.

Almost at once, the white glare of a spotlight swept over their position.

“They saw you!” Poet said. “We’ve got to pull back before they get any closer.”

Ryan growled, snatching up his longblaster as he waved for the others to retreat down the concrete walk between the little houses.

Retreat they did.

Each of the bungalows had a small concrete porch, accessed by a short flight of concrete steps. Poet grabbed Guy-ito by the collar and pulled him into the shadows behind the stairs. As it was the only cover, Ryan and Hun jumped in after them. No sooner had they ducked down than a spotlight from the street pinned the porch.

“You, in there!” a sec man shouted through a megaphone. “Come on out! Don’t make us come in and get you!”

Above them, the door to the bungalow opened inward, then the screen door, what little was left of it, swung out. The head that appeared in the gap had long, wavy brown hair. Beneath it was a mountainous body wrapped in a vast pink chenille bathrobe.

“What’s going on out there?” cried a familiar musical voice.

“Seen some prowlers around,” the sec man barked back.

Big Dumpling stepped out on the little porch. She looked down at Ryan, Hun, Poet and Guy-ito, crouched together in the shadows of her stairs. She didn’t hesitate a beat. She turned back to the sec wag and said, “Well, there’s nobody here now. You boys must’ve scared them good. They’ve already run off. Thanks for your help.” Then she waved a cheery goodbye to them.

The wag didn’t move on until Big Dumpling had reentered her house and shut the front door. As soon as the vehicle was gone, the door opened again and the gaudy songstress whispered out at them, “Come on! Get inside! Quick before someone sees you.”

With Guy-ito hanging back and bringing up the rear, the four of them scrambled up the steps and into the tiny dwelling. The low-ceilinged living room was lit by a series of candelabra, each filled with scented candles; it reeked of sandalwood and patchouli. The room was barely big enough to contain a threadbare sofa and duct-tape-patched armchair. The sofa had a big sag in the middle, and the armchair’s arms were splayed out wide; The doorways leading to bedroom and kitchen no longer had doors, but they still had hinges and pins. Doors opening and closing would have restricted the interior space even more.

“Thanks for hiding us,” Hun told the large woman.

“Wouldn’t have done it for anyone else,” Big Dumpling said, “but you saved me from some serious hurt earlier, and I figured I owed you a return of the favor.”

Then to Ryan she said, “What’re you doing hanging around here after dark, anyway? Don’t you know any better?”

“Zeal kidnapped the rest of our crew and took our convoy’s wags,” Poet explained. “We thought we could spring them from jail tonight. But they aren’t there.”

“Then those were your friends I saw getting dragged out of the cells about an hour ago,” the singer said. “Zeal himself took them away in a bunch of transports, and that’s never a good sign. Hope this don’t sound too harsh, but if they aren’t back by now, they may never be back.”

“We can’t go unless we know for certain,” Poet said.

“I understand that.”

“Mind if we wait here awhile until we’re sure?” the war captain asked. “We can keep a safe watch on the jail from that window.”

“No, of course not. Stay as long as you want. I’d say make yourselves comfortable, but that’s near impossible in this doll house.”

“Who’s she?” Hun said, nodding at a torn, fly-specked color poster tacked to the wall. It showed a generously built woman dressed in a black fringe leather jacket, half-unzipped to show off her considerable cleavage, skintight black pants and black spike heels. She had long, flaming red hair, dead white makeup, big painted lips and held a microphone in one hand, into which she was singing. The position of her legs gave the impression that she was dancing up a storm while she sang. On the stage behind her were grinning male musicians in broad-brimmed hats and string ties.

“I don’t know who she is,” Big Dumpling said. “Her name was ripped off at the bottom of the thing when I got it. But she must’ve been a great big singing star before the nukecaust. I think there’s a resemblance between me and her.” Big Dumpling opened the lapels of her bathrobe a bit and struck a pose. “Do you see it?”

“Yeah, I think I do,” Hun said. “You could have been sisters.”

“Say, if you don’t mind my asking,” Ryan said, “how’d you end up in a place like this?”

“A sad story,” she replied. “At one time, I had my own traveling show. I sang and danced, and I had a five-piece orchestra backing me up. Even had some comedy acts in the show—a bat-eared boy, and a pinhead who ate live chickens. We worked the southern baronies for years until the show fell on hard times. I ended up signing on with Gert Wolfram as a featured entertainer in his Deathlands Carnival and Freak Show. Rode with him for a couple of months before he made the mistake of pulling in here. Zeal held old Wolfram and his whole carny hostage, wouldn’t let it leave without the payment of ransom. In return for safe passage out of town, Wolfram handed his best acts over to the baron, so he could use them in his gaudies. Of course, one of them was me.” She sighed heavily. “Now, I’m just a bird in a poorly gilded cage.”

Big Dumpling’s eyes suddenly widened. For the first time, she seemed to notice the boy, who was taking pains to keep his back to the far wall and his face hidden behind Poet’s back.

“You keep that nasty little beast away from me,” she said, pointing an accusing finger at him. “He’s always sneaking around the gaudies. Won’t leave the working girls alone. Dirty pawing hands. Always trying to insinuate them where they don’t belong, if you know what I mean. Like the brat actually knew what he was doing.”

Guy-ito took this as a challenge. He stuck out his chin and said, “Mebbe you wanna try me, Dumpling?”

Hun cuffed him hard behind the ear. “Watch your mouth, you little shitball. Didn’t your folks ever teach you to be polite?”

“Got no folks no more,” the boy snapped back. “Both of them got themselves chilled last year. Pop got his in the refinery. Something fell on him, they said. Never saw his body. Mama got hers in the gaudy. One of the bosses high on jolt cut her up good. I saw her after. My mama died plenty hard.”

Guy-ito’s eyes darted to the sheathed panga.

“What’re you thinking, boy?” Ryan demanded.

Guy-ito grinned fiercely back at him, showing the broken edges of his front teeth.

Ryan took that look for an answer, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. “You’re thinking the wrong thing, then,” he said. “You don’t have the size for something like that yet.”

“So now you’re not gonna pay me?” the boy cried. “On account of what? You don’t know what’s in my head. Shouldn’t matter none to you, anyhow. I scouted for you, didn’t I? I brought you here safe, just like I said I would. Not my fault that your friends got took.”

“He’s right,” Hun said. “Not his fault.”

“I’ll give you the blade, because that’s what I promised,” Ryan told him. “But you take good care where you stick it, understand?” Guy-ito nodded.

Ryan unsheathed the panga and passed it over to the boy, handle first.

Guy-ito took it in both hands, made a slashing cut through the air, then turned and ran out the door. The screen banged shut after him.

“You shouldn’t have given it to him,” Poet said, shaking his head. “He ain’t gonna live out the night.”

“This is a rad-blasted rough ville,” Big Dumpling agreed.

“Why do you stay here, then?” Ryan asked her.

“Because it’s way better than what I had with Wolfram,” she confessed. “I didn’t just get to sing and dance. He used to make me do things with some of his other attractions, and he’d make folks pay to watch us through peepholes in the side wall of the tent. He had a couple of swampies that would take turns

” Big Dumpling paused, eyes shut tight, shuddering at the memory. When she opened her eyes again, she said, “It was no life for an artiste.”

The room fell to silence.

It was all starting to make a little more sense to Ryan. Strange as it seemed, there was safety of a sort inside the barricade of Virtue Lake. You sure didn’t have to worry about rad-mutated beasts dragging you out of a sound sleep and feasting on your heart and liver. Maybe the workers hadn’t all figured out that they were never going to leave here alive. Maybe they didn’t care. Maybe they were just looking for a moment of calm in the eye of the chem storm. At least life was undersomebody’s control in Virtue Lake, even if it was a madman like Lundquist Zeal. And if there was endless brutal work, there was a steady supply of booze and sluts, unlike farming or trapping or mining in Deathlands, in which there was no reward for one’s daily toil except the sight of another sunrise, and nothing to look forward to but more of the same until you dropped stone dead. Which you were going to do sooner or later anyway.

The sound of approaching wag engines derailed Ryan’s train of thought. He followed Poet and Hun to the window. As they watched, a line of transport wags pulled in beside the jail and stopped. A hot pink Lincoln brought up the rear of the file.

“Looks like your friends made it back, after all,” Big Dumpling said as she peered over Hun’s shoulder.

Sec men opened the rear doors of one of the wags, and men and women in chains were forced out at blasterpoint. None of them had boots. Ryan saw J.B. and Sam among the first wag load. The jailers held open the cell doors while the sec men kicked the prisoners into the pits. One by one, the transports were emptied. When the last crewman was dragged out, Poet said, “Trader’s not there.”

“He could be in that long pink wag,” Ryan said. “Can’t see inside it because of the armor plate over the windows.”

“That’s Zeal’s personal transportation,” Big Dumpling stated. “It’s blasterproof.”

“If Trader’s inside,” Ryan said, “you can bet he’s working some kind of angle on Zeal.”

“Trader could also be dead,” Poet countered.

“Whether he is or isn’t changes nothing. We’ve still got to get the crew out of those cells and free the wags before we can stick it to Zeal. I say we do it in just that order. Break the crew out of jail, round up some weapons, then take the convoy back.”

“Won’t work,” Poet said flatly.

That news didn’t sit at all well with Ryan, whose blood was up. “Why not?”

“The jailers are done with their supper, and now they’ve got their duties to attend to, lots of prisoners to abuse. We’re not going to get close to the cells without their seeing us and starting a firefight. A firefight will bring all of the baron’s sec men down on us. Probably before we can free everybody. Certainly before we can gather up enough blasters to fight back.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Ryan asked. For once, he was willing to hear the older man out.

“We’ve got to face facts. As things stand, we can’t rescue the crew. And without the crew, we can’t free the wags. So, we’ve got to forget about both of them for the time being and take another tack. What we need is a bargaining chip. One so big that Zeal will have to surrender to us or lose everything he’s got.”

A grim smile lit up Ryan’s face. He knew what the intended target was at once. “It can’t be a bluff, though,” he said. “We’ve got to be prepared to follow through, all the way.”

“I agree,” Poet replied. “If he calls us on it, we’ll have to blow up the refinery.”

A coarse laugh burst from Hun’s throat. “Serve the twisted son of a bitch right!”

“Oh, my!” Big Dumpling exclaimed as she hurriedly stepped away from them. “You folks are really scaring me now. I don’t think I want to hear any more of this. No, I’m sure I don’t want to hear any more of this. I’m going in the bedroom for a bit of a lie-down. Just close the door after you when you leave.”

“Thanks for your hospitality,” Ryan said to her pink-chenilled back.

The hefty songstress didn’t turn, didn’t speak; as she disappeared through the doorway, she just waved bye-bye over her shoulder.