Chapter Seven

 

 

There was no hot water, and the cold flowed from the taps with a grudging trickle, carrying with it the remains of myriad tiny insects.

 

"Looks like the boys aren't that hot on washing in here," Mildred commented.

 

"I was close to Mervyn and he was smelling kind of high," Krysty agreed. "Mebbe it was the heating system that went west and caused the rad leak."

 

Ryan looked around. "I reckon the best we can do is all take a rest as soon as possible. Then rise early and get out of the main gates. Find out where in Deathlands we are. Don't want to linger with the rad count high as it is."

 

"Taken its toll on the brothers," Mildred said, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that Titus and Mervyn hadn't come back. "They got all the signs of being inbred from the original folks that found their way into the redoubt. Way they look, I wouldn't want to lay too much jack on their being around in another three months."

 

"Triple creepy." Jak had let one of the taps run until the water flowed clear. He dropped his head to drink, his mane of white hair tumbling over his narrow, bone-pale face like spray from a winter waterfall.

 

Doc had been walking around that section of the redoubt, looking at the blank walls, testing the limits by finding the locked and coded sec doors that closed off other parts of the place. Now he had rejoined the others.

 

"Creepy is a better than adequate word to describe the siblings, my young fellow," he pronounced. "They are as strange a couple as I've seen in many a day's march, are they not? Gog and Magog of Deathlands. Old Brother Right and old Brother Wrong. Both Ossa and Pelion. Scylla and Charybdis. Are they not the topless towers of"

 

Ryan patted the old man on the shoulder, getting a blank stare from the watery blue eyes. "Running off at the mouth again, Doc," he warned.

 

"Really? My dear fellow, then it would appear that apologies are in order."

 

"Never apologize," Mildred said, putting on a gruff voice. "It's a sign of weakness, pilgrim."

 

Dean came out of one of the cubicles, grinning broadly. "Shitter has a jet of water that gushes up and cleans your ass for you," he said. "So strong it sort of feels like it's going to push your ass clean out the top of your head."

 

Doc tutted. "The sooner that stripling gets a decent education, the better for him and for all of us."

 

"You're right, Doc." Ryan glanced at his wrist chron. "Enough, friends. Let's get some quality sleep."

 

But he and Krysty had things to do before they slept, finding the stillness in the farthest of the dormitories to be lovely, dark and deep.

 

 

 

RYAN RAN THE TOP of his tongue around his lover's nipple, making it stand up hard and hot.

 

Krysty sighed sleepily. "I hate to be a party pooper, but I'm feeling real tired. I think twice is going to be enough for tonight."

 

Ryan laid his head on her magnificent breasts. "Guess you're right. Out in a few hours to findwho knows? Just that it makes a good change to have a reasonable bed and reasonable security for a night."

 

"I know." She kissed the top of his head and stroked his cheek. "You could do with a shave."

 

"There were razors in the bathroom, still sealed in that shrink-wrap stuff."

 

"Cold water, lover," Krysty said, shuddering. "Mebbe wait until we get somewhere that's got hot water."

 

"No." He stretched. "If there's hot water, there won't be decent blades. Those predark whitecoats sure knew about putting an edge on fine steel."

 

Krysty ruffled his hair. "All right. Certainly make you a little less ugly."

 

"That wasn't what you said a few minutes ago." He grinned, his teeth white in the glow of the all-night sec lights.

 

"Then was then and now is now, lover." Suddenly she threw her arms around him, holding tight. "Be careful, Ryan."

 

"Always am. But why now? Why especially now? You got a feeling about the stupe brothers?"

 

Krysty half smiled. "I think of them as the smelly brothers. But stupe'll do. Yeah, there's a bad feeling, like it's set on the back burner, but that doesn't mean there might not be trouble from them."

 

Ryan swung his legs out of bed. Feeling reasonably secure, he'd stripped off his clothes. He eased on his shirt and his underpants. "Well, I'll look out for the boys. I'm going to have a piss and a shave. Back soon."

 

 

 

A NARROW PASSAGE RAN alongside the dormitories, so Ryan could get to the bathroom without having to disturb everyone else.

 

At the last moment, his combat sense jarred a little by Krysty's feeling, Ryan had picked up the eighteen-inch panga, carrying it in its sheath as he walked through the night-silent redoubt.

 

The only sound as he walked past the open doors to the other large rooms was Doc snoring, like a buzz saw running at full throttle in the heart of a summer forest. The old man slept in a dormitory along with Jak and Dean. Mildred and J.B. were together in the third of the row of rooms.

 

Which left the last one, closest to the bathroom and the main entrance, to Titus and Mervyn.

 

Dean had gone sneaking around before retiring and come back to report that the brothers' dormitory was like an animal's den, filled with dried branches and skins of beaver, wolf and bear. The remnants of innumerable cooking fires were in the center of the room, which contained only two beds.

 

"Looks like all their kin lived there once," the boy had said. "Stinks so much their bodies might still be rotting away in there someplace."

 

The smell came wafting out as Ryan padded by.

 

But nothing moved.

 

 

 

SHAVING WITH COLD WATER was almost as uncomfortable as Krysty had warned. The steel blade seemed to catch and scratch, and the plastic one-use container of foam gave only a feeble dribble of watery white slime.

 

The air was cool, smelling strongly of the cooking fire. Ryan had glanced into the entrance hall of the redoubt, seeing the pile of glowing embers, which stood six or eight feet high, giving silent testimony that Titus and Mervyn tended not to remove ashes from old fires.

 

Beyond the smoking pile was an open space, littered with bits of unidentifiable scrap metal, animal bones and a ragged heap of damp material. And then there were the huge floor-to-ceiling sec doors, their paint dulled and scarred.

 

Ryan finished shaving, rubbed his hand over his stubble-free chin and dashed several handfuls of icy water into his face, blinking at the shock.

 

"Better," he whispered.

 

He looked up at himself in the discolored mirror, seeing the tight lines around his eyes and mouth. Not for the first time he could glimpse his father in the mirror.

 

Something moved behind him and he spun, facing the twin muzzles of the two Magnum revolvers held steady in the hands of Titus and Mervyn. They stood together in the doorway, less than twenty feet away, separated from him by another row of waist-high basins.

 

"Fireblast!" Ryan glanced at the sheathed panga resting on the third basin along the line to the right.

 

"Guards of the Redoubt present and defending," the brothers snapped, their voices in perfect unison. "Protect redoubt against outlander enemies."

 

"We aren't enemies. Been through all of that, haven't we? You agreed that we weren't enemies."

 

There was a mad chill in the brothers, their eyes narrowed with suspicion. They were fully dressed, and Ryan guessed that they probably hadn't even been to bed at all that night, waiting together in the semidarkness, whispering their plans to each other.

 

"You going to shoot me? Then go along and shoot the others in their beds?"

 

The question made them turn and stare at each other, and Ryan realized that Titus and Mervyn hadn't actually done all that much strategic organizing.

 

"We'll chill you all," Mervyn said, sounding and looking doubtful.

 

"Shoot me now and the noise of the shot'll wake the others, and they've got the weaponry to take both of you out of the game without raising sweat."

 

Titus giggled. "But you'll be dead."

 

Despite being a credible triple stupe, the man had put his finger unerringly on the one weakness in Ryan's argument. Posthumous revenge wasn't a great idea.

 

Though, as Trader had sometimes commented, it was ultimately better than no revenge at all.

 

"There's you and me in mirror," Mervyn said. "Haven't seen us in lots of time."

 

The brothers stared vacantly at their reflections, smiling their identical idiot smiles, heads to one side at the same angle, the barrels of their blasters edging away from Ryan.

 

Lot of times you had no chance.

 

Sometimes you glimpsed a part of a chance.

 

Ryan took it.

 

He dived to his right, reaching for the hilt of the panga, his feet slipping on the wet tiles so that he nearly fell short. But his fingers just grabbed enough, pulling the knife off the basin, still sheathed.

 

But Titus and Mervyn reacted much more quickly than he'd guessed and the bathroom filled with the thunder of the big .44s, shattering glass and the ceramic basins.

 

Their speed of reaction had tugged away his only chance, and Ryan realized that bloody death could be only a few seconds away.