Chapter Twenty-Three

 

 

A mirror on the wall opposite Ryan enabled him to see the three men behind him. He cursed his lack of caution, lulled by the excellent food.

 

Three men. The one holding the short-barreled revolver at the base of Ryan's skull was average height. His face was lean with oddly thick lips. A deep scar seamed his left cheek. He looked to be around thirty, and his two companions were both much younger.

 

They put Ryan in mind of the gang of three that had ambushed them on the trail.

 

"You come from Glenwood, mister?"

 

Ryan continued to eat the last few forkfuls of his cherry cobbler, using his fork in his left hand to shove some of the final crumbs of pastry together.

 

He glanced up, trying to make a combat judgment of the trio. Neither of the younger men had blasters drawn, though they were wearing revolvers in holsters. They were obviously content that their older companion had the situation well under control.

 

Ryan took a sip of lemonade, laying the spoon down for a moment. "Glenwood. Yeah."

 

"When?"

 

"Three, four days back."

 

"How come it took so long? Was you on foot?"

 

"Yeah. I was with my young son. Taking him up to the school over yonder."

 

"Brody's place?"

 

"That's the one."

 

"You see anything of some good friends of ours? Some good, good friends?"

 

"They got names?"

 

"Joey. And a couple of kids."

 

He turned his head. "What was their names?"

 

"Eddie and Manuel."

 

"Right. They went off to try and get somesupplies and stuff. And they don't come back."

 

"Been plenty of snow behind me. Could be they got caught in that."

 

One of the younger men nodded in the mirror. "That might be right, Gordy."

 

"I don't know. Looks like this outlander's the only person come up in the last week. There was that old man and the girl going down with their burro."

 

The kid on the left giggled. "But we know they weren't going to make it to the Springs, don't we, Harve?"

 

The other teenager laughed, showing a strange dental arrangement where every other black and rotting tooth was capped with gold, reminding Ryan of a piano keyboard.

 

"Should be back," Gordy insisted, pressing the muzzle of his blaster harder against the back of Ryan's head. "And this son of a bitch is going to tell us about it."

 

Carl had spotted the disturbance and bustled over, wiping his hands on his apron. "What's going on here?"

 

"Butt out, asshole!" Gordy snarled, his eyes still locked on Ryan's face in the mirror. "Got us some business with the outlander here."

 

"It's all right," Ryan said quietly. "Let it lie or you'll likely get yourself hurt."

 

"I can help."

 

"No." Ryan shook his head warningly. "You run a great eatery, but I don't see you as a shootist. Let it lie. Best all around to do that."

 

Gordy laughed, licking a thread of spittle from his bulbous lips.

 

"Don't want to make a mess, huh? Specially inside your pants. Then let's go outside and talk this over."

 

"Right." Ryan had let his shoulders slump, knowing the importance of body language, allowing the three killers to think they had him cowed and totally at their mercy.

 

He started to stand, pushing himself up with his right hand, so they could see he wasn't doing anything foolish, such as reaching for his SIG-Sauer. The muzzle of the blaster moved from his nape, and he was able to see what it wasa Llama Comanche Model II with a four-inch barrel, chambered to take a big .38 round. It was enough blaster to spread Ryan's skull all over the mirror.

 

"Watch the rest of the crowd, in case there's any folks want to turn into a dead hero."

 

The two teenagers turned away so that Ryan could see only their backs. They dropped hands to holsters in a parody of a menacing gunslinger.

 

Gordy had also turned away for a moment, checking out the other tables.

 

That moment was the moment.

 

Ryan had kept hold of the three-pronged fork that he'd used to finish off the delicious cobbler. Now he swung to his right, slapping the Llama away from him with his free hand, lunging with the fork at Gordy's astonished face.

 

His target had been the right eye, but the man reacted more quickly than Ryan had expected, starting to turn and pull his head back.

 

But the fork still caught him, gouging a deep wound beneath his right eye, burying itself in the side of his nose, near the top. Blood gushed down over his mouth onto the floor, and he began to yell.

 

Ryan left the fork where it was, jammed into the cartilaginous flesh. At the same time as he'd begun the offensive, he'd pushed back, shouldering the two teenagers hard away from him, using his own chair to knock them both off-balance.

 

The place was instant bedlam, with everyone yelling and starting to try to escape the fight, tables going over and glasses and crockery smashing.

 

Ryan was totally oblivious to all that, his mind focusing coldly on what he had to do.

 

His right hand already had the SIG-Sauer clear of leather as he spun, now facing all three of the enemy.

 

Gordy had pulled the trigger on the Llama, firing wildly, the bullet splintering the mirror behind Ryan, missing him by a couple of feet at point-blank range.

 

He never got a chance to fire a second time.

 

The SIG-Sauer boomed, deafening in the low-ceilinged room, the 9 mm round catching the man through the upper chest, exiting in a welter of torn flesh and splinters of bone. It bit a fat man behind him in the right shoulder, sending him down, as well, screaming like a stuck pig.

 

Gordy took two staggering steps backward, dropping the blaster, hands clutching at the mortal wound.

 

"Burns like ice," he said in a normal, conversational voice, the fork wobbling grotesquely from his nose. Then his knees went, and he folded up on the floor.

 

Ryan wasn't listening or looking.

 

Knowing that it had been a perfect killing shot, he was concentrating now on taking out the two teenagers, neither of whom had yet managed to draw his blaster.

 

Carl was moving in behind one of them, reaching out to grab at the boy.

 

"Leave him and get down!" Ryan yelled, leveling the SIG-Sauer. He shot the lad through the side of the head, the powerful full-metal-jacket round bursting the skull like a ripe melon, showering walls, ceiling and customers with a thick gray-pink grue of brains, bone and blood.

 

The other youth had just recovered his balance, his right hand snatching desperately at the butt of his pistol. His gaze was fixed on Ryan's face, reading his own doom there.

 

"Don't." was all he managed to say. Then the 9 mm bullet hit him through the mouth, smashing teeth and ripping his tongue to flapping rags of bloodied flesh, burying itself in the core of his brain.

 

In less than six seconds, all three men lay dead on the restaurant floor.

 

"It's over!" Ryan shouted at the top of his voice, overriding the panic. "Hold it, folks. The chilling's done."

 

Gradually the hubbub abated, the customers who remained standing still, their faces white with shock, many of them dappled with blood. The wounded man had fallen to his knees, crying quietly, tears streaming down his chubby cheeks.

 

"You took them all," Carl said, breaking the silence.

 

"Had to. They were going to take me."

 

"Sure," Carl agreed, nodding like a porcelain Buddha. "We all saw that. I tried to"

 

Ryan holstered the automatic. "I know you did. And I truly appreciate it. Just sorry for all the mess in here."

 

Carl waved his hands. "Don't worry. Soon get it cleaned. And folks'll come packing in once word gets around."

 

"Best settle my check."

 

Carl managed a smile. "Don't mention it, brother. This one's on the house."

 

 

 

KRYSTY HURLED HERSELF sideways, diving behind a padded armchair, shielding her face from the explosion of shattered glass.

 

The picture window had been reinforced, but it wasn't designed to withstand an impact like the huge mutie timber wolf.

 

The noise of the crash was deafening, and was accompanied by a rush of freezing air from outside. Krysty was aware of her own voice, screaming out to the others, and Jak also yelling to J.B., Mildred and Doc to come running.

 

She couldn't help being aware of the snarling of the pack leader, its breath frosting in the air, and the howling of the rest of the animals as they readied themselves to follow. Krysty also noticed the rank smell from the wolf, harsh and feral.

 

She had no idea where her blaster was, guessing that it had to be on the floor close to the sofa.

 

The room wasn't that dark, with the bright light of the burning logs, and Krysty pulled herself to hands and knees, the breath locked in her throat with the terror of the massive brindled animal, standing only a yard from her. Its shoulders and coat were patterned with blood, and shards of glass continuously dropped to the carpet from its heaving flanks. Its eyes were like saucers of molten gold, burning into her.

 

Her only hope was that Jak would be able to get at his own .357 Colt Python. His throwing knives would be of little use against an animal with such a thick pelt.

 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the window had been smashed apart, leaving a gaping hole at its center, with cracks running from top to bottom and from corner to corner. Even as she watched, a second wolf braved the gap and landed clumsily in the room, its paws slipping on a loose Navaho rug so that the creature fell against the piano.

 

Despite her fear, Krysty drew together the rags of her Earth Mother training, remembering about panic and about facing wild animals.

 

She stood suddenly, spreading her arms, her eyes never leaving the yellow orbs of the wolf. "You better leave me alone, you dumb fuck!" she said firmly.

 

Mother Sonja had told her that a positive response would chase away some animals and slow any attack from the rest. That was what she'd said, but Krysty had never tried it on anything like a giant timber wolf.

 

For a few heartbeats it hesitated, as though its murderous brain couldn't encompass such a helpless creature trying to stand against it.

 

During that brief stasis, a third and fourth wolf crashed into the room, all of them standing and looking at the woman and the white-haired man. Their eyes turned to the pack leader, as if they were waiting for instructions.

 

Jak had reached for his blaster, holding it in both hands, trying to decide what was his primary target. The pair of wolves that were menacing him, or the huge leader that threatened Krysty?

 

For several more racing beats of the heart, nothing moved in the warm room.

 

"Going to charge me, Jak," Krysty whispered, seeing the way the wolf was crouching, its powerful hindquarters quivering with suppressed tension, its eyes still fixed on her face. A thread of saliva dripped from its fangs.

 

The albino leveled the blaster and squeezed the trigger, the explosion releasing all the coiled, pent-up action.

 

Though Jak was probably the finest knife man in all of Deathlands, he would have been the first to admit that he wasn't in the top ranks of shootists.

 

The big .357 round hit the wolf, but missed any of its vital targets. Just as it began its spring, the bullet smashed into its hindquarters, near the top of the left leg, sending it spinning in midair. It landed clumsily between Krysty and the sofa, falling on its left side, howling at full power and turning to snap at its own bleeding wound.

 

The brief delay that Krysty's stand had brought them was utterly crucial.

 

It gave J.B. and the others time to wake and rush downstairs, carrying their own blasters.

 

The Uzi clattered, instantly knocking over the three wolves that had followed the leader in through the broken window, while Mildred, standing calm and four-square in the doorway, shot a fifth animal through the head at the very moment it crashed in after the others.

 

But the giant mutie wolf was still very much alive, heaving itself upright, though the shattered leg made any rapid movement impossible.

 

Krysty backed slowly away from it, its looming shadow thrown ahead of it by the flickering flames.

 

The whole pack was coming now, bursting through the remnants of the broken picture window, two and three at a time, seeming to fill the room with their noise and rank stench. Jak managed to shoot another one, but the dying animal knocked him sideways, stumbling as it died, finally falling into the fire. Its bulk practically extinguished the burning logs, and the whole place was plunged into almost total darkness. There was still the filtered silver moonlight from outside, and the snarling, raging animals, filling the room.

 

The staccato sound of gunfire added to the confusion and carnage.

 

Krysty had good night sight, second only to Jak, and she could see the grim outline of the leader of the pack, dragging itself toward her as she backed awaybacked away until she felt her shoulders touch the corner of the room and knew there was nowhere else to go.

 

She could feel the hot carnivorous breath of the wolf, less than a yard away from her. In the chaos, everyone was too busy with their own problems to worry about her. The corpse on the fire was already beginning to burn, filling the cooling air with smoke and the taste of roasted flesh.

 

Krysty had already decided to try to gouge out the wolf's eyes when it came at her, and bite it on the ear or the muzzle, though she also knew that the odds lay long and hard against her.

 

"Come on, then," she whispered, trying to boost her own failing courage, aware from things that Peter Maritza had told her back in Harmony that a wolf that size could take her arm off at the shoulder in a single crunching bite.

 

"Aid is at hand, my dear!" Doc yelled, stumbling across the room, tripping over the twitching corpse of one of the animals, holding the Le Mat in his right hand.

 

"Watch yourself, Doc!"

 

The mutie leader of the wolves had turned at the interruption, its attention wrenched away from the woman. It opened its great jaws and bayed defiance at the intruding man.

 

Doc might have been a few cards short of a full deck, but he had never lacked courage.

 

He stopped a scant yard from the creature and leveled the Le Mat, pointing it so that the railroad-tunnel muzzle was inches from the angular skull.

 

And pulled the trigger.

 

The hammer fell on the 18-gauge scattergun chamber, exploding the burst of grapeshot.

 

At point-blank range it didn't just kill the wolf, it destroyed it, blowing the head apart, covering Krysty with hot blood, peppering her with fragments of bone.

 

The animal never moved, simply slumping dead to the carpet.

 

"Gaia!" Krysty said, as she wiped her sleeve over her face. "God love you, Doc, for that."

 

"Courage, mon amie, le diable est mort!"

 

"What?"

 

"Means no more Mr. Wolf, little Red Riding Hair. We can all live happily ever after."

 

The shooting had stopped.

 

One of the wolves was whining as it lay beneath the window, but Jak stooped and carefully slit its throat.

 

The place stank of burned meat, scorched hair, hot blood, cordite and excrement, where a number of the animals had fouled themselves in dying. And the temperature had already dropped twenty degrees.

 

J.B. went to drag the body off the fire, fanning the air with his hand. "How many came in and how many stayed out?" he asked.

 

Mildred stepped carefully to the window, reloading the Czech blaster as she did, and peered through the shattered glass at the trampled winter landscape outside.

 

"All gone," she reported, turning back to the room. "And it looks like about eight or nine dead ones in here."

 

He nodded. "Everyone all right? Good work, my friends. Well, we were going to leave in the morning. I think we might as well go now. Anyone object? No? Then let's go."