Alpha Wave

The sun was setting when they reached the ville’s high gates, turning the skies a burning red as it sauntered under the horizon in the west behind them. The sturdy gates were constructed of strips of rough wood tied together with old rope and held in place with rusty hinges. Twice as tall as a man, the gates were set within a similarly high wall constructed from a patchwork of materials. Opened together, the gates could let a wide wagon pass through into the ville, but they would be kept closed for most of the time to discourage possible looters.

Two sentries patrolled the top of the wall, and they came over to the edge of the gates when Ryan and his companions approached. “You want somethin’, outlanders?” the sentry to the left called out, casually brandishing a large-bore shotgun over the rim of the wall. He was a heavy man, wearing a tattered, checked shirt and two days’ worth of beard. Across from him, on the other side of the gates, a sallow young man dressed in similar clothing trained a wooden crossbow on the companions. Ryan judged that its range was insufficient to reach them as far from the gates as they were, and certainly not with any appreciable accuracy.

Ryan let Krysty’s feet drop gently to the ground and waved his companions back, instructing them to wait as he went to speak with the sentry.

“We’re not here looking for trouble,” he began, holding his hands at shoulder height to show he held no weapon. The longblaster was clearly visible on his back, of course, and he had a blaster at his hip, but this was the Deathlands. The sentries would have been more suspicious of an apparently unarmed man than one who came at them blasters blazing.

The sentry on the left raised the muzzle of his weapon a little, encouraging Ryan to continue.

“My friend back there is ill,” Ryan said, his gaze never leaving the man’s eyes. “We come seeking somewhere to bed down, mebbe look her over.”

The sentry with the crossbow shook his head, looking over at his comrade. “We don’t got no healin’ to give to outlanders,” Shotgun stated bluntly, and his companion made a show of raising his crossbow higher, pointing it at Ryan’s forehead.

“You best be on your way, One-Eye.” The crossbow-wielding man chuckled.

Ryan didn’t flinch, he just continued to look at the man with the shotgun. He bore these two no malice. They were just doing their job. Just protecting their own.

“We’ve got our own healer,” Ryan assured them. The trace of a smile crossed his lips as he saw both the sentries look across to his companions, squinting against the setting sun as they tried to guess which of the ragtag group might have valuable medical skills. “Be willing to let the healer take a look at your people, too,” Ryan suggested, “if you need that. Free of charge, if you can give us somewhere to examine our own.”

The sentries looked at each another, muttered a few words that Ryan didn’t catch. But he detected the change in atmosphere immediately, and leaped to one side as the buckshot exploded toward him with a loud crack.

The sentry with the shotgun bragged loudly as he targeted the barrel at the fleeing Ryan, preparing a second shot from the homemade weapon. “Think we’ll just chill you and take your healer for our own, if it’s okay with you, One-Eye!” He laughed.

Ryan had already loosed his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 blaster from its holster. Straight-armed, he reeled off a single shot. The sentry staggered back, dropping the shotgun as it exploded in his hand, taking the full force of the Sauer’s bullet.

Ryan targeted the second sentry, the one with the crossbow, but there was no need. J.B. had the man dead center in the sights of his mini-Uzi, Doc had his LeMat revolver aimed at the man, and Mildred and Jak had crouched around Krysty, poised with their own weapons—a ZKR 551 target revolver in Mildred’s right hand, a .357 Magnum Colt Python in Jak’s—to offer her necessary protection. Slowly, carefully, the younger sentry placed his crossbow on the ridge of the wall at his feet before raising his hands.

The sentry to the right, the one who had been holding the shotgun, cursed as he clutched at his bleeding right hand. But there was admiration in that curse as much as anger. “Black dust, but that is some good shooting, friend,” he pronounced incredulously.

“For a one-eye,” Ryan called back, keeping his blaster trained on the sentries, whipping it between the two.

The sentry laughed, the blood dripping from his hand where the homemade shotgun had been a few moments before. “Well, besides some dead-on shooting and a healer, you got anything worth my opening these gates for? Or should I go call me some reinforcements and see if we can’t negotiate with you some more?”

Ryan looked at him, never lowering his blaster as he spoke. “Reinforcements won’t be necessary,” he told the sentry. “Like I said, we’re not here looking for trouble. Just a hole to sleep in for me and my people. We’re willing to pay for it, with ammo if you’ll take it. Or we can walk away right now, and you’ve learned a little lesson in trying to take what isn’t yours.” Ryan’s expression remained fixed as he watched the sentry.

The sentry smirked, nodding to himself. “You got ammo? Why didn’t you say so earlier, One-Eye?” he asked. “We got the best nuking dog fights here, if you’re a betting man, might even double or triple your wager if you bet as well as you shoot.”

Ryan nodded, warily lowering his blaster. After a moment J.B. and Doc followed his lead, carefully relaxing, but keeping their weapons in hand in case things turned nasty again. “Triple at least, I reckon,” he told the older sentry.

“Hell, yeah.” The sentry laughed. “Now, my boy here is gonna open the gates, and everybody is going to just play nice. Sound okay with you and your people, outlander?”

Ryan glanced across at J.B. and Doc to see if either would object. Then he answered by holstering his SIG-Sauer P-226. “You want my healer to look at that hand?” he asked as the younger man disappeared from sight.

The old sentry nodded. “I would be much obliged,” he agreed.

J.B. AND D OC CARRIED Krysty through the open gates and into the tiny ville. She seemed heavy, a felled doe from a hunting expedition, as her feet dragged on the sandy ground. Mildred had suggested it would be easier to carry her by shoulders and feet, as Ryan and J.B. had when they’d brought her here from the tower, but Doc wouldn’t hear of it. “Mayhap she cannot go in walking,” he had told them, “but she will at least go in looking like she can walk.”

J.B. agreed. Psychologically, it made sense to keep Krysty upright. That way she would appear hurt to the citizens of the ville and not dead.

The older sentry met them as they walked through the gates, his younger companion working the mechanism to open them—the gates worked on some kind of weighted cantilever system. J.B. made a mental note to examine it in more detail when the sun was higher in the sky. The old sentry had wrapped a makeshift bandage around his right hand, torn from the bottom of his checkered shirt. He smiled as he greeted Ryan and the companions.

“You sure gave my hand a walloping there,” he told Ryan. “That was some nuke-hot shooting you did.”

Ryan shrugged, not wanting to dwell on it, aware that the old sentry may yet be itching for payback.

“My name’s Tom,” the sentry went on, before indicating his younger partner beside the gate. “And this is my boy, Davey.”

The younger sentry, Davey, brushed a hand through his hair and slowly eyed Mildred from the chest up. “Pleased to meet you,” he finally said, oblivious to the others.

“Flattered,” she responded with a fixed grin.

Tom carried on, pointing down the single street of the walled-in ville. “This here is Fairburn. Don’t look like much, I guess, but we still call it home.”

“It looks very homely,” Ryan said. “I’m Ryan, and these are my traveling companions,” he said by way of introduction, not bothering with anyone else’s name. He would sooner they keep a low profile for now, at least as much as strangers in a walled ville could. “You said something about maybe having somewhere we could stay?”

Tom pointed to the center of the small ville, where the four twin-storied buildings stood. “There’s an eatery over there. Can’t miss it. Just follow your noses to the stink. Jemmy there will sort you out a room. Just ask at the counter.”

As the companions made their way down the dusty thoroughfare, two dogs rushed over, yapping and snarling playfully, their thick, saliva-smeared tongues hanging from their mouths. They were mongrels, stupid and friendly, their tails wagging as they looked at the well-armed strangers. Jak issued a low growl from deep within his throat, and he narrowed his pure red eyes as he looked at the mutts. As one, the dogs turned tail and ran, seeking more willing playmates.

Doc looked at the sentry’s bloodied hand as he passed, hefting Krysty. “I do not imagine you have much call for renting out rooms here.”

“Probably depends a little on who’s on the gate,” Tom agreed.

“Come over when you’re ready,” Ryan called back, “and our healer will take a look at that hand.”

The companions headed into the center of the ville, with Krysty still lolling between Doc and J.B.

Chapter Three

A huge chandelier hung from the ceiling of Jemmy’s by a thick, golden chain, its crystal droplets casting a flotilla of sunlight specks across the walls of the room where they rippled and bounced as if living things. The impressive chandelier was utterly incongruous, at odds with the simple, rustic design of the barnlike barroom.

Crude tables and chairs were scattered around the room, some simply upended wooden crates, seats ripped from old automobiles. A few men sat around, playing with stacks of dominoes or just jawing and drinking, mostly armed with remade revolvers, a couple of shotguns resting on the tables. Two women were propped at the bar, heavily made-up over expressions of utter disinterest. The wide room smelled of rotgut.

Doc and J.B. helped Krysty to the bar, which Ryan was leaning over, looking into the back room, trying to locate whoever was serving.

The two women propping up the bar looked at Ryan, then the older one—all of nineteen, perhaps—turned her head and shouted toward the back, her husky voice crackling like fire. “Jem, you got some new customers.”

A moment later a woman came out of the back room, taking in the companions in a quick sweep of her hazel eyes before turning a bright, flawless smile on Ryan. She was dressed in a man’s shirt, too large for her, with sleeves rolled up past her elbows, her dark hair tied back. Ryan guessed that she was in her early thirties, skin tanned and hands calloused from a tough, outdoor life. She tossed aside the towel she had been wiping her hands with and asked what she could do for everyone.

“We’re looking to stop over in your fine ville,” Ryan told her. “Could do with rooms if you have them.”

“Here for the dogs?” the woman asked conversationally.

Ryan nodded. Behind him, J.B. had stepped away from the bar and was looking around the room, scanning for possible exits. Through the kitchen area behind the bar—where the woman had appeared from—he could see an open door leading to the backyard, the ground nothing more than sand. There was a well out there, really just a hole in the ground with a roped bucket beside it, framed by the open door. Off to the right of the bar, wooden stairs at the back of the room led up, and a second-floor balcony surrounded the room on three sides, with several doors leading off—most likely the lodging rooms for the establishment, transaction rooms for the two gaudy sluts working the bar. A door beneath the staircase proclaimed that it led to toilet facilities, though J.B. guessed it was probably nothing more than a fenced-in part of the backyard.

“You know how long you’re here for?” Jemmy asked Ryan as he placed a few rounds of spare ammo on the bar. The ammo was useless to the companions, none of it fitting their blasters, but spare ammo served as the gold standard for the Deathlands.

Ryan looked around the room as though surveying the whole ville. “Nice place,” he said. “Who knows? Mebbe a few nights. That be a problem for you?”