No Man's Land

“Right now,” Ryan said, “I’m going to sleep.”

From his tone he meant just that. Mildred could sympathize. After their run, and the jump that preceded it, a good night’s rest was all she could handle right now herself.

“I mean, after?” Krysty asked.

“We need to get out of here!” Ricky said.

Then his dark eyes got big, as he wondered if he’d screwed up by talking out of turn among the grown-ups. He was a kid, about sixteen years old, whom they’d picked up during an inadvertent jaunt to his monster-ridden home island of Puerto Rico. Unsurprisingly, he was considerably darker than Jak, and somewhat taller, which wasn’t hard for anyone to accomplish, since Jak Lauren was a slight albino with shoulder-length white hair and ruby eyes. Initially thrown together with the band by fate, Ricky had quickly made himself one of them, saving their lives individually and collectively at several turns before they managed to get to a gateway off Monster Island. He still pined for his adored older sister, Yamile, who’d been kidnapped by coldhearts and sold to mainland slavers, and still harbored hopes he’d cross her trail again someday.

He’d fit in quickly and relatively smoothly, or he wouldn’t be with the companions now. A natural tinker by nature, weaponsmith by training and cunning trap-maker by inclination, he had almost instantly become doted on by J.B., whom he idolized—almost as much as he obviously did Ryan Cawdor.

Jak had been prickly toward the newcomer at first, the adolescent-male hormones kicking him into reflex rivalry with another male a few years younger. But Ricky had proved his value to the exacting standards of Jak as well, and the natural affinity of a couple of youths roughly the same age amid a gaggle of grown-ups overcame testosterone poisoning.

But in the small, relatively well-to-do and proper ville where Ricky came from, children were taught to be seen and not heard.

So the thing about this group that made them so strong—made them family, so far as Mildred was concerned, and she knew she was not the only one—was that once you were accepted, your contributions were valued for what they were actually worth, not on any other basis. Each member brought a necessary part to the functioning—surviving—whole. If Ricky, or Jak, or any of them said something foolish, then they could expect the others to slap them down a notch.

But the black-haired youth said only what Mildred suspected all the rest were thinking. She sure was.

“We may be best served scouting tomorrow,” Doc said, “in order to locate the main armies.”

“Don’t we want to go in the opposite direction, Doc?” Mildred asked.

“And how else are we going to know what that is?” he asked blandly.

“Could be tricky getting clear,” J.B. said. “If two armies are fighting over this patch of ground, likely means it’s in turn right between the places the armies come from. Country where passing strangers are likely to be looked at askance, if you know what I mean.”

“I think there’s a redoubt around here,” Ryan said.

“So close to the other?” Krysty asked.

Ryan shrugged. “Who knows the mind of a whitecoat?”

Doc laughed. It was a dry laugh, more than a little cracked. That was a wound that sometimes scabbed over, but would never fully heal.

“They serve a multiplicity of functions, these agencies and departments,” he said. “Served? Our language does not support the traveling of time well as a concept. One redoubt might be built for one purpose in this place, another not a half day’s walk away, performing different abstruse—and need I add sinister?—tasks. Notwithstanding which they might yet be linked by the mat-trans gateways.”

“Happened before,” J.B. agreed.

Krysty stood up. She encircled Ryan’s narrow waist with her arms from behind and nestled her head on his shoulder. Though he was a tall man, she didn’t need to stretch up much to do it.

“So why do you think that now, lover?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. Something I heard, saw. Somewhere, sometime. Mebbe.”

Detaching himself from Krysty’s embrace, he turned and bent to kiss her briefly on the lips.

“Mebbe just wishful thinking,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll see what we see. Now I’m getting some shut-eye.”

* * *

IT SEEMED TO Mildred that she had barely closed her eyes, lying on her side near the banked fire with the warm and comforting solidity of J.B. spooning her from behind, when a sudden commotion shocked her awake.

It was Jak, pounding up on the camp out of the night like a buffalo herd. The youth could move, and usually did, with no more noise than a shadow. The fact he wasn’t trying to be quiet was as alarming as anything he could say.

Or so Mildred thought.

“Horses,” he said. “Many. Coming upwind. Fast!”

Chapter Two

Ryan had his Steyr Scout Tactical longblaster in his hands when he jumped to his feet, wide awake and ready for action.

It was already too late.

Likely it was just rad-blasted luck, triple-bad, that brought the cavalry patrol right on top of them—up the wind, where Jak’s wild-animal keen nose wouldn’t catch their scent, nor his ears hear them until he literally felt their hooves’ drumming through the ground beneath his feet.

Or perhaps they managed to scout them out first. Jak wasn’t the only person in the Deathlands who could move as quietly as a panther. And the locals would know the terrain better than the youth from the bayous of the Gulf Coast possibly could.

Either way, by the time Jak ran in to give his warning they were already had. Ryan saw dark forms looming inhumanly high on three sides of them already. Starlight glinted on eyeballs in human faces and horse heads, and on leveled blaster barrels and long blades.

They still could have bolted northeast, back the way Jak had come. But while a fit man could run a horse into the ground over the long haul—Ryan had done the thing himself, not with notable enjoyment—in the sprint a horse would ride the fastest of them down inside fifty yards. Or bring its rider in range of a cut or thrust with one of their wicked curved sabers.

A man wearing a dark uniform and a slouch hat rode up on a big chestnut with high-stepping white-stockinged feet. The horse’s coat glistened in the starlight. The man glowered down at Ryan between bushy brows and a bristling dark beard. He wore a saber on a baldric over one epauletted shoulder.

He leveled a weapon at Ryan’s chest. While most of the blasters the one-eyed man could see as the cavalry closed in around his little party were black-powder burners, the one the obvious officer was aiming at him was an unmistakable Mini-14, a combat model in stainless steel with black synthetic stock.

“I’m Captain Stone. Surrender, spies, in the name of the noble Des Moines River Valley Cattlemen’s Protective Association and our glorious commander, Baron Jed Kylie of Hugoville!” he declared in a buglelike voice. It was a bit in the high range, but Ryan wasn’t inclined to make fun of it.

Ryan stooped to lay the Scout at his feet, then straightened slowly and obediently raised his hands. His companions did likewise. They knew the drill. These pony-troopers had the drop on them and no mistake. They were also clearly wired up with the excitement of their catch, eager to blast—or cut with those giant-ass mutie-stickers they toted. Any show of resistance—anything but instant meek compliance—would get the bunch of them chilled on the spot.

“We surrender,” he said. “But we’re not spies. We’re just travelers, passing through this country. I’m Ryan Cawdor.”

“Chill them now, Captain!” a voice said from somewhere behind the front rank. There’s always one, Ryan thought glumly.

He just hoped this wouldn’t be the time that one got listened to.

The captain shook his head. His hat had some kind of big puffy plume on it, light-colored. Ryan had no idea what it had come from or where it had come from.

“Baron Jed has given strict orders all trespassers should be brought to him immediately for questioning and disposition,” he replied. “Sergeant Drake!”

“Sir!”

“See to the securing of the prisoners,” he said. “And their belongings.”

“All right, you slackers,” the sergeant rasped. “Listen up and listen close!”

Ryan wouldn’t have needed the captain to say his rank, nor to see the chevrons sewn on the sleeves of his uniform tunic, to know he was a noncom of some sort. When he rode up on his big Roman-nosed black gelding to where Ryan could get a look at him, he could see he was a black guy, probably medium height, double-wide across the shoulders. His face, clean-shaved, looked as if it had been used to hammer railroad iron.