Crossways Laurence James(1)

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Ryan noticed that the blacksmith's son kept glancing at Krysty as they followed the trail toward Harmony.
And he twice brushed clumsily against her at places where the track had grown narrow. It was all too
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obvious that Carl still carried a blazing torch for Krysty Wroth.
Ryan filed the fact away, with the knowledge that it could prove potentially dangerous.
HARMONY LAY IN A shallow bowl of fertile land, around the ten-thousand-foot mark. They came
around a bend in the overgrown blacktop and saw the ville spread out ahead of them.
"Gaia! I've come back," Krysty said, standing with hands on her hips, staring down into her old home.
"Someone coming," Jak warned. "Two men on mules. Think might be stickies."
The albino teenager's eyesight in the cloudy half-light of the morning was impeccable.
Everyone took shelter among the large boulders that were scattered on both sides of the highway,
watching as the two unsuspecting figures drew closer, both riding spavined burrows, their long legs
angled out, heels almost brushing the muddy trail. They were stickies.
Their clothes were ragged and torn, showing the sickly gray pallor of their skins beneath. They were both
male, with stringy hair that seemed pasted to their bony skulls. Typically they both had weeping sores all
over their faces, with clusters of yellow spots around their thin-lipped mouths. Each had a large
handblaster strapped to his waist. As they drew closer, it was easy to see the circular suckers that marked
their hands and fingers, giving them their Deathlands name of stickies.
One was singing a tuneless dirge as he rode along, his companion passing the time by practicing hawking
up phlegm and spitting at rocks in the road.
Ryan had warned the others that it could be helpful to chill the first one silently, and take the other
prisoner to try to extract information on the dispositions of the gang within Harmony ville.
Silent killing meant Jak and his leaf-bladed throwing knives.
The teenager waited until the stickies had passed him, then rose from his hiding place and let fly with one
of his concealed blades. It whined through the air like a loosed arrow, striking the second of the stickies
through the side of the throat, just below and behind the right ear. It severed the artery, sending him
toppling off his donkey, hands grabbing at the sharp pain of the wound, unaware that he was already
dying.
Blood fountained high in the air, pattering in the mud as the mutie crashed to the ground.
His comrade was starting to turn, a sickly grin strung across his face as he thought his comrade had
simply fallen from the back of the burro.
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"Wrong move and you get to be dead," Ryan said, appearing in front of him, holding the rifle at his hip.
J.B. came into sight on the other side of the trail, the Smith amp; Wesson scattergun covering the stickie.
Krysty, Mildred and Doc also showed themselves, as did Carl Lanning, a few moments later. He was
gripping a short-handled sledgehammer that he normally carried tucked in his broad belt.
The mortally wounded mutie was kicking and scrabbling in the dirt at the side of the trail, the flow of
blood already eased to little more than a trickle.
"Why you chill Jimbob?" the other stickie asked, looking puzzled. "You gonna get chilled when word
gets to rest of us." He spit in the dirt near J.B.'s boots. "Triple stupes all soon chilled like Jimbob."
"Get off the burro," Ryan ordered. "Want to ask you some questions."
For a moment it looked as if the stickie was going to ignore the command, sitting negligently on the back
of the burro, hands holding the dangling reins. Finally, slowly, he dismounted.
"Sit down there," Ryan said, pointing with the rifle to a shelf of rock set among the bracken and heather.
"Look after the animals, Jak."
"You chill me?"
"Mebbe. Depends on you telling us what we want to know about the rest of your friends."
"Friends?" The brutish face showed bewilderment. "I ain't have no fuck friends."
The rest of them gathered around the prisoner, Carl standing just behind him.
"The rest of the gang. Where they're living. Where you keep the gas wag. Weapons. That kind of stuff."
The stickie's hands were knotting and fumbling at each other, the tiny suckered circles in the palms and
along the strong fingers opening and closing like nervous mouths.
"I don't tell you that."
Without warning, Carl hefted the hammer and struck the mutie a single cracking blow across the back of
the skull. There was the unmistakable, unforgettable sound, like a large apple being crushed underfoot.
The stickie slumped forward, rolling onto the trail, the looseness of his hands and feet the sure sign of his
death. A thread of crimson blood oozed from his right ear, from his nose and mouth, and leaked from the
corners of his watery eyes. One hand tapped on the cold, mud-slick pebbles for a few seconds, then
became still.
Ryan turned the Steyr toward Carl, filled with one of his sudden murderous rages, his finger tight on the
trigger of the rifle.
"You! I said not to hurt him."
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