Moon Fate Laurence James

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"Free you."
He looked at her. "Both be dead. Have to wait, lover. If they leave us tonight& or
at their camp. Mebbe risk it then. But you know that using the power leaves you
drained for hours."
"You might make it."
"Forget it."
There was a long silence between them. One of the stickies brought a handful of
the dried meat and dropped it in the dirt, giggling as they had to roll on their
stomachs to gnaw at it.
After he'd rejoined the others, Krysty spoke qui-etly, mumbling through a
mouthful of beef.
"Jak and J.B. must be after us."
"Difficult."
"What?"
"Difficult to track us. This skinny bastard is good. Taken us a quarter mile or
more over bare rock. Won't leave much of a trail. Crossed the same stream three
or four times. Walked along through the water for a ways. I figure that they'll have
a triple-hard time try-ing to follow us. And they'll be real slow, having to keep
backtracking and checking all the time. No way they'll move as fast as us."
"But they'll find us in the end."
"Course they will."
The pause was so minimal that an outsider wouldn't have noticed it. But Krysty
did.
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
"Try again, lover. Fails to convince."
"Fireblast! Odds are they'll find us, but it could be way too late."
Charlie and the stickies were standing, ready to move on again.
MILDRED POURED a pitcher of water over her head, dropping to hands and
knees, exhausted by the run back to the main camp.
Dean was already pacing nervously around, eager to start off in pursuit of the
stickies that had taken his father.
Christina had merely nodded as the black woman panted out her story, sitting and
waiting patiently un-til she'd finished.
"Knew this would happen," she said. Her voice was flat, bitterness coming dry
and hard from every word. "Soon as Ryan Cawdor came back here. Things were
good until then."
Doc had been leaning silently against the trunk of a sun-warmed spruce, shaking
his head at the gravity of the news. But at Christina's anger he stood, stamping the
ferrule of his lion-headed cane in the dirt.
"Forgive me, my dear, but I fear that your concern has made you less than fair."
"What?"
"I concede that your life with the young man has been one that has paralleled
Shangri-la itself. But you can hardly blame Ryan for the misfortunes that have
struck in the past couple of weeks."
"Oh, yeah? Wrong, Doc. I can blame him. Just watch me."
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
"These stickies did not come to New Mexico to hunt down Ryan, did they?"
She looked down at the ground, moving the surgi-cal boot she wore against a tiny
yellow-and-white flower. "Things were good with Jak and me until he came
again."
"And they'll be good again," Mildred said. "Course they will."
"Ryan Cawdor," Christina grated. "Jak thinks he's like something between an
angel of death and a sub-stitute father. The best thing the Good Lord made since
he invented the chambered revolver."
Dean was shuffling his feet anxiously. "Dad does good," he said.
"Sure. Count the men he's chilled good. Women he's widowed good. Little ones
that he's orphaned real good. Houses burned good."
Doc pointed the sword stick at Christina. "Allow me to remind you of the
somewhat selective nature of your little speech, Miss Ballinger. Or, Mrs. Lauren.
Cast your mind back to your life with your sweet-natured father and your fine
brothers."
"All right, Doc, all right." Her face showed her re-membered pain.
"Ryan chilled them good. Liberated you good. Risked his life good. And in the
time I've had the honor of knowing him, he has done a very great deal that is
undeniably good."
Christina hauled herself to her feet and nodded, lifting her eyes to meet Doc's.
"You're right and I'm not. But I'm pregnant and you're not. And my hus-band
might come back dead."
"We'll all go together, my dear," Doc said, his voice now gentle.
"Sure. Yeah, sure."
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
EVEN AFTER THE BETTER PART of a day with them, Ryan still found it hard
to reconcile himself to the idea of there being intelligent, capable, organized
stickies.
The sun was setting, and they'd covered about fif-teen miles over tough terrain.
And Charlie had con-stantly been taking precautions to ensure that any pursuit
would be slow and laborious. Again and again they would detour to walk over
exposed granite, avoiding the softer paths.
Each time they came to water they would deliber-ately try to pick their way along
the center, sometimes altering the direction they were moving in to ensure that
anyone trailing them would waste a lot of time.
Once Ryan pretended to stumble, hoping to leave some clue for Jak and J.B.
Charlie took him by the arm, gripping him by the elbow, suckered fingers digging
in with frightening power.
"Try that again, Cawdor, and I'll use my hands on the woman's breasts. Think
she'd look as good with-out any nipples?"
Ryan didn't try it again.
Chapter Eighteen
They passed a large open space, with light gravel partly covered with
thimbleberry bushes and sagebrush. Be-yond it the trail meandered past a row of
burned-out buildings so totally destroyed that it was impossible to even guess at [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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