Crimson Waters by James Axler Read Free Book Online Page B

either.”
    “I did,” Ryan said. “Haven’t we done plenty of things to stay alive we weren’t thrilled about?”
    “Ah, yes,” Doc said. “Steeping in shame to stay alive. I remember...the sows....”
    “Stay with us, Doc,” J.B. said. “The sows’re long since gone for bacon.”
    For a moment Doc gazed around, wild-eyed, as if seeing hell-knew-what bizarre landscape peopled with alien monstrosities, instead of a surprisingly clean but still seedy gaudy house and the faces of his friends. Then the mad light left his eyes. He seemed to deflate.
    “Ah, yes,” he said again, with a sad smile. “Long gone.”
    “Should we be discussing stuff like this...you know?” Mildred asked, waggling her eyebrows ridiculously and looking sidelong at their guest.
    “Don’t mind him, Millie,” J.B. said. “He’s too sunk in rum to know what we’re talking about. Or care.”
    Lumpy had, indeed, tossed off his second shot like water and now slumped in his chair like a half-empty sack of oatmeal. His own eyes stared without focus at the tabletop. He drooled over a hanging lower lip.
    The doors burst open and four Monitors swaggered in. They were dressed and armed like the crew that had braced Ryan and his friends on the docks, and their heads were likewise shaved. Which was a little more curious this time out, since one of them was a woman, who wasn’t unattractive in a blade-faced kind of way. She seemed to glare around a lot more truculently than her three companions, as if suspecting she had more to prove than they did.
    Heads didn’t turn when the Syndicate sec team blew in. Conversation didn’t falter, but it dropped an octave. And heads huddled down a little closer in collars, where applicable, or chins closer to collarbones where not. Ryan realized he wasn’t the only man in the gaudy who was suddenly keenly aware the four were the only ones in the house with easily accessible weapons.
    He smiled, ever so slightly. Not that a measly twist of wire with a dab of goo sealing it would stop him doing the necessary thing.
    But then, he wasn’t in any rush to throw his life away, either. He looked away from the four as they ceremoniously paid for their drinks at the bar, and back to his comrades.
    “We all know finding an easy living isn’t easy,” he said. “Finding a hard one isn’t always easy, either. We’ll do what we need to to survive, bottom line.”
    “We always do, Ryan,” J.B. said.
    “We don’t have to make a decision tonight,” Ryan said. “But in the morning, we’ve got to move. So we need to know by then which way we’re moving.”
    Krysty patted his hand. “Something’ll come up, lover,” she said. “It always does. One way or another.”
    “Krysty’s right, as usual,” Mildred said. “But it’s the ‘or other’ part that worries me.”
    J.B. grinned at her. “What, Millie? You looking to live forever?”
    “Made a good start on it already, John,” she said. “Even if not quite on a par with Doc.”
    Without waiting for permission, Lumpy waved at the good-looking server for yet another rum. Ryan took it in; his one eye seldom missed much. He didn’t object. He might have more questions to ask before they were done with Lumpy.
    If the stupe doesn’t drink himself under before I think of them, he thought.
    Lumpy glared at the Monitors. “Bastards,” he muttered. “All they do is keep a man down.”
    The Monitors drank, neither lingering nor rushing, then they sauntered out of the gaudy without a word to anyone. As soon as the door slammed shut, the conversation picked up. The piano player, who’d been engaged in low tinkling, struck up a brisk tune.
    “Fuckin’ Monitors!” Lumpy exclaimed. “Drink! Sweetcheeks, get them sweet cheeks over here! I need a drink.”
    Behind the bar, McDugus Fish’s lugubrious face fisted in annoyance. In the corner Ryan saw a gleam of eyeball as his daughter looked to see what the fuss was. She never missed a stroke, though. A real