Doom Helix by James Axler Read Free Book Online Page A

fire. Weren’t trying to wound me, either. They aimed at my head.
    “In the end I had to travel so far from the gaudy to find homesteads where they didn’t know me that it wasn’t worth the time and trouble of hauling the little sluts back. Got to feed and water them the whole way, you know, and worst of all, you got to listen to them talk. Nearly broke my heart to give up that job, but things always seem to change, and for the worse, don’t they?”
    Ryan turned the coyote carcass to give himself a better attack angle on the surviving hip joint. He was irked by the bastard’s buoyant tone, like he thought the companions were going to swallow his line of crap, adopt him as one of their own and nursemaid him from here on.
    Sure, in order to get along they had taken up the causes of other helpless victims in the past, and put their lives on the line in the process, but the people they’d helped weren’t accomplices to—and profiteers in—slavery and mass murder. The people they’d helped had done nothing to deserve the injuries they’d received, or the mortal danger they’d been put in. Ryan felt no moral responsibility for the care and safety of the likes of Mike the Drunkard, but he was thankful they hadn’t chilled him the last time they’d met. If they had, chanceswere they would have learned about the she-hes too late to do anything about it.
    Ryan stopped listening to the braggart’s jabber and concentrated on splitting bone.
     
    T WENTY MINUTES LATER the last, campfire-ready coyote haunch hit the meat pile. As water was now in too short a supply to use on hygiene, Ryan scrubbed his fingers and arms semiclean with handfuls of fine dirt, while J.B. and Jak tied the hindquarters in pairs, foot to foot. Each cleaned haunch weighed about ten pounds. Even though they hadn’t discussed it, there was never any doubt as to who would be carrying them. The companions were already toting forty-pound backpacks and weapons.
    “Get up,” Ryan told Big Mike. When he did, the one-eyed man stepped closer, drew his SIG and aimed it at his forehead. The distance to target was less than two feet.
    “Oh, Mama,” Big Mike moaned, looking down the barrel.
    “Don’t move,” Ryan said. At his signal, J.B. and Jak started draping paired haunches over the man’s shoulders.
    “What is this!” Big Mike exclaimed, staggering to keep his balance under the full eighty pounds of deadweight. “You can see I’m a goddamn cripple!”
    “You sure as hell can’t shoot a blaster anymore, but your legs work just fine,” Ryan told him.
    “You’re taking advantage ’cause I can’t fight back anymore,” Big Mike said. “How low-down, sorry-ass is that?”
    “As I recall,” Doc said, “fighting back never was your strong suit.”
    “More like, roll up in a ball and beg for mercy,” Krysty added.
    “If there’s more trouble ahead,” Ryan said, “that extra weight will slow us down. Mebbe slow us down enough to get everybody chilled. You want to follow along, you want to drink a share of our water, you want to eat later on, you’ll carry the load.”
    “This ain’t right,” the big man said, but nobody was listening and he didn’t try to shrug off the garlands of meat.
    After the companions had shouldered their packs, Ryan took the lead, setting off for the crater’s south rim.
    “Now, wait just a nukin’ minute!” Big Mike shouted at their backs. “You’re going in the wrong direction!”
    “Nobody’s holding a blaster to your head,” Ryan said. “You’re free to break your own trail anytime you feel the urge.”
    “But not lugging our grub, of course,” J.B. added.
    “Are you out of your rad-blasted minds?” Big Mike said. “I just came from that way. Nothing over there but Burning Man and the she-hes. You wanna keep on livin’ you’ll head north to Meridianville.” He turned and gestured. “It’s thataway.”
    Even as he pointed, off in the distance, somewhere out on the plain above the