No Man's Land by James Axler Read Free Book Online

cool sod with his heels.
    Mildred stepped out of the night. She carried two backpacks, giving her a silhouette like some kind of giant awful one-off mutie. She was looking very pleased with herself and working the bolt on a funny-looking longblaster with a short, wide barrel.
    “You know,” she said, “I could get used to this DeLisle of Ricky’s.”
    “Weren’t you used to it enough to shoot that other bastard sec man before he chilled Jak?” Ryan asked.
    Looking sheepish, Mildred handed the carbine with its built-in silencer to its rightful owner, Ricky Morales, who was dancing as if he had to take a pee with the effort of holding in his desire to snatch his beloved weapon away from her.
    “Sorry, Ryan,” she said. “I’m a handgun girl. I sort of forgot about working the bolt in the heat of the moment.”
    “Don’t you mean to say, ‘Thank you for shooting the bad man, Mildred?” Krysty asked sweetly. She likewise had two backpacks.
    Ryan exhaled between pursed lips. “Yeah,” he said. “Reckon I do. Thanks for shooting the bad man, Mildred. Thanks for rescuing our triple-stupe asses, both of you.”
    “It would appear the pair of you have released yourselves on your own recognizance?” Doc asked.
    “I’m the only other one here got the slightest clue what you’re talking about, you old coot,” Mildred said. “But, yeah. That happened.”
    Krysty knelt, carefully depositing the pack she held in her right hand in front of Ryan. He saw that it was his own, with his Steyr Scout strapped to the back of it.
    “You managed to liberate our weapons and gear, too?”
    Krysty grinned. “And managed to drag them along. They thought it was an ace idea to stash them in the same tent where they stashed us. I guess they thought of us as just more sundry valuables, lover.”
    “Seems like they also thought of us as the gentler sex,” Mildred said, gratefully unburdening herself of the weight of J.B.’s pack with Uzi and M-4000 shotgun strapped to it. “Wrong.”
    “We should probably get out of here as fast as we can,” Krysty said.
    Ryan searched the dead sergeant for anything useful and came up dry. “Don’t want to stay too long,” he said. “But seeing as how they stuck us out here away from the rest of the camp, probably to keep us from being a bad influence on the other grunts, we ought have a little breathing space. Especially seeing as Mildred used that whisper-quiet longblaster and—”
    “No,” Mildred said, looking strained. “You don’t understand. Ah, we took care of Buddy before we left.”
    From the center of camp they heard a marrow-chilling scream. It went on and on, rising higher and higher until Ryan actually saw sweat bead on Krysty’s taut pale face in the firelight.
    The scream broke off.
    “That wasn’t pain,” J.B. observed, picking up his fedora and dusting it off. “Leastwise, not the physical kind.”
    “It was the cry of a man who just found his son dead,” Krysty said grimly. “Buddy attacked me, but I made sure he wouldn’t be raping any more women.”
    “So which way do we go now, gentle friends?” Doc asked. “I perceive these environs are due to grow uncomfortably warm in the very near future.”
    “West,” Jak said with certainty.
    Everybody looked at the albino teen.
    “Horse corrals that way,” he said. He didn’t have to explain the smell had told him. “Figure, better we ride, they don’t.”
    “Two pronouns,” Mildred said in wonder, “in the same sentence? Jak, you’ve gone and used up your whole year’s allotment!”
    “I do admire the way he thinks, though,” J.B. said.
    “Yeah,” Ryan said, as lights flared up in the middle of camp and commotion began to grow. “So why are we still standing here jawing about it?”

Chapter Five
    As silent as a panther, Jak crept through the night.
    Since he approached with the wind in his front—to keep the horses from detecting him and showing nervousness—the equine smell was almost