Wretched Earth by James Axler Read Free Book Online

caravaneers with one flinty look,
Loomis swaggered over to the companions’ table. He was hitching at his tight
black leather pants as he came. Mildred didn’t even want to think about what that might imply about what had just been going on
in the boss’s private room above.
    Loomis stopped a few feet away and thrust his unshaved face at
Ryan like a challenging canine. “Boss says he wants to talk to you, Cawdor,” he
said. He jabbed a thumb back over his shoulder. “Now.”
    Behind the round lenses of his glasses, J.B. narrowed his eyes
at the man. For him that was about as good as cussing Loomis out loudly. Mildred
squeezed his leg under the table.
    “Be back,” Ryan said laconically, rising. He turned and looked
at Loomis. The sec man stood glaring up at him for half a minute. Then,
realizing he wasn’t going to win any staring contests with the taller man, he
turned and led the way back to their boss’s table.
    * * *
    “W HAT THE HELL are you playing at,
Cawdor?” Plunkett bellowed as Ryan came up. “You ain’t gettin’ paid to sit on
your asses listenin’ to fairy stories. Get out there and guard my shit, before
these convoy scum steal me blind!”
    Ryan took his time answering. He and his friends had taken
Plunkett’s jack. The one-eyed man felt bound to see a job through once accepted,
if it was at all possible without throwing away the lives of his companions. He
was tempted to give their current boss a second mouth to bellow through,
between, say, chins two and three. But it was bad form, and he didn’t want to do
it unless he really had no choice.
    Anyway, it wasn’t as though the boss’s abusive bluster was
news.
    Besides, there was an off chance the fat man would pay the
balance owed at the end of the trail, just as he said he would. That in itself
was worth keeping him alive. For now.
    “Right,” Ryan said. “We’ll do that.” He glanced at Loomis.
“Startin’ to smell bad in here, anyway.”
    He turned back to his party. He doubted the sec man had the
stones to jump him. And if he did, Ryan was certain he’d read it in the faces of
his friends, all of which were turned to watch him.
    He got back to the table without incident, noticing the
caravaneers drinking in the bar seemed to let their eyes slide away from him
like oil drops on a hot pan. The cultists, too.
    Fine, he thought. It saved complications if they were afraid of
him. Omar had a strict rule against anyone who wasn’t Omar chilling anybody
inside the adobe outer walls of the compound.
    “Let’s go,” Ryan said. “Boss says it’s time to get back to
work.”
    “Ryan—” Mildred started.
    “Yeah, okay,” he said. “He can stay with us.”
    “Thank you!” Reno said. “You won’t regret this.”
    “Don’t get ideas,” Ryan said. “We’ll probably chill you in the
morning.”
    * * *
    R YAN CAME AWAKE all at once, as he
usually did.
    He was instantly aware of a presence leaning over him in the
cold darkness of the cinder-block hut. Something was tickling his upturned
face.
    It was Krysty’s hair.
    “There’s something going on,” she said as soon as his eye
opened.
    Ryan sat up. He slept in the shed where Plunkett’s sec wag was
parked. Krysty would’ve slept alongside, but had her turn on watch. J.B. and
Mildred had the shed with the boss’s personal wag. The RV was parked outside the
structures. Jak and Doc slept in it.
    “What?” Ryan asked as he picked up his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226
handblaster and his eighteen-inch panga from where he had them laid close to
hand. He tucked them away in appropriate places and started to pull his boots
on. Apart from them he slept in his clothes.
    “Guards have been reporting movement out in the night,” Krysty
said. The land lay clear for anywhere from fifty to a hundred yards all around
the perimeter wall. Omar’s crew kept it swept of brush or anything else
unwelcome visitors could hide behind. Or use as cover from blasterfire. “They
think they’re