Wretched Earth by James Axler Read Free Book Online Page A

human.”
    “Could be starting at shadows,” Ryan said, grunting as he
hauled on a boot. “Mebbe they heard your pal Reno’s scary stories.”
    The skinny bespectacled guy had pitched his bedroll next door
with J.B. and Mildred. If Mildred was going to take in strays, she was going to
have to take care of them herself. And J.B. would have to deal; Ryan grinned a
little at the thought.
    Krysty shook her head. She squatted next to him, ready to
spring into action at an eye blink’s notice.
    “Don’t think so, lover.”
    From outside they heard voices raised. She looked around.
    “Now what?” Ryan said.
    Krysty shook her head. She straightened, and they both walked
out the open bay door into the yard.
    The first thing they saw was eight or ten of the wag drivers.
They were roaring drunk, standing in a ring passing bottles around.
Fortuitously, they were on the far side of the compound from where Boss
Plunkett’s wags were parked. They seemed to be engaged in some kind of
roughhousing.
    From over by the gate they heard voices raised. “But Maw,” a
male voice, high and near cracking with adolescence, called in protest. “She was
just a little girl, wandering out there all alone in the dark. Leon said weren’t
no harm in letting her in.”
    The bucktoothed kid was a twig of about thirteen, all nose and
Adam’s apple. Omar’s wives had dropped uncountable girl children—at least, Ryan
hadn’t been able to count them all. But they seemed to have produced only two
boys—this one, Locke, and eight-year-old Paco.
    Leon was one of Omar’s guards. The Fat One looked at the big
man, who shrugged. “She acted scared,” he said.
    “Little girl?” asked J.B., emerging from the neighboring shed.
“What’s going on?”
    “Probably nothing,” Ryan said.
    “Nothing?” Reno echoed, fumbling to adjust his glasses on his
nose. “They didn’t let anyone in, did they?”
    “Appears that they did.”
    “They’re crazy! It could be one of them!”
    “Where is this little girl?” Mildred asked, hugging herself
tightly beneath her generous breasts and not looking thrilled at being rousted
out of a relatively warm bedroll. Her breath came in puffs of condensation.
    “Ryan,” Krysty said, “those men again—”
    The wag drivers were hooting in rising merriment. Only the fact
the Fat One was busy reading Locke the riot act prevented her from jumping on
them for making noise at this hour, Ryan reckoned. That was against Omar’s
rules, too.
    Then the circle opened a bit and Ryan saw that the wag drivers
were pushing around a girl with pigtails. For a moment he thought it was one of
the host’s daughters. But he quickly dismissed that; if they could stand up, the
wag drivers weren’t that drunk. He remembered how
Locke claimed he and Leon had admitted a lone little girl.
    Now the wag drivers were bouncing her around the way they had
Reno earlier in the evening.
    “What is it with these assholes?” Ryan asked.
    “Ryan,” Krysty said, “we’ve got to do something.”
    “No,” he amended, “no, we don’t. We’ve got our hands full now.
Let Omar’s people deal with it. What we have to do is get back to sleep.
Plunkett’s going to want us hustling tomorrow.”
    Jak was frowning. “Girl not look right.”
    “What?” Ryan said. He had headed back to bed. Now he turned to
look once more.
    The sky was clear overhead, but the pitiless stars didn’t cast
enough light to see by. Nor did the lantern light seeping through the gaudy
house windows. Still, it struck Ryan that the little girl did move strangely, as
if she were stiff, somehow. And was it a trick of the light, or did her face
appear gray?
    “What’s going on out here?” Omar himself, shaved-headed,
ferociously mustached, stood in the doorway to the barroom. He wore his
inevitable apron and held his sawed-off scattergun in his big blunt hands. He
wasn’t shy about raising his voice regardless of the hour.
    The wag drivers ignored him. One of them blew