Neutron Solstice

Chapter Eleven

Ryan had truly intended to let the hulking Cajun woman go free.

If he'd felt that she'd been any threat to them, then he'd have given Finn the nod to put a bullet through the base of her skull. He'd have given the word and not had a moment's unease about it. That was the way it was in the Deathlands.

But she wasn't a threat. She'd brought them through the swamps, into the pale glow of dawn, right to the edge of what had to be the suburb of West Lowellton. It didn't matter to them that she would tell Ti Jean and the other Cajuns. It was obvious that they preferred the dark, mazy wilderness to the open spaces of the town. Ryan didn't figure there was any real danger of their being pursued.

So why not let her go?

Finnegan looked at him, beneath the grove of stunted elms dripping with the leprous moss, where they waited. The woman's left hand was scratching where an early rising mosquito had raised a weal above her swollen, freckled breast. Her right hand was still beneath the torn blanket, where it had been every single time that Ryan had looked at her. That bothered him a little. Even when she'd stumbled on a couple of occasions, she'd used only her left hand to steady herself.

"How 'bout?.." asked Finn, gesturing to the Cajun. His dark blue sweater and pants were splattered with mud, some patches drying, some still dark and wet. The steel toe caps of his combat boots were slick with the gray-brown slime.

"Let her go," said Ryan. "She's told us 'bout all there is. We best watch out for this Baron Tourment and the snow wolf. Tell her she can go free."

Standing beside her, virtually in her shadow, Finnegan beckoned to her. Doc grinned at the sight of the tubby little man and the looming woman.

"She stands like a sow that had overhelmed all her litter but one,'" he said. "Henry Four." Cackled with laughter at the looks of total bewilderment on the faces of all his colleagues. "But let it pass, my brothers. Oh, let it pass."

"Hurry it up, Finn," called Ryan, staring at the oddly matched couple.

"Fucking all right," snapped Finnegan, looking away from the Cajun for a moment.

Ryan's good eye opened wide.

Just as Finnegan half turned away from the woman, gesturing with his arm toward the dark desolation of the swamp behind them, she finally began to take her right hand from under the blanket.

"Fireblast," breathed Ryan, but before the word hung in the air, the drama was played.

The G-12 coughed, the triple burst sounding like a single shot.

Finn jumped, the Model 92 Beretta pistol jerking into his fist. J.B. raised his Mini-Uzi, searching for the threat. Doc was fumbling for his Le Mat. Lori squeaked her dismay, and Krysty Wroth had drawn her H&K P7A-13 9 mm handblaster.

The Cajun woman lurched sideways as all three bullets stitched into her, all hitting within a hand's span, under the ribs on the left side of her body. Despite her great size and strength, the three bullets sent her staggering. The blanket fell away, revealing her nakedness. Blood came from the bunched wounds, dark and thick, dappling her thighs as she tottered, fighting for balance.

"Bastard," she said, in a normal, quiet conversational voice, sinking to her knees, then sliding in the dirt on her face, both hands clutched beneath her, holding the triple wound.

"Ryan! Ryan?"

"What is it, Finn?"

"You said she could go. You fucking said..." His voice was rising.

"Look in her hand, Finn."

She still lived Ч if the residual nervous twitching and jerking of the body could be called living. Finn kicked her over with the toe of his boot, staring down as the corpse rolled on its back, breasts sagging, blood and urine trickling across the thighs and belly.

"In her right hand," said Ryan.

The fingers were clenched, and the man bent down and pried them open. Then he stood up and shook his head at what he saw, at what they all saw.

It was an open cutthroat razor, honed down over countless years until it was only a sliver of steel, hardly as wide as a man's fingernail. The handle was of dull white bone, broken and mended with twine.

"Fucking double-poor crazy bitch," said Finnegan, spitting into the staring eyes of the dead Cajun woman. Lori took a few steps away from the body, looking toward the nearest buildings, all shrouded with thick vegetation. "We go in there? Food? Shelter?"

"Shelter, yeah," replied Ryan. "After a hundred years or so, I'm not so damned sure 'bout any food. Let's go see. And let's take care."

The four men and two women moved out of the deep, lush greenery, picking their way along what had once been the farthest outpost of West Lowellton. They passed a partly completed suburban development of medium-priced housing that once pushed the sprawling frontiers of Lafayette deeper into swampland. Nearly one hundred years ago, in the remote past.

"Moudongue?"

"Oui, Baron. Moudongue."

"They are becoming of interest to me, my dear and loyal compatriot, Mephisto."

"We'll take them."

"Such confidence. What of the teams of sec men out in the green?"

"Pecker said they'd gone."

"Why were they not kept for me?"

"They were..." The sec boss hesitated, wiping a hand down the leg of his white pants. He noticed that his fingers left a sweaty trail.

"Yes?" asked the baron, his voice as gentle as a maiden's whisper. Mephisto found himself sweating a little more than before.

"They were taking a pig."

"A ritual?"

"Yes."

The exoskeleton creaked and groaned as Baron Tourment pulled himself upright, towering over the sec boss as he strode around the motel room, seeing himself reflected again and again as he passed the mirror over the oyster-pink washbasin.

"Had I given my permission?"

Mephisto had known the question was coming and had anticipated it from the moment one of the patrol teams in the swampwags had reported back to him.

"I had one in five blasted, Baron."

"Only one in five?"

"They are useful to us, so close to the part of West Lowellton where the boy runs."

The great leonine head nodded slowly, and Mephisto knew that he'd guessed right: he would live for another day.

"Truly spoken. One in five? Good."

"The outlanders took out one man."

"Who?"

"Be la Tour. The one with the beard forked as if lightning had struck it."

"Was he not the one who shot the black in the buggy a day back?"

"Yes."

"Revenge?"

Mephisto nodded. "I believe so. We can ask when we take them."

"And they will tell you, my dear Mephisto?"

"They will tell me," he replied, ignoring the irony in Baron Tourment's voice.

"Where are they now?"

That was the one question that the elegant sec boss had been dreading. His patrols had returned within the hour from their search, and he knew that the baron would have heard the rumbling engines as they ground into the ville. "One woman was missing from Moudongue."

The striding stopped, and the baron's eyes turned toward him. "Who?"

"Marie Laveaux."

"Who?"

Mephisto hissed through his teeth. "Marie. Jeanine was her younger sister, the one that you ordered to be..."

"I know. Watch your careless tongue, Mephisto. There are many who would welcome your fall. It was Marie? The large woman? I remember her." There was something that could have been a smile.

"She was..." Caution sealed his lips and made him reconsider his description of the Laveaux woman as a giantess. It would not sit well with the baron, whose head scraped the ceiling of the bridal suite at the Best Western Snowy Egret Motel.

"Was a fine strong woman. She took me and wept for more. Not like some of these fucking little tight-cunted bitches who scream and bleed, shrieking that I'm tearing them apart. No, she... she is dead, you said, Mephisto? The toll rises for these strangers."

"She was shot three times at close range. Sec-patrol leader said the slugs were strange."

Tourment sat down, the bed sinking under his weight. On the wall behind him was a painting that seemed to show a murky orange sunset and a pale blue sky streaked with fiery chem clouds.

"Strange? Stra-a-a-a-ange?.." He drew out the syllable until it almost snapped.

"Caseless small bore. High impact. Never seen anything like them."

"This was near where the snow wolf lives?"

"Yeah."

"Are they to be allied 'gainst us, Mephisto? Is this the root of the tree? The kernel of the fruit? Will the two blades be forged as one?" He lay back, and his voice became thin and singsong. "Shall the sky and earth wed? Will water marry fire? Will the wolf cleave to the panther?"

He was silent for a long moment, then sat up and pointed at his sec boss.

"Go get that fucking ice-suit dirty. Track 'em and take 'em. That's all. No more words, or I'll reach into your flicking chest and part the ribs and tear out your lungs."

Mephisto carefully closed the door of the suite and stood in the narrow corridor, his eyes squeezed shut, trying to control himself. He nearly wiped his hands on his pants again. Licking his dry lips, he ran his fingers through his tight, pomaded curls.

"Mephisto, my brave and cunning friend," he whispered to himself. "Best find these strangers and bring 'em here."

He thought he heard the baron stepping toward the door inside the room, and he scampered away, set on his lethal mission.