"We don't have the room," Ryan said.
"We can make room for the poor folk, lover," Krysty said behind him.
"It would only be the merest Christian charity, Mr. Cawdor," Doc added.
Ryan turned in the swivel seat. "You say 'Christian,' Doc? That's not a word you hear an awful lot around Deathlands these days."
"Indubitably so, my dear Ryan. But that is a sorry comment on how we live. Oh tempora and oh mores, indeed. If I may be forgiven the classical tag."
Ryan ignored the ramblings. Looking back at the woman who seemed much the stronger of the pair, he said, "We can't take you." He didn't apologize. Like Trader used to say, it was a sign of weakness.
"Please, mister. You can fuck me. Or fuck Jem here. Any of you can. Make you feel..."
"You want food and clothes?" Ryan said. "We don't have the time."
"No, mister. Just take us with you. Take us for a day, that's all." She was babbling, the words stumbling and jostling each other in her terror. If she was acting, she was very good.
"I told you. Drive on, Jak. So long, lady."
The boy engaged one of the ten forward gears, and the truck began to creep ahead. The woman looked hopelessly at Ryan. He began to wind the window up once more.
"You going't'the Susqua? We can save you."
Ryan didn't answer her, though Jak glanced sideways at him.
"Be a trap there. They get strangers at the toll crossing."
"Hold it," Ryan said to Jak. "Best hear this."
"We can save you. Me an' Jem. Take us on and we can save you all from the chillers." Ryan reached back and triggered the lever that opened the side door of the wag.
Chapter Sixteen
Her name was Chrissy. Jem was her man. They'd been traveling west because they'd heard from some traders that there was a good life in the clean lands toward California. Then the muties had come and ended the dream.
Jem rested, falling instantly asleep under a gray blanket in a rear bunk. She told Ryan all about the squatters who controlled the crossing of the Susquehanna, how they tricked travelers and slaughtered them.
"They're cannies, mister," she whispered.
"What're cannies?" Lori asked.
"Eat meat," J.B. replied.
"We eat meat," she replied.
The Armorer shook his head. "Not human meat, we don't. But cannies do."
"By the three Kennedys!" the girl exclaimed. "Double-nasty!"
"Yeah," J.B. agreed.
"How do they work the trap?"
Chrissy looked at Ryan warily. "I tell you an' you put us off?"
"No. Tell me. The truth." There it was again, like a scab that couldn't be picked. Something about the ambush didn't sit right with him. But what was it?
"They got a lotta blasters. And the road's blocked so you gotta stop. No way around. An' they talk sweet and tell you to get down. Seem okay, but it ain't. That's how they does it."
"When do they hit you?"
"Some kinda word they got. Like one'll say casual that it's bastard cold. That might be the word. You gotta watch 'em. Only way is to step down and talk a whiles. Put 'em off guard. Then you can hit 'em."
J.B. leaned forward. "What if they hit you first?"
The woman seemed caught off-balance. "They... they won't. Not the way they do the chilling. Always same way."
"How far's the river?" Ryan asked.
"Coupla miles."
"We'll be ready."
"Ryan," Jak warned.
"I see 'em."
The road came winding down the side of a bluff. The original highway had vanished a couple of miles behind them, slipping away and leaving a jagged edge of concrete and tarmac. Jak had carefully steered the big wag down to the left, where deep ruts showed how other drivers had taken the same course. There'd been a shower of rain, earlier, and it had laid the dust.
Everyone took up their positions inside, blasters ready. They'd all been in on the firefight planning, all finally agreeing that Chrissy should lead them out and then try to let them know when it was best to make their play against the would-be chillers.
The woman and Jem, now recovered, waited immediately behind Jak and Ryan. They'd been offered fresh clothes, but both of them had insisted they'd wait until after the ambush.
"There's around twenty," Jak said, "and I can see a spiked pole 'cross the track. Just this side of the bridge."
At this point, just beyond the southern suburbs of what had once been Harrisburg, the Susquehanna was about a third of a mile wide, and looked like a glittering silver cobra winding through the gray-green land.
Ryan felt the familiar buildup of tension. When he'd been a very young and callow boy, he'd told a stone-faced shootist that he wished he didn't get nervous. The man had looked at him for a moment without speaking, then he said, "You feel that way, means you got nerves. Means you care 'bout getting chilled. Time comes you don't feel that no more is the time you start to die. Might take days or weeks. But you're deader'n a coonskin coat."
Ryan Cawdor had never forgotten those words. Now his stomach was beginning to knot with the anticipation of shooting. Adrenaline was flowing fast, his mouth was dry, and the palms of his hands were slick with sweat. He wiped them on his pant legs.
If the two survivors of the massacre were telling the truth, the ground was going to get larded with several corpses in the next quarter hour.
"Take it slow and steady and pull her up when they tell you," Ryan said.
Jak nodded, concentrating on steering the heavy wag through the bumps and wheel tracks that came together near the bridge.
"What they got?" J.B. asked from the back of the vehicle.
"Looks like a bunch of M-16s. Smith & Wesson handguns in belts. Can't see any gren-launchers or heavy blasters," Ryan told him.
"Best set your G-12 on continuous. Going't'be sharp down there," the Armorer advised.
Ryan nodded. If the girl was telling the truth, then they should have a chance to start shooting and take the squatters by surprise. But if she was lying and they were being set up...
They were about a quarter mile off, Jak keeping the wag moving steadily in low gear. Jem was right behind him. Ryan thought he caught the faint sound of metal on metal, and he swung around and saw both Jem and Chrissy fiddling with their leather belts. Both of them grinned as he turned, keeping their fingers hooked inside, out of sight.
"Nice wag, this," the man said, speaking quickly. "Volvo-Benz, ain't it?"
"Yeah," Jak said. "What was your truck... before the muties got at it?"
Ryan noticed a slight hesitation on Jem's part, but he was concentrating on the bridge and the men ahead of them, who stood in a loose half ring, waving them to a halt. As he listened, Ryan was already reaching for the main door control lever.
"It was an old Nissan. Kind of beat-up, but it ran well."
"Fucking right, Jem," the woman agreed, leaning against the back of Ryan's chair. She was so close to him that her breath stirred the long hairs at his nape. "Jem kept that better'n he kept me. Painted and polished it everyday."
That was it!
The wag was easing to a stop, everyone ready to move to the exit to jump down. Ryan's hand was on the door lever.
Without even looking around, he jabbed back and up with his left elbow, feeling it crack home on the side of Chrissy's jaw. A stab of pain shot up his arm, but he ignored it. Dropping the Heckler & Koch from his lap, he drew the panga with his right hand. He turned in a fluid movement and sliced at Jem's exposed throat.
"Trap!" Ryan yelled. "Chill 'em all, outside!"
He was facing the back of the dimly lit sec wag and saw the expressions of shock and horror on his companions' faces.
Jem was on the metal-ribbed floor, his left hand grabbing at the screaming lips of a gaping wound that opened up his neck. The carotid artery had been severed by the keen edge of the panga, and blood was flooding out in great pumping jets. His mouth was open, and he was trying to cry out.