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James Patterson Alex Cross 05 Pop Goes the Weasel
James Alan Gardner [League Of Peoples 03] Vigilant
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James Axler Outlander 02 Destiny Run
LearningExpress 501 Grammar & Writing Questions, 1st Ed 180p(1)
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It was neatly lettered, signed in scarlet with the stark initials: "CoR."
"Friendly sons of bitches," Ryan muttered. "Religious crazies can be serious
trouble."
"Think we should just go back, lover?"
He shook his head hesitantly. "Mebbe not yet."
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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time
EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON they reached another cross trail. This one was wider
than any of the others and showed distinct ruts from wheeled vehicles and the
deep patterns of many horses. Jak squatted on his haunches and peered at them.
"Not fresh. Not very. Days not hours."
J.B. leaned over the teenager's shoulders, nodding his agreement. "Yeah. Rain
tells us that. But the track's heavy used. Look at the boot marks, as well."
"No gas buggies at all," Ryan offered. "Only flatbed carts. Iron-rimmed
wheels.
Some ponies unshod. Wonder if they could be the Apaches?"
"Possible." The Armorer looked around them, his head slightly on one side, as
though he were listening for some divine message. "Might as well follow them."
"Why not?" Ryan straightened and eased the blaster in its holster. "Just so
long as we don't run into the camp of these Children of the Rock."
"THINK SOMEONE'S COMING." Krysty had stopped at a point where the trail wound
into a series of hogback ridges, with the trees pressing in thickly on both
sides.
"Sure?" Ryan already had the SIG-Sauer drawn and cocked in his right hand.
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She nodded, her sentient red hair bunched more tightly at her nape. "Sure,
lover."
"Norms or muties?"
Krysty considered the question for a moment, her green eyes squeezed shut.
"Norms."
"Many?"
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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time
A shake of the head. "Don't think so. Few. But you know that I can never be& "
"Sure," he said, finishing the sentence for her. "Yeah, I know."
Jak cleared his throat. "Can hear something."
"What?"
Ryan knew the albino's hearing was sometimes uncannily acute.
"Bridle. Hooves."
"Right. J.B., you, Mildred, Dean and Doc cover that side of the path. We'll
take this side. Keep under cover. Don't make a move unless I do. Best nobody
knows we're in the area." As the others began to move, he called out in a
penetrating whisper, "But if we need to stop them, then we do it with extreme
prejudice." The old killing phrase from the long-gone, distant days before
skydark came easily to him.
He crouched in the stygian blackness between two slender sycamores that had
somehow seeded themselves among the ranging conifers, his blaster ready, his
nerves strung taut.
From where he hid, Ryan could see some distance along the trail toward the
north.
The sound of a horse coming in his direction was louder, and he heard the soft
snuffling of the animal's breath, the noise of the harness and tuneless
singing.
It was an old song that Ryan recalled one of the navs on War Wag One used to
sing, claiming it was an ancient folk ballad from a hundred years before
skydark and that it had at least a hundred verses. And he'd known all of them.
The quavering voice, coming toward them along the trail, could be either an
old man or an old woman.
It didn't sound like anything to fear.
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Finally the singer appeared, sitting slumped on a sway-backed mule, barefoot,
dressed in a collection of ill-fitting rags. It was an elderly man, with
shoulder-
length, greasy gray hair, tangled and knotted. He held the bridle loosely in
his clawed right hand, seeming content to allow the animal to pick its own way
at its own speed.
The current verse of the interminable song detailed a biologically impossible
encounter between the heroine, Little Betty, and a well-endowed rattlesnake,
in a cave filled with long-lost Spanish conquistadors' gold.
Ryan eased his finger off the trigger of the SIG-Sauer. The old man was alone,
apparently indifferent to the rest of the world, obviously unaware of any
threat to his safety.
It might be worth stopping him and interrogating him about the local region,
and particularly about the mysterious Children of the Rock.
Now the mule was almost level with where Ryan was hiding, and the rider still
hadn't even looked up, still droning on in a quavering voice.
Ryan made the snap decision to allow him to pass by unchallenged.
When the song stopped, the old man tugged on the reins, bringing the animal to
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a four-square halt. His head turned slowly toward the fringe of trees, seeming
to drill directly at where Ryan was standing stock-still, barely breathing.
He risked a glance around the flank of the tree, seeing to his amazement that
the man was stone-blind, his staring eyes both veiled with milky white
cataracts.
"Who's there?"
The voice was stronger, and Ryan noticed for the first time that the old man
had a blaster tucked into a broad leather belt, a battered Ruger that looked
like it had been used for everything from hammering fence posts to stirring
mutton stew.
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"I can hear you out yonder. If it be one of you brats, then I'll see skin
tanned off your asses."
From the other side of the track, Ryan glimpsed J.B.'s face, framed in the low
branches of a pine. The Armorer was holding his Uzi at the ready, eyes turned
questioningly in Ryan's direction, as if he were waiting for a sign to open
fire.
For a dozen slow beats of the heart, nothing happened.
The pale, blind eyes continued to stare toward where Ryan lurked between the
pair of sycamores. The mule snickered and lowered its head to graze a clump of
long, rank grasses.
"I can hear you. Smell you. By the living God that made me and plucked out my
glims, I can taste you! If Brother Joshua hears of this& then on your own gob-
smitten heads be it. Don't say you wasn't warned!"
There was a note of genuine rage in the trembling voice. Ryan realized that
the blind man wouldn't be a person to cross.
"Well enough." His bare heels kicked into the hollow flanks of the patient
mule.
"Walk on, you spawn of Shaitan. Miles to go before we sleep."
The animal began to amble down the trail, the venomous old man swaying from
side to side on its back. Just before they vanished from Ryan's sight, the
song started up again, this time with the verse about Little Betty and her
meeting with the over-endowed band of traveling monks.
Ryan watched until the voice had faded away in the distance before stepping
out from cover.
"Old man was riding the mule stone-blind," Krysty said wonderingly.
"Mean-looking bastard." Jak spit in the dirt and made the finger gesture to
fend off evil.
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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
