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not had such a thrilling adventure since I last rode Colossus at the mountain
of
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate magic."
J.B. was stooping over the body. "Not a stickie."
Mildred joined him. "Oh, God! You don't think he's a friend of Ryan, escaping
from up there?"
The voice came from the fringe of trees. "Don't worry, Mildred, His name's
Joe-
Bob, and he's no friend of mine. No loss to anyone."
Chapter Thirty-Seven
"Clean in and out. Neat hole in and not much bigger going out."
"Musket ball," Ryan said, kneeling beside the black woman. "Low velocity.
Tends not to fragment or dis-tort. What did it hit?"
Abe was flat on his back at a turn in the winding path. His face was deathly
gray in the watery morn-ing sunlight, and he kept trying to reach down and
hold himself.
"Didn't hit my balls, Ryan. Tell you that for noth-ing."
"Shame. One thing you never use."
Mildred patted Abe on the shoulder. "Knew a patient once. Lawyer. Most evil,
corrupt and unpleasant man I ever saw. Found he had a growth on the colon.
When we operated and took it out we found it was benign. Not cancerous. We
told his wife they were just starting a messy divorce and she shook her head.
'Typical,' she said. 'You find the one part of the bastard that isn't
malignant and
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate you remove it.' Get it?"
Abe nodded. "Yeah. When I hear a doc making jokes I figure it's to cover the
bad
news up."
"No. Might have chipped the crest of the ilium that's your hipbone on the way
through. But I don't think it did. Some muscle damage to the transversus
abdominis. That'll heal quickly. Not like tendons." She hesitated.
"Here it comes." The wounded man sighed, biting his lip at a sudden spasm of
pain.
"No. Only question is what it might have done on the inside."
"Like what?"
"Shouldn't have harmed the central nervous sys-tem. Not that far to the side.
You got no trouble with moving arms or legs or anything, have you, Abe?"
"Don't know about anything, Doc."
"I'm Mildred. He's Doc." She gestured with her elbow toward Doc Tanner.
"Sorry, Doc. Both Doc and Doc."
She was pressing on his naked stomach, watching his face for a reaction, and
touching him gently around the dark hole that was now only leaking a small
amount of bright blood.
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"Not too painful?"
"Had worse."
"Near as I can guess, it might just have nicked the ascending colon. Part of
your guts, Abe. Don't worry too much about it. I think there'd be some
evidence if the
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate bullet had struck you there. Close to
your appen-dix."
"That bad?"
"Take out your appendix with a musket ball? Drastic method of surgery, I
suppose. Not likely to lead to any problems."
"No?"
"Apart from an extra belly button."
WITH SO MANY of them to help, it proved much easier to carry Abe along.
They made something that was a cross between a stretcher and a travois,
dragging the wounded man on the smoother sections of trail and taking turns to
carry him when the going became more difficult. By noon they'd reached a wider
trail, with the ruined remains of buildings that indicated the area had once
been some sort of park. There were rotting benches perched near what must have
been a spectac-ular scenic observation post.
The rain had been blown away, and it was a glori-ous morning. Above them they
could see the trail leading toward a notch between two of the peaks, a place
that
Christina said was called Bear Claw Ridge.
"Pa used to hunt over that way. Plenty of goats, years ago. Small kind of
township up there. All ru-ined. Snowed up most of the winter."
Now that the two parties were once again reunited, the disabled woman seemed
much happier. But she kept very close to Jak, and her whole body language
demonstrated the depths of her hostility toward Ryan.
As they traveled steadily along, Ryan and Krysty were able to fill in the
others on what had been hap-pening, learning themselves of the discovery of
the mutilated corpse in the river and of J.B. hearing the group of lepers on
their way toward the stickies' camp.
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
Harold and Dorina kept more to themselves, as though they were shy at suddenly
finding themselves among this group of combatwise travelers.
They kept turning and looking behind them, more often than the others. Harold
realized that Ryan had noticed, and grinned sheepishly. "Guess it's like
hav-ing a fly on your neck you can never swat. Worried about the stickies."
"We all are."
Very soon after dawn, when they had just gotten back together, the sky to the
south had been smeared with a huge black, oil cloud, rising like a finger of
doom from the ravine where the old Anasazi settle-ment was hidden. Gradually
the freshening breeze tore at its tip, shredding it, dissolving the dark
pillar of thick smoke, spreading it far away, toward the distant east.
It was after noon before they spotted any sign of pursuit.
Krysty had been standing at another of the places where a dented metal marker
indicated there had been a scenic observation post, this time with an added
in-formative, period flavor.
Doc read it out in his orotund voice. "It is a histor-ical marker, placed here
by the good auspices of the New Mexico Historical Society, financed by a gift
from Jim and Carla Wright of Albuquerque on July 4, 1990. It recalls the site
where Eider
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Marcus Howell of the eighteenth Episcopalian conference saw a vi-sion of the
golden city of Halcia. As a consequence, an attempt was made immediately to
build the city but this sadly failed after only six weeks due to lack of
water." He turned and grinned at his listeners. "Upon my soul, dearly beloved
brothers and sisters, but I
love historical markers."
Amid the laughter, Krysty moved forward and placed one dark blue Western boot
on the metal marker. She shaded her green eyes with a hand and posed as if
staring into a biblical wilderness. "I see no city of Halcia."
"What do you see?" Ryan asked.
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
She smiled at him, looking back down into the valley . The smile disappeared.
"I
see a bunch of bastard stickies coming after us, Strawhead Charlie leading
them."
They all crowded to the edge of the drop, staring back among the tall stands
of timber where Krysty's finger pointed.
Jak's sight was never that good in bright sunlight and he blinked, turning to
his wife. "You see?"
"Sure. I make about fifteen."
J.B. nodded his agreement. "Same here. They're way back."
"And we're way slow," she snapped, face crum-pling, near tears. "Don't forget
you got a sick, gut-shot man to carry, as well as a crip like me to slow
everyone down."
J.B. stared at her, the sun reflecting off his glasses, making it hard to see
the expiession in his eyes. "For an intelligent woman, Christina, you
sometimes talk a load of crap. From where they are now it'll take close on two
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