James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero Page 9

"Good," he said, grinning. "Your turn."

  "Thanks."

  "How's the time?"

  Ryan checked the chron on his left wrist. "Just after four in the afternoon."

  "Think this place is safe, Ryan?"

  "Guess so. I remember Clinkerscales. Nice to find someone who doesn't spit in your face at the news that you once rode the war wags with Trader."

  "True enough. Heard him mention a baron in the region. Didn't catch the name."

  Ryan sniffed. "You hear the name of the baron, Krysty?" he called.

  "Sharpe, he said."

  "Find out more about him while we eat," J.B. stated. "Better go get dressed."

  The door opposite opened, and Mildred appeared, still only wearing a towel. "Hurry up, John. Come and get dry, then we can get ready for supper."

  "Two hours to wait, Mildred," Ryan called as the skinny figure of the Armorer scuttled back into his room.

  "I know it, Ryan. We'll just have to find something to do for a couple of hours." She giggled as she closed the door.

  Krysty was close to Ryan, laying her hand on his shoulder and gently squeezing the back of his neck. "We have to find something to do to pass the time as well, lover."

  "Like having a sleep?"

  Her hand dropped lower, down his back, stroking his firm, muscular buttocks. He automatically tensed them at her touch. "Like rocks in a sack, lover," she whispered.

  "I'll go take that bath and be back real quick."

  "No, lover. You and I'll go down and take a bath and be back real slow."

  THERE WAS A STOUT BOLT on the inside of the door and only a narrow, curtained slit window, insuring complete privacy for them. Ryan had the SIG-Sauer inside his towel, and Krysty was carrying her own Smith & Wesson five-shot blaster.

  Krysty leaned over and turned on the large brass tap, marked with the symbol H, smiling with pleasure as hot water gushed out.

  "Looking good, lover."

  There was a bar of red carbolic soap on a shelf near the window, and a pile of fluffy towels on a bench in the corner of the bathroom.

  Steam began to rise from the foaming water, and Krysty added some cold, stirring it with her hand.

  "Smell the chemicals," Ryan said. "Sort of sulfur like the hot springs we saw back." The words trailed away as his mind snatched at the memory of Trader and Abe standing together in the stinking mists.

  "Why didn't you tell Clinkerscales about Trader?"

  "Meaning he's dead?"

  "From what you said, it's likely, lover."

  Ryan bit his lip and sighed. "Guess so. I just figured that it's best to allow the legend to survive."

  "Probably right." She turned off both taps. "There. Looks like enough water. Don't want it swilling all over the floor. The door bolted?"

  He checked. "Yeah."

  "Then let's get clean."

  Krysty peeled off her clothes fastest, throwing them on a marble-topped table. "Come on," she teased.

  Ryan had unlaced the steel-tipped combat boots, tucking his socks neatly inside them. He unbuttoned the heavy-duty dark blue pants and pulled them off, adding the blue denim shirt, leaving him standing in his shorts.

  Krysty put her arms tight around him, her breasts pressed against his chest. She stood only three inches below his six feet two. Her fingers traced the complex network of scars that seamed Ryan's back.

  "Every one of these could tell its own story, couldn't it, lover?"

  He kissed her on the side of the neck, her fire-bright hair seeming to caress his face. "Guess they could," he said. "Not pretty stories."

  As her fingers roamed lower, they encountered his most recent wound, from the arrow. He instinctively winced at the touch, and Krysty moved her hand.

  "Sorry," she whispered. "Want me to try to kiss it better for you?"

  Now her right hand had insinuated itself between their bodies, easing inside his shorts, finding him hard and ready.

  "Might get to some kissing better a little later," he said hoarsely.

  "Right," she breathed. His hand was between her thighs, moving them apart, touching her very gently. "Best get in the bath before the water gets cold, lover."

  Ryan tugged off his shorts, taking care not to snag them on his erection, throwing them on top of his piled clothes. He stepped cautiously into the bath, finding the water was hot but not too hot. "Good," he said, sitting, then lying flat on his back, the level rising up over his thighs and over the flat, muscular wall of his stomach.

  Krysty smiled, reaching down to hold him. "Looks like that thing that submarines used to have, so they could see when they were below the sea."

  "Periscope?"

  "Thats it."

  She climbed in, stepping carefully astride him, lowering herself very slowly, using her fingers to guide him deep inside her. The level of the water rose higher, coming close to the top of the bath.

  "Best if I do the moving for both of us," she said. "Or we'll have us a flood."

  "Sounds good."

  Ryan held her as she started to rise and fall, using the soap to wash her breasts, covering the peaked nipples in foam, rubbing them with his strong fingers.

  Krysty's head was thrown back, her bright emerald eyes closed, the cords taut in her throat. She gripped Ryan's hands, pushing them harder against her body, moaning to herself.

  "Gaia, that's so good, lover."

  Ryan stared up at her perfect body, trying to judge how far along the road she was, controlling himself, holding back, despite the insistent pressure of Krysty's body sucking him in deeper and harder.

  "Touch me," she panted, rocking back and forth as he probed at her with his index finger, helping her toward a racing climax.

  When she came it almost took him by surprise, her mouth sagging open, leaning over him, her nails scratching at his chest, making him moan in a mix of pain and pleasure.

  But he allowed himself his own surging release, closing his eye, whispering to his love. "Yes, yes, yes, yes."

  When they'd recovered their breath, they paid some attention to washing each other.

  Ryan stood, steadying himself against the wall, while Krysty knelt in the hot water, soaping him, paying particular attention to his genitals. She rubbed up a fine lather, cupping him in both hands, lowering her mouth to bring him back to readiness. When he was a little slow for her, Krysty moved a hand between his thighs, sliding a soaped finger up inside him, making Ryan yelp in surprise as it had the desired effect on him.

  She smiled up at him. "Some fingers come in the front door and some use the back door," she said.

  Ryan gripped her by her nape, holding her steady as he started to thrust into her mouth.

  But she pulled away.

  "No. Not that way this time. Want you in me from behind." Krysty stood, careful not to slip in the soapy bath. She placed both hands against the wall, resting her head on them, stooping forward.

  Ryan moved close in, sliding between her glistening buttocks. Using his right hand to set himself in the right place, he spread her thighs wider.

  "There," Krysty whispered.

  By the time they'd completed the bathing and the lovemaking, drying each other off with the thick towels, so much time had passed that they realized that supper would soon be ready.

  They dressed quickly in the bathroom. Ryan slid back the bolt and, from force of habit, checked that the corridor outside was empty.

  "Let's go," he said.

  LOOKING OUT OF THEIR WINDOW, across the rutted mud of Green Hill's main street, Ryan saw the shanty town starting to come to life. The air was heavy from the smell of cooking fires, and kerosene lamps were appearing outside some of the shacks and tents.

  A dog barked in a furious rage nearby, until the sharp sound of a blow silenced it. A woman called out, laughing, across the way, and a mule was letting the world know that it was feeling hungry.

  "You've been in plenty of places like this one, haven't you, lover?"

  He nodded, turning from the window, letting
the tattered curtain fall back into place. "Hundreds. From the big snows down to the gulf. From the Cific to the Lantic. If I had a fistful of jack for every frontier pesthole I've visited, then I'd be the richest baron in Deathlands."

  There was a knock on the door.

  Ryan picked up the blaster and moved to flatten himself against the wall. "Who is it?"

  "Me, Dad. Joint's jumping. Packed out. Clinkerscales says outlanders are rare and everyone's here to check us out. You coming down to eat?"

  "Sure. Be right down."

  "If the meal's as good as the bath, then it'll be an evening to remember," Krysty said.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Lincoln Inn was groaning at the seams.

  As Ryan and Krysty paused at the top of the stairs, they could hardly see a free inch of floor space. All of the tables were occupied, and three separate games of poker were going on, with jack piled up among the beer glasses. The dartboard was the center of a noisy game, the flighted hand arrows thudding hard into the sectored cork.

  Clinkerscales behind the bar was busier than a one-legged man in a forest fire, rushing from end to end, drawing beer and sliding shot glasses of the house whiskey through the spill puddles to the clamoring crowd.

  The only women in the saloon were gaudy whores, working the room to try to get some custom, even though it was still early in the evening. As Ryan and Krysty looked down, one of the sluts was coming up the stairs, dragging a three-parts drunk breed behind her. The man seemed to have two sets of teeth, laid one inside the other, and he was grinning vacantly at the tantalizing prospect that lay ahead of him.

  The whore was young and skinny, with a dreadful knife scar, barely healed, that opened up the left side of her face from hairline, past the corner of the eye, down to the angle of her jaw. The cicatrix was puckered, purple at its edges, a livid white at the center.

  Before the scar, she might once have been a pretty girl. Ryan's guess put her at about fifteen years old.

  A tubby man wearing a greasy derby was hammering out music at a tuneless piano by one of the front windows. At least Ryan assumed that it was music, though there was nothing that even vaguely resembled a tune, just an endless collection of bright and discordant notes.

  "Where are the others?" Krysty asked, having to raise her voice and press her mouth close to Ryan's ear to be heard above the riotous noise. "Don't know. Can't see any of them." He had the SIG-Sauer on one side, balanced by the weight of the eighteen-inch panga on the other. The rifle rested under the bed in their locked bedroom. Krysty was wearing her own five-shot.38.

  At that moment Clinkerscales looked up from his flurried work behind the bar and caught Ryan's eye, simultaneously waving one hand to him while wiping sweat from his shaved head with a checkered cloth in the other.

  Then he pointed to a small doorway, directly beneath the stairs, miming putting food into his mouth.

  "He means the eating place is through there," Krysty said.

  "Yeah, I got that."

  As they walked down, the hubbub began to fade away toward something that was almost silence. The game of darts stopped, and the poker players held their cards in their hands, frozen in mid-bet. The piano was suddenly three times as loud, hammering away at something that Ryan finally recognized as being close to an old song that he'd heard before, a soldier's song, about a girl wearing a yellow ribbon around her leg.

  "Center of attraction, lover," Krysty whispered, taking Ryan's arm.

  "Looks like she be one of Sharpie's pets," someone shouted near the bar, triggering a bellow of laughter that ran clear around the saloon.

  "Ignore it," Ryan said out of the corner of his mouth, not moving his lips. But his hand rested casual and easy, just above the ridged butt of the blaster.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs, turning sharply into the lake of deep shadows, where the oil lamps didn't reach. Ryan pushed open the door, standing back to allow Krysty through first, keeping an eye open for any danger from the main room behind, But the moment of tension had passed and, once again, he could barely hear the thumping rhythm of the piano.

  Clinkerscales had done them proud.

  The private room was brightly lighted with two dozen tallow candles, set in sconces around the walls, and there was a reasonably clean cloth on the long table. Admittedly the candles were guttering, smoking and smelling, and one leg was missing off the table, but the man had tried. He'd even propped up the missing leg with a pile of dusty green hymnals to keep the table level.

  Everyone else was there.

  Doc was in state at the head of the table, in a huge chair of heavily carved oak with a high back. Dean sat next to him on one side, Jak on the other. J.B. and Mildred were opposite each other, next down the table, leaving two spaces for Ryan and Krysty.

  "Hi, there." Ryan closed the door behind him, muffling the noise.

  "Mebbe we'll get us some food now that you two bathbirds have arrived," J.B. said.

  Ryan had barely sat, pouring himself a glass of nearly fresh cold water from a jug on the table, before Clinkerscales himself came popping through, holding a bunch of plastic-covered folders in his sweating hands.

  "Here are the menus for this evening. Not a wide range, I fear, but all good and cooked in these very kitchens. I'll leave them with you for a few minutes. I have some passing red and white wines. Should I bring them in?"

  "Two of each. Thanks," Ryan said.

  The golden logo, blind-embossed on the outside of the large maroon menus, proclaimed that they came from the Maltese Falcon restaurant in Quince Orchard, Maryland.

  Mildred looked at the front cover. "This meal's going to be the stuff that dreams are made of," she said, smiling, looking around expectantly at the others, the smile fading. "Name of a film with. Never mind."

  The contents of the menu didn't quite live up to the magnificent exterior. Each one contained a single sheet of paper, hand-written, ill-spelled, with the name of the Lincoln Inn at the top.

  "Soup. Meat flavur or not. Stew. Pig or sheep or cow. Or cowoty or dog. With vejetubls on the day. Fries. Tuna melts. Mex dish. Chicken done how you want it. Frute pie in all flavurs. Drinks to folow."

  Doc laid the menu on the table, looking around as Clinkerscales appeared with four bottles of wine on a tin tray. "Interesting," he said. "Probably puts all of the old top hotels to shame."

  "There's no labels on those bottles," Ryan said as the barman laid them on the table.

  "Truth is, Mr. Cawdor, they was in a warehouse that gotten itself under the Potomac. Below water for forty years or so. But the corks was sealed and they've all been good. Man that said he knows about wine told me that the red's what they call a claret and the white's." Clinkerscales scratched his forehead, finally saying, "And the white's not called a claret."

  He busied himself pouring out glasses for everyone, while they studied the bill of fare.

  "What's the soup?" Mildred asked.

  "Ah, yes, now the soup. The soup is very. And made from the finest available. I can promise you that you'll enjoy it. Promise that."

  "Yeah, but what flavor is it?"

  The man tugged at his jaw, his cheekbones so prominent that it looked like they might burst clean through the skin of his face at any moment.

  "Sort of soup flavor."

  "What's the Mex dish?" Dean asked.

  "Holy mackerel!" the barkeep exclaimed. "Never figured on havin't pass a test before I served you good folks your supper. The Mex dish is, well, there's chicken fajitas with onions and green peppers with sour cream and a taco and a burrito and an enchilada. Whole thing covered in green chili and a side order of our own salsa. Refried beans and black olives and lettuce. All with a big hunk of the finest bread baked in all of Green Hill."

  Krysty clapped him. "Well, if it's as good as it sounds, I'll give it a try."

  "Tuna melt?" Jak asked.

  Clinkerscales drew a deep breath. "Chunk of that bread, crammed with a coupla handfuls of tuna. Well, that and some othe
r fish. Topped off with cheese and held under the grill so it don't escape. Fries and salsa on the side." He looked at Jak. "Just a quick word of advice, son."

  "What?"

  "Around where Baron Sharpe has his ville, you'd do best to hide that snowy hair."

  "Why?"

  The man hesitated, swallowing hard. "Sharpie collects all kinds of odd animals and muties. Like a zoo."

  "Animals or people?"