Free Deathlands 122: Forbidden Trespass by James Axler Page B

miles and miles more of these pissant deer trails crisscrossed all over ’em. Got to be. We could follow them until we all grow long gray beards and only find a sign of the coldhearts by sheer strike accident.”
    Fury blazed within her. “Are you doubtin’ me?” she flared at him. “You lookin’ to bail on me too?”
    Old Vin tittered. “Oh, ye of little faith,” he said.
    Burny’s eyes widened and he took a step back.
    “No, no,” he stammered. “All I’s sayin’ is, we need a better plan, seems to me.”
    “And backin’ out on me’s a better one?” she shouted. “Is that your plan? Turn tail and run, like your buddy Walter John?”
    “But, Wymie, he had to. He got an ailin’ wife and two kids to take care of. You know that.”
    “Listen to me, Burny Stoops,” she said, dropping her voice low and menacing as she stepped up to him. Her anger had brought the others clustering close around. “Iwill keep after these outlanders, and I’ll find them. Once I do, folks’ll rally to me. You’ll see. And then there’ll be a day of reckonin’! And not just for them, but for them as sided with the child murderers by not helpin’ me! Which side will you be on, Burny Stoops?”
    “Yeah!” Mance echoed. “Which side, Burny?”
    “You with us or against us?” demanded Angus Chen, a carpenter from Sinkhole.
    “With us or against us?” the others began to chant. They closed in threateningly on Burny.
    He cowered. “No, Wymie, no!” he said. “It ain’t like that at all. But—people are startin’ to wonder if we’re ever gonna find them.”
    “You wonderin’, you mean?” Wymie asked.
    “No. I just heard— Oh, shit hell, Wymie. I’m with you. Please. You got to believe me.”
    She looked in his brown eyes and saw only fear. And submission. After leaving him to wiggle in the spike of her gaze for half a minute she nodded.
    “All right,” she said, turning away. “That’s better. Anybody else goin’ weak in the knees on me?”
    She knew at least half her remaining people had spent the morning grumbling about a wild-goose chase, but now they stumbled all over one another and themselves to assure her they were in all the way.
    “Right,” she said. “Let’s keep on this trail over the next rise. Then—we’ll see.
    “All we need’s just a trail, even, that we’re sure leads to those stoneheart bastards. And then we’ll go back to town and see who’s really with us, and who’s with the outland baby-killers.”
    “Mathus Conn might not take kindly to that, Wymie,”Dorden said, “without more evidence the outlanders are the ones who did it.”
    “Then coamers can eat Mathus Conn’s guts!” she cried, invoking the terrible half-remembered childhood legend that for some reason sprang into her mind.
    “The worms go in,” Vin sang. “The worms go out…”
    “Oh, put a sock in it, you wrinkled old loon!”
    * * *
    “F IREBLAST !” R YAN YELLED .
    And indeed that happened, straight for his face from the muzzle of Abe’s blaster.
    Ryan felt the heat of the yellow black-powder flame-flare from their host’s blaster like a dragon’s breath on his face. Its glare dazzled his good eye, and he felt hot powder specks pepper his cheek right below the socket.
    He wasn’t aware of hearing its roaring report nor the sound of his own 9 mm SIG Sauer blasting.
    An agonized scream from right behind him ripped even through the ringing in his ears.
    At the same moment he saw a pale shape, indistinct among the scrub that rimmed the boulder-lined bowl, rear up behind Abe, throw hands in the air at the ends of long but manlike arms and topple backward. Though vague blue blobs floated in his monocular vision, he had gotten the impression of a third, red eye opening above the two he had glimpsed glaring at him from the brush just behind and above their host.
    Krysty was on her feet, aiming her Glock handblaster at Abe with both hands. A side-glance showed her face to have gone bone-white.
    “Back