Free Palaces of Light by James Axler Page B

was in a sour mood, even if it was a matter of great importance. In truth, nothing seemed that important to any of them since the incident involving the children.
    K settled down to brood. Maybe he would find some answers as to why he had done nothing. Worse, as to why he hadn’t even seen it coming at him like a bastard great bullet aimed between the eyes.
    He started to think back to how it had begun… .
    * * *
    “S IX OF THE BASTARDS , all weird as fuck, coming from out of the chill zone.”
    K stopped chewing on the stringy leg of mule that was marinated in grease and a few herbs. Food was never great in the ville, but at least his cook made an effort. She was better than most, and he could put up with her cooking as long as she gave him a blow job after the meal. There had to be something going for her. He could be an indulgent baron. And it had been the thought of this that had been occupying his mind while Higgins spoke. He hadn’t, if he was honest, been giving the sec man his full attention.
    The last sentence had caught his attention, though, and made him look up from the plate. He laid the shank down in its thin sauce and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. Not that he gave a crap about manners, but it gave him a couple of moments to marshal his thoughts.
    “The chill zone,” he repeated in a flat tone. “But no one lives there.”
    Higgins shrugged. He was a big man, about six-four and 280 pounds, most of it muscle and a lot of it in his head. But he was loyal and—most important of all in the circumstances—he was just too damn stupe to lie. If that was what he’d seen, then that was what he’d seen, no matter how strange or even impossible it might seem.
    K got up from the table and walked around to where the sec man stood. As he passed him, he clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, Higgy, this I’ve gotta see.”
    Higgins grunted and nodded as he fell in behind his baron. He’d been a little nervous about reporting to K. When the eastern sector patrol had come back in on their mounts just before sunset and reported the distant group coming across the flatlands on foot, he hadn’t been inclined to believe it, either.
    Higgins had fallen in with K somewhere out midwest, when the two men had been mercies for hire. Higgins was a follower, not a leader, and had recognized the leader in K. All leaders need good, reliable muscle as backup, and so Higgins had made the decision to be K’s right hand. It saved him having to think, which was something he wasn’t good at. But by the same token, he wasn’t a complete stupe. He wouldn’t have stayed alive so long if he was. One of the first things that he had learned when he followed K to this pesthole and taken it over was that the lands to the east were beyond all life. No birds flew over them. No animals that you’d want to sink your teeth into, or meet on a dark night, lived on them. And no people. Sure, he’d heard the stories of those who had wandered out there and come back…different. But as he’d never actually met one of those people, or even anyone who could actually have claimed to have met one rather than just heard about it, he didn’t believe it for a second. Just as he never gave more than that second’s thought to what was out there. What the land looked like—shit, it could be flat, dead and dusty between here and the sea for all he cared, as long as he didn’t have to go on it.
    So when he figured that he should check it out before reporting to K, he felt fear in the pit of his stomach. It took a lot to shake it off.
    He took his horse out slowly, and beat the bastard raw to get back quick. There were six men, of differing shapes and sizes, and they were coming toward the ville on foot.
    As he followed the baron out on horseback once more, he felt the unease of a person who really didn’t want to be doing what he was right then. But he had to lead K to them, make him see for himself.
    They rode heavily across the dry and