Free Deathlands 122: Forbidden Trespass by James Axler Page A

spit, “looks as if our dinner’s ready to serve. Now—”
    His black eyes got wide, seemingly fixed right on Ryan. He slapped leather with his right hand.
    At the same time, Ryan, staring right back, went for his own blaster.
    As quick as a pair of diamondback rattlers, the two men drew their weapons, pointed them straight at each other and fired.

----
    Chapter Six
    “Anything?” Wymie asked.
    She stopped to catch her breath and wipe sweat from her brow with a handkerchief. She was used to hard work in the hot sun, but not all this walking up and down hills, bashing brush most of the time.
    Her cousin Mance, face streaming sweat from under a bandanna, shook his head. “Not yet, Wymie.”
    He sounded worried. She understood. She had started out with nineteen or twenty helpers. The past two days of fruitless searching had whittled them down to a round dozen.
    “Should we head back to the Mother Road,” asked Dorden, who to Wymie’s amazement was not one of the ones who had abandoned her, “or keep searching this area?”
    She shook her head helplessly. Who knew it would be this complicated, hunting for her sister’s killers?
    Because the outlander coldhearts only ever came to Conn’s gaudy house, or rarely to Sinkhole proper by way of it, she reckoned their hideout had to lie somewhere to the west. So they’d started out following the Mother Road, which paralleled Stenson’s Creek away from Sinkhole, to begin her search.
    After about six or eight miles, though, the wooded hills gave way to flatter karst country, more given tograss and patches of scrub than pine or hardwood forests. Dorden had suggested it was unlikely the outlanders laired up in such open country, despite the occasional harsh limestone ridge. She’d agreed.
    “We’re what,” she said, “mebbe a mile south of the road by now?”
    They were following a game trail. It was the best thing she could think of, and not even know-it-all old Dorden had come up with better.
    “That’s right,” Mance said.
    “And nobody we came across has seen hide nor hair of them,” Lou Eddars said. He was Mance’s friend and their chief tracker. His freckled face streamed with sweat, though nothing it seemed could keep down his frizz of orange curly hair. He had ears that stuck out, big buck teeth and an Adam’s apple that looked like a baseball lodged in his throat. But he was an accomplished hunter who knew the countryside around Sinkhole as well as any.
    As well as anybody who’d chosen to throw in with Wymie and her quest, anyway.
    “What about the signs of recent campsites,” Mance asked his pal, “like that one we come across the last ridge back? Fire ashes were still warm, even.”
    Lou shook his head. “Too small,” he said. “Looks like folks who camped there heard us coming, or spotted us, and lit out for the brush. We got too many weps showin’ to look triple peaceful-like, which is also why we can’t raise too many local folk to ask if they seen the outlanders.”
    Wymie sighed.
    “Let’s follow this trail a spell farther,” she said.
    “If at first you don’t succeed,” Vin said with a cackle, “try, try again.”
    It also surprised Wymie the oldie had stuck right with her throughout all the exertion and frustration. But thinking about it, she realized it shouldn’t. He might look as if he could scarcely totter across a room, especially with the limp he’d had for decades, but he still spent much of his days tramping around the hills around Sinkhole. He lived for excitement, such as was to be had for a man of his great age in a peaceful, quiet backwater like the Pennyrile. She had no idea whether he actually shared her conviction as to the outlanders’ guilt or not, but it made no difference, she guessed, as long as he—and his giant Peacemaker handblaster, with which he was still a dead shot—stayed by her side.
    “But, Wymie,” Burny whined. “There’s a hundred square miles of these wooded hills around Sinkhole, and