Prodigal's Return

Chapter Three

Dropping the Molotov off the ville wall, Dean Cawdor saw the glass bottle full of shine shatter on a steel hinge and splatter liquid fire across the complex array of ropes and pulleys used to haul the mammoth front gate closed. In only a few seconds, the burning ropes began to snap apart and the pulleys sagged, the main locking bar sliding away from the stout iron hoops set into the gate.

“Angels!” Dean bellowed through cupped hands. Then he quickly dropped flat as a hail of blasterfire tore through the empty space he had just occupied.

While a squad of sec men charged along the top of the wide stone wall, Dean rolled over to fire his Browning Hi-Power a fast five times. Four of the guards jerked, brains exploding out of the back of their skulls as the steel-jacketed .38 rounds cored through. The fifth guard staggered about blindly, a bloody furrow along her temple. As the unlucky woman started to walk off the wall, Dean shot her in the heart to mercifully prevent the her from getting gangbanged to death by the invading cadre of coldhearts.

From outside the ville, a sizzling red flare arched into the sky and gently exploded in a pyrotechnic display of colors.

A moment later, the unlocked wooden gate of Alpharetta ville violently exploded as the rapidly accelerating steam truck, Atomsmasher, crashed through, its chugging engine visibly radiating waves of heat, the steam whistle screaming loudly.

“Angels!” Camarillo bellowed from inside the small control room, both hands operating the mechanisms.

Chorusing the rally cry, fifty armed coldhearts on horseback galloped through the splintery breech, their bodies lumpy from heavy canvas jackets lined with slabs of green wood.

Caught directly in the path of the huge steam truck, a dozen of the ville sec men went under the razor-sharp blades attached to the double row of thirty iron wheels, their high-pitched shrieks of unimaginable agony cut short.

Huffing and puffing, the Atomsmasher continued onward, crunching a muzzle-loading cannon, along with the group of sec men trying to aim the weapon. The brass barrel of the cannon visibly bent as it went under the colossal invading machine, the horrified people torn to pieces from the terrible spinning blades.

Reloading his blaster, Dean tried not to cringe at the horrible sight. They were falling like wheat before a crimson sickle.

Charging out of the stables, another crowd of people saw what happened, turned and fled, dropping their own crossbows, spears and zip guns.

Running along the wall, Dean turned his eyes away from the oncoming slaughter. Supposedly working as an advance spy for the Stone Angels, he had attempted to warn the locals of the coming attack. But the baron and sec chief hadn’t believed the teenage outlander. The damn fools never did. They were always positive it was just some sort of trick to extract free brass from the ville arsenal.

Stupe bastards. I try to help every ville the Angels attack! Dean raged, reluctantly chilling a sec man struggling to load a crossbow. Why don’t the triple-stupe barons ever listen to reason? If the locals could ace the gang, or at least Camarillo, then he would be free from the gang’s odious control.

Dean had been riding with the Stone Angels for several months. He had hoped to slip away and head out on his own, but he had made a mistake—he had stopped Hannigan from cutting the throat of a newborn child that wouldn’t stop crying. It was just bad luck that Camarillo had noticed the act of kindness. The coldheart boss had kept an eye on the youth from that point on. The prospects of getting away from the gang were greatly diminished. And Dean knew that should he escape, the brutal Camarillo would take it out on the slaves.

Dean was now as much a prisoner of the coldhearts as any of the slaves toiling in the camp’s kitchens, chopping firewood or cleaning the outhouses. Unwillingly, he had been forced to help the coldhearts build Camarillo a massive war wag from the assorted wrecks found in the junkyard of some predark ruins. A combination of several Mack trucks, two bulldozers and an antique steam locomotive, the Atomsmasher was an iron-plated juggernaught of unbelievably destructive power.

Trying to make amends for his act of kindness, Dean had managed to earn some small degree of freedom from Camarillo by offering to work as the advance spy for the coldhearts. The chief of the Stone Angels had been suspicious at first, but now seemed to think that Dean was finally becoming one of them. In truth, his hatred of Camarillo grew every day, and the last thing Dean planned to do before escaping would be to ace the coldheart leader by cutting out the heart of the brutal bastard.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen today, Dean sourly noted, discharging the stolen crossbow at a snarling sec man charging his way with a swinging ax. The arrow missed, so Dean used another precious .38 round in the Browning. Dropping the ax, the sec man clutched at his red belly and groaned into oblivion.

With its steam whistle keening, the Atomsmasher crashed through a crowd of people foolishly trying to surrender. Laughing inside the control room, Camarillo wiped the spray of warm blood off his face and blew the whistle again. The strident keening noise terrified the horses of the sec men, making the animals throw their riders to the ground. However, the terrible sound had no effect whatsoever on the horses of the coldhearts, who had grown accustomed to it.

Running along the wall, a platoon of Alpharetta sec men fired nonstop at the colossal Atomsmasher, and the galloping coldhearts shot back with black powder scatterguns that boomed louder than grens. The sec men were aced, their chests blown open, guts flying to the wind, as they tumbled off the wall.

Suddenly, a sec woman wearing sergeant stripes appeared carrying a pipe bomb, the fuse sputtering away. A dozen coldhearts trained their blasters on her, but all of them missed.

“Alpharetta!” the sec woman yelled, hauling back an arm to throw the bomb.

Snarling in rage, Camarillo thrust the barrel of an AK-47 through the iron bars covering the windows of the Atomsmasher and cut loose with a long burst, the hail of 7.62 mm hardball rounds stitching the sec woman from groin to throat. Gushing life from a score of wounds, she collapsed, and a few seconds later a thunderous explosion rocked the wall, a section of the stonework crumbling away as her tattered body went sailing into the distance.

“Damn, so close,” Dean muttered in frustration, taking a flintlock from a hand lying on the wall, the arm no longer attached to a body. Nearby lay a bag of powder and shot, the leather splattered with glistening brains. Grimly, he checked to make sure the weapon was properly loaded, then ran for the stairs leading down to the ville. Things were about to get nasty.

As the Atomsmasher reached the center of the ville, it was met by the baron of Alpharetta, sitting astride a black stallion. A burly man sporting an enormous beard, he cradled a Thompson .45-caliber rapidfire. As the steam truck turn toward him, the baron cut loose with the weapon, but the soft-lead rounds ricocheted harmlessly off the heavy armor of the converted steam truck, leaving behind only a dabbling of gray smears.

Laughing, Camarillo pulled some levers, and the Atomsmasher lurched into motion.

Frantically kicking his horse into a full gallop, the baron tried to escape by going around a building. However, Camarillo drove the vehicle straight into the tavern, coming out the other side in an explosion of smashed adobe bricks. The baron and his horse were hit broadside. Both man and beast were sent flying by the brutal impact, smacking into a nearby tannery. As they slid off the bricks to the cobblestone street, the Atomsmasher rolled over their bodies, audibly crushing them flat.

“The baron is dead!” Camarillo bellowed joyously. “The ville is ours!”

Shouting in victory, the Stone Angels climbed off their horses and started running into buildings, shooting anybody they found carrying a weapon—blaster, knife, hammer or pitchfork. Man, woman or child, it made no difference. If the people resisted, they were aced.

“I surrender!” a wrinklie shouted, raising both arms high. “Please, I surrender!”

“What’s your job?” a bald coldheart demanded, walking closer, a brace of blasters balanced in his hands.

“Sir, I’m a blacksmith, sir,” the old man replied, as respectfully as possible.

“Sorry, already got us one of those.” The coldheart sneered, discharging both weapons. The head of the old man exploded, chunks of bone and brain spraying to the littered streets.

“We got a blacksmith?” Dean asked, feeling sick to his stomach.

“Nope!” The coldheart grinned, sauntering away in search of other prey.

Just then, a screaming woman charged out of an open doorway with three coldhearts close behind.

“Gotcha!” one of them yelled in triumph, grabbing her by the ponytail and pulling downward.

With a cry, she crashed to the ground, and two coldhearts pounced, ripping off her skirt, then grabbed her legs and pulled them apart. Grinning fiendishly, the first coldheart started to unbuckle his pants.

“Better leave this one alone,” Dean said quickly. “She’s the ville healer. The boss will want her at camp.”

Muttering curses, they did as he requested and released the woman, to go back into the building.

“I…I ain’t no healer, mister, just a gaudy slut,” she stuttered in a whisper, her face tight with fear. “Don’t know nothing about healing and such.”

“Then lie, or they’ll chill you bad,” Dean commanded under his breath, helping her to stand. “Wash any wound with clean water, then wash it again with shine, and wrap it with a clean strip of cloth. Now, find a friend, and claim she’s your assistant. Remember, clean water only! Savvy?”

“Another healer? Yes, of course, I savvy,” she replied, grabbing her ruined skirt off the street and wrapping it back around her hips. Then she asked, “Why are you doing this?”

A piercing scream rent the air as the three coldhearts reappeared with another woman in tow. Plump to the point of being obese, she was wearing a stained cook’s apron over a denim dress. Most of her clothing was already gone, ripped to pieces, her large soft breasts flopping about. Tearing off the rest of her garments, the coldhearts hauled the weeping woman into an alley, then her screaming really began.

With no time to explain the value of human life, Dean hauled the gaudy slut over to the Atomsmasher.

“Whatcha got there?” Camarillo asked, smoking a cigar inside the control room.

There were several coldhearts stationed around the huffing engine, along with a line of chained people, all of them men. Most of them were badly beaten, with teeth missing and arms clearly broken, judging by the weird angles they hung. But Dean knew these were the lucky ones. The women in Alpharetta ville would suffer much worse before they were finally allowed to be chained as slaves.

“Found us a new healer,” Dean said, trying to sound proud as he threw her at the chain gang. “Catch of the day!”

The woman landed in a sprawl.

“A healer, eh?” A fat coldheart chortled, wiping his mouth on a sleeve. “I hear they know all kinda secret things about pleasing a man.” The other coldhearts eagerly nodded in agreement.

“Leave the healer be, and do your damn job,” Camarillo said, tapping the ash off his cigar. “There’ll be more than enough quim to go around later on.”

Grumbling in disappointment, the coldheart roughly hauled the woman to her feet and started attaching a collar around her neck.

Confused, one of the prisoners scowled. “Healer?” He started to say more, but stopped at a cold glance from Dean, whose hand rested on the holstered Browning.

“Good job, Tiger,” Camarillo said. “Now, go celebrate with the rest of the boys. You’ve earned it.”

“Thanks!” Dean replied, turning away quickly so that the man wouldn’t see the open disgust on his face.

Hoping to avoid most of the bloodshed and rape, Dean headed down a relatively quiet street. Turning a corner, he nodded at a group of coldhearts shuffling out of a redbrick building, their arms full of crossbows, gun belts and blasters.

“We found the armory!” one shouted, thrusting out a hip to show the three blasters tucked into his belt. “Not much live brass, but—”

In an explosion of glass, a sec man dived through a window to bury a knife into the back of a coldheart. As the other Angels dropped their loads to claw for weapons, Dean drew and fired the Browning in one smooth motion. With a horrid gurgle, the sec man staggered, blood gushing from the hole in his chest. As he fell, the coldhearts converged on the corpse, kicking it with their boots, and firing their blasters so often the ragged clothing caught on fire.

Taking his leave, Dean felt almost good about saving the sec man from days of public torture for attacking an Angel. The coldhearts knew some tricks that even cannies wouldn’t use on their living food, and Camarillo was always happy to find some unlucky bastard to use as an example. Prisoners became more docile and obedient after discovering that any act of rebellion opened a doorway that led straight into the depths of hell.

Heading across the ville, Dean encountered several people hanging from trees, some alive, some not. But without a legitimate reason, any effort on his part to ease their suffering would only have put him in their place. He wanted to help these people, but not at the risk of his own life. If they were family, of course, kin helped kin. But not total strangers. Survival came first in Deathlands.

Trying to ignore the screams coming from every direction, Dean turned a corner to find a chilled sec man splayed in the street, his body severed in two from the spinning blades attached to the wheels of the Atomsmasher. Looking around to make sure nobody was watching, Dean quickly knelt to search the corpse. The holster was empty, but flipping over the lower half of the torso, Dean found the loops of the gun belt full of brass in a caliber suitable for his BAR longblaster. Taking it all, Dean continued on while stuffing the precious ammo into different pockets to prevent it from jingling together when he walked. Clinking brass could chill your ass, his father, Ryan, used to say. Words of wisdom, indeed.

Something exploded in the distance, throwing a dozen bodies high into the sky. Dogs howled, a woman screamed and coldhearts cheered in delight.

Discovering a tavern, Dean slipped inside, hoping it hadn’t been looted yet. Usually, he wasn’t a drinker, but this day was surely the exception. However, he was too late. The shelves behind the counter were empty, and the limp bodies of sec men and ville people lay everywhere, the sawdust on the floor lumpy with spilled blood. Ah well. He was just about to leave when a pretty woman came racing down the stairs, chased by Hannigan.

“Come back here!” Hannigan growled, and he dived forward to tackle her around the knees. She slammed into the floor, throwing up a small cloud of dirty sawdust.

“Get the fuck off me!” she yelled, kicking out and beating at him with her fists.

“Shut up, bitch!” Hannigan laughed, punching her in the belly.

Going pale, the woman struggled to breathe as the coldheart pulled a knife and grabbed the front of her blouse.

“Well done, brother! Thanks for catching her for me!” Dean said with a fake grin, hauling the limp woman to her feet. “The stupe bitch got away from me before. You’re gonna pay for that, slut!”

“Mutie shit, I found her!” Hannigan growled menacingly, his throat tight with barely repressed lust.

“Sure, but only after she got away from me!” Dean pointed at her broken nose, with no idea how the damage had happened. “That’s my mark on her face.”

Narrowing his eyes, Hannigan weighed his options, then wisdom took control, and he moved his hand away from the sawed-off scattergun at his side. As a raw recruit “Mud Puppy” hadn’t been frightened of him, and now, months later, “Tiger” Cawdor, a blooded Angel, was one of the toughest bastards in the gang, and greased lightning with his fancy blaster. Only a triple-stupe droolie would challenge him in a fair fight.

“Take her.” Hannigan sniffed, hitching up his gun belt. “The bitch is too old and stringy, anyway.”

“Thanks, brother!” Dean chuckled, slapping the hated man on the shoulder in a friendly manner. “I owe you one!”

His face a mask of repressed fury, Hannigan lumbered out of the tavern, firing his blaster at a corpse in the gutter for no valid reason.

“Thanks, but I’ve never seen you before,” the woman said, wiping the blood from her face with a sleeve. “I broke my nose running away from the first wave of coldhearts as they came over the wall.”

In case somebody was watching, Dean drew back his arm as if to cuff the woman. “He would have raped you, girl,” he whispered urgently, “and I won’t.” He stepped closer and she flinched. “Now come with me if you want to keep sucking air!”

Unsure for a moment, she looked into his eyes and was startled to see only kindness there. Nodding in understanding, she did nothing as Dean grabbed her by the collar to roughly drag her to an undamaged house across the street.

As Dean approached, a coldheart walked out with a skinny, bucktoothed young woman. She was dressed in rags, most of her body fully exposed and covered with dark bruises.

“Hey, Tiger, done found me a virgie!” The coldheart laughed. “That be a first.”

“Good work, Natters!” Dean complimented the man, feeling sick to his stomach for the woman. Her shoulders kept moving as if she was crying, but there were no tears on her cheeks. “You done in there?”

“All yours, brother!” Natters laughed, leading his captive away like a dog on a leash.

Going inside, Dean checked over the house. It was small, with just one room and a single door, no windows. Perfect. Closing and locking the door, he sighed in relief. “Okay, this buys us some time,” he said. “Wish I could help your people more, but I’ve been treading water with these bastards for a while, and they still don’t completely trust me yet.”

Silently, the woman stared at him, not sure what to do.

“Come on, scream,” Dean ordered, taking a chair and sitting. “If somebody passes by, it has to sound like you’re fighting for your bastard life, or we both get aced. Savvy?”

“You…a roughrider?” she asked hesitantly, clutching the front of her ripped shirt.

Though he’d never heard the slang word before, Dean could make an educated guess to the meaning. “No, I like women in my bed,” he said honestly, and then for some unknown reason felt compelled to add, “Not that I’ve had that many.”

That comment caught her totally by surprise. Suddenly, she decided to trust the handsome stranger.

Taking in a deep breath, she cut loose with a blood-curdling shriek.

Startled, Dean blinked from the sheer ferocity of the cry, then smiled as he heard a couple of coldhearts laugh outside, and somebody thump the locked door.

“Not so hard, Tiger!” a voice called. “Let her breathe some, unless you like riding the peach off a corpse!”

“Shut up, I’m busy!” Dean shouted back, punctuating each word with a grunt.

Chuckling, the coldhearts walked away, singing and firing their blasters.

“I’m Althea,” she said. “Althea Stone.”

“Dean Cawdor.”

“Tiger?”

“Just a nickname,” he said with a scowl.

“What should we do?” Althea asked, sitting on the bed.

“Better rip those clothes some,” Dean replied, pulling out a knife and tossing it over. “Then cut me on the cheek. Gotta make this look real.”

Making the catch, Althea tested the balance of the blade, then slashed out, her hand a blur.

Caught completely off guard, Dean jerked at the stinging touch of steel, then used fingertips to check his face. There was a shallow cut along his jawline. Damn, she was quick!

Flipping the knife over, Althea slashed at her clothing, then added a few cuts to her legs. Dean was impressed. The blood would make folks think he had been her first, which would prevent most of the other coldhearts from bothering her, acknowledging an unspoken rule that she was his. He would have to keep a watch out for Hannigan. Someday soon, he would have to chill the man.

Finished, Althea threw the knife back. It thudded onto the floorboards between his boots. “Can’t let them find me with a weapon,” she said, starting to remove her clothing.

“Hey now, that’s not necessary,” Dean said, raising a palm.

“Gotta make this look real if somebody checks,” she replied, letting the tattered garment flutter to the floor.

As she finished disrobing, Dean said nothing, transfixed by the unbelievable beauty of the young woman. She had scars, of course—everybody alive did—but her skin was beautiful anyway, glowing with health. Her breasts were pert and firm, her stomach flat, and the delta between her legs was completely hairless.

“You shave down there?” he asked, his throat oddly tight.

“Never had no hair there,” Althea replied, sitting on the bed, which squeaked slightly. “Guess mebbe I got a little mutie blood in me. Most of the people in this ville do. We had a former baron who… Well, to say that he was crazy as a shithouse rat wouldn’t half load the blaster on that story.”

“Reckon so,” Dean said, crossing his legs. The little cabin felt uncomfortably warm.

“Now what?” she asked, pulling a blanket to cover herself. She wondered how it was possible that she was feeling an attraction to the coldheart. He had a kind face and intelligent eyes, but he was still an invader destroying her home and everybody she loved. Yet he had gentle ways, and the mixed messages confused her greatly.

“Now we wait for the chilling to stop. That should be sometime around dawn,” Dean said, removing his gun belt and laying it on a rickety table mostly held together with duct tape. Then he hesitated, not really wanting to take off his shirt or his pants, although for vastly different reasons. Choosing the lesser of two evils, he pulled off the buckskin shirt.

Inhaling sharply, Althea felt a visceral surge at the sight of his powerful chest and broad shoulders. Dean had the muscles of a blacksmith, and his wide chest was thickly matted with black curly hair, except for three white strips that looked like old knife wounds.

“I can see why they call you Tiger,” Althea said, starting to reach for the scars, then stopping herself. She was inexplicably drawn to the gentle killer.

“Anything’s better than Mud Puppy,” Dean snorted.

“What?”

“Never mind. Spent brass.” Turning away, he took off his combat boots and pants, then paused again, unwilling to turn around in his turgid state.

Guessing the cause of his unease, Althea turned down the oil lantern.

Relaxing slightly in the darkness, Dean padded barefoot across the cabin to sit in the wooden chair alongside the little bed.

“Mebbe you should join me under the covers,” Althea suggested.

Finding it difficult to think, Dean cleared his throat, trying to choose the correct words and not offend. He felt dizzy, almost drunk, and his heart was pounding.

Moving onto the bed, he sank into the ancient mattress as he lay next to the young woman. He could feel the heat coming off her naked body.