Shaking Earth by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

“He’s crazy,” Mildred said. “He’s flat-out, florid, schizophrenic.”

“Jumped back fast, back there,” Jak said with a wolf’s grin from the rear compartment of the Hummer. “Blood scared?”

“No. I mean, yes! Yeah, I’ve seen blood before—even been sprayed with it a few times. You people know that. But back in the twentieth century that was something we took seriously, what with AIDS and everything. And besides, it took me all by surprise, dammit. I never imagined he’d do something that barking damn crazy.”

“Which made it all the more effective a demonstration of the loyalty he commands from his household troops, dusky princess,” Doc said.

“Which only goes to show they’re as screwy as he is. And while you’re at it, you can seal that ‘dusky princess’ crap in lead and dump it in the Marianas trench, you goofy old coot!”

“Millie, our man Don Tenorio doesn’t seem to really want to be a baron,” J.B. said. “In this bad old world, what I’ve seen of it anyway, only those who want it really bad can hold on to it. He seems a nice enough old guy, for somebody who pays too much attention to whitecoats. But if I was a bettin’ man, and of course I am, my jack would have to be on this dude Don Hector. Even if he is crazy as a shaken-up jar full of hornets.”

“Barons always crazy,” Jak said. “Where big deal?”

“I don’t believe you people. He’s tried to have us killed, not once but twice.”

“Neither time on purpose,” J.B. pointed out.

“So he says. But even, just for the sake of laughs, stipulating that he didn’t mean it—correct me if I’m wrong, John, but are you not just as dead if you get chilled accidentally as on purpose? Either way, dirt hits you in the eyes.”

“People,” Ryan said softly, “this isn’t really our fight.” He was sitting in the back seat with Krysty beside him, gazing morosely out the window, letting the warm moist air, smelling of clean water and fertile soil and only ever so slightly of the omnipresent sulfur tousle his shaggy black curls.

He had been a little uneasy, approaching the checkpoint at the landward end of the causeway. Tenorio had allowed them to go to Hector without trying to send along any kind of chaperones—or spies. But it would be right within parameters for baronial paranoia for him to decide that, having broken bread and spoken with the enemy, they were never to be trusted back into the city. Or perhaps, not except under armed guard, as prisoners virtual or outright.

But no. The sentries had grinned and waved the way the scavvies always did to the visitors, hooked back the razor-tape tangles and moved the blocks and gestured them right on through. Did that lack of apparent suspicion in itself indicate pusillanimity on the part of Tenorio on his people? Mebbe.

Mildred sat back and crossed her arms. “It is if we have intention of staying here, Ryan. Making some kind of lives for ourselves

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