Chapter Nineteen

 

 

 

There was no time to even catch a glimpse of the speaker. A hand was laid between Ryan's shoulder blades and he was shoved down into the kiva. Someone tried to break his fall, then Krysty was pushed on top of him. He opened his mouth and found it filled with the toe of her boot.

 

There was a metallic slamming sound as the heavy grille was dropped in on top of them, then the sound of feet moving away.

 

The light disappeared.

 

"Fireblast!" Ryan pushed Krysty's foot away from his face and felt hands helping him to get upright, lowering him gently to the slightly uneven floor of the deep pit.

 

"Stand still till you get used to the size of it," someone advised him.

 

"Them stickie pricks goin' to choke us to death with more fuckers," a third voice whined.

 

"Everyone keep still." The first, hoarse voice spoke again, with a snap to it.

 

A tiny, distant bell rang in one of the back rooms of Ryan's memory.

 

"I know you," he said.

 

"Yeah."

 

"Way back when."

 

A laugh. "You could say that."

 

"Trader?"

 

"Gettin' warm, old friend. You and me knew stickies, Ryan." The voice was so diminished that it barely rose above a strained whisper.

 

"Abe," he said. Not a question anymore. This time it was a simple statement.

 

"Yeah. Abe."

 

"We been talking about you a lot of times over the months."

 

The whining voice came riding in over the top, like a malfunctioning saw cutting across a sheet of plate glass.

 

"You guys shut the fuck up and let's all sit down again. Not that it's easy with even more jammed into the hole."

 

A woman spoke. "Why don't you shut your mouth and give your ass a rest, Harold."

 

There was a muttered chorus of approval.

 

"He's got a point, Helga," Abe said. "Everyone sit down slow and careful. Ryan, you and your woman sorry, don't recollect her namecome this side of the kiva so's we can talk quiet."

 

"Name's Krysty Wroth, Abe. Real good to see you again."

 

"You was nearly last thing I ever seen. It was you holding me in the Darks."

 

 

 

RYAN HAD MOVED to stand where Krysty cradled Abe in her arms. The arrow, with its barbed tip, still stuck through his throat at a grotesque angle, blood trickling from both sides. The shaft was made of some sort of aluminum compound. It was streaked crimson. The feathers were the same kind that they'd seen on the warning totems.

 

Henn had looked up. "Bad, Ryan. Bad."

 

Abe had fought for breath, fingers moving convulsively on Krysty's sleeve, her bright red hair framing his pale face. His eyes had flickered, seeking Ryan, finding him.

 

"Doesn't hurt" His voice was muffled with the blood that was now seeping through his lips. "But a blasted arrow, for nuke's sake. Be funny if" He'd coughed, a great gout of arterial scarlet.

 

And they'd left him.

 

That was the way. If Abe had been an inch or so nearer death, or if the attacking Indians had been a little closer, then Ryan would have put a bullet through the wounded man's skull.

 

But there was always a chance.

 

Even for someone who had the Grim Reaper's scythe laid across his neck.

 

And Abe had pulled through.

 

 

 

THERE WAS shuffling and scuffling until everyone was sitting again. "How many in here, Abe?" Ryan asked.

 

"You make numbers nine and ten," Harold replied.

 

"You ever say anything without sounding like you're about to burst into tears?" Ryan asked.

 

"Yeah. Fuck you!"

 

"Better." There was a ripple of nervous laughter before the dark pit settled into stillness.

 

"Abe?"

 

"Ryan, you're going to try to shoot off at the mouth about leaving me to die up in the Darks. Please don't."

 

"You know how it was."

 

The chuckle turned itself into a deep-throated coughing fit. '"Course. Do the same for you, someday. Live by the Trader's rules and you damned often finished up getting chilled by the same rules. You did what you had to. I hid up. Managed to push the arrow clear through my neck. Never pull it through with a barbed hunting tip to it. Bled some. Slept some. Here I am. You can hear it hasn't done much for my throat, though."

 

"You never were one of the Lord's chosen singers, Abe," Ryan said, grinning in the darkness. Despite the intense danger of their position in the heart of the stickies' camp, his heart was lifted by meeting again with the tall mustached man.

 

"Where did Charlie catch you?"

 

Ryan dropped his voice. "You didn't recognize him, Abe?"

 

"No. Why? Kind of odd for a stickie, but I never seen him before."

 

"You have."

 

"Truly?"

 

"He knew me. Lucky that he didn't recognize you as well."

 

"Don't recall. Stickie that walks and talks like a norm is something special. Thought I'd have remembered him."

 

"Little kid with straw hair. Party we rescued from Gert Wolfram's gang not far from Fishmouth's bar in the Darks."

 

There was something in the darkness that might have been a chuckle. "That was little Charlie, was it? If I'd known I'd have slit the bastard's neck from ear to ear."

 

"Guard coming," the woman hissed.

 

The circular kiva fell silent.

 

There were feet slapping bare on the stones above them and the sensation of someone standing there, listening closely.

 

Abe's face was near to Ryan's, his mustache tickling his ear. "Hope the sucker-fingered bastard doesn't piss on us again. Did it last night."

 

But the feet went away again.

 

Harold whispered into the velvet blackness. "Can we all get some rest now?"

 

Nobody argued.

 

 

 

IT WAS COLD in the underground cell, which was hewn from the bare sandstone, but the press of bodies checked the temperature from dropping too low.

 

As the others slipped into sleep, Ryan stayed awake, trying to marshal his thoughts, trying to make plans to cover any contingency. The way it looked was that Charlie would keep his word and use their execution as an example of his own power over norms. And with the force he seemed to have at his disposal, it would be difficult to do too much about it.

 

If things came down to the wire, then Ryan would at least try to take the leader of the stickies with him. Even if it meant tearing his carotid artery open with his teeth.

 

He'd been in many tight spots in his life and he was still alive.

 

But he recalled something the Trader had said to him as they'd lain under a towering sycamore not long before the sick old man had done his disappearing act. The familiar black stogie had been sending coils of smoke wreathing up into the evening air.

 

The Trader had used it to gesture to the sylvan calm around them. "Been a good day," he'd said. "Odd when you think that we're all bound to die sometime."

 

Ryan finally closed his eye and entered the darkness with the pessimistic thought that this might, at last, be the time for him and Krysty.