Chapter Five

A tin cup thunked on the long bar top, which was made from five hollow-core doors, lined end to end.
"Just a minute," the bartender said, continuing to sweep around the sawhorses that supported the doors.
The cup thunked again, louder.
Somewhat irritated, the bartender of Perdition's finest gaudy house looked up from his broom. The impatient customer was tall, lean and lantern-jawed. The hair on his head was shaved to a gray stubble, which matched the salt-and-pepper scruff that carpeted his cheeks and the front of his neck. His ears were rimmed with what looked like layers of light brown, river dirt. The barman took in the longblaster slung over the guy's right shoulder, a sniper job with telescopic sights. Worth plenty of jack. It was the kind of blaster a fellow could get himself killed dead over, if he wasn't careful.
"Who's the sawed-off little shit running off at the mouth?" the tall man said, hooking a thumb in the direction of the gaudy's only crowded table, where a dude in tattered BDUs was holding court before a spellbound audience of sluts and hangers-on.
The bartender took an involuntary half step backward. This customer had some of the foulest breath he had ever suffered through. And given the gaudy's regular clientele, that was saying something. "Who's askin'?" he inquired, resting his elbows on his broom handle.
The skinhead female who stood beside the tall guy leaned over the bar. The barman's gaze dropped at once to the low-cut top of her dress and the high, tight cleavage she was showing off, then to the muzzle of the cocked, blue-steel 36-caliber Colt Army blaster half concealed behind her slender, dusty arm. She was pointing the black-powder revolver's muzzle straight at his heart. "The Right Reverend Gore's asking," she said through a feverish smile. "And you'd best be answerin' right quick."
"It's no big secret," the bartender replied, meanwhile mentally measuring the distance between himself and the sawed off, double-barreled 12-gauge he kept hidden under the bar top. Given that the grinning skinhead bitch had caught him flat-footed, and that counting the tall guy, she was backed by three evil-smelling, road-scum compadres who were lined up on the other side of the bar, he figured the wisest course was to leave the scattergun alone.
"Guy's name is Grub," he said. "He's a scrounger from down Slakecity way. Came in here late last night, tellin' stories about some strange happenings over to Moonboy ville. Crazy stories. Muties in black armor. Blasters that cut through solid walls like they were made of paper. Mass chillings. Lots of other stuff, too, but I can't tell you about it 'cause I wasn't listening real hard. I hear a lot of rad-pure crap around here, usually when somebody's falling off a jolt high. Anyway, some of the customers been finding what Grub's got to say altogether fascinating. He even got a couple of the dumb sluts to give him freebies and the local high rollers been buying him rounds all night. If you want to hear his act, all you got to do is feed him drinks" he gave the skinhead female a deadpan look and added "or fuck him a few times."
Though his delivery was perfect, the bartender's remark didn't have the anticipated shock effect. If anybody was shocked, it was he, by the high-pitched, shivery laugh that exploded from the woman's throat The sound set his teeth on edge, but it was those huge coal-black eyes of hers, absolutely insane eyes, that forced him to turn his gaze from her pretty, dirty little face.
"Give us a bottle, then," the Right Reverend Gore said.
"Better take you a jug, or you're just gonna have to come back for more," the bartender told him. "For a stumpy little scab, he can sure hold his 'shine."

GRUB HINTON WAS in heaven. Never before in his pathetic, shit-crossed life had he been the undisputed center of attention. On either side of him at the table sat two of Perdition's most accomplished and uninhibited sluts, both of whom had already accommodated him free of charge. The sluts hung on his every word, as did the prominent citizens of the ville who filled out the audience and kept his tin cup topped up with white lightning. Four more interested parties, three men in dusters and a skinhead woman in a long dress, started to amble toward him from the bar. Yes, it was mighty fine being the one in the spotlight for a change. A thing to be savored. And all he had to do to keep the ball rolling was talk, talk, talk.
"No, I tell you it was cleaner than a knife," he said for probably the fiftieth time, but nobody was counting. "Cut through Old Rupe's arms and legs faster than you can blink. And no blood came from the stumps. Not one drop. Sealed them right up."
"What kind of blaster can do something like that?" one of the citizens asked, shaking his bald, sun-browned head in disbelief.
"Predark, whitecoat secret technology, I figure," Grub speculated at top volume, for the benefit of the approaching newcomers. "Same goes for their body armor. I know what I saw. It's burned into my brain. Hundreds of pistol balls fired at those two muties from rock-chucking range, and not one ball so much as grazed them."
"Sounds bastard impossible," said the tall stranger with the scoped longblaster as he and his friends stepped up to the table. "You wouldn't be shittin' everybody, now would you?"
"You don't know Grub Hinton, mister," one citizen replied. ' 'He could never make up a story like this."
"I'm too fucking stupid," Grub agreed good-naturedly.
Everybody at the table laughed at the joke; so did the skinhead girl, in a kind of hysterical cackle.
Grub liked the look in her eyes. A lot. It was crazy, like her laugh. He figured she was the kind of girl who'd go triple wild if he could just get a leg over on her. And he could tell from all the silky bosom she was showing out the top of her dress that she had a much firmer body than either of the gaudy sluts he'd sampled. He licked his dry lips, then took a deep, satisfying pull of 'shine. In the radically altered universe of Grub Hinton, anything was possible.
The tall, gray-haired man then bent over the citizen and practically nose to nose with him said, "Why don't you folks give us a few minutes alone with this gent?"
The color instantly drained from the citizen's face. Choking, he got up at once and offered his empty chair with a wave of his arm. "Need some water," he said, rushing for the bar.
The other citizens reluctantly rose and followed him, driven from their places by the threatening looks on the strangers' faces. Only the two sluts remained glued to their seats, clinging somewhat defiantly to the storyteller's arms. After all, this was both their primary residence and place of business.
"Out, bitches!" the skinhead female snarled at them. Then she gave Grub a look so sexy and inviting that it made his groin twitch and jerk like a head-shot jackrabbit. "We need us some privacy" she said huskily.
One of the sluts started to protest, but her co-worker caught her by the wrist and stopped her, indicating with a nod of her head the cocked, short-barreled, blue-steel pistol the skinhead held pointing downward, along the outside of her thigh. Without another word, the two women made themselves scarce.
As the four newcomers sat, the gray-haired guy produced a full bottle of booze and topped up Grub's cup. His hand trembled a little as he poured, slopping some 'shine onto the table. "Might as well get properly introduced," he said. "My name's Gore, the Right Reverend Gore. And she's called Giggly Jane."
The skinhead woman sitting next to Grub showed him her wet tongue. It was quick and pink, and pointed at the tip.
"This here's Spadecrawler." Gore indicated the barrel-chested, round-faced man on his right, who looked as if he'd been caught out in an acid rainstorm without a helmet. A big splatter of dead-white, hairless scar tissue sat on top of his head, the waxy skin dripping down on the right side to a shriveled mushroom of an ear.
"And this is Egregious Jones." The third man was big and powerfully built, with oily, debris-flecked brown hair hanging to his shoulders. Exposed at the open neck of his duster were interlaced, angry red raised scars. The overlaid self-brandings were what in some parts of Deathlands passed for tattoos.
Grub noted that Egregious Jones's front teeth, upper and lower, had been filed to sharp points, but he was far more interested in Giggly Jane, whose amazingly hot little hand was under the table, resting lightly high on his inner thigh. "Have a drink," Gore said. Grub drank deeply, slamming the empty cup to the table when he was done. "What do you folks want to hear about?" he said. "The tornado? The blasters?
The chilling?"
All of it, from the beginning,'' Gore said, refilling the cup.
Grub retold the entire tale once more. His new audience was less intrigued by the flourishes of purely fictitious heroism than by descriptions of the roachmen's gear their body armor, blasters, cube on wheels and flesh-dissolving foam. Gore asked him pointed questions about the operation of each of these devices, from time to time shooting meaningful looks at his friends.
By the time the story was finished, so was the bottle. After Gore sent Spadecrawler to the bar to fetch another, he said, ' 'I got a real sweet proposition for you, Grub."
"I'm listening.
"If what you're telling us is trueand for your sake it damn well better besounds like there's some fine pickings waiting over at Moonboy."
"You could look at it that way, I suppose."
"What if I told you that the four of us are just the advance scouting party for our band? What if I told you we've got a bunch more pals camped just outside the ville? All with good, center-fire blasters like this one. All of them seasoned bush-fighters. Some of us used to be sec men over in the eastern baronies."
"And what are you now?" Grub said.
"Opportunity seekers," Gore replied. "If you lead us to these armored muties, we'll chill them all, then divvy up the spoils, fair and square. Should be plenty to go around. Interested?"
Before he could respond, Giggly Jane's hot fingers crawled into the middle of his lap and, once there, began to rummage around most skillfully. Awash in pleasure, Grub gazed helplessly into the whirlpools of her eyes.
"I've got an idea," Gore said, scraping back his chair. "Why don't we go someplace where we can talk more freely about the details of the job? Someplace where you and Giggly Jane can get much better acquainted."
At this, the skinhead dug her nails into him and, leaning her face close to his, pushed the wet, squirming tip of her tongue deep into his ear. It was all the convincing he needed.
"I love women," Grub confessed as he staggered to his feet.