"Not anymore," Mildred said quietly to Ryan. "I knew this placespent some time at this very hospital, in fact. By the 1990s, North Carolina had some of the finest physicians and medical equipment in the entire country."

"The old road's still intact more or less. We'll follow it toward Freedom. I've got some business there, and it'll give us a safe place to spend the night What's wrong?" Alton allowed his voice to trail off as he tried to comprehend the sudden dark expressions that crossed the faces of Ryan's group upon the mention of the word "Freedom."

"This Freedomthat the name of some kind of ville?" Ryan asked, his mind involuntarily crawling back to another Freedom, the Freedom City Motor Hotel and Casino, located in the southeastern part of the Carolinas. It was the lair of the former Baron Willie Elijah and his mutie-hating mercies, the site of a vicious battle with Lord Kaa, a self-styled "lord of the mutants" who had confronted Elijah and his humans in a brutal fight ending in the baron's ultimate demise.

"Yeah, sort of," the scavie replied with a grin. "But better. You got to see it to believe it."

"Already have," J.B. said firmly. "Don't want to go back, either."

"No, this is a different Freedom," Ryan replied. "Has to be."

"What's the Southern fascination with the word freedom anyway? Seems half the places we've ended up in the Carolinas has been named 'Freedom' this or 'Freedom' that," Dean groused.

"White guilt," Mildred guessed.

That got J.B.'s attention. "Huh? I don't get you, Millie."

Doc was quick to offer his interpretation, delighted at the opportunity in fact, J.B. thought glumly. "The War Between the States was triggered by many pivotal events, John Barrymore, one of which was the th.o.r.n.y subject of slavery. The white overlord and his darker-hued property. Those in power in the South said they needed the slave labor to maintain their fields, and when President Lincoln signed his fateful proclamation, mounting tensions went beyond discussion and boiled over into full-scale conflict. The South seceded from the North, and there was holy h.e.l.l to pay."

"Everyone pays the freight in a war, Doc," the Armorer replied.

"Indeed. After the war, many of the more forward thinkers in the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and so on entered into a spell of overkill, and in response to the new freedom of the black man, a freedom that did not fully come until decades later during the famed civil-rights movement, the name Freedom worked its way into many a new Southern building or street. The traditions continued well into the late 1900s, and up to sky dark."

"Well, that's one interesting thing about the end of the worldit tends to be a great equalizer," Mildred quipped with little amus.e.m.e.nt.

HOURS LATER, after making their way down from the parking deck to the road below, Mildred was feeling much better. She whistled a slightly off-key fragment of a bouncy tune, snapping her fingers in accompaniment. The beaded strands of her plaited hair clacked softly as she moved her head in time to the music.

"What's that you're whistling, Millie?" J.B. asked, trying vainly to identify the music. "Sounds familiar, somehow."

"Before your time, John," she replied, pausing to breathe deeply of the mountain air. "Way before your time. Came from an old television show. So old, it was in black and whitenot color. The show always started the same. The opening credits would show a father and his barefoot son walk down an old back road to a lake, fishing poles over their shoulders."

"Kind of like you and me, Dad," Dean interjected. "Except we haven't gone fishing in a triple-long time."

"Don't interrupt," Ryan replied to his son. "Mildred's talking."

"Show took place in North Carolina, and that's what I always think of when I think about this area. Back roads and fishing," Mildred continued. "d.a.m.ned if this place doesn't look just like what I remember from the series, even if it is part of Deathlands."

"Television," Doc snorted disdainfully. "Mind rot. I regret the loss of the films of the world, but I cannot say the same about what was dubbed 'the idiot box.' Too many hours of potential achievement were wasted staring at the daily parade of misfits and dysfunctional families on a never ending barrage of so-called talk shows, programs where the talking consisted of nothing but screaming and accusations over intentional betrayals between men and women of ill repute and worse behavior."

"I'll take a little mind rot over senility any day, you old fool," Mildred said with a chuckle. "Besides, from the sounds of it, you wasted more than a few hours of your own life watching the daily parade of the misfits."

"At times, dear Doctor, that was all I was allowed to do to pa.s.s the time during my incarceration. And I can a.s.sure you, my jailers gave no choice of channels."

Mildred fell silent after that.

THE PARTY OF EIGHT continued to follow the broken pavement of the old Hawthorne Road. Extra care had to be given to watching where they stepped, as the road was pitted with small holes that could easily twist an ankle or cause a fall. At times, the blacktop disappeared entirely to be replaced with a mix of lush, ankle-high green gra.s.s and the hardy, small white daisies that seemed to bloom throughout Deathlands. After Mildred had stopped reminiscing, a slight pall seemed to hang over the group. About a mile into their trip, the silence had become almost tangible.

Ryan took notice of the lack of sounds in the air. Before there had been faint reminders that life was still here among the ruinsthe hum of insects, the discussions between the arguing friends, the sound of footsteps rising and falling on the road. Now it was almost as if each of them had subconsciously started trying to move more silently, a hidden command to breathe easy and keep noise to a minimum.

The absence of bird calls was especially noticeable. Once, Krysty had wordlessly tugged at Ryan's long coat. When he glanced back, he couldn't help but see she was troubled, as well. Her sentient red hair was coiling and uncoiling in a manner that indicated that she, too, subconsciously knew something was wrong.

Still, the tree-lined roadway gave all indications of being safe, and their guide had no problems with striding ahead without fear. Alton apparently knew where he was going, and the closer they got, the more at ease he acted.

"Been a while since I got out this way," he said. "Like you, I been traveling myself. Back and forth with no permanent place to hang my hat."

Dean, bored out of his young mind and looking up at the blue sky, noticed the movement in the trees first. His keen eyes detected a slight movement in the leafy covering of a particular large tree directly next to the scavie's head. The mighty oak's branches were hanging out like spread wooden fingers over the asphalt path they were traveling.

He thought about mentioning it, but he didn't want to look like a stupe over a squirrel or other arbor-dwelling creature. Besides, his father didn't seem to be worried, and the boy knew Ryan's survival senses were honed by experience to a much finer edge than his own. As Alton and then Ryan both pa.s.sed under the long branches, Dean held his breath until they were on the other side.

The boy exhaled with relief.

Until the leaves parted with a sudden, frantic rustling, and the hidden men leaped out and were upon them.

Chapter Nine.

"Ambush!" Dean cried out in a voice pitched high and tight with shock, but his warning arrived a second too late as the men in the tree revealed themselves with a sudden, murderous intensity.

Alton Adrian fell like a dropped doll, taken totally by surprise as the weight of his attacker came down hard and swift upon his head and upper body. The second man wasn't as lucky. He had chosen Ryan as his target. The one-eyed man reacted much more swiftly than the bearded guide, his reflexes inhumanly quick as he brought up the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer in a swift, practiced motion and fired off a trio of shots, each slug catching his a.s.sailant in the chest. The force of the bullets at such close range flipped the attacker backward, causing him to hurl his weapon away.

He landed hard on his lower back and rear once his feet clumsily hit heel first on the broken road. Between the force of the bullets and the impact of the fall, the man was wheezing, gasping for air as he writhed helplessly in pain.

J.B. was in motion the instant the ambush begun, swinging the b.u.t.t of his own weapon in a forward arc across the back of the man who had focused his energies on the unsuspecting scavie. The sound of hard blaster on softer skull was loud and unforgiving. Even with the disadvantage of poor vision, the Armorer was a deadly foe in close-quarters fighting.

The othersJak, Mildred, Doc and Krystyall came to instant readiness, their own individual weapons springing up from their holsters and other places of concealment to find safe haven in their hands.

No other ambushers revealed themselves.

"That it?" Jak asked in disbelief, still peering hard into the foliage above.

"Looks like it." Krysty said.

"Stupes," Jak muttered, shaking his head in amus.e.m.e.nt.

Mildred was kneeling and checking the broken cranium of the man J.B. had taken down. She felt the b.l.o.o.d.y skull and winced.

"This one's alive, but he won't be answering any questions for a while. Some lump he is growing on his skull."

"Could improve his dumb-a.s.s looks," J.B. muttered angrily.

The sec man Ryan had drilled staggered to his feet, holding his chest and ribs with both hands. His face was a twisted mask of agony as he tried awkwardly to stand. Ryan reached over and shoved him back down hard on the ground.

"Ow, G.o.ddammit!" the man roared. "Wearing armor under those work clothes, aren't you?" Ryan remarked calmly.

"Best purchase I ever made. Saved my a.s.s twice before," he managed to gasp in a voice tight with pain and fear.

"Too bad they don't make it for the head."

"You weren't aiming for my head."

"I am now," Ryan said, making a point of aiming the SIG-Sauer right between the man's eyes.

"s.h.i.t!" the man cried out, bringing his hands up to his face.

"Hold still. No, don't keep trying to get up or I'll drop you coldc.o.c.ked like your pal over there."

The man looked over at his comrade lying unconscious at the edge of the road.

"He chilled?"

"No, just sleepy. What I want you to do is roll over flat on your stomach with your hands above your head. Cross your legs like a bashful gaudy s.l.u.t and keep them that way until I tell you to move," Ryan ordered.

The man complied, groaning with the effort of contorting his already aching body.

"Now, I'm going to ask you some questions," Ryan said. "I want answers and I want them fast, or I'm going to start blowing you apart piece by piece, and no body armor is going to stop it. You get me?"

"Wait a second. We're sec men out of Freedom. You're getting awfully d.a.m.n close to the area we're supposed to protect."

Ryan looked to Alton for confirmation. Alton shrugged and pointed to the identical green denim jackets the two men wore. On the right arm of each was a white patch with an ornate cursive F in a circle.

"They're wearing Freedom colors and patches like sec men. Could be telling the truth."

"Don't mean much. They could've stolen the clothes from Freedom or even chilled the real guards for the threads and hardware," J.B. said.

"What are your names?" Ryan asked.

"I'm Michaelson. The guy you knocked cold is Isaac."

"Mike and Ike. That's real cute," Ryan said mockingly.

Dean had collected the dropped handblasters the men were carrying in the attack and gave one of them to J.B. for identification.

"Twin Colts, the 2000 model," the Armorer said. "This was the first gun from Colt that broke away from the old John Browning original design of the locking breech that drops and swings. The top lug locks into a recess in the slide, and the bottom lug rides in a cam path cut into a cam blocksee? The block rests in the frame. The firing mechanisms on these pistols were also innovative. The mag release is ambidextrous, and there's no form of applied safety. The self-c.o.c.king mechanism is set up so you can't accidentally shoot yourself in the foot."

"Thanks, J.B. That's probably more than I needed to know," Dean replied.

"One more thingthese blasters use 9 mm ammo."

"Good, we can use the bullets," Ryan answered, turning his full attention back to the p.r.o.ne captured man. "Ready to talk, Mike? Why were you and your buddy out here?"

"Looking for stickies. They been giving us holy h.e.l.l at Freedom. Every night they slink around, starting fires, chilling travelers, blowing things up. Not only is it a major pain in the collective a.s.s, but the sons of b.i.t.c.hes are getting dangerous. We've started widening the perimeter of our patrols to see if we can catch them out in the daylight."

Ryan nodded. "And what happens if you do?"

"Then we chill the stickie b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"All two of you?" Mildred asked sarcastically. Jak snorted in derisive agreement.

The fallen sec man looked insulted. "We're the advance team, the lookouts. Looking down, we got carried away and thought you were stickies."

Ryan lashed out with the steel-reinforced toe of his scuffed boot, catching the man in the hipbone, making him cry out. "Wrong answer, friend. Want to try again?"

"d.a.m.n, mister, you don't have to kick me!"

"I'll kick your teeth in if I take a notion, and stomp your b.a.l.l.s for an encore if you don't stop jerking me around."

"It's the truth, it's the truth!"

"Do we look like any stickies you ever saw before?"

"No, not now. Up in the trees you did. Sun's going down. Getting harder to see. I guess we acted without thinking things through."

"That's the first honest thing you said to me yet."

J.B stepped forward and added his opinion. "What kind of strategic genius thought it was a good idea for two men to jump a party of eight? Your odds aren't worth a d.a.m.n."

"Thought if we took out you two, we'd have hostages."

"Stickies don't give a rat's a.s.s about hostages." Mike's partner, Ike, gave a groan as he started to come around. "Perhaps your partner over there can tell me the truth before we decide whether to waste two bullets on your sorry a.s.ses."

Alton Adrian's voice broke into the interrogation. "Wait, I think I know who these two are nowor rather, why they're slinking around and jumping people. They're highway robbers. Thieves. Hiding out here to steal the jack off any visitors before they can get to Freedom safely."

"You lie!" Mike roared.

"No, I think he's made a good point," Ryan replied, pulling out his panga with a flourish. "Now, I'm not one for torture, but let's see if cutting off some fingers and toes loosens your memory."

"Someone come," Jak said, pointing down the stretch of road.

Off in the distance, a group of men was riding toward them on horseback. They paused a good distance away, and the leader took out a small handheld bullhorn device to amplify his voice.

"Hoy to you, friends. We're sending out a representative to talk with you. h.e.l.l, I'm coming myself. Don't chill my a.s.s until you hear what I've got to say," the man called.

"Getting interesting," Jak said softly, readying his blaster.

"Tell me about it," Mildred agreed.

The man who'd spoken through the bullhorn handed it to one of his men and rode slowly toward the waiting group. On his approach, the beautifully marked reddish-brown-and-white paint horse became identifiable.

So did the black man's attire, which matched the suits worn by Mike and Dee.

"Good evening," the man said, keeping both hands on the horse's reins.

"Whatever," Ryan replied, alertly insolent.