Chapter Thirty

 

 

They reached the Brown Burro diner in Fairplay just as the sun was setting.

 

The small ville seemed untouched by the ravening gang, with smoke coming from several chimneys and the smell of cooking drifting from open windows.

 

Ryan was little the worse from his ordeal, though Mildred insisted on bathing his many cuts, bites and scratches with boiled water, as hot as he could bear it, to try to remove the risk of any infection. He'd quickly walked off the stiffness of being trapped.

 

The eatery was completely empty except for a middle-aged woman wearing a spotless white linen apron. She had looked up as the six strangers walked in, her face a mask of apprehension, tinted with fear. "Yeah?" she said. "You looking for a meal?"

 

"This is a diner?" Ryan asked.

 

 

"Sure is. Best in town. Brown Burro's been goin' since way back before skydark."

 

"You looked like you might have been expecting different company," J.B. said, leaning the scattergun in the corner of the room and sitting at a rectangular table.

 

"Been some bad ones around here in the" Her eyes flicked nervously over the group. "You ain't them?"

 

"Gang of stickies and norms?" Ryan said. "Seen their bloody leavings all over the Rockies. No, we aren't them."

 

The relief could almost be touched.

 

"Figured you wasn't them."

 

"We came through Alma," Krysty stated. "They took the ville apart. How come Fairplay isn't touched?"

 

The woman sniffed, eyes looking past her, through the curtained window at the cool evening. "Some folks think they're just waiting for the right moment. Some folks run to do their bidding. Brown-nose bastards! Nobody'll stand up to them."

 

"Many people prefer the option of living on their knees to dying on their feet." Doc intoned.

 

"Right there, mister. Fairplay's useful to them. Get all the stores they want on the slate here. Not that they'll ever pay their dues."

 

"They eat here?"

 

She looked at Jak, clearly unhappy at his white hair, pale face and ruby eyes. "You sure you ain't ? No. Eat here? Sometimes. I make them pay. Jack up front for what they want. Don't like to think where that jack comes from. Blood money is what I reckon it must be."

 

"They likely to stop by tonight?" Ryan asked, walking and opening the door, looking and listening all around.

 

"Hardly. Always get back to their camp up in Harmony before full dark."

 

Krysty had sat beside the Armorer, running her fingers over the odd covering on the table, which was lots of predark coins, set in thick, clear plastic.

 

"They taken Harmony?"

 

"Sure have. Hear they did some chilling and raping. Usual story. Most of the living are too scared to run now. One or two got out in time. They hide around here. Now, they could look in for some supper tonight."

 

Mildred was reading the chalked menu. "Reckon I could start at the top with your potato-and-leek soup and work my way through every single thing until I got to the coffee at the end. Sure sounds real good."

 

"Brown Burro prides itself on giving folks value for money," the woman said. "You all sit yourselves down and I'll take your orders."

 

It didn't take long for them to make up their minds, and they waited, mainly in silence, while the woman went into the kitchen to pass their orders to her cook.

 

Krysty was restless, shifting in her seat, glancing out as the darkness folded itself around the little ville. "So close" she said.

 

Ryan called out, asking if there was accommodation to be had in the ville.

 

"Sure. A few empty cabins. I'll tell you which ones to try when you're ready to go. They belong to some of the locals who've done a runner, ones who reckon the gang'll pay us in blood when the markers fall due. Seems pointless to me. Up and running. About as much good as waving a lantern at a runaway train."

 

She turned as a bell rang from the kitchen, telling her their food was ready. Moments later she reappeared with a tray in each hand, the dishes jostling each other.

 

"Venison stew with creamed potatoes. Same with roasted potatoes and peas and beans. Steak-and-bacon pie with wild rice and chicken gravy. Breast of chicken with french fries and sliced tomatoes in oil. Trout we got was so big I've divided into two portions. With cress and lettuce and a side order of fries. Sourdough bread and our own salted butter. Got some blueberry jelly I made myself if anyone's interested. There's some red currant sauce for the venison and onion sauce with the pie and the chicken. Fish has its own white sauce with pepper and some of my own herbs. That everything you ordered?"

 

Ryan looked at the mountain of food, passing half the trout to Krysty, taking the other half himself. "I reckon it'll keep us going for a while."

 

"We got some good desserts, as well. Take some pride in my pies, I do."

 

"What you got to drink?" J.B. asked.

 

"Mostly beer. With beer as a second choice. And milk as the third choice."

 

They all chose beer.

 

Doc broke the munching silence. "The trouble nowadays is that food is killing the art of conversation."

 

Mildred laughed through a mouthful of steak-and-bacon pie. "Last few days have been either feast or famine, haven't they? Eating in two good eateries. And in between living off rocks, gravel and rainwater."

 

"Prefer beer to rainwater." Ryan grinned.

 

At that moment the door of the restaurant inched open, making everyone look around. A heavily built, middle-aged, unshaven man peered in, blinking at the bright light from the oil lamps, staring at all of them, his eyes returning to Krysty.

 

"Little Krysty!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "My firstest and bestest girl."

 

She stood, hand dropping in an automatic reflex to the butt of her Smith amp; Wesson 640. Then her green eyes widened in surprise, recognition slowly dawning.

 

"Gaia! It's Carl. Carl Lanning. Herb's boy."

 

The man shut the door quickly behind him, after a glance to make sure that nobody was close by or watching him. He walked over to sit at the table, ignoring Ryan and the others, holding out a hand for Krysty to shake.

 

"Little By the gods! Never thought I'd ever set eyes on you again, Krysty. That's"

 

The sentence trickled off into stillness. The woman who ran the Brown Burro had appeared from the kitchen, and then spun on her heel and vanished again.

 

Ryan studied Carl Lanning. Krysty had told him how, when she had been an adolescent girl in Harmony, under her mother's tuition, she had decided that the time had come for her to lose her virginity. And Carl Lanning, about her age, son of the blacksmith, had been the chosen candidate.

 

She had seduced him, using him for her own purposes. But it had affected Carl and he had jumped to the conclusion that they were as good as engaged. Almost married. He followed her everywhere around the ville and neglected his chores until she'd finally driven the message home that she was going to leave Harmony one day and would leave it as a single woman.

 

Carl was a year or so older than Krysty, but he appeared at least twice that. His face was weathered and his eyes had the floating dimness, like watery eggs, of heavy drinkers. His features looked as if they were set in stone and he had a nervous tic, a nerve twitching beneath his left eye. It was possible to see behind the rapid aging that he had once been a handsome youth. Ryan's guess would have put him on the scales now at the two-fifty mark. He reckoned that Carl probably stood around five feet nine inches tall.

 

The handsome youth had vanished under the weight of far too many glasses and bottles.

 

"So," Krysty said. "After all these years. To meet up like this. Let me introduce you to my friends, Carl."

 

"Sure thing. I guess I knew you'd come back one day, Krysty. Folks said you'd flown the coop forever and a day. But I told them no. Knew that one day Harmony'd pull you back. Though there's been changes."

 

She nodded. "We can talk about that in a moment. First off, this is Ryan Cawdor. Mildred Wyeth and"

 

"Yeah, good to meet you." He interrupted her without even a token nod to the others. "Changes, Krysty. By the gods, but that's true enough!"

 

Krysty persisted with the introductions. "John B. Dix, Jak Lauren and the old guy's Doc Tanner."

 

"These changes all started"

 

But Doc wasn't going to let Carl get away with such rudeness. "I fear that I have no time for any man who uses vulgar words and vulgar language and vulgar manners, Mr. Lanning. But I assume that you are under stress and I will make allowances. I am pleased to meet any friend of Miss Wroth."

 

He stood and offered his hand across the table. After a few seconds' delay, Carl stood and shook hands, finally doing the same with everyone.

 

"Sorry," he muttered, eyes downcast. "You was right to slap me on the wrist, Doc Tanner. My pa would have whaled the tar out of me for bein' so rude. Specially to friends of the daughter of Mother Sonja."

 

Krysty was still standing. But now the color leached from her cheeks and she sat quickly. "Mother" she said, barely audible.

 

"Why, sure. You won't have heard nothing about Harmony, will you? Unless folks here in Fairplay told you. Which way did you come, anyway, Krysty?"

 

Seeing Krysty's distress, Ryan answered the man. "From Glenwood Springs to Leadville and across the tops. Then down and up again through Alma. Put my son into Nicholas Brody's school. You heard of it, Carl?"

 

"Guess I have. So you seen some of the work of the gang of killers we got landed with? By the gods, but there are some triple-sicko sons of bitches there. I'm on the run from them. Been after me for days. Just because I stood against them. Laid one cold with Pa's old hammer. Busted his skull like a ripe melon."

 

He looked toward the kitchen. "Any chance of some pan-fried chicken with hash browns and grits? And" His voice took on an unpleasant wheedling tone. "Mebbe some whiskey?"

 

The woman reappeared. "Told you we'd give you the basics, Carl, until you got yourself together. Doesn't include giving you jack-free liquor to muddle your brains."

 

"Just a glass?"

 

"One."

 

"Thanks a million."

 

"I'll go get the food and let you talk private to your friends."

 

She went through the swing door into the kitchen, and there was an uncomfortable silence that nobody seemed to want to break. Until J.B. spoke.

 

"How many in this gang?"

 

Carl turned to him, narrowing his eyes as though he'd already forgotten who the Armorer was. "The gang? There's fucking stickies in it, you know? What kind of a man rides with mutie shutters like that?"

 

"How many?"

 

"Stickies?"

 

"All of them."

 

"Around twenty or so norms and half that many stickies. Too many for you and your friends, Krysty. Even with all those pretty blasters."

 

"Tell me about Mother Sonja and Tyas McCann and Peter Maritza. What happened in Harmony after I left?"

 

 

 

CARL TOLD THEM how his father, Herb, had died a few years earlier of a bloody flux after the wheel of a cart had shattered and the rig had fallen on him.

 

Peter Maritza had been killed the previous year. He'd gone hunting and vanished. The spring thaw had revealed his desiccated corpse with both legs broken.

 

"Think it was an accident," Carl insisted.

 

Uncle Tyas McCann had gone into a decline after Krysty had run away from Harmony ville.

 

"You was always his sweetheart among the whole family," Carl said, wiping his stubbled chin after draining the quarter glass of whiskey in a single gulp. "Broke his heart, Krysty. Broke mine. Most of the young fellers in the ville. But Uncle Tyas sort of lost interest in everything. Faded away and dried out like a leaf in the fall. Got one of them coughs that bring out the red roses. Know what I mean?"

 

"When did he die?" asked Krysty, who'd been sitting with her eyes fixed to the patterned tablecloth as Carl poured out the sorry news of the decline of Harmony.

 

"Two years after you went."

 

There was a long silence, while Krysty tried to summon up the courage to ask the one question she was frightened of hearing answered.

 

Despite his lack of sensitivity, it was obvious that Carl knew what the question was and he was backing off from responding to it.

 

"My mother?" The question was asked in the faintest whisper, yet everyone in the diner heard it.

 

Carl had been eating his meal while he spoke. Now he gestured with the empty glass to the woman who stood by the kitchen door. Slowly and grudgingly she poured him another slug of the home-brew whiskey.

 

"Mother Sonja. By the gods, Krysty, but I been dreading meeting you one fine day and having to be the one told you about what happened."

 

"She's dead?"

 

"No. Yeah. I mean, we don't know."

 

She was on her feet again, pointing an accusing finger at the fumbling man. "You may have turned into a fat old drunk, Carl, but you better just tell me what happened, clear and careful. Now."

 

To everyone's surprise and embarrassment, the blacksmith's son put his head in his hands and started to cry, sobbing, his broad shoulders shaking, tears trickling down his cheeks and dripping onto the table.

 

The woman owner of the Brown Burro went and patted him on the back. "There, now, Carl, there now. It wasn't your fault. You weren't the one up and ran away and broke the heart of a whole ville," she soothed, staring angrily at Krysty.

 

Ryan was also standing, hands braced on the table in front of him. "Fireblast! Will someone just tell us what exactly happened to Krysty's mother?"

 

"Nobody knows. Few months after you left her, it seems she left Harmony in the mid of the night. Abandoned her home and all her possessions. Left no note. No message. No word. Nobody seen or heard from her since."

 

"Nothing?" Krysty's face was carved from living marble, showing no trace of any emotion.

 

"Nothing," Carl said, wiping his nose and eyes on the back of his sleeve.

 

"Oh, Gaia help me," Krysty breathed, sitting again and closing her eyes.

 

 

 

IT WAS A SHORT TALE, simply told.

 

Sonja Wroth had walked out of her life and walked out of the ville and nobody had seen a glimpse of her. Nor had there been any word of a sighting. She had disappeared off the face of the earth.

 

"Not even a whisper. We asked packmen and traders and travelers to look out. She was kind of distinctive to recognize. But we never got a word. By the gods, Krysty, sweetheart, I'd have given all the jack in all the villes in Deathlands not to have been the one told you this."

 

"I wanted her to be alive," Krysty said haltingly. "So I could make it up to her for Or, if she'd been dead, then I could have mourned her and made my peace that way. But with her gone. Just gone"

 

Nobody spoke for several long seconds. Finally Ryan broke the silence.

 

"Least we can do something to clean Harmony ville from its plague of rats. You want to do that, lover?"

 

Krysty sighed and smiled. "Yeah. I think I'd like that very much."