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his boys."
Carla Petersen looked solemn. "I heard he blamed you for it. Thought it was
part of a plot. Riddler spoke for you. He said it couldn't have been arranged,
that you didn't even know about the run. Mote was all for taking action."
"Action?" Krysty asked.
"Lining you up for a feeding."
Ryan nodded. "You got a good weapon, you'd be a stupe not to use it. One thing
puzzles me, Carla. How did Mote get this snake cult started?"
"Nobody really knows. Or remembers. There'd always been big snakes out in the
brush, toward the foothills, but nothing the size of Azrael and the rest. The
Motes came out of the desert in a couple of
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Deathlands - Ice and Fire wags. One of the wags was enormous, and some folks
say it held straw and was like a kind of cage inside."
"You mean the Motes brought those rattlers with them?" Krysty's voice betrayed
her shock and disbelief.
"That's what people say. But these days they say it quiet behind closed doors
and shuttered windows.
Edgar's brother was one who said it aloud. Never found even a bone of him."
"Nice," Ryan muttered. "Real nice."
"And they brought this worshiping and chilling with them as well?"
Carla glanced around, as though she thought she'd heard a sound in one of the
dimly lit alleys behind her.
"That's about the breadth of it, Krysty. Like I said before, step careful."
With that advice Carla left them to visit with J.B.
The sun had vanished, and night came across the land in a shifting, sideways,
skulking run, dragging its black cloak in the dust behind it.
Ryan and Krysty decided that they'd leave a recce of the Sierra Sunrise Park
to some other time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
J.B. HAD BEGGED some clean, dry rags from Ruby Rainer, explaining that he
wanted to do some cleaning. She'd also supplied him with a white enamel bowl
that was half-filled with steaming water. He'd carefully drawn the curtains
shut across his second-floor back room, sliding the bolt in the center of the
heavy oak door.
The Armorer always made it a policy to try to fieldstrip and clean all of his
weapons at least once a day.
In the Deathlands that wasn't always possible. But here in Snakefish he had
everything that he needed to perform the task.
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Deathlands - Ice and Fire
He was whistling quietly to himself as he beganan old hymn tune that dated
right back to the shadowed days of his childhood. "The Day Thou Gavest, Lord,
Is Ended." If asked, J.B. probably wouldn't even have realized he was
whistling any time at all.
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This evening he decided to check out the contents of his voluminous pockets
the plas-ex, detonators and wires; the sextant and the garotte; and the
grensthe scarlet-and-blue implode and the slightly smaller frag-
gren with the flip-top firing.
He fisted the Tekna knife, feeling the dark metal hilt with the holes cut for
lightness and grip, admiring the honed steel blade with the jagged sawing
part, nearest the grip. J.B. held the blade to the lamp, turning it to catch
the reflection, rubbing with one of the pieces of cotton waste to remove a
barely visible smear.
As he concentrated harder, the whistling ceased and the room was quiet. He
caught the noise of one of the
Last Heroes thundering past the Rentaroom, but he ignored it.
Once the knife was cleansed, and a fine film of oil applied to it from a small
screw-top container in one of his pockets, J.B. began to work on his blasters.
Time slipped by. Outside his room the sun dipped below the horizon and the
streetlights came on. With a sigh the small man stood, stretching his arms
above his head. He moved aside the corner of the flowered curtain and watched
his two friends, close together, strolling through the dusk.
The ritual went on.
All the parts clicked, one from another, and were laid on the bed, on the
cloths, in their ordered positions.
Springs, catches and gleaming muzzles. J.B. started to whistle once again.
Happiness wasn't a concept that preyed much on the mind of John Barrymore Dix
from Cripple Creek, but if he'd thought about it, times like this would have
been equated with happiness.
His strong, capable fingers rubbed, oiled and cleaned, sliding the various
machined parts of the Heckler amp; Koch MP-7 SD-8 together. It was warm in the
room, and the steam from the bowl of water began to condense on his
spectacles, fogging them. J.B. took the glasses off and began to wipe at them
with a corner of one of Mrs. Rainer's old bed sheets.
The knock on the door of his room was soft and hesitant.
J.B. didn't reply. He drew the knife and stuck it into his belt. Hefting the
automatic rifle from the bed, he moved, light-footed, to flatten himself
against the wall by the door.
The knock was repeated.
He still kept silent.
"John? John Dix? You in there? It's me. It's Carla."
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