Devil's Vortex. James Axler

help you.”

      “Here, now,” Ryan protested from behind her. “Let’s not go overboard with this.”

      “Out of the way, Captain Sensitivity,” Mildred said brusquely. “A healer needed here.”

      “But—”

      “Healer working here.”

      Although Jak had butted heads with Ryan a few months back, that was all in the past now. The two had discovered the hard way how much they needed each other. Same as everybody in their little crew needed everybody else. Before, during and since that time, the other member of the group to challenge Ryan’s authority was Mildred. Krysty reckoned he endured it as much to help keep himself from getting too full of himself and thinking he was infallible—which was a sure recipe to end up with dirt hitting you in the eyes, triple quick. But like every one of the companions, she had a specialty. And when she or anyone of them was engaged in his or her work, Ryan knew to back off.

      The way, of course, they did with him. Mostly. Krysty had to grin to herself.

      “My friend Mildred is coming to help you, too,” Krysty said—fortuitously a moment before she heard the clatter of a tool inadvertently kicked by one of Mildred’s combat boot, and a suppressed curse. “You’re safe now. Why don’t you talk to me? Tell me your name.”

      An eye opened. It was brown. It looked startlingly dark in that bloodless face. Krysty had to hope that trauma and terror had drained color from her skin. Otherwise she could hardly be healthy.

      The eye rolled, then fixed on Krysty. The sobbing dwindled to a sniffling.

      “I—I’m Mariah,” she said.

      “Are you hurt, Mariah?” Mildred asked briskly, kneeling next to Krysty. She subtly shouldered the redhead a bit to the side to make room. The two were best friends. As such, Krysty knew that when she was in full-on healer mode, Mildred was as bullheaded businesslike as her man, J. B. Dix, tinkering up a busted blaster—or using one to chill a room full of stonehearts.

      “Any blood? Any broken bones? Any bad pains?”

      “No,” Mariah said. She moistened her lips with a pale pink tongue. “Can I have some water?”

      Mildred promptly pulled a canteen from her belt. With plenty of snow on the ground here near the Black Hills, fresh water wasn’t hard to come by. Fresh chow was another thing entirely.

      “Come on,” she said. “Sit up to drink it.”

      She let Krysty urge the girl to uncurl her arms from their death grip on her shins. Then Mildred firmly grasped her shoulders and pulled her up to a seated position. Krysty suspected that her friend’s bedside manner, as they would have called it in predark times, would have raised some eyebrows, but no matter how abrupt the dark, stocky woman with the beaded hair plaits might be, she treated her patients far more gently than a girl like this was likely used to. It was how the world was.

      Mariah took the canteen and drank thirstily, her eyes squeezed shut. Krysty noticed that she didn’t spill a drop.

      After a moment Mildred eased the canteen back from the girl’s lips. “Not too much at a time, or you’ll just throw it back up again. Breathe.”

      For a moment Mariah clutched at the bottle like a nursing baby at the breast. Then she dropped her hand to her lap. Her eyes focused, first on Mildred, then Krysty again. Then they swept over Ryan, J.B., Ricky and Doc, looking in from the doorway.

      Jak’s friends had put themselves in position to counter whatever threats may have lurked in the toolshed. He, of course, had moved on. His business now was to secure the rest of the small farm settlement and report back to the rest.

      Mariah appeared to become more in control of herself. Some color was coming back to her cheeks. Krysty still reckoned she likely was as naturally pale as the redhead was herself.

      “I’m Mariah,” she said again. “What do you want from me?”

      “That’s a good question,” J.B. said, scratching his neck. Evidently deciding the scared child—she looked now to Krysty to be in her early teens—offered little immediate threat, he had tipped the barrel of his combat shotgun toward the slanted roof. “I can’t really think of a thing.”

      “Information,” Ryan rasped. “What happened here? And who did it to whom?”

      “What do you mean?” the girl asked.

      “That’s Ryan,” Krysty said. “He’s the leader of this crew. Tact isn’t his strong suit.” She and Mildred hastily introduced the others. Mariah seemed to listen attentively, nodding shyly at each in turn.

      “What our fearless leader was asking was two questions at once,” Mildred explained.

      Krysty saw Ryan frown a bit at that, and she flashed him a grin.

      “Why don’t you tell us what happened first?” Mildred asked.

      Mariah moistened her lips, then she looked down at her hands, lying in her lap like crippled white birds.

      “Stickies attacked us before dawn,” she said. “The, uh, Baylah family lived here. Actually, a few families did. They were all related to one another somehow, I reckon. I never did get it straight, and no one bothered explaining it to me. Paw and Maw Baylah owned the ’stead, though, and ran the show.

      “Just all at once I woke up and there was screaming everywhere. Screams of people and animals in pain. And that awful screeching the muties make.”

      “Ones with mouths anyway,” J.B. said, nodding.

      “You were sleeping in your dress?” Mildred asked.

      “I do a lot,” the girl explained. “In case somebody decides to rouse me out in the middle of the night to do chores.”

      Krysty watched her closely. If those chores included the sort of sexual favors that were sometimes demanded as the price of boarding—even of children—she wasn’t giving the fact away in her face and manner any more than in her words.

      If that sort of abuse had happened, the guilty had more than likely paid by now. For what that might be worth.

      “You got away?” Ryan asked.

      “I was sleeping in the pantry,” she said. “They didn’t find me. At first. But when I looked out the door to see what was happening, they spotted me. They were...feasting already and across the kitchen. I ran out the door and hid in the first place I hit.”

      “This shed,” Krysty said.

      She nodded. “I shut the door. They started hammering on it. Dust flew all off it—I could just see by dawn light seeping in through the little window. I hoped they would get tired and go away. But they knew I was there and didn’t give up. Then the door sprang open, and I curled up in a ball like the way that you found me, closed my eyes tight and started to scream.”

      From the doorway, Ricky made a strangled sound.

      “Relax, kid,” Mildred told him without looking around. “We know the stickies didn’t eat her.”

      “Why not?” Ryan asked.

      “Ryan,” Krysty said.

      He raised his eyebrows at her. “What? It’s a fair question.”

      Mariah just shook her head. She still didn’t look up.

      “What happened to the stickies?” Ryan asked carefully, his lone blue eye on Krysty.

      Mariah shook his head.

      “I don’t know. The door burst open. The wind was howling. A big bunch of snow and dust blew in. And the stink—the stickie stink, and fresh blood. And worse—”

      Worse likely meaning the reek of torn-open guts, Krysty knew. She was double glad the cold wind tended to carry off the charnel smell and deadened such scent as remained.