Serpent's Tooth. James Axler

burning in his bowels. A second gunman whirled with a shattered shoulder joint, collapsing as he clutched his ruined limb.

      Kane sidestepped, taking cover behind the corner of a hut, but the remaining two bandits were in no mood to fight back. They were fleeing for their lives. Just to make certain, Kane put two more quick bullets into the dirt at their heels. The rebuffed predators only picked up speed, not even weaving to avoid being shot in the back. Terror, not tactics, ruled the minds of the pair. Any thoughts of returning fire had been abandoned with the elimination of their friends.

      The man with the bullet in his belly lay in an ever growing pool of bright arterial blood. It had been only a few seconds since the initial hit, meaning that Kane had severed the bandit’s aorta. Unable to be staunched by tourniquet or direct pressure compress, the marauder was doomed the moment the bullet tore through the central trunk of blood flow in his body. The other raider, his shoulder reduced to stringy, bloody pulp, fumbled with his rifle, flipping it across the alley toward Kane.

      “I give up! Don’t shoot!” the wounded man cried out. “I’m unarmed.”

      “You think I’m blind?” Kane growled, stalking closer to the surrendering bandit. “Pull the pistol from your belt.”

      The raider looked down at the handle poking from under the folds of his shirt. His left hand slapped at the gun, clumsily dislodging it while avoiding any semblance of grasping it firmly. The predatory instincts that had made the wounded robber into a thief had been quenched with his crippling injury. Kane stooped and helped the wounded gunman in his surrender.

      “How large was Lombard’s gang?” Kane inquired.

      “There were twenty of us,” the crippled prisoner answered.

      Kane nodded, doing the math. “Baptiste, Grant, we’ve got about ten more raiders out there,” he subvocalized over the Commtact.

      “We’ve got two prisoners here that confirm those numbers,” Grant responded.

      “No medics were harmed, except for the initial rough-housing by the bandits,” Brigid added. Over the Commtact, Kane could hear Brigid check the action of her 9 mm pistol. “Do you think Lombard will regroup and try to finish the job?”

      “Lombard lost half of his crew trying to get these meds,” Kane answered. “I don’t know. Black market medicine is worth a hell of a lot, but money won’t bring you back from the dead.”

      Kane escorted his prisoner to the intersection, seeing Brigid tend to Phillips. The medic had a cut on his forehead, and blood stained his white coat pink from the seeping wound. On closer examination, though, Kane was relieved to see that Phillips’s eyes were focused.

      “No concussion, just a mess,” Brigid confirmed.

      “Good luck for me at least,” Phillips grunted.

      “Us, too,” Kane answered. “I wouldn’t want to lose any allies here in Cobaltville. You’re worth more than any five gunslingers we could recruit.”

      “Especially for rebuilding Cobaltville,” Brigid added.

      Phillips winced. “I appreciate the sentiment, guys. Just wish these bastards hadn’t cracked my head open.”

      Phillips slowly got up and started dealing with the bleeding laceration of the man Brigid had carved with the box cutter. Kane had packed the shoulder of his prisoner with a kerchief and tied it down with a belt, so he wouldn’t need immediate attention. Ruben was rubbing his throat, looking weak and sickly after being swung around as a human weapon.

      An orderly looked at Phillips, then shook his head. “These guys attacked us. They hurt you.”

      “And they’re not a threat anymore,” Phillips snarled. “Damn it, even Kane, a Magistrate, tended to his prisoner’s injury. Maybe you feel like you can pick and choose when to apply mercy, but that’s not the oath I took.”

      Kane looked at the angered medic. “Besides, I don’t think the danger’s over yet.”

      In the distance, the rumble of diesel engines sounded.

      Lombard had gotten back to his war wags, and from the sounds of things, they were returning to deal with Kane and his allies.

      Chapter 3

      At the sight of the stranger in the forest, Domi slipped her satchel full of scrounged books from her shoulder, hiding it in a corner between the raised roots of an ancient tree. The small but cord-muscled albino woman didn’t want to lose her latest haul from the library in the event of a chase, or if the stranger had allies who would capture her. Armed with only her dagger and a pistol crossbow for catching game while in the wild, the youngest, most feral member of the Cerberus redoubt focused her ruby-red eyes intently on the newcomer, sizing him up.

      The security of Cerberus had been breached many times in the scant years that Domi had called the redoubt her home. As commander of Cerberus Away Team Beta, however, she’d proved to be more than merely a wayward refugee in the ancient facility. She’d battled reptilian invaders with spacecraft and gods armed with technology that could have been mistaken for mythical weaponry, all in the name of protecting her lover, Lakesh, and the ever growing population of the predark bastion of technology, knowledge and security.

      The man wending his way toward the Bitterroot Mountain stronghold had, no doubt, picked this arduous route to avoid Sky Dog and the Lakota Indians who were staunch allies of Cerberus. Domi had crossed this particular terrain with the nimbleness of a mountain goat, spring-steel leg muscles bounding her along the rocky, uneven path with preternatural ease. She noticed that the man was no stranger to hard journeying, but exhaustion weighed on his powerful limbs. Domi regretted leaving behind the Commtact implant at the redoubt as she observed the lone traveler. She had gotten into the habit of isolating herself on these solitary expeditions to achieve a measure of solace, as Lakesh described it. Such trips were meant to escape the confines of the base, abandoning both people and modern technology. The act of shedding the Commtact was the ultimate statement of that mental journey. The machine-woven fibers in her tank top and shorts and the polymer materials of her crossbow were the only evidence of her connection to the Cerberus redoubt and the technology it represented.

      Domi’s thumb snicked off the safety on her crossbow. The bolt was now ready to be released with only the touch of her finger on the trigger. The broad-headed tip was an aggressive assembly of four vaned blades designed to inflict enormous trauma as it pierced the organs of animals as large and as fierce as bears. Domi avoided contact with the carnivores who hunted in this region, leaving them a wide berth. However, a shaft capable of killing a bear would be more than sufficient to take any human invader. She wondered at the stranger’s affiliation and his motives for approaching the redoubt. From his focus and his direction, there was no way that he could miss the base. Nothing else was nearby for hundreds of miles.

      The man was armed with a large revolver stuffed into a leather scabbard that rode on his thigh. A coiled bullwhip hung from a hook on his opposite hip. His machete sheath was empty, for now, as he was using it to hack through thick briars that halted his path. Hardly the arsenal of an invader, even with the two-foot blade in his grasp. Cerberus guards would easily overpower him in the event of a hostile confrontation, but Domi’s curiosity had been piqued, and she strove to get in closer.

      The man paused, wiping his brow with his brawny forearm. He laid his machete on a rock, then reached for his canteen. As soon as he was committed to pulling a swallow of water from the canister, Domi stepped out, crossbow leveled at his chest.

      “Hold still,” she challenged.

      The man’s eyes went wide with surprise. He managed a swallow, then tilted the canteen so he wouldn’t waste his water by drenching himself. “Can I recap my canteen?”

      “No sudden movements,” Domi said. “Who are you?”

      “My name is Austin Fargo. I am on my way to the Cerberus redoubt to meet with Lakesh and Kane, the men who rule there, to ask for their assistance.”

      “Anything