Wretched Earth. James Axler

or children—to the extent there was a difference—were circling the central yard, lighting torches as darkness fell.

      “What’s happening over there?” Krysty asked, pointing.

      By the flaring orange torchlight that flickered in a chill, rising breeze, Mildred saw a skinny guy being bounced like a pinball among a group of dusty, mean-looking wag drivers. They were hooting derisively as they thrust him from one to the next. He reeled, unable to get his balance.

      Mildred scowled. “They hadn’t ought to do that to a little guy. With glasses.”

      Squaring her shoulders, she marched toward the fracas. It didn’t even occur to her to wonder whether Krysty would follow or not. Mildred didn’t care. She hated injustice.

      As the little guy was pushed from pillar to post, a bald wag driver stuck out a boot. The victim went sprawling, his glasses flying off his face. Desperately, he shoved himself up onto all fours to scuttle after them.

      They’d landed near another knot of jeering, laughing wag drivers. One waited until the skinny guy’s fingers almost reached the glasses before he stepped on the specs and crushed them with a vindictive ankle twist.

      “Well, now, look what I gone and done,” he said, showing a gap-toothed grin to his buddies. “Ain’t that a shame?”

      Evidently deciding his pal was getting too much of the attention, a larger man with a mop of dirty hair took it up a notch. He stepped toward the scrabbling victim, clearly getting ready to put the boot in.

      Mildred grabbed his shoulder. “Here, you got no call to do that,” she said, spinning him.

      The predark doctor was a sturdily built woman. In her time she’d been an avid hiker, not to mention an Olympic-class pistol shooter. Since reawakening into the Deathlands she hadn’t exactly slacked off at either pursuit.

      But the guy was a head taller than she was, and what little wits he had were fuddled by advanced testosterone poisoning. As he turned, he snarled and punched her hard between the breasts. She reeled backward three steps and sat down hard.

      So there she was. And the dirty-haired guy was winding up as if to deliver to her the kick she’d stymied.

      Chapter Two

      The burly wag driver, who turned out to have a rat’s-nest beard to go along with the hair, did a little stutter step to kick the sitting Mildred. She gave him a hard heel thrust in the nuts. He sat down not far away from her, bent over and clutching himself.

      Mildred jumped up. The whole rowdy group converged on her, the little dude with the crushed glasses forgotten.

      Suddenly Krysty stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her friend. Her prehensile hair swished around her shoulders, betraying her agitation. It also betrayed the fact that, however beautiful she was, Krysty Wroth was a mutie. Given the sign above the gateway, not to mention the temper of the mob closing in on them, Mildred hoped onlookers would think it was just the breeze stirring her scarlet locks.

      “Wait!” Krysty said, holding up her hands. “What’s all this about?”

      “Thanks, Krysty,” Mildred said from the corner of her mouth. “But you probably should have stood clear.”

      Krysty just smiled at her. That wasn’t the way of any of them, to stand by and watch a friend get stomped. Mildred felt sick at what she might have gotten her friend into.

      A wag driver with a Mohawk like a dead squirrel atop his head backhanded Krysty. “Clear out, bitch, or you’ll get what we give her.”

      The force of the blow snapped Krysty’s head around. She came back with an overhand right that flattened the man’s long nose against his face with a crunch of breaking bone and cartilage, and blood squirting out each nostril. His eyes rolled up in his skull and he folded to the yard.

      With a vicious collective snarl, the man pack closed in around the two embattled women.

      Hard arms enveloped Krysty from behind. Hot breath washed down her neck and back. It stank like an overflowed shitter.

      “Gotcha!” her captor grunted triumphantly as he tried to hoist her off her feet.

      He got more than he bargained for. Krysty brought her knees up and drove a double-booted kick to the jaw of a short, wide wag driver with a faded bandanna tied around his head, hurling him into the crowd. Then she slammed her head back into the face of the man who held her.

      Krysty’s skull was stronger than his jaw was. She felt something crunch at the impact, and he squalled and let her go. She gripped her hands together and turned into him fast, driving the point of her elbow into the pit of his stomach. The air burst out of him.

      As he jackknifed, Krysty was already responding to the men rushing in on her. She whipped herself upright, bringing her elbow under the chin of one of them. His jaws clacked together, then he screamed, revealing red teeth that had bitten deeply into his tongue.

      She caught a glimpse of Mildred. Surrounded, the stocky black woman had turned into a whirling dervish of fists, boots and elbows. She was peaceful by nature but could fight when she had to. And years of Deathlands living had taught her to hold nothing back. She was giving her attackers all they wanted and a double load more.

      Krysty didn’t regret stepping in to help Mildred. The woman was too softhearted and shouldn’t have intervened. Krysty understood intellectually that Ryan was right about the need to keep out of fights that weren’t theirs, no matter how her own compassionate nature rebelled. But there were times when bad behavior had to be resisted.

      Whatever the cost.

      Her arms were grabbed from both sides. She sagged toward the closer assailant, who had caught her right arm. Cocking her knee, she turned and fired her left leg back in a powerful kick that caught the man who held her other arm between navel and crotch. It knocked his legs out from under him, and he slammed into the merciless ground face-first.

      Krysty swung back around, driving her left knee toward the groin of the man who still held her arm. He twisted his own hips. And her knee drove hard into the big muscle of his thigh. It had to have hurt like rad fire, but he grinned in triumph that she’d missed pulping his balls, and made to grab her with his other hand.

      She got her foot down, turned back and, grounding her powerful legs, pistoned a blow against his ribs. Bone cracked like a pistol shot. He gasped and sagged.

      Another man was already closing in from behind. Krysty snapped her left leg straight back, then whipped it up and around. Her heel thwacked the new attacker’s left cheek and spun him away.

      There were too many of them; she and Mildred could never win. But Krysty put that knowledge from her mind and gave herself totally over to fighting.

      * * *

      A TALL MAN IN A JACKET with tarnished silver studs and frayed gray patches spun toward Ryan, and away from an ill-considered attack on Krysty, which had earned him a wheel kick in the cheek.

      He almost stumbled into Ryan. “I’m gonna teach that bitch,” he said. “Get my back!”

      He wheeled to charge the flailing, fighting redhead. Recalling a lesson from Trader, back in the day, Ryan folded his right hand into what the cagey old man had called a “phoenix-eye fist,” with the forefinger knuckle protruding, braced by the thumb. It wasn’t a shot Ryan had had many opportunities to make. He was interested to see how it would pan out.

      It panned out ace. Grabbing the wag driver’s shoulder, Ryan dug a brutal uppercut into the man’s right kidney, putting plenty of hip twist and leg drive into the short, sweet, savage stroke. The guy squeaked like a stepped-on deer mouse and slumped to the ground. There he curled up into a knot of pain and lay mewling and drooling into the hardscrabble dirt.

      “What seems to be the problem here?” Ryan said, raising his voice.

      Nobody paid any attention. Instead, peristaltic waves of mob closed in and