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  "I'm J.B., short for John Barrymore. You can call me John, if you like, Carla."

  "John!" Jak exploded, overhearing the conversation.

  "Yeah, John! You want to make something out of this, kid?"

  The Armorer stood, braced, his whole body fighting tense as he faced the boy. Ryan knew better than to interfere with J.B. on a matter of blood.

  "You don't call me that," Jak said quietly, his right hand slithering toward the back of his belt, where he kept one of his throwing knives.

  "Then button up about my name, Jak. Take my meaning? Just…"

  The teenager grinned suddenly. "Sure, J.B., I understand. Real good."

  "My goodness," Carla said. "That seemed to be rather a nasty moment."

  "Just play," Krysty replied. "You get used to their ways."

  CARLA LEFT THEM in the lobby of their small hotel, having made sure the rifles were checked in safely. Before going she'd called the seven friends around her for a last, urgent word.

  "The baron is a beautiful old man, but his grip is not what it once was. There are those in Snakefish who whisper that he is too generous with the ville's gas. Too easy in trading with other villes in the area. He knows of the talk, but believes that his nephew will take over from him soon."

  "What about the bikers?" Doc asked. "Those angels from hell?"

  "They're the ville's sec patrol," she admitted, "but their hearts aren't with Edgar. They're allied with those who bring true power."

  "The Mote family," Ryan asked.

  "Yes." She dropped her voice even quieter, glancing around to ensure nobody could overhear. "Guard yourselves against the Motes, outlanders. And when you attend their service, take the greatest care. The greatest. If they perceive you as any sort of threat they can be quite ruthless."

  "I don't suppose there's any chance of something to eat now, is there?" Rick asked plaintively. "I'm famished."

  "Of course. Through that door into the eatery. Now I must go. Remember what I said. Take care with the Motes."

  Chapter Seventeen

  "YOU CHOSEN?"

  "Sorry?"

  The thin lips parted for a moment, then snapped shut once the sentence had been hissed out. "You been saved?"

  Ryan shook his head. "Don't think so. How would we know?"

  The narrow face of Ruby Rainer, owner of the Rentaroom, broke into an approximation of a beatific smile. "I guess you'd know. You ever feel an inner heat?"

  "No, not often. Except…" He looked across at Krysty, who struggled to conceal a giggle.

  "I have," Rick said. "And I've seen light in the darkness. Warmth in the middle of winter. Floods during a drought. Manna in the wilderness. And salvation in the darkest night of the soul. Amen to that."

  "Amen," Ruby added, clasping her bony hands to her even bonier bosom. "I'm well pleased to see that at least one of you outlanders has some spark of the Lord's blessings lighted within the lamp of his innermost heart."

  "Hallelujah, sister," the freezie shouted, clapping his hands together. "And… ?"

  "Yes, brother?"

  "Was there not some talk of a dessert to follow that admirable bowl of spiced stew?"

  "Oh, oh, yes. Course. Pecan pie or some iced cream with strawberries."

  She got orders for five pies and two helpings of the fruit with iced cream. After the dessert Ruby served them some acorn coffee, ground fine, with added herbs. "Best y'ever tasted," she boasted as she poured each of them a brimming cup.

  Rick sipped suspiciously at his, pulling an appalled face. Fortunately Mrs. Rainer had left the dining room and didn't see, or hear, him.

  "She call this coffee?" he asked.

  "Yeah," Ryan said. "I've tasted better, but I've surely tasted worse."

  "I recall once eating in a restaurant in some place like Bucksnort, Idaho. They served me a soup that was their special delicacy. I learned afterward it was made from dogs' spleens, with mustard added. Up till now that was the most foul thing that I ever tasted. Up till now…" He gently replaced the cup on the table.

  After the meal Rick said he'd like to just go up to his room and rest. The others agreed that they'd split up and walk around Snakefish, checking the place out.

  There was a minor spat when Lori tried to insist that she be allowed to go on her own.

  "I'm not a shit-assed girly! I'm older enough to go without you having to hold my hand all the hours, Doc."

  Ryan settled the argument. "Listen, Lori. Right now you're behaving like a double-stupe snotnose! In a strange ville like this nobody walks these streets alone. Not Doc. Not you. Not me. Stick together in pairs. Safest. Meet back here for the evening meal around six."

  "But I don't…" she began, stopping herself when she saw the look of flaring anger on Ryan's face.

  They went in the usual pairings: Lori with Doc, the sunnier side of her nature reappearing; J.B. and Jak wandering off together, intent on a recce of the gas-processing plant. And Ryan with Krysty.

  "Snakefish," she said. "Prettiest little ville in the west."

  It was just like walking into one of the small towns that Ryan had seen in old mags and vids. The lack of nuke damage was staggering. The sidewalk was clean, the shop fronts mostly looked like they had been painted fresh in the last month or so.

  Uniquely there were several wags parked along the side of the street. Four pickups, one ordinary passenger vehicle, a blue VW and a panel van with a badly painted picture of a leaping salmon on its side.

  "That's what living on top of your own gas supply does for you," Ryan said. "That's why they all look so damned jack-heavy. Everyone wants gas. You got it and you name your own price in the trading stakes. Good place to be."

  They browsed along the sidewalk, staring in at the windows of the stores, amazed at the variety and quality of the various goods offered.

  There weren't too many folks out and about— mainly women, with a few younger children. Everyone was polite and friendly in a distant, formal kind of way.

  There was a sign in one window that read: Snakefish jack, one dollar to one dollar. Outsiders' jack, one-fifty to one Snakefish. Trade by agreement. Sorry, no credit. Don't even ask.

  "Shows you how solid things are here," Ryan observed. "Two local dollars to three from outside the ville. Good trade rate."

  Occasionally, if you found some isolated community that the nukes hadn't reached, you might find faded signs from before the big fires. In Snakefish it was different. The buildings were untouched, but everything they sold was new.

  Practically everything. One establishment was retailing blasters. And most of those were rebuilds and recons from before sky-dark, like the handguns carried by the Angels.

  The shop owner was a sharp-faced young man, and he came out to his doorway when he spotted them looking in his window.

  "Hi there. You admiring the display? Some real good blasters there, huh?"

  "No," Ryan replied, seeing no reason to lie about it.

  "What? How d'you—"

  "Cheap shit. Recons look like they'd blow your hand off first time you squeezed the trigger."

  "I'll have you know that I engineered them myself and I—"

  Ryan cut through the bluster. "Then you ought to try one out. Put the muzzle in your mouth and let the hammer down."

  Krysty's fingers on his arm told Ryan that she thought he was going too far.

  "They aren't that bad! Anyway, what are you carrying, stranger?"

  Without speaking, Ryan unholstered the 9mm SIG-Sauer P-226 and showed it to the dealer.

  "Hollow tooth! That's one… I could do you a real good trade on that, friend."

  "I'm not trading, and I'm not your friend," Ryan replied.

  "Two hundred Snakefish jack," the gun dealer offered eagerly.

  "No."

  "Three hundred?"

  Ryan shook his head. "Not selling."

  "Four hundred and any blaster out of my stock, and that's my last and best offer."

  "I told you…"

&n
bsp; "Let me see it?" He held out his hand. "I'll give you a great deal, or my name's not Honest John Dern. Gimme."

  "Two people get to hold this blaster," Ryan said coldly. "Me, and the man that chills me. Nobody else. Right?"

  "Right. Sure. If you change your mind…"

  Krysty was laughing as they walked on. "Can't blame the stupe for trying, lover."

  The wind had veered, and the smell of gasoline had weakened considerably. Ryan and Krysty quickly noticed that nearly every store and house in the small township seemed to carry some kind of a snake emblem in a window. Sometimes it was ornately carved from a twisted piece of wood, sometimes a more symbolic shape of plaited string or wool. Most of the totem figures carried a silver collar around the throat.

  Apart from the town hall, the largest and most elegant building in the ville was at the farther end of the street. Through a coat of fresh paint it was still possible to make out the name: Rex Cinema and Video Palace. But it was put into the shade by the blaring and colorful lettering across the front.

  Come One. Come All. Worship at the Shrine of the Blessed Serpents of the Apocalyptic Gospel of the Martyred Marcus the Peripatetic.

  Beneath it was a sheet of card, under clear perspex, which listed the days and times of the services. There was one due the following morning at seven o'clock.

  "Early bird gets the snake," Krysty observed.

  "Unless it's the one we got first. Baron seemed to think we should go."

  "Then we should," she agreed.

  The last notice was on a wooden board, screwed to the front wall of the building: Guardians of the Sepulcher of the Sacred Snakes. Norman Mote. Marianne Mote. Apostolic Apprentice, Joshua Mote.

  Beyond the old movie house the ville ended. The road just faded out into the semidesert, vanishing into a deeply rutted dirt trail.

  They turned and looked behind them, from Main Street

  to the desert beginning, just past the elegant town hall. Snakefish wasn't more than a couple of straggling blocks wide.

  "No gaudies?" Krysty said questioningly. "No drinkers, either?"

  "Nope. Not like Mocsin, or some of the real heavy frontier pest holes. This is all clean and decent."

  "Yeah. And they worship snakes, lover. Don't forget that."

  Doc and Lori were just coming out of a clothes shop as Ryan and Krysty walked past them. The store was called Handmaid and featured a marvelous patchwork quilt in the window, made of hundreds of tiny pieces of colored satins and silks.

  "Spend any of your Snakefish jack, Lori?" Krysty asked.

  "Nice skirt in there, but old miserable Doc said it cost too many."

  "It was beautiful," Doc admitted ruefully. "Segments of lace, some old and some new, all stitched together, and it was kind of transparent. I fear that it cost more jack than we got in total and I decided that the garment would have lasted about zero seconds in the brush."

  "Wouldn't have worn it out in sand, would I?" she pouted. "It was so pretty, Doc. I don't wear anything pretty now."

  "One day, my dearest and most cuddlesome little dear one."

  "Dear one, dear one, dear one," she mimicked, half-angry. "When's that?"

  "Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. But one day, I promise you, Lori, it will be tomorrow. I shall allow you to make an honest man out of me."

  She flounced away from him, head in the air, leaving Doc with Ryan and Krysty.

  "Should tan her ass, Doc," Ryan suggested.

  Doc sniffed. "She's just seventeen, if you know what I mean, and the way that… I'm sure that used to be a song, once. Or I'm a poet and I don't know it. No, the girl's growing up and she's growing away. You can't cage the wind, Krysty. And I would never try."

  "Want to walk back to the rooming house, Doc?"

  "Thank you, Ryan. Good friends are a consolation against the grievous rigors of this parlous world. And I do appreciate your great kindness toward me. But I must walk that lonesome highway by myself."

  "Keep away from the snakes!" Krysty shouted as the old man wandered slowly away.

  ONE PLACE that fascinated Ryan was a store selling memorabilia. Predark was its name. The window was dusty and the interior badly lit, despite the ville's electrical power, all of it provided by a huge gas-fired generator on the edge of town.

  "Let's go in."

  There was a brass bell above the door, and it tinkled like Lori's spurs as they pushed it open. It was a warm day, with dark chem clouds stippling the tops of the Sierras. Inside the store it was humid and quiet, the silence broken only by the ticking of a tall grandfather clock in the corner.

  "Good afternoon, strangers. Come into my little cave of riches with a good heart. Be at peace with all men. Gentle be the selling and the buying and could you shut that coil-bound door?"

  The last seven words were uttered in a raised voice laced with anger.

  Krysty hastily pushed it closed, making the bell jingle once more.

  "Keeps out the scale-blasted flies, you understand. Can I help you outlanders to any small curio or other?"

  "This stuff all come from before the long winters?" Krysty asked, brushing the dust of the street from her long, fiery hair.

  "Indeed. Much of Southern California took the big plunge into the Cific, down the Andreas. Lot of neutrons around here. My father and me been collecting since then. I pay packies to go scouring the old gulches and ghost villes."

  At last he stepped out from the darkness, sliding through a curtain of clear glass beads that clicked softly.

  The man was in his late fifties and wore a loose shirt, hand-woven in varying shades of purple and green. He sported old-fashioned glasses with lenses tinted a very deep blue, and he held his head on one side like a querulous parrot.

  "I do not see well. An accident in a warm spot that became hot without my noticing it. Corneal damage, I believe. That is why I keep my humble establishment a touch gloomy. It pains me less."

  "Mind if we look around?"

  "Course not, Mr. Cawdor."

  "How'd you name my name, Mr… ?"

  "Zombie and his two-wheelers help me in finding items for my store. He described you very well. My name is Brennan. Yes, the same as Baron Edgar. He is my brother. His nephew, Layton, is my grandson."

  It seemed like he was going to go on and say more. Maybe a lot more. But a shadow fell across the window and he turned like a startled hare, taking three steps back to the shelter of his beaded curtain.

  "It's all right," Krysty reassured him. "Friend of ours. Rick Ginsberg. Hey, Ryan. Looks like he's been laying out some jack on clothes."

  The bell chimed thinly as the freezie entered the shop cautiously. "That you, guys? Thought I saw you from the bedroom. I changed that old suit for something more practical. Laid out most of my cash… I mean jack."

  He was wearing a pair of faded Levi's, tucked into ankle-high hiking boots with studded soles, a washed-out work shut in light brown and a heavy-duty quilted jacket.

  "How do I look?"

  "Hell of a lot better, Rick," Ryan said. "Could find the going warm in that coat. But, yeah, make life easier for yourself when we get moving again."

  "Mr. Ginsberg," the shopkeeper said, "I'm Rufus Brennan. Welcome to my store. Browse around and hope that you will be guided to what is right and fitting for you."

  "You never owned a jewelry store down near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, did you?" Rick asked. "No. Those names are not familiar to me. Why do you ask?"

  "Just the way you do the sales pitch. But let it pass."

  "Let's look around some," Ryan suggested. "Then we can get back and see how J.B. and Jak have been doing. You feeling okay, Rick?"

  "Sure. It's just that seeing all this stuff from… We'd have said most of this was plain junk. But it's a time warp. Walking down the street here with the houses and the stores…similar but not the same. No, not the same at all."

  He took off his spectacles and began to polish them furiously.

  Predark wasn't a very large store, but it
was crammed with all manner of memorabilia. One corner was filled with childrens' toys and games. Creatures with names like Care Bears and Dumpyloves, and comp-controlled dolls that would do everything except make people love you. There were plastic figurines that you could move and place into stiff poses. They all had incomprehensible names such as Hutch and Fonzy and Indiana and most seemed to come from places with strange, Oriental names.

  There were all sorts of souvenirs. Ryan guessed people must once have collected them to remind themselves of places they'd visited. Disneyland was one that he'd heard of. Tuckaluckahootchie Caverns was one that he hadn't.

  One table held a dozen different kinds of telephones. Ryan picked up one that was made to look like a droopy white dog. "You got working transceivers in the ville?" he asked.

  "No. Few years back my brother tried to get one installed. Not much interest. Folks figured that Snakefish is such a small ville you could lean out on your porch and shout to most everyone that you wanted."

  Krysty was fascinated by an intricate metal tool with prongs, spikes and cogwheels. "Gaia! What's this do?"

  Rufus Brennan sniggered. "That used to have a little box, but it was all raggedy. But I know what it was—for coring an avocado—and if you twist that button it will remove the seeds from grapes. Kind of useful, isn't it?"

  Krysty laughed, tossing her hair back. Even in the gloom it danced and burned with a living fire. "Useful? I'd rate it about level with a glass scattergun on the useful scale."

  "Hell's bloody bells!" Rick exclaimed from the side of the store, where small ornaments and books were piled.

  "What've you found?" Ryan asked.

  "My past, Ryan. This book. Poems and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. I had this given to me as a school prize when I was about eleven, around 1981. Scared the shit out of me with its pictures and the creepiness of—"

  "Did your friend say he was eleven years old in 1981?"

  "No," Ryan said. "He didn't. And if you started talking around about how he did, then it might not be a great idea. Man could get himself hurt with bad hearing. You understand me, Rufus?"

  "You can put the blaster back, Mr. Cawdor. I understand you. But if anyone else around the ville misheard when your friend was born it might be harmful. Do you understand me?"