What he really needed, Wolfe thought, was a good roadmap. Well, maybe he could pick one up in the ransacked litter in a roadside service station somewhere. In the meantime, he would just have to make do with his wits and a generous measure of luck.

  Wolfe picked up the cart tongue and wheeled around in the opposite direction from where he wanted to go. He needed to get out of sight from that guard shack before it became daylight, lest the FEDCOM people see him and guess what he intended to do.

  “Come on, boy. No, darn it, this way!”

  The dog, rather reluctantly, or so it seemed, turned and began trotting along at Wolfe’s heels once more.

  Chapter Four

  “What’s the matter with you?” Wolfe complained, taking the dog by the collar and trying to drag it forward. “There’s nothing up there. Look for yourself, you idiot! So what are you afraid of now, huh? Look, will you? See? Do you see?”

  Wolfe demonstrated by letting go of the collar and standing upright so he could peer forward into the roadside brush.

  “There isn’t anything there, see? Now, come along, dang it!”

  Leaving the dog sitting stubbornly in the middle of the road, Wolfe started moving forward once more. He was pretty sure he remembered passing an open meadow, where it should be easy to strike eastward. As long as the ground was not too marshy and soft, he should have no trouble pulling the cart through the lush grass. And, if he was very, very lucky, he might get a chance to try out his new toy. Ever since his last fight with the wilders who held Reba captive, he had worried about having so few arrows left. He might be tempted to fire one for a large game animal, but he could no longer risk losing or breaking one shooting at something insignificant like a rabbit or squirrel.

  The answer to his problem came straight off the pages of the Bible he had found in the book of Samuel—1 Samuel, if he remembered correctly. When he was a boy, that one, the story about little David whipping up on the Philistines, had been one of his favorites. It had something he could identify with, he supposed. He had forgotten over the years since that time, but now rediscovered that before David ever tangled with Goliath, he had tended his father’s livestock and defended them from lions and wolves and the like, using nothing but a leather thong and some smooth stones.

  The leather from a Cadillac backseat provided him with his thong, and he passed by any number of creeks with their endless supply of water-polished stones. It took more than a little practice to learn how to swing the weapon hard and fast, and by trial and error, figure out exactly when to let go of one string so the stone would fly to the mark, but he was getting better with it. With his amazing strength, Wolfe scared himself by how hard he could throw those stones. He figured a head shot would take down any small animal. Now he was anxious to try it on a rabbit or duck or whatever. He traveled with a pocketful of round stones and the long, leather thong coiled and stuffed beneath his belt.

  Wolfe took a dozen steps without the dog moving to join him. Mildly exasperated, he stopped and turned around to coax the animal to move. It only hunkered lower, cowering, with its tail tucked tight to its backside.

  “What in the world is the matter with you?” Wolfe grumbled out loud. “Are you coming or not?”

  He bent down to snap his fingers as encouragement, and, behind him, heard the loud roar of a gunshot then a swarm of shotgun pellets sizzled over his head like a thousand furious hornets.

  Wolfe dropped the rest of the way to the pavement. Then, realizing there was no cover out in the open, he quickly rolled to his left, bolted to his feet, and dashed for a thicket of brush on the side of the road that the gunshot came from.

  “D’you get ‘im?” a voice called from the east side of the road.

  The shot had been fired from the west. Whoever they were and whatever they wanted, they had tried to bracket him and take him in the crossfire. Wolfe burrowed quickly inside the protection of the brush, his heart racing but his mind clear. The dog, he discovered, was pressed tightly to his side and was trembling. Well, so was he. Being shot at was not a pleasant experience.

  “I wounded ‘im!”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure!”

  “But you didn’t kill him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, go look, dammit!”

  “Why don’t you go look your own self, then?”

  “We’ll do just like with a down deer. Give him time to bleed out or at least stiffen up so’s he can’t run again. He’s down, we got ‘im. We’ll just take our time before we make sure he’s dead. Right?”

  “Yeah, if you want.”

  Wolfe heard some rustling in the brush ten or fifteen yards in front of him. That one, the one with the shotgun, seemed to be withdrawing to the north. He bellied down to the ground and moved cautiously closer to the edge of the road. He lay watching patiently and, after ten minutes or so, saw a movement in the tops of the bushes on the far side of the road. Apparently, that one was withdrawing to join his buddy while they waited for Wolfe to die.

  Soon, he saw smoke rising from a spot a hundred yards or so up the road. Apparently, the boys intended to have breakfast while they waited. Wolfe scowled and glanced toward the east. The sun was coming up now, and he no longer had the advantage of darkness. He reached down, scratching the dog’s ears.

  “Knew they were there, didja? Good boy. Good boy, little fella. Next time, I’ll pay more attention when you try to tell me something.”

  Wolfe thought for a few moments about what he should do. Then he grinned. It wasn’t broad daylight yet; he still had a few minutes during which it would be difficult for those men to spot him, and maybe, just maybe…

  “Down,” he whispered, pressing the dog’s back. “Stay.”

  He laid his bow on the ground beside the dog then came upright into a low crouch and moved silently forward.

  Chapter Five

  A shot rang out, the sound sharper than the shotgun blast had been. The shotgun sounded hollow, almost dull. This was a whip-crack noise, and a metal slug ricocheted off the pavement in front of Wolfe and whined nastily off into the distance.

  Wolfe spun around and launched himself back into the underbrush. They were not as complacent as he had thought. That bullet struck between him and his cart. His things were in the cart, darn it; his sleeping bags, spare clothes, food, trading materials. Worse, two of his arrows were in the cart. The quiver that was attached to the bow held only six.

  He hated to abandon everything, but he now didn’t seem to have a choice. He could stay and try to defend his possessions, or he could slip away now before these men got here. They were on the way now, sneaking in toward the place where they had last seen him. He was sure of that, and it would be daylight in a few more minutes. Their vision would be unimpeded.

  He pulled his welding goggles into place to protect his eyes from the glare of the rising sun, retrieved the bow with its precious six broad head arrows; he had the bow, dog, the sling, and his Bowie knife. In his pockets, he carried very little: a Butane cigarette lighter, a small magnifying glass, a lock blade folding knife, and handkerchief, and, of course, the round stones that were the ammunition for the sling. Those few items didn’t constitute much in the way of survival gear. On the other hand, a truckload of camping gear, gold, and diamonds would be of no use to a dead man, and Wolfe intended to live. He snapped his fingers softly to get the dog’s attention and moved silently uphill, away from the road and the possessions he was leaving behind, and headed toward the meadow, where he intended to enter the clear area in Wyoming.

  It was just plain bad luck, he thought, that he’d blundered into those wilders again. Incredibly bad luck…or, were they deliberately targeting him? He wondered if they were a wilder posse, made up of the dirtbags that had taken Reba. He had left two of them alive. Maybe that was a mistake.

  Wolfe was a killer, but he wasn't a murderer. With a last look at his now abandoned cart filled with red zone treasures, he made his decision.

  “Stick with me, boy,” he whispered to the dog. “We’ve got some ground to cover before we sleep, little fella.”

  Chapter Six

  Wolfe circled around to the north, reasoning that since the wilders were traveling south, it would only be sensible for him to continue on toward the north to avoid them. He stayed well clear of the road, moving along the high ground that paralleled the highway then cutting downhill to the east again when he had gone a mile and a half or so.

  “What do you think, boy? Is this far enough?”

  The dog trotted along at his side, its tongue lolling wetly in what looked like a smile. They reached the bottom of the hill and crossed a patch of bare ground before dipping down into the ditch and back up onto the roadway again. The far side of the road represented the clear area and safer travel, perhaps information, too.

  Now that he thought about it, Wolfe wished he had entered the clear area back there where Reba had returned to it. It hadn’t really occurred to him before, what with everything else that was happening, but he could not see what he had to fear from this Federal Command. He was not a criminal, he was a free American, and entitled to do whatever and go wherever he pleased. There was no reason he should not approach the FEDCOM people and simply ask about the red zones. It could well be that Bradenton was in a clear area, or perhaps there was some sort of computerized registry where a person could look up the names of other refugees. Lurleen and Jojo could be listed somewhere and their whereabouts known to the FEDCOM authorities.

  The thing that held him back before was only a desire to keep the bicycle cart and the things it held. Now that those were lost to him, he regretted not voluntarily giving them up when he could, or anyway, he could have slipped around that manned crossing point and gone on with Reba to her home. She said it was easy enough to do. After all, the scavengers who kidnapped her from her home and took her with them as a servant and plaything did so by evading the FEDCOM on their way into the red zone back there. If they could come out illegally, one could obviously go in the same way.

  On the other hand, he would hate to lose his knives and the bow, especially since he knew they were not irradiated, so it was probably best still to sneak into the clear area, even without the cart and its possessions—his former possessions. Those wilders owned them now, damn them.

  Wolfe and the dog bolted out of the weeds that grew in the roadside ditch and trotted onto the blacktop. There was a low, tree-covered hill to the south of where they were and a grassy marsh, probably caused by the construction of beaver dams years ago, in front of them to the north. Wolfe expected to find a stream on the far side of the marsh. That was good. He could get a drink from the creek, their milk jug water supply being among the items lost in the cart.

  Just as they reached the Wyoming side of the highway, Wolfe felt a burning sting across the back of his left shoulder. A second or two later, he heard the distant report of a gunshot.

  The gunfire galvanized him into a hard sprint to the safety of the trees ahead and to his right. He had no choice but to veer in that direction, even though it brought him closer to the wilder with the rifle. Wolfe had no idea how far away he had been when the wilder made that first shot, but the man’s aim was altogether too good for comfort, and coming closer to him so he could try again was not appealing.

  There seemed to be no choice. It was either that or try to run through the marsh where he could be in the open for hundreds of yards, slowed down by bad footing.

  “Lordy,” he grumbled aloud as he ducked his head and ran, literally for his life. “Come on, boy.”

  He heard another shot and a third before he reached the relative safety of the trees, but he did not know where those bullets went.

  “Come on, boy, come on!”

  His breath was ragged now, and he was feeling dizzy, although he did not know why. His vision was clouded, as well. Sweat fogging the dark goggles? Could be, he thought. The thing was he had to keep moving, keep running. Couldn’t let the wilders catch up with him. Had to keep on.

  Something puzzled him just a little. He could smell loamy soil, and something—crushed leaves from years past, he thought—prickled against his cheek. He seemed to be lying down. He didn’t know why; he didn’t remember falling. All he remembered was…

  The last thing Wolfe heard before he passed out was the soft whine of the dog, who pawed anxiously at his side, its nails scratching at his right shoulder. Wolfe wondered idly and without fear if this was what it felt like to die. And then he was gone, and neither felt nor heard nor thought another thing.

  Chapter Seven

  “I thought…” he stopped, swallowed. Found it difficult to speak. He took a moment to collect himself and tried again.

  “In the movies… whenever a guy passes out, he wakes up… I thought he was s-supposed to… see a beautiful girl first thing when his eyes come open.”

  He heard a laugh.

  “So… how come I get stuck with… some guy with a beard?” Wolfe asked, and the man laughed again.

  The fellow was dressed in army camouflage trousers and a floppy jungle hat, but he was also wearing a black Brooks & Dunn t-shirt. If nothing else, at least Wolfe approved of the man’s taste in music.

  “Where… where am I?”

  “Wyoming.”

  “Am I in a clear area?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you see who shot me?”

  “Only from a distance, and there were two of them.”

  “Am I dying?”

  “Nah, not a chance. The bullet entered at a shallow angle, just below your shoulder blade, tunneled through the meat in your back, and came out your armpit, went into your arm out the other side. Lucky for you, it was a jacketed bullet, probably military issue; it didn’t mushroom. Punched a hole and went on through.”

  “Is that good?”

  “That’s very good,” the bearded man told him. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. That’s why you passed out like that. Fact is, mister, you’ve lost an awful lot of blood. The good news is that blood is replaceable. You’ll be weak for a while, but your strength will come back to you given time, food, and rest.”

  “I don’t have any food with me. I did have, but those men with the guns have it now.”

  “That sounds like their style, all right.”

  “You know them?” Wolfe asked.

  “Not personally, but if they’re some of the bunch I think they are, they’re bad news. Generally, they run in a pack, four of them, robbing and killing and stealing what others have gone over to scavenge in the red zone. Then they come back over here and sell whatever of it they don’t want, and keep the rest.”

  “Four, you say?”

  “That’s right. I don’t remember ever seeing just two of them at a time, probably the other two are somewhere close by.”

  “Or dead,” Wolfe said.

  The man raised an eyebrow. “You sound like you have a reason to suggest that.”

  “Yeah, I s’pose I do.”

  Wolfe briefly explained his run-in with the four men who were holding Reba Crane. “That was over in Idaho.”

  “And the other two?”

  “Dead,” Wolfe said simply.

  “You’re pretty sure about that.”

  “I’m sure.”

  The fellow rocked back on his haunches and whistled. “Uh-oh!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Those four men? They’re brothers. If you killed two of them, well, you can see why they’d be so hot to take you down.”

  “They near about did it this morning.”

  “Yeah, but close don’t count. The problem now is that they likely won’t stop until they know for sure you’re dead.”

  “Or until they are,” Wolfe suggested.

  “There is that, isn’t there?” the man grunted. “Care for some more bad news?”

  “It gets worse?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it does. You see, those boys are in tight with the commander of the FEDCOM border patrol in this sector. They come and go pretty much as they please.”

  “Why would I care about that?” Wolfe asked.

  “Simple. If they bring Major Henkin into it, he could put out a bulletin on you. Make you an outlaw all through the clear area, or anyway, through this district. I don’t know how far that order would spread, but at least anywhere around here you could be picked up and detained, which is one word for it; I’ve heard better. And if you try to resist, or even if one of them just takes the notion, you could be shot.”

  “You did say you had bad news for me, didn’t you?” Wolfe looked at the man’s camo and the M16 he carried, and asked, “You, uh…you aren’t in that FEDCOM Command, are you?”

  The fellow laughed. “Not me, friend. I’m what you might call a business competitor of those boys. I hang around here, always in the clear area. I make it a point to never stray over into the red, and I meet parties of scavengers on their way home. It can be dangerous for them to transport whatever they’ve found. Henkin and his people will take it away from them if they’re caught, so I make a bargain with them. I haul their load, whatever it is, and deliver it to them deeper inside the area, where it’s safe for them to move their goods,” he grinned. “The commission I take for this service is quite modest.”

  “Competitor?” Wolfe repeated.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Well, I’m pleased to have met you,” Wolfe said. “Which I suppose I haven’t actually done yet.”

  He held out his hand to shake, having to struggle just a little to do it. He was weaker than he had realized.

  “Jim Wolfe,” he said.

 

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