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was still far better-looking than most women in Deathlands.
    What drove them so hard, likely, was pure lust: for the use they’d get out of the women themselves, and then for the jack or barter they’d reap from selling them in what would still be considered prime condition, even if they wound up badly bruised and shy a tooth or two. Selling a pair the likes of Krysty and Mildred would bring them more than two months’ good scavenge, if the going rate in St. Lou was comparable to other places Ryan had known.
    The one-eyed man heard and felt Krysty and Doc peel away from either side of him. Then there came the crack of a bullet passing fast, followed by thump and a grunt of surprise as much as pain.
    And then Mildred’s piercing scream.

Chapter Three
    “J.B., no!” Mildred cried. The despairing echo chased itself mockingly around the circular ruins.
    Ryan’s heart seemed to seize in his chest. He ducked behind the wall and turned.
    The Armorer stood as if rooted in place. Ryan could clearly see where a few threads of his leather jacket had been pushed out a fraction of an inch behind him by the heavy-caliber bullet that had blown right through the small man’s chest, front to back.
    Time froze. A thin streamer of blood hung in the air behind J.B.’s back, fractionating into round red droplets as it distanced itself from him. With a roaring silence in his ears and an abyss of emptiness opening in his gut, Ryan watched his oldest living friend, his best friend, the man who’d had his back since he was a pup, spin and topple to lie on his back in the dust with his glasses disks of emptiness, reflecting the troubled yellow sky above.
    Mildred scrambled toward the fallen Armorer. Though tears dug gullies through the dust on her cheeks, her professional training and experience had taken over. She was kneeling over J.B., checking his vital signs even before Ryan snapped out of it.
    “He’s still alive!” she called. “Missed the heart.” She shrugged frantically out of the straps of her backpack.
    Ryan’s attention snapped back into focus. The blood pennon had streamed away east toward the great river.That meant the shot had come from the west. Bringing the Steyr to his shoulder, Ryan turned his blue eye that way.
    Fifty or sixty yards away what looked like a parking structure had pancaked, creating a stratified slab a story or so high. At least half a dozen people in scraps and oddments of salvaged clothing advanced across a broad area overgrown with green weeds to their knees, pausing to shoot then charging on. Four were men. Two looked to be women.
    As Ryan watched, one man rocked back to the recoil of what he reckoned to be a battered Springfield M-1A, the semiauto-only civvie version of the old M-14 battle rifle. The same caliber as Ryan’s Steyr, it was a weapon well prized in the Deathlands. It was likely, Ryan thought, this was the bastard who shot J.B.
    But he wasn’t shooting at Ryan. Instead he aimed north toward the rubble of the westward-fallen building that the companions had bypassed. The scavvies who had been chasing them appeared to be taking cover there.
    Rival bands? Ryan wondered as he lined up his scope on the center of the rifleman’s chest.
    He fired. The enemy rifleman jerked as the steel-jacketed slug punched through his ribs and transversed through his heart. Gray dust puffed from his gray, black and white camo blouse, confirming Ryan had hit his mark.
    The scavvie collapsed bonelessly. The heavy rifle was dropping from his fingers even before recoil kicked Ryan’s field of view up over the man’s head. A chill, sure, he thought.
    The other five dropped into the weeds, vanishing instantly from sight. From the top of the dumped structure behind them more blasters opened up to cover them, producing the vast grayish smoke clouds characteristic of black-powder blasters.
    Ryan ducked out of the line of fire, popping the magazine from the well of his own rifle to stick in a fresh box. It was