Read Deathlands 122: Forbidden Trespass for Free Online

signs of watchers or intruders—and look for signs the elusive white shadows had been there. Crickets and tree frogs trilled in the night. A few late fireflies danced.
    “Can we stay here?” Ricky asked.
    “Don’t see as how we rightly can,” J.B. said. He sat across the fire from Mildred, face turned toward the flames. The yellow underlighting brought out the strong bone structure of his face, and turned his eyeglass lenses into disks of flame.
    “The place has gotten too hot for comfort, I reckon. It’s time to shake the dust of it off our heels.”
    Mildred pressed her lips into a line. She hated to contradict J.B. She loved him. More, she respected him.
    “Let’s not overreact.”
    Mildred’s eyes widened in surprise.
    She glanced at Krysty. The tall, statuesque redhead sat beside her brooding man. It was she who had spoken outas Mildred opened her mouth. Looking back at J.B., she saw a quick furrow of his brows as he glanced at Krysty.
    On him, that was the equivalent of a full-on scowl. He was usually as expressive as a stone statue.
    But Krysty said what she wanted, and not just because Ryan was her partner. Everyone could speak his or her mind.
    “‘Overreact’?” Mildred repeated.
    “We have a good place here,” Krysty said. “A comfortable camp, the cave is good shelter, and we have running water. The dig has a lot more scavvy to be unearthed. You yourself said it looks as if we’re just getting down to the good stuff, J.B.”
    “Jack’s worth squat,” J.B. replied, “if you don’t live to spend it. So Trader used to say.”
    Mildred frowned. J.B. did not tend toward the dogmatic, but when the quotations from his and Ryan’s old mentor were trotted out, that meant he was settling into his groove of thinking.
    “He also used to point out you tend to make jack in direct proportion to the risk you run,” Ryan added without looking around.
    “Why, Ryan,” Doc said. “I thought you of all people would urge caution.”
    Ryan shrugged. “Looking to look at the whole situation before I make up my mind,” Ryan replied.
    “Looks straightforward to me,” J.B. said. “We’ve got two packs of enemies on our tails. That’s beyond bad odds.”
    “But, J.B.,” Ricky said, almost desperately. “Think of the stuff that might be down there! The tech—the weapons!”
    The Armorer shook his head. He took a half-smokedblack cheroot from a pocket of the brown leather jacket he wore, struck a spark from a butane lighter he had found in the last redoubt they’d jumped to and puffed the smoke to life. He cast a swift glance at Mildred.
    The woman repressed a grin. His apprentice knew his soft spots, for sure.
    His occasional smoking didn’t please her as a twentieth-century physician, even one who preferred research to hands-on doctoring—before she got wakened from her cryosleep into a brutal, desolate world where “healing” was her number one marketable skill, that is. But she’d long since lost the heart to chide him for it, other than a slight frown.
    Realistically, she didn’t count on any of them living long enough for cancer to take them. In Deathlands, sudden death wasn’t just a constant possibility. It was an immediate reality.
    “Right now,” Ryan said softly, “we’ve got no evidence I can see that anybody’s on our tails. Here, anyway.”
    “But those pale shadows know where our dig site is, certainly,” Doc stated.
    “Yeah. But they haven’t shown up around here, yet.”
    “Yet,” J.B. echoed.
    It was Ryan’s turn to shrug.
    “We’re not on the last train west yet, either. Even if the locals are after us, too, they don’t know where either place is.”
    Ryan had chosen a campsite a mile or so from the sinkhole that had swallowed the predark trove. It was a fine site, as comfortable as it got sleeping rough—and better than a lot of buildings they’d bunked in, Mildred knew all too well. The cave provided shelter from the frequent rains as well as from casual