"No, I knowhe can't. Course I know. I know the world, Carla. He's lost it. If Ryan and I walk down the street and chill the Motes it won't help him, because we'll move on. We always move on. And then the baron here might have a few good days. But there'll be another Mote. And another. Carla, there'll always be another Mote. It has to come from inside!"

Ryan could hardly remember J.B. ever making a more emotional speech. Carla Petersen was looking at him, questioning.

"He's right, lady. Ace on the line all the way. You don't like it. You want some handsome hero with flashing teeth and a blaster that kills sec men with every round. You want someone to come in and open all the doors."

"It's not us you want, Carla," Ryan continued. "That's not the way. Now, I've had it right up to here with you and the baron. I'm getting out with my friends before any of us get to buy the farm. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is."

There was an uncomfortable hush in the bedroom, with nobody prepared to meet anyone else's eyes. Lori broke the quiet.

"Someone outside," she said.

"Where?"

"Heard someone. But I can't seeing because of all the heavy smoking."

Ruby Rainer's bonfire was roaring away, sending a great pillar of roiling gray smoke into the calm morning air.

"Can't see anyone," Krysty said, coughing and spluttering as some of the smoke became sucked into the crowded room. The main window of Doc and Lori's bedroom opened onto the street, but the fire was at the rear of the large house, overlooking a rough garden with a dual privy. Beyond that was a deep draw that ran parallel with Main Street, vanishing into the thick brush of the desert.

"Close the window," Doc demanded. "Smoke's bad for my asthma and I don't desire another of my nasal eructations."

"What?" Carla said.

"Nosebleeds," Doc replied.

The conversation flagged and faded away. After another ten minutes or so Carla Petersen suggested to Baron Edgar that they should be going.

"Lots to do," she said. "Day's still young. Norman wants us both to go out and check where they found their snake dead. His idea is to keep on putting pressure on Edgar as baron until the string stretches too far and snaps."

"Guess I'm not ready to snap yet," the little man protested, sliding back onto his feet from the chair.

"Do well to visit Dern and lay out some jack on a blaster," J.B. suggested.

"No."

"Edgar," Carla begged, "please. Why not take John's advice? He and Ryan and the others know what they're talking about."

The chubby face managed a smile. And a strange kind of dignity. "Guess not. Thanks for the thought, Mr. Dix. But the day I need to pull out a blaster to defend what I believe in, then that's the day I've lost it all. You can't convince folks to goodness with a loaded gun."

With that he bowed to the others and left the room, followed by Carla Petersen. The door closed quietly behind them.

J.B. punched his right fist into his left hand. "Dark night! You might not be able to convince folks with a blaster, but you can sure as rad blast save your skin with one!"

"I can see his point," Rick said. "Remember that I believe in peace, as well. Back in my time there was a lot of folks who figured it was better to live on your knees than die on your feet."

"You believed that?" Ryan asked, unable to conceal his surprise.

"No, of course not. But I always thought that any problem could eventually be sorted out by talking. Rather than a finger on a red button somewhere beneath the prairies of Kansas."

The view from the rear window was still obscured by the turmoil of smoke from the garden bonfire.

Krysty, standing by Ryan, glanced toward the window. The one-eyed man felt her start, but her voice, when she spoke, was calm and measured.

"Don't anybody turn and stare, but we got us a stickle hanging on the glass, looking in at us."

Lori immediately turned and stared.

And screamed.

Chapter Twenty-Five

One hand was holding the wooden wall of the house, the other flattened against the central pane of glass in the window, showing the white circles of the suckers on fingers and palm. The face was pressed flat, glowering at the seven companions.

The tiny insensate eyes, blank and lacking any spark of humanity, gazed unblinkingly in, and the mouth sagged open, revealing the lines of saw-edged teeth and the small, leathery tongue. Smoke from outside wreathed around the mutated monstrosity, making it appear, truly, like some creature from the depths of hell.

At Lori's shriek, the creature opened its mouth still farther and rattled the casement with its fist. A thick, bloody drool hung from the lips, dripping onto its naked chest.

"Mine." Ryan drew his SIG-Sauer and squeezed the trigger in a single, lethal movement.

The 9 mm bullet exploded through the glass, driving dozens of keen-edged splinters into the rubbery flesh of the stickie's face and neck. The full-metal-jacket round hit precisely where Ryan had aimed it — into the cavern of the gaping jaws, chipping teeth as it went, slicing the tongue into ribbons of oozing flesh, carrying on through the back of the throat. The slug angled off the spine and exited through the second cervical vertebra in a burst of pink spray.

The stickie went over backward, its one hand contracting, sucking out the pane of glass it had been holding. Everyone heard the crash as it landed near the back door of the house — followed by a shrill scream from Ruby Rainer, who'd just walked out of the house and had nearly been struck by the flailing corpse.

"Attracted by the smoke," Ryan guessed, holstering his warm gun. "Should do something. Bad news when start coming into a ville like that in the middle of the morning. Should do something."

Zombie arrived an hour or so later, with Riddler and Harlekin.

"Reverend sent us t'ask you 'bout stickies," Zombie informed Ryan.

"Yeah?"

"You know all 'bout them," Riddler continued. "We seen that from the way you chilled them out in the desert."

"Told you. I've fought them before. But stickies aren't all the same. Just got some patterns in common. Like the way they get attracted by flames and by big explosions."

"Yeah. Reverend Mote said to come and ask if you figured they might attack Snakefish. Gang of 'em in the ville?"

"Mebbe."

"Worth going out t'look for their nest, Ryan?" Riddler queried.

Ryan grinned at the fat biker, amused by his enthusiasm to go out after the murderous muties.

"Mebbe. Can't you get the Baron's nephew to go up in his plane and look for them for you? Be great for a recce."

The three Last Heroes looked uncomfortably at one another. Harlekin answered. He'd had a bad accident some time in his past that had left him with a mess of scars around his mouth, and most of his upper lip was completely missing. His speech was blurred and sibilant.

"Fat boy wouldn't help Mote. He'd help the fugging ville and his dwarf uncle, but not the reverend. We could find the stickies' nest if we had someone along to tell us what to do."

"No."

Riddler looked around the room. "Could be better if you was to help, Ryan."

"No."

Zombie hissed between his teeth. "Reverend Mote said he wouldn't come. Said to tell you that the stickie in the ville has changed things. Said to tell you the feeding wouldn't be tomorrow dusk. Said to tell you it'd be today dusk."

"Answer's still the same," Ryan replied.

"What?"

"No."

The bottom tip of the sun had fallen out of sight over the western horizon. The whole of the ville was gathered on the edge of the desert, near where the highway ran out into oblivion. Men, women and children stood huddled together, an air of expectant tension almost visible in the atmosphere. There was very little conversation.