Wretched Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

breeze, Mildred saw a skinny guy being bounced like a pinball among a
group of dusty, mean-looking wag drivers. They were hooting derisively as they
thrust him from one to the next. He reeled, unable to get his balance.
    Mildred scowled. “They hadn’t ought to do that to a little guy.
With glasses.”
    Squaring her shoulders, she marched toward the fracas. It
didn’t even occur to her to wonder whether Krysty would follow or not. Mildred
didn’t care. She hated injustice.
    As the little guy was pushed from pillar to post, a bald wag
driver stuck out a boot. The victim went sprawling, his glasses flying off his
face. Desperately, he shoved himself up onto all fours to scuttle after
them.
    They’d landed near another knot of jeering, laughing wag
drivers. One waited until the skinny guy’s fingers almost reached the glasses
before he stepped on the specs and crushed them with a vindictive ankle
twist.
    “Well, now, look what I gone and done,” he said, showing a
gap-toothed grin to his buddies. “Ain’t that a shame?”
    Evidently deciding his pal was getting too much of the
attention, a larger man with a mop of dirty hair took it up a notch. He stepped
toward the scrabbling victim, clearly getting ready to put the boot in.
    Mildred grabbed his shoulder. “Here, you got no call to do
that,” she said, spinning him.
    The predark doctor was a sturdily built woman. In her time
she’d been an avid hiker, not to mention an Olympic-class pistol shooter. Since
reawakening into the Deathlands she hadn’t exactly slacked off at either
pursuit.
    But the guy was a head taller than she was, and what little
wits he had were fuddled by advanced testosterone poisoning. As he turned, he
snarled and punched her hard between the breasts. She reeled backward three
steps and sat down hard.
    So there she was. And the dirty-haired guy was winding up as if
to deliver to her the kick she’d stymied.

Chapter Two
    The burly wag driver, who turned out to have a
rat’s-nest beard to go along with the hair, did a little stutter step to kick
the sitting Mildred. She gave him a hard heel thrust in the nuts. He sat down
not far away from her, bent over and clutching himself.
    Mildred jumped up. The whole rowdy group converged on her, the
little dude with the crushed glasses forgotten.
    Suddenly Krysty stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her friend. Her
prehensile hair swished around her shoulders, betraying her agitation. It also
betrayed the fact that, however beautiful she was, Krysty Wroth was a mutie.
Given the sign above the gateway, not to mention the temper of the mob closing
in on them, Mildred hoped onlookers would think it was just the breeze stirring
her scarlet locks.
    “Wait!” Krysty said, holding up her hands. “What’s all this
about?”
    “Thanks, Krysty,” Mildred said from the corner of her mouth.
“But you probably should have stood clear.”
    Krysty just smiled at her. That wasn’t the way of any of them,
to stand by and watch a friend get stomped. Mildred felt sick at what she might
have gotten her friend into.
    A wag driver with a Mohawk like a dead squirrel atop his head
backhanded Krysty. “Clear out, bitch, or you’ll get what we give her.”
    The force of the blow snapped Krysty’s head around. She came
back with an overhand right that flattened the man’s long nose against his face
with a crunch of breaking bone and cartilage, and blood squirting out each
nostril. His eyes rolled up in his skull and he folded to the yard.
    With a vicious collective snarl, the man pack closed in around
the two embattled women.
    Hard arms enveloped Krysty from behind. Hot breath washed down
her neck and back. It stank like an overflowed shitter.
    “Gotcha!” her captor grunted triumphantly as he tried to hoist
her off her feet.
    He got more than he bargained for. Krysty brought her knees up
and drove a double-booted kick to the jaw of a short, wide wag driver with a
faded bandanna tied around his head, hurling him into the