Tainted Cascade Read Online Free

of his childhood, but his arms were thickly cabled with muscle. His clothing seemed to be composed more of patches than original material, but the overall effect was a sort of camo pattern that allowed him to disappear in a forest. Even his boots were pieced together from an assortment of other shoes and such, mostly to hide the short nails sticking out of the toes. More than once, Charlie had kicked a man to death while hooting and laughing. For some reason, he enjoyed pain, giving and receiving, and sometimes, in the deep of the night, Charlie wondered if he was insane.
    The big bore blaster holstered at his side was homemade, just a hunk of steel bathroom pipe reinforced with coils of iron wire. The wire was applied red-hot, and when it cooled, the coils tightened, reinforcing theold pipe enough for it to take the blast of a 12-gauge cartridge. The wooden stock was carved from an apple tree and bore the crude design of a naked woman, the notches along the top showing the number of chills he had done. The actual number was only half as many, but it still represented a lot of folks on board the last train west.
    â€œDelta is an odd town, that’s for sure,” Petrov countered, taking out a worn deck of playing cards and beginning to shuffle. “But that’s why I like the place. Strange suits me fine.”
    The rest of the crew could find no fault with that. Delta ville sat alongside the Whitewater River that flowed out of the Great Salt like a slashed artery of blue life. The muddy banks were lined with reeds, bam boo, flowering bushes and even a couple of stunted trees bearing tiny bitter-tasting apples. But the farther the river got from the desert, the more the greenery expanded until only a day’s ride away the plants spread across the landscape in a true forest of real trees, bushes and green grass. The ville did all of its hunting and farming out there, both groups accompanied by heavily armed squads of sec men as much-needed protection against the muties that lived in the trees and, sometimes, under the ground.
    However, never in the history of the ville had a single mutie gotten past the front gate. The defensive wall around Delta was huge, made of rocks hauled out of the river by decades of slave labor, the mortar between the layers said to be liberally mixed with blood, sweat and tears. It was probably true, but old Baron Cranston had died a long time ago, and his wife, who’dsucceeded him, hadn’t tolerated such brutality. Nor did her son. If you were caught stealing food, a person got twenty-five lashes at the post, every time, no favors or leniency. Rape a woman or a child and that got you beaten by the women in the ville with clubs, whipped by the men and then sent to the gallows—if you were still sucking air. The only crime that got a person sent to the wall was disobeying the orders of the baron. That put you in chains to work and labor on the ville wall, expanding the barrier, making it higher and thicker until a full moon had passed, then you were set free and tossed outside the ville gates. Alone and weaponless, the person would be easy prey for slavers or muties, but at least still alive.
    Most of the old folks considered the baron too damn soft on coldhearts, especially those operating a salve trade out in the Boneyard, but they never said it out loud. Only Petrov Cordalane knew the truth of the matter, and since he lived in Delta, the man said nothing about it to anybody, not even his gang. Secrets held power.
    Besides, Petrov had a good thing going here in Delta, and he wouldn’t ruin it. Heaven was the main tavern in the ville, boasting food, drinks, an actual working piano for Sunday, a gaudy house upstairs and a still out back. The local brew was made out of rotting fish guts, an acquired taste, to say the least, and it was also burned in lanterns to make light and to degrease machine parts. But the locals sang its praise, claiming that the river juice would cure