There had to be a hundred ville shooters. They had the wags completely flanked and were massing their fire from the hard cover of the Taco Town building. Meanwhile, Furlong's crews were dumping their booty and returning wild fire as they ran for their lives.
Bullets rained down on his rousties in a hellstorm. They had no chance against so many blasters. Those caught out in the narrow lanes between the huts were hit by dozens of slugs. Those ducking into the huts in search of cover found none. The dirt farmers shot through the flimsy walls of their own cabins, nailing the looters crouching there. The Bullard ville sec men knew exactly what they were doing. Under the barrage of blasterfire, they pushed forward to the edge of the rows of shanties and the back side of the Burger Stravaganza.
As far as Furlong was concerned, the handwriting was on the wall. The opposition was too strong, and they were too well armed and trained. As he flipped up the driver's ob port and cranked over the engine, a pair of ashen-faced rousties jumped in the back of the RV. He didn't wait for them to shut the rear doors. Revving the engine, he cut the steering wheel hard over, then dropped it into gear. With a roar, the Winnebago lurched around the end of the wag in front. There was a jolting hop on the right side as the big wag's front wheel crunched over a fallen man, then Furlong accelerated, heading for the tent and the circled wags.
The first row of plant beds came up in a hurry.
Through louvered shade's ob port, Furlong caught a blur of movement to his right as people standing there scattered. He glimpsed the scoped longblaster first, then the black eye patch and dark curly hair. At the very last instant, he swerved the Winnebago at Ryan Cawdor, who was caught flatfooted in the open, with nowhere to run.
The look on the about-to-be-dead-man's face burned into Furlong's brain. There was no fear in it. No panic.
Nothing but calm.
The head roustie didn't give a damn how Cawdor took being squashed to a pulp.
"You're mine now!" he cried, pinning the gas pedal to the floor. "You one-eyed, fucking bastard!"
WHEN RYAN SAW the middle wag pull out of line and start heading their way, he knew it was a golden opportunity, and that it might be their last. It all depended on the driver seeing a way to rack up an easy last chill while he beat feet. "Spread out and take cover!" he ordered to the others.
"Here!" he shouted to J.B., as he tossed the Steyr longblaster to him.
With the companions scattering out of the way and the RV bearing down, Ryan just stood there like a mutie jackrabbit frozen in headlights.
He couldn't see the driver because of the armored screen that completely covered the windshield. Of course, that meant the driver couldn't see him that well, either, trying to steer while peeping out of the narrow ob port. At a glance, from the size and position of the slit, Ryan figured it had to have a blind spot to objects up close. At least that was what he was hoping for.
When the RV was ten feet away, he dived to his right, beyond the reach of the front bumper, rolling and coming up in a crouch. As the Winnebago rushed straight past him, he leaped for the driver's-side mirror strut. His left hand closed on the steel tubing, and the Winnebago's momentum whipped him around. His body weight broke the grip of the adjustment nut and the entire mirror assembly swung back, slamming him so hard into the outside of the driver's door that he concaved it.
Somehow he held on.
As the wag picked up speed, Ryan managed to get a toehold on the narrow step below the bottom of the door frame. In the middle of the louvers over the side window was a round hole, about two inches across. He yanked the SIG-Sauer P-226 from its holster and rammed its blunt nose through the blaster-port. As fast as he could pull the trigger, Ryan fired into the driver's compartment, swinging the weapon's muzzle in a narrow arc. The driver started to swerve wildly back and forth to try to throw him off.
Ryan held on and kept shooting.
Because of the angle of the louvers he couldn't see if he was hitting anything. He could hear the sickly whine of ricochets zigzagging inside the armored box. The RV suddenly swung even more crazily, first to the left, then the right. It glanced off the end of a plant bed, tearing away twenty feet of corrugated chem rain awning and tipping over onto two wheels for an instant before slamming back down.
The impact almost threw Ryan off the door. It forced him to stop firing. Before he could resume, the Winnebago started to slow down, as if the driver had taken his foot off the gas.
After ten yards, the heavy RV was barely crawling along, which allowed the companions to catch up to it. It was still rolling as they rushed the open rear door. There was no hesitation on their part. They knew it was all or nothing, that the wag was their only hope of getting out of Bullard ville alive.
As the furious, close-range shootout raged at the back of the RV, Ryan tried to get the driver's door open, but it was locked from the inside.
He heard J.B.'s scattergun boom, and the sharp reports of Mildred's and Krysty's handblasters. The trapped rousties returned fire with their autopistols. With blasterfire pouring in through the open door, the steel plate that lined the box was a big negative. Buckshot and .38-caliber slugs cat's-cradled back and forth between the side walls.
After mebbe fifteen seconds, the shooting stopped.
"We got 'em," J.B. shouted to Ryan from inside the driver's compartment. The one-eyed man hopped down from the door's step.
After a moment, the driver's door opened and Ryan stared up at the Armorer's sweaty face and smeared glasses.
He climbed into the RV, and he and his old friend dragged the driver out from between the seats. The head roustie was paralyzed but alive, his spine shattered, the wounds in his hairy back leaking red. They dragged him out of the Winnebago like a roll of old carpet and dumped him on the ground, leaving him there to stare up at the sky, his mouth moving and the weakest of sounds coming out.
If Furlong had some famous last words, nobody was interested in hearing them.
Ryan climbed behind the steering wheel, which was no longer circular, having been almost half blown off by a load of buckshot, it was more a U shape. He glanced to the rear to see that everyone was okay. Mildred and Krysty nodded to him. Doc sat with his back against the crudely welded, quarter-inch steel plate that lined the lower third of the interior wall. His chin sagged to his chest, his eyes were closed, but he was breathing. Above Doc, the wall of the RV had so many bullet holes in it, it looked like a cheese grater. The wag had been completely stripped on the inside to make room for stolen cargo. The rear door was another crude bit of customizing; it was wide enough to get really big things inside. From the looks of things, the built-in bins contained more dead carny chillers than Bullard ville loot.
"Dump those bodies," Ryan said as he quickly eyeballed the controls of the RV.
"What about the loot the bastards collected?" Krysty asked him. "What should we do with it?"
"Keep the food and the ammo," he replied. "Everything else, shove out the back." He put his foot down on hard the gas pedal, heading for the big tent and Dean, Jak and Leeloo.
As Krysty and Mildred heaved the last of the three corpses over the back bumper, the sec men who had moved up to Burger Stravaganza finally found the range, and bullets started spanging into the rear door.
Chapter Twenty-One
At his father's command, Dean grabbed Leeloo's hand and they broke from cover on a dead run. Blasterfire blazed behind them as they sprinted across the stretch of open ground between the plant beds and the red-and-white-striped tent. Dean followed his dad's orders to the letter and didn't look back, no matter how much he wanted to. This wasn't the first time he'd been sent away from danger because of his age and his lack of experience. Usually, there was never anyone to look after but himself. This time his feelings of helplessness over leaving his dad and his friends to their fate and allowing them to sacrifice themselves were made easier to swallow by the responsibility he had been given. It was his job to get Leeloo Bunny to safety.
He took some com
fort from the knowledge that the companions had always managed to beat the odds before. Someday, he thought, his father wouldn't make him go when things looked blackest. Some day, there'd be no question of letting him stand and fight with the others.
Dean ran hard and Leeloo ran stride for stride beside him. She was fast and strong for a person of her age. As they neared the side of the tent, slugs whined low overhead. He slowed and ushered her in front of him, shielding her from bullets with his own body.
The blaze of shooting wasn't the only ruckus going on.
The clatter of the pitched gun battle had sent the mutie zoo creatures into a panic. The Wazl birds shrieked like shattering plate glass. The Worm hissed and shook its rattles. The naked stickies mewled in a terrified chorus. The swampie jugglers yelled for help, begging at the tops of their lungs to be released from their dung encrusted cage. The entire Wolfram menagerie seemed to sense, and rightly so, that there would be no justice and no mercy if they were abandoned to the care of the revenge seeking Bullard ville norms.
Dean was relieved to hear the din they made. The way the muties were all carrying on at once, no way could they sound an alarm over the presence of him and Leeloo. How many armed carny folk were still lurking among the wags? The boy had no clue. His plan was simple: slip under the trailers. He figured he and Leeloo could crawl below the rows of cages and stay out of sight until they found Jak.
As Dean and Leeloo raced past the first trailer, a great, flabby arm lunged out from the shadows, and before they could duck or dodge, it clotheslined them both. Dean ended up flat on his butt, with the muzzle of his Hi-Power blaster rammed deep in the soft yellow dirt. The impact of bone against bone, of forearm against chin made him see stars. He shook his head to clear it, looked over between the trailers, and his blood froze.
Baldoona, the two-headed scalie, its massive bulk seated on the ground, held Leeloo Bunny at arm's length, snatched up by a handful of hair, like a plaything. An unhappy plaything. The little girl was fighting like a demon, but her nails couldn't scratch the glittering, reptilian skin, and her kicks were futile against the creature's well padded exterior.
Dean jerked up his handblaster, giving its slide a quick, hard thump with the heel of his hand to clear the barrel of dirt. Then he dropped the safety and put his finger inside the trigger guard, and drew a careful bead on the adult head. "Let her go!" he shouted.
By way of answer, the mutie soundly backhanded the wildly struggling child once across the face. It was a hard blow. Leeloo went instantly limp, a rag doll held off the ground by sixteen inches of light brown hair.
"Bastard!" Dean snarled, thumbing back the blaster's hammer and jumping to his feet. "I said, let her go, you sack of shit!"
The two-headed scalie did nothing of the kind. Instead, it gathered up the unconscious girl in both hands, holding her by the wrists and ankles, and raised her to its mismatched mouths like an ear of roasted corn.
"Try to bite her and you're dead meat!" Dean warned.
"Do you really think you can chill me before I chill her?" Baldoona's adult head asked him with a smirk. From the way the baby head was lopsidedly grinning, it, too, was amused at the idea.
Dean said nothing. His finger tightened on the trigger, taking up the slack to the break point. The cap was about to snap.
"Think you can stop me with just one shot?" the adult head went on. "Because that's all you're going to get. And it won't be enough. In case you forgot, I've got two brains, Bed Wetter."
Dean grimaced, sighting the Browning first at one nasty drooling head, then the other. From the only shot angle he had, he couldn't hit both with a single 9 mm slug, through one head and into the other, which was the only hope he had of taking out the scalie before it could hurt the girl. He racked his brain, trying to think of what his father would have done in the situation, and came up with a gigantic blank. There were no options as long as the monster had hold of Leeloo.
Baldoona's adult head licked the unconscious girl's cheek and ear, tasting her skin, and then smacked its lips appreciatively. "Cinnamon spice, very nice," it said.
The baby head gibbered and chattered excitedly, puckering its mouth, stretching its neck to the limit, trying to get its lips and then its tiny teeth wrapped around one of the little girl's bare feet, her sun browned toes, which were just out of its reach.
"No, don't!" Dean cried, lowering his weapon. "Don't!"
" 'Don't'?" the adult head said, giving him an irritated look. "I'm about to eat this tender little morsel's face off, and you think I'm interested in your 'Don't'?"
"Let her go and take me instead," Dean told the monster. "You can eat me. I'm bigger than she is. There's more meat. I won't fight you, I promise. Just let her go."
"Yeah, sure…" the adult head said dubiously, opening its mouth, moistening its lips as it prepared to take the first bite.
"Look," Dean said, "I'll prove it. I'll put down my blaster." He carefully placed the weapon in the dirt at his feet. Parting with the Browning under these circumstances was one of the hardest things the boy had ever had to do. But the memory of what the scalie's two heads had done to the live pig in the big top was still very fresh in his mind. Dean couldn't bear to witness it doing that to Leeloo. He needed the scalie to put the girl down. That was step one.
Baldoona smiled with both its wet mouths. "You got yourself a deal, Piss Pants," the adult head said. The scalie then gently set the still unconscious Leeloo on the ground, smoothing her faded dress, then securely trapping her there by laying its grotesquely fat thigh across the small of her back. It extended both its arms to Dean, then snapped its fingers impatiently at him. "Chow time for Baldoona," it said.
There had never been a doubt in the boy's mind that Baldoona would try to double cross him, that it would eat them both, if it could.
Dean's plan was born of desperation. Get in close enough and use his legs and feet. Get inside the creature's guard and kick for the heads. Boot the adult head first, then the baby head. Boot them until they were knocked out.
But before he could plant his back foot and get off a kick, the scalie had him fast by the scruff of the neck. It was much quicker than it looked. And much, much stronger. As the fingers vise gripped his neck, Dean realized the monster could break his spine with a sudden twist, like a dog with a rat. And when Baldoona squeezed a little harder, cutting off the blood flow to Dean's brain, all the strength went out of his legs.
The baby head started to coo as its suddenly helpless, living meal was drawn tantalizingly closer.
Dean smelled the mutie's huge, and hugely soiled, underpants as Baldoona grabbed his right hand by the wrist and raised to its adult head. The jaws opened wide, exposing short, wear-blunted fangs and a mossy, vaguely reptilian tongue. Dean tried to draw back his hand, but the scalie increased the pressure on his neck, and his arm went dead in the creature's grasp.
In the near distance, over the sounds of the shooting, Dean heard the engine of a big wag starting up, then getting louder and louder as it rumbled his way. Something hot and wet slithered between and around his fingers. The scalie was licking him. Dean cringed, anticipating the horrible pain to follow.
But Baldoona didn't start crunching on his fingers. The scalie's grip suddenly slackened on Dean's neck. Below him, Leeloo had regained consciousness, and was trying to claw her way out from under the weight of the mutie's thigh. It snagged Leeloo's slender shoulder, dragged her back under its leg and sat on her.
"Get out of here!" Baldoona's adult head bawled. "This is mine! All mine!" Dean turned his head and glimpsed a huge beige shape poised, as still as a statue, not five feet away.
The mountain lion, uncaged.
Its stare was locked on the scalie, and the stare was having its desired effect.
Dean saw that Baldoona was paralyzed. Both heads knew it couldn't run and hope to escape from the lion. Both heads knew it couldn't fight the lion and win. But neither head wanted to give up the food it had captured. The monster's four eyes
glittered with fear. With gluttony. With anger.
Given its show stopping bigtop act, the scalie had had considerable practice in eating live prey against the clock.
In a flash it made up its minds.
But before it chomp down on either of its captives, the lion sprang. A beige blur rushed past Dean. Its front paws landed high on the scalie's sagging chest, knocking the air from its lungs and bowling it over onto its back. Dean was slammed to the ground but rolled free as Baldoona lurched up to defend itself from the attack of the giant cat.
Defense was futile, comical even, and certainly brief.
As big as the scalie was, as quick as it was, it was no match for this adversary. Baldoona lunged for the lion's horned throat, and its fingers closed on air. Dean blinked in amazement. The big cat was standing behind the scalie, whose hands were clenched together, strangling nothing. With a single blow of its paw, the lion sent Baldoona crashing onto its hands and knees.
Dean had witnessed mountain lion kills before, but always at a distance, through the telescopic sight on his father's longblaster. Dog style was the position lions preferred for chilling man or beast.
It offered access to the prey's throat. In this case, it had a choice of throats.
Dean had no idea how big the lion's mouth was until it opened wide. It was so big that it could wedge the scalie's adult neck between its back teeth. As the lion squeezed down its jaws, cutting off air and blood and shrill cries of terror, the adult head turned a deep plum purple, eyes bulging out of their sockets, quasireptilian tongue protruding obscenely. The baby head, stabbed by the cat's stiff whiskers, began squealing, not unlike the live pig it had so recently consumed.
The lion didn't use its prodigious fangs on Baldoona. It used its back molars and started sawing, grinding away with them, twisting its thousand pounds of muscle and bone, digging into the dirt with its claws for added leverage, this while the scalie frantically bucked and jerked.
Axler, James - Deathlands 62 - Damnation Road Show Page 14