by James Axler
But the crack of the sniper rifle rolled over the ville, and most of the voices on the streets stopped shouting.
“If they come to this side and find the bodies, we’re screwed. There’s no canopy over here to hide the arrows,” Ryan growled. “Load and fire at will, but hit that triple-damn wag right now!”
Fast and furious, the companions loaded and fired as quickly as possible, flaming arrows raining all over the area, setting fire to the roof of the motel and smashing to pieces on the streets. When the wind slowed for moment, they sent off the last flurry of arrows. Climbing high toward the stars, the firebrands curved sharply earthward and slammed all over the wag, penetrating the cab, the hood, and several going through the tattered canvas awning over the rear.
Only seconds later, a fire woofed out the back of the wag from the punctured fuel cans, tongues of flame licking from every hole in the canvas. Some sec man hidden behind the wag started running, but it was already too late.
The deafening explosion illuminated the entire ville in a blinding flash of light and rattled shutters for blocks in every direction. Caught near the blast, the sec men were slapped off the ground and sent tumbling through the air like burning rag dolls to hit the side of other buildings with lethal results.
Then from the boiling inferno of the barn came a series of sharp bangs and a new fireball boiled upward, spraying out debris as the cans of condensed fuel rocketed into the air and detonated above the ville.
By now every window was open and a dozen bells were ringing. Illuminated by the reddish glare of the rising fireball, the companions ducked low on the roof of the temple to try to stay in the shadows.
Blaster in hand, Ryan gave a short whistle and jerked a finger at the front of the temple. Dropping to his belly, Jak crawled to the edge of the roof, listened and then chanced a peek. Turning to face the others, he nodded and gave a thumbs-up.
“Okay, they’re off to check the explosion,” Ryan said aloud, rising to his knees. “That bought us time but not a hell of a nuking lot.”
He paused as another detonation shook the ville, as the main forty-gallon fuel tanks of the U.S. Army GMC 6×6 added their destructive fury to the growing conflagration.
Still wary, Krysty was maintaining a close watch on the keep. When a guard appeared on the parapet with what seemed to be binoculars, she swung around the heavy longblaster, set the crosshairs on his chest and fired. The recoil kicked her hard in the shoulder, making the woman think she had missed completely, but the slug from the Nitro Express crossed the distance in a split second and the man flew backward minus a head, a splash of blood hitting the flagpole. Hopefully, Gaza would think it was shrapnel from the blast.
But as she worked the bolt, a woman dressed in white appeared briefly at a window in the keep, and Krysty got a fluttery feeling inside her head. Hastily, she raised the monster rifle, but the woman was already gone. Her heart pounding, Krysty suddenly knew she had aced the wrong target. The strange female was the source of danger, but whether she was a doomie or a telepath, Krysty had no idea.
“The baron might have a doomie,” Krysty said aloud. “Hawk could be waiting for us at the horse corral.”
Or the front gate. Breathing heavily in the darkness, Ryan said nothing at the news for a few moments. “Okay, too bad for him,” he stated.
“J.B., check out the corral. Everybody else, clear the streets of any sec men!”
Standing in plain view, the companions went to the side of the temple and cut loose at a group of guards inspecting the bodies sprawled in the street. Side by side, they chilled every man, the continuing explosions from the wag drowning out the crack of their rifles.
“Corral looks clear!” J.B. announced, collapsing his Navy scope.
Holstering his piece, Ryan gathered up a thick coil of fuse from the roof and tied the end to the top rung of the iron ladder. Tugging hard, he decided it would hold and tossed the rest of the coil over the edge of the temple. With the others keeping watch, the one-eyed man slid down the rope in one fast motion, landing with his knees slightly bent to absorb the impact.
Instantly, he turned with the SIG-Sauer drawn and checked the street, but there were only the dead and the dying on the cobblestones.
Ryan whistled twice, and the rest of the companions descended one at a time, the process seeming to take forever, even though it was only a few minutes according to his wrist chron.
Once Doc was on the ground, Ryan lit the fuse with his butane lighter and watched it slowly start to burn upward.
“Let’s get those horses,” he growled, and started running through the maze of the ville with the others close behind.
Chapter Fifteen
As they raced through Rockpoint, a crackling noise steadily grew as flames began to spread across the ville following the canopy covering the streets. Soon the flames started to spread to the adobe houses, the compressed mud and straw bricks burning as easily as wood.
People were rushing into the street, clutching their belongings and staring about helplessly. A child got in the way of a running sec man, and he clubbed the little girl aside. With a cry of rage, her father smashed a water jug over the guard’s head shattering his skull. As the body dropped, the rest of the family began kicking and beating the fallen man while cursing wildly.
“Looks like we’ve got that revolution,” J.B. remarked as they ran past the scene. His last view was of the father yanking the blaster from the limp hands of the bleeding corpse and fumbling to work the hammer and trigger.
But as the companions took a corner, a group of sec men were shouting orders to a crowd of people stomping out the burning embers on the ground.
“It’s them!” a sergeant cried out, swiveling his longblaster and pulling the trigger. But the weapon misfired and only a feeble flame came from the muzzle.
As the sergeant feverishly worked the arming bolt, Ryan put a round into his chest, while J.B. fired the Uzi, the hail of 9 mm rounds tearing the other sec men apart.
“Head for the temple!” Dean shouted at the terrified people running about. “Water’s everywhere!” But if anybody believed the boy, there was no indication.
Watchful of the side streets, the companions ran through the ville, shooting down any sec men who came their way. At a hitching post, a corporal stared in shock at their approach and raised his hands in surrender. Without remorse, Ryan blew him away and kept going, knowing full well the man would have started to shoot once their backs were turned.
The smoke was getting thick, blowing along the streets like mist in a tunnel, trapped by the canopy and adobe buildings. That was an unexpected bonus to hold down sniper fire, especially from that 25 mm cannon in the keep if it was working. Rising above the ville, orange flames were barely visible through the cloth and the dense clouds, then there came the sound of splintering wood as the roof of a burning tavern collapsed, sending sparks soaring skyward in a fiery whirlwind.
Needing to check his bearings, Ryan stopped at a gaudy house. The front door slammed aside, and there stood a bald man armed with an ax, along with a handful of raggedly dressed ville people carrying makeshift clubs. Behind them was a group of women in various stages of undress.
“By the Scorpion God, it’s the outlanders!” the bald man yelled in triumph. “Chill ’em and the baron will make us sec men!” Like a pack of hounds flush with the scent of their prey, the rest yelled battle cries and charged.
Pausing for a full second to make sure Bart and his wife weren’t among the gang, Ryan and J.B. then opened fire while Krysty braced for the recoil and stroked the trigger on the H&H Nitro. The longblaster thundered flame along the street, the big .475 slug blowing a gory hole through the leader only then to slam into the second and send him sprawling.
The noise of the longblaster startled the rest of the vigilantes, and they broke and run, tossing away weapons. Tracking the group for a moment, the companions then turned and hurried away, seeing no reason to ace the unarmed people.
“Fools,” Jak muttered, thu
mbing rounds into the side port of the hot Winchester. When it was loaded, he yanked the crossbow off his shoulder and tossed it away. Damn thing weighed a ton and could serve no useful purpose now. The night creep was over, this was a straight firefight.
Screaming as he came, a sec man ran around a wooden cart loaded with loose bricks, shooting a homemade scattergun. Ryan dived out of the way just in time, and Mildred lunged forward to gut the man with the bayonet at the end of her blaster. The shotgun fell from a spasming hand as he tried to clutch the writhing nest of entrails pouring from his belly. Although still screaming, the guard was already dead, but Mildred couldn’t stop herself from wasting a live round and firing the Remington into the man, ending his agony. There was only so far the physician would allow herself to abandon civilization, leaving a wounded man to die slowly was something she would avoid whenever possible.
By now the alarm bell stopped ringing, and people were running all over the ville, seeking cover, but also looting the buildings and the dead. Several fistfights had broken out, and once Dean saw a sec man shoot a corporal in the back. When the turncoat faced their way, the boy feathered him with the last bolt from the crossbow, then tossed the weapon away. Hot pipe, the ville was going insane, old scores between people being settled in the crimson heat of raw battle.
Doc discharged the Webley at an armed man on a rooftop. Although it was a predark weapon, the revolver was carrying bullets reloaded with black powder, and it boomed as if it had exploded, gushing forth a billowing cloud of acrid smoke. Yet even through the din, Doc saw the guard go over the side and fall to the cobblestones to land with a meaty crunch.
“Praise the lord and pass the ammunition,” Mildred growled, then flinched as a slug hummed by so close she felt its warmth on her cheek. She turned quickly, but didn’t see the source of the incoming rounds. Doubling her speed, the woman tried to ignore the itchy feeling between her shoulder blades of a crosshair marking her as a viable target.
Checking around a corner, Ryan whistled sharply at the others and held up a restraining hand. Listening to the growing noise of the fire and rioting fill the ville, the man watched the stables across the courtyard for any sign of activity. But he could only detect the natural motions of the horses, nothing fugitive suggesting hiding troops.
Taking point, Ryan sprinted across the open street to jump over a split-rail fence and hit the wall of the stable. Then he swung inside with his blaster, searching for enemies. But there were no guards at the corral, the adobe brick stalls containing only horses, mounds of hay and tack. The animals were shuffling in the straw on the floor, their eyes wide with terror. The animals were reserved for the baron and officers, so blasterfire would be well-known to them, but the thick smell of smoke stirred primitive fear response that no amount of training could completely overcome.
There was a movement near the fence, and Ryan almost fired until he saw it was J.B. covering his blind side. Good man.
The Armorer stood guard while Ryan gave the signal and the rest of the companions charged into the stable, grabbing blankets, saddles and bridles to throw onto the animals.
After her horse was saddled, Krysty looked around for anything useful to steal and spotted some sagging bags hanging from a wooden peg sticking out of the bricks. It took only a touch to realize they were water bags. Grabbing two, Krysty looped the first over the pommel of her saddle, then did the same for Ryan’s horse. Finished with her own mount, Mildred saw the action and did the same, along with Doc and Jak. Dean searched for any feed bags for the horses, but couldn’t find any.
During this, Ryan and J.B. had remained by the fence, ruthlessly chilling every sec man who appeared on the street, the bodies scattered along the surface like drunks after an orgy.
“Let’s move out,” Krysty called, guiding her frightened horse to the fence, with two more in tow by the reins.
Swinging open the gate in the fence, Ryan and J.B. climbed onto their animals, briefly checking the saddle and reins. Just then a sec man ran by, clutching the stump of an arm, blood spurting at every step.
“That’s no blast wound,” J.B. said, tightening the reins as a precaution when his horse reared in terror as a cougar lopped past the corral with a human hand sticking out of its fanged mouth.
“The lunatic!” Mildred cursed, fighting to control her mount. “Sparrow said the baron guarded the junkyard with some big cats. Cougars!”
“Must have released them to try and get us,” Dean said, stroking the neck of his mare to try to calm her. The animal responded to his touch, but became jittery at the moment he stopped the soothing caress.
“More likely they escaped, terrified of the fire,” Ryan stated grimly, forcing his combat boots into the narrow stirrups. “But its still triple-bad for us.”
“Look out!” Jak shouted, levering the Winchester with only one hand, the other tight on the reins.
Snarling and spitting, another cougar appeared from around a corner, chasing an armed sec man. The fellow fired blindly over a shoulder, and the big cat leaped through the black powder cloud to land upon the man, driving him to the ground under its weight. Then the man screamed as the cougar buried its fangs into the small of his back and savagely shook him, audibly snapping the spine, then cast him aside. In a blur of movement, the animal was gone, leaving a trail of bloody paw prints to mark its passage.
“We stay together!” J.B. commanded, inserting a fresh clip into the Uzi. “They’re less likely to attack us in a group! Let’s move it!”
The companions galloped through the billowing clouds of smoke, heading directly for the front gate. There was no more time to waste on subterfuge or tricks. The faster they got out of Rockpoint and into the desert, the better were their chances of staying alive.
Unexpectedly, the two cougars joined in the courtyard, snarling their blood-chilling cry as they padded through the smoky ville, attacking sec men and civilians indiscriminately. But anybody who discharged a blaster was brutally attacked by both animals and literally torn limb from limb.
Even as he fought to not get sick from the slaughter, Dean filed away the type of attack in his mind. The cats were a pair, male and female, working as a team. He had never seen animals do that. Most muties attacked in a mob but without any order, these killers weren’t even eating the people they aced. Just chilling and moving on to find another. The very idea made the boy wish he had taken a longblaster instead of a crossbow from the temple armory, and he clenched his hand around the checkered grip of his Browning Hi-Power, privately wishing it was something more than a 9 mm pistol.
“They seem to be heading for the gate,” Krysty said, struggling to keep her horse from bolting. The combination of fire and the cats was driving the animal into a frenzy.
“Stay behind the cats,” Ryan ordered. “They’ll clear the way for us.”
“What if they turn?” Doc demanded, the Webley held in his right hand as he cocked back the hammer with a thumb.
“Left shoulder!” Ryan stated, holding the reins in his left hand, the right keeping the Steyr braced in his hip for immediate use. “Not the heart or head! And don’t fucking miss!”
As if understanding the words, a cougar glanced backward to snarl at the mounted people, and the companions leveled their arsenal of weapons at the beast. For a moment, it seemed like the male cougar was going to charge, then the female sprang sideways and seized an old woman by the throat ripping away most of her neck. Gushing a horrible fountain of blood, the wrinklie fell to her knees, as the cougar mauled her with its front paws. Her high-pitched scream never stopped as the blood sprayed everywhere. Then she went limp and the cat raised its gore-streaked face to snarl at the sky.
At the sight, Krysty started to aim the Hollands & Hollands, but stayed her hand. The old woman was already dead, and they needed the help of the cats to reach the gates. Once there, she would blow their heads off with the Nitro Express.
Horses, dogs, civilians and sec men fled from the approach of the cougars, the chaos in
the smoky ville increasing as the alarm bell began to ring again from the keep. Or was it sending a message to the sec men? There was no way of knowing.
With the bravado of ignorance, a sec man jumped out of an alleyway firing two big bore wheelguns at the big cats in a storm of lead. But they dropped to the ground at the first round and then leaped, the male seizing his gun hand by the wrist and the female racking her claws across the man’s head, flipping over the scalp to fall across his face. Bare white bone gleamed from the smeared blood of the open head. As the guard tried to shove his scalp back in to place, both cats sank their teeth into his chest and ripped out vital organs.
That was when several shots rang out from behind the companions. Turning in their saddles, they fired a volley at the group of sec men coming up the street. The ten or so guards were moving from doorway to alley, trying to always stay behind cover as they closed in toward Ryan and the others, the companions now trapped between them and the big cats.
“Flank attack!” J.B. yelled, spraying the Uzi in a figure-eight pattern, the 9 mm Parabellum rounds ricocheting off the houses and streets in a hellstorm of lead until the clip went empty. “Which way, the men or the cats?”
“Fuck them both! Head down the side street!” Ryan shouted, kicking his horse in the rump and urging it on to greater speed.
Galloping loudly on the cobblestones, the companions thundered past the snarling cats and down the side street. But the cougars followed, looping after the riders.
The stupe sons of bitches had to think the friends were running away in fear, Ryan realized in frustration, and instinct was forcing them to chase after them. That was when he saw the street was a dead end, terminating at the ville wall. Trapped again! Now there was no other choice. They had to ace the cats before the animals got underneath the horses and ripped out their bellies.
“Ace ’em!” Ryan ordered, reining in his mount and turning to shoot.
The barrage of rounds from the companions hit the cats everywhere, blood covering their muscular bodies. But the lead seemed to have no effect, and the cats leaped to turn in the air and charge at the mounted people, snarling with blood lust.