Chapter Forty-Four

 

 

 

J.B. stopped and beckoned Krysty to his side.

 

"See the terrain here?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"What do you think?"

 

"What for? Oh, I see. Could be."

 

"Put the guns on both sides, but the rising slope means there's no risk of pouring lead into one another. Be firing downhill a little, which isn't so good for accuracy. Still"

 

The Armorer's glasses glinted silver in the moonlight. He licked his lips in the eager anticipation of a good ambush.

 

The others joined them, quickly understanding what he planned.

 

Dorina punched one hand into the other. "Give 'em some shit," she hissed.

 

Harold nodded reluctantly. "Could be a good place to catch them, 'specially if they're moving fast and careless."

 

"Never heard of a stickie that wasn't always careless," Christina said. "Excepting for that Charlie, of course."

 

"Mebbe I could sort of lure them," Dean offered, "pretend I got a bad ankle or something. Limp back there so they see me. Then they'll be thinking about me and start chasing me, and you can easy take them."

 

"No," J.B. replied flatly.

 

"It'd work."

 

"And then I get to tell your father that some stickie got a lucky shot and blew half your head away? Dark night!"

 

Doc cleared his throat. "Forgive my interruption, John Barrymore."

 

"What?"

 

"I am a famous dullard when it comes to subtle variations in the fine art of warfare. But it does seem to me that the little rascal has come up with a potentially game-winning suggestion."

 

The forest closed around them. The trail ran straight for about one hundred and fifty paces. On each side the hills rose away, with excellent cover for hidden shootists.

 

J.B. sighed, looking at the others. "I'm the one in charge. I don't like the risk."

 

Doc pressed him. "A perfect ambuscade. We can annihilate the enemy, then return safely to liberate Bear Claw Ridge and all who sail in it." He coughed again. "And do business in great waters, for they I'm sorry, I appear to have momentarily lost the thread of my discourse."

 

Mildred broke the silence. "I say let him do it. It's a real good plan."

 

"Dad would let me if he was here."

 

J.B. wasn't the sort of man to waste time once he'd finally made up his mind.

 

"Let's do it," he said. "Then go make sure everyone's safe up the hill."

 

 

STORAGE UNITS had been ripped off one of the walls of the mall, leaving brackets scattered all over the floor. Trying to move quietly through the concrete maze of small units and gaping doorways, Ryan slipped and turned his ankle, falling heavily.

 

Fortunately if there were any stickies nearby, none of them seemed to have been attracted by the clatter.

 

All around him, the retail catacomb was still and silent.

 

He lay there for a moment, cursing beneath his breath, then pulled himself up, gingerly testing the injury. He put his weight on it and winced at a feeling like a white-hot needle lancing through the bone. Ryan had broken his ankle about ten years earlier and could still remember the extraordinary pain that had seeped in after about fifteen minutes. This time it had hurt immediately, which gave him some hope that it might only be a bad sprain.

 

He rolled his ankle, gritting his teeth, trying again to stand on it. This time it was markedly easier and he limped up and down a few times, eye scanning the main part of the mall for any sign of movement. But it was still deserted.

 

 

 

JAK TURNED A BLIND CORNER to find his targetan unusually stout stickieleaning casually against a tumbled wall, head back, taking a great gulp from his flask.

 

The teenager didn't want to use his .357 Magnum, which would bring every mutie for ten miles around.

 

Just for a moment he hesitated. A year earlier his automatic reflex would have taken over and carried him through. He would have taken the step in and crushed the barrel of the weighty blaster against the side of the stickie's skull and put him down, stooped and opened up his throat with a single slicing cut from one of his many knives.

 

But Jak Lauren had been a married man for many months now. Running a homestead in the wilderness of New Mexico wasn't an easy ride.

 

Nor was it quite the same as roaming through Deathlands at the shoulder of Ryan Cawdor.

 

The stickie was so startled at the sudden appearance of the supernatural demon, with the hair of white fire and the eyes like living flames, that he gobbed out the mouthful of liquor, which sprayed into Jak's face.

 

The alcohol was home-distilled, close to one hundred proof, and it blinded the albino teenager.

 

"You triple-stupe fucker!" he staggered backward, pulling the pistol's trigger three times, totally unable to see where the bullets had gone.

 

One went into the side of a dirt wall three hundred paces away to the south. A second one was still rising when it disappeared into the dark forest, well over a quarter mile away, having missed the drunken stickie by less than three feet. The third full-metal jacket struck the chubby mutie high on the inside of the left thigh, neatly opening up the femoral artery on the way in and removing much of the quadriceps muscle and the hamstring on the way out.

 

Blood began to pour from the gaping wound, jetting into the sand near Jak's face. The stickie was blown backward onto the ground and immediately became preoccupied with the puzzling affair of his own death.

 

The teenager heard the unmistakable wet, solid noise of a heavy caliber bullet striking flesh. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, blinking through a sea of tears, and saw the dying man writhing on the floor.

 

Jak turned and was immediately knifed in the chest by Charlie's third scout.

 

 

 

DOWN THE STEEP TRAIL, on the farther side of the plateau, everyone heard the echoing sound of the three shots.

 

Dean hesitated and stumbled, nearly falling. He recovered his balance and carried on.

 

Charlie had dropped behind his raggle-taggle army of stickies, urging them on. The disorderly gang was whooping as they saw the slim figure of the boy so close ahead of them. But Charlie had also heard and recognized the sound of the shooting. He knew that none of the three men he'd secretly left behind carried large-caliber blasters, which meant they'd flushed at least one of their prey out of hiding.

 

Amid the cheering, the rest of the stickies hardly noticed the distant peal of thunder. They charged on down the straight section of the track.

 

Charlie stopped, considering calling them back. He saw the boy turn around and peer over his shoulder. As though he was looking for

 

"What?" Charlie said.

 

Realization came moments too late.

 

J.B. had also heard the noise of Jak's big blaster and, like Ryan, knew that it might mean some seriously bad news. But for the present, the Armorer had to concentrate his attention on the ambush.

 

The time was now.

 

"Stop!" Charlie screamed, his voice cracking into the darkness.

 

"Now!" J.B. yelled, spraying the muties with a sustained burst from the Uzi.

 

The night exploded into a bedlam of shooting and tumbled death.

 

 

 

THE MOON HUNG in a cloudless sky. There was a hint of frost in the air, and the mountains around were sharp and clear.

 

Ryan's combat boots rang on the blacktop as he sprinted toward the sound of the shots. It was so calm and still that he caught the sharp odor of gunsmoke before he reached the scene.

 

He came in from the other side, seeing the dead stickie and a great lake of blood seeping black and glossy around the corpse's shattered leg.

 

"Fireblast!" Ryan put his head slowly around the corner, seeing the second sprawled body lying still in another patch of leaking blood, this time from what looked like a stab wound in the chest.

 

"Oh, Christ, Jak," he said. "No!"