Part 23 (2/2)

The stickie's corpse collapsed onto the roof, into a burning pyre. The smell of burning flesh was instantly recognizable in the night air.

Ryan, however, wasn't waiting around to admire his handiwork. He was already rolling, firing his blaster as he moved. The element of surprise was still with him. When the first stickie died, all eyes fell upon its death throes, but no one thought to look up.

Gripping his right wrist with his left hand, Ryan braced himself against the kick of the powerful pistol as it spit death again and again. His aim no longer needed to be as precise as the first kill, so he took chest shots, the safest option against his now moving targets.

A chest shot was never as elegant, clean or final as a head shot, but it had the advantage of not mattering much whether you were a couple of inches high or low or to either side. If your aim was high, you still took out the throat or heart or one of the lungs. Shoot a maneven a stickiein the rib cage and watch him fall down gasping for air.

Go low, and you had an old-fas.h.i.+oned, hurt-like-h.e.l.l gut shot, which was more than likely going to end up being a killing hit when delivered with a 9 mm round from a P-226 blaster. As J.B. had said more than once, ”You hit when you miss with a chest shot. Nothing fancy about a shooting like that, but it gets the job done.”

Ryan's backup was close behind him, closer still when the first shot exploded in the burning night.

The big sec man slowed as he approached the scene. ”Christ, Cawdor, you chilled them all,” he said.

”Don't fall all over yourself thanking me, Rollins.”

”I've never seen anything like it,” the younger man in the mall sec colors said. ”Five stickies downed by a single man.”

”Friend of mine once told me a running man with a sharp knife can slit a thousand throats in a single night,” Ryan said. ”As long as he's quiet about it.”

The lead sec man waved over his single living follower. ”Use the tank extinguisher. It should have a full charge. Put those fires out as fast as you can.”

”Yes, sir!”

”Still wish you would have left one alive for questioning,” Rollins griped. ”Dead muties can't talk.”

”Since when have you ever known a stickie to volunteer any information? Even if they knew anything, half the time the stupe” Ryan's voice trailed off, the sight of Krysty's face tight with pain taking his earlier thought away.

”I'm okay, lover,” she said softly, catching his eye peering intently at her. ”But we got major trouble.”

”What?”

”Bad. Very bad. I've got a mental picture of the roof of this mall, and it's bright red, all red.”

”What the f.u.c.k is she talking about?” the sec leader said angrily. Ryan could see confusion and fear in the big man's face. He'd gone about his life expecting stickies to perform and act a certain way. Now that the patterns had changed, he was losing his grip. Ryan wasn't surprised. Most men would have done likewise when confronted with the abnormal, and there was nothing normal about the ways these stickies were behaving.

”Told you before, Rollins, she's a seer,” Ryan said. ”Senses danger. Bad things to come.”

”As red as blood, as red as fire,” Krysty whispered, every hair on her head moving gently back and forth like wheat in a strong breeze.

”Shut her up, Cawdor,” Rollins ordered, his eyes wide.

”Why? She scaring you? Good.”

Rollins shook his head. ”We don't have time for crazy mutie talk.”

”We'd better make time,” Ryan insisted. ”s.h.i.+t's about to hit the fan.”

The small radio on Rollins's gun belt squawked, the shrill tone adding to the mounting tension between the two men.

”Go ahead, answer,” Ryan said. ”I don't think either one of us is going to like what we hear.”

Rollins s.n.a.t.c.hed the black-and-silver portable comm radio off his belt and thumbed the Send b.u.t.ton. ”What?” he half yelled into the tiny voice grid.

”This is Jameson, sir. From the west wing,” an excited voice said.

”I've got problems of my own, Jameson. Make it quick.”

”The stickies, sir. They're over here. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are coming in from all sides. We shot down one in a hang glider, but not before he dropped a s.h.i.+tload of rope ladders and some kind of flaming napalm. We're boxed in, and more of them are crawling up the sides. What are we going to do?”

Chapter Twenty-Three.

The interior of Freedom Mall was a scene of ma.s.s chaos. Word about the mutie attack from all quarters had spread effortlessly through the storefronts and common areas of the mall, creating a panic where panic was the only foe to fight. And as the word spread and the fear grew, a planning flaw in the reconfiguration of the mall's sec setup was becoming painfully evident.

The main entrance into the ma.s.sive two-story construction was also the site of the primary exit, since all fire doors, loading docks and the nearly forty other former exit-entrances into Freedom had been long since barricaded shut with concrete and stone, and chain and metal.

As the ma.s.ses tried to flee from terrors both real and imagined, the greed in men's hearts came bubbling up to the surface. Realizing that all of the available members of the Freedom Mall sec staff were busy with the stickie onslaught, looters appeared in all of the stores and shops. Some of the establishments were closed for the night, others abandoned by their owners, who had fled into the mob attempting to escape. These were loudly ransacked.

However, other store owners had no interest in leaving their staked territory. Any thieves entering these stores with stealing on their minds found proprietors hidden inside armed and waiting for whatever threat might come bursting through their doors. Crazed human or crazier mutie, they didn't care. Try to infringe on what was theirs, and a person would be cut down in a hail of blasterfire.

At the multiplex, Doc, J.B. and Mildred had learned of the crisis when the movie had been stopped in midreel. Mildred hadn't minded the interruption in the least. The humor of Dawn of the Dead was being totally lost on her, as well as on Doc, although J.B. seemed to be greatly enjoying himself.

The angry audience had taken offense and was ready to lynch the projectionist until Boston from the box office came out with news of what was happening outside.

Now the three friends were struggling to make their way through the teeming, panicked ma.s.ses. The looting of the many mall business establishments had already begun, an unstoppable wave of shrieking l.u.s.t for food, clothing and, best of all, material possessions.

”By the Three Kennedys!” Doc bellowed, raising his voice to be heard over of the cacophony of the mob. ”These ignorant fools are raiding their own henhouses! Can they not see they are a.s.sisting in the destruction of their own sanctuary?”

”They don't give a d.a.m.n, Doc,” Mildred replied sadly. ”They just don't care. I haven't seen the likes of this since the 1992 L.A. riots. Tomorrow there might be some remorse mixed in with twinges of guilt, but tonight is wilding time. The time of the unleashed collective id.”

”Don't quote Freud to me, Doctor. Sometimes a cigar is a cigar, and sometimes a pack of wolves is a pack of wolves,” Doc retorted, using his sheathed swordstick to beat and jab a clear path through the milling ma.s.s of people.

”Watch it,” one unruly ma.s.s of muscle and leather spun and bellowed at Doc. ”Poke me again, and I'll jam that toothpick up your skinny a.s.s.”

”Better men than you have tried, sir,” Doc bellowed back.

J.B raised his M-4000 scattergun. ”Keep moving, friend, or I'll clear a path the old-fas.h.i.+oned way,” the Armorer intoned. ”Right though your gut.”

The talking ma.s.s of muscle looked at the twin barrels, snorted and continued on, allowing the trio to pa.s.s unmolested down the annex area to the entrance of the satellite mall-sec headquarters. As official members of the sec team, each knew the entry code. Doc took the honors, beeping in the series of numbers to command the door to unlock.

No sliding pneumatic doorways here. After the door popped open and swung inward on the hinges, it remained that way until pulled tightly closed and left sealed for the next visitor who needed access to the sec area.

What the friends found inside were two faces belonging to their fellow sec men, two men armed with M-16 autoblasters leveled right at them as they entered.

”Come on in,” Ike said, a turbanlike white bandage wound around his head.

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