Part 24 (1/2)
”Always good to see friends,” Mike echoed.
”REPORT, AND KEEP IT short,” Rollins hissed into the hand comm unit. Around him his remaining backup man and Ryan and the others cast nervous eyes into the darkness around the roof of Freedom Mall.
”The roofs on fire over here. Going up fast,” the frightened voice replied through the unit. ”And we're pinned down by high-powered blasterfire. Can't get through the access hatch. Where'd they get the blasters, sir?”
”Where doesn't matter. Dealing with it is. Regroup your party. You'll have to move over and above to get to where we are. We've secured this end. In fact we'll try and meet you halfway if possible. Rollins out.” The big man terminated the communication and returned the radio to his belt.
”They need backup,” Ryan said.
”I know.”
”Is it possible to go from one end to the other by roof?” Krysty asked.
Rollins leaned down to tighten a lace on his combat boots. ”That's the idea. We'll use the stickie fires to guide us.”
Ryan took off at a measured sprint, Jak and Krysty both at his heels.
STILL IN A CROUCH, Rollins followed Ryan's lead. Both men stayed low until reaching the outcropping of the built-up skylight area used to provide natural lighting to Freedom during daylight hours. Ryan continued to squat, his knees protesting from being forced to support his full body weight for so long.
Each of them held their breath, waiting, listening for any type of noise to come.
Rollins had attempted another communication with Jameson's sec team, but had gotten nothing back in the way of an answer but static.
Ryan eased out of the crouched position and turned to look beyond the elevated skylight edge. The air was still. He looked down through the skylight and saw even more fires burning within Freedom, along with looting and destruction from a panicked populace. The unmistakable smell of smoldering embers and burned bodies hung in the dead air.
”No sign of anything out there. Inside is another story,” Ryan whispered.
He turned to Rollins, who was also standing. The man had removed the radio from his belt once more. He turned down the sound of the device before thumbing the Send b.u.t.ton.
”This is Rollins. Anyone else on this frequency?”
Silence.
”Dammit, Jameson, answer me!”
”You didn't say 'please,' Mr. Rollins,” a new voice said, distorted by a poor connection linking the two units.
”Who the f.u.c.k is this?” Rollins demanded.
”Does it matter? No, wait, stop. Don't answer that. I'm sure you'll make a point of yammering on and telling me it does. I'll make it quick since I've got a mall to take over. All of your sec boys on the roof of the south side of Freedom are dead. We used their heads for some extra burning fun. My new friends have been showing me all sorts of clever ways to kill a norm. Hair burns quick if you pour on some black powder or charcoal fluid.”
”Jameson! Where are you?” Rollins demanded, talking over the bragging voice.
”Can't help you there, buck. I don't know which one of those crummy excuses for a norm was the late Mr. Jameson.”
Ryan took the radio from Rollins and asked a question of his own. ”Like the man said, who is this?”
”I know that voice! How's it hanging, One-eye?”
”Why don't you meet me and find out?” Ryan replied, surprised at hearing the old nickname.
”Sorry. Can't do that. I'm not on the roof anymore. None of my stickies are on the roof. Like me, they're already down and inside the mall.”
Ryan listened closely. The voice sounded oddly familiar somehow, but he couldn't place it.
”See you there!”
RYAN HEFTED his SIG-Sauer in a two-handed grip as they came upon the rooftop ma.s.sacre. The sec squad on this end of Freedom hadn't been able to repel the invaders nearly as effectively as Ryan's team. Five men and one woman were effectively scattered around, their corpses ripped into gory pieces or burned beyond recognition.
The killing muties appeared to be long gone, except to Krysty's advanced means of perception.
Everyone else felt it, too, a feeling of unease.
”Not right,” Jak observed.
”I know,” Ryan replied, and then the stickies were on them, giggling like demented children as they leaped from their hiding places, coming out from the stairwell access or hanging down the walls of the front of the mall and using their fingertips to adhere to the edge of the roof.
Ryan was impressed, and slightly surprised. These were tactics he would have bet a stack of jack with a clip of ammo chaser to be beyond a stickie's mental capacities.
Muties. Who could predict them, really? He'd met stickies like Charlie back in Colorado who were so intelligent and crafty, they could give Trader a run for the proverbial money. Or mutants with charisma such as Lord Kaa and his hypnotic third eye, or even their most recent tussle with the formidable self-styled Pharaoh Akhnaton in the Barrens. All of them were crazy, dangerous and gifted with mental abilities and insights that made them more of a threat than the traditional human foes he was so frequently thrown up against.
Now here was another batch of stickies showing off, using hide-in-plain-sight tactics of combat. It was as strange as h.e.l.l, not to mention disturbing, since while their tactics were something to behold, their hand-to-hand combat skills were as poor as ever. A few were holding long blasters, but instead of firing them, the stickies were using them as clubs to swing and bash. Ryan's internal musing was interrupted when a short stickie slithered out from beneath an air-duct vent's bottom slat and grabbed him bodily by the legs, the long thin fingers adhering instantly to the leather of his thigh-high combat boots.
The one-eyed man toppled over like a empty bottle, dropping his blaster to the roofs pebbled surface. The SIG-Sauer skipped away, landing out of reach near a burning patch of tar as he struggled to free himself from the mutie's deadly embrace.
Its hands slid higher, feeling his legs and crotch, oozing the secretions that allowed their sucker-covered fingers to stick to almost any known surface.
”Stop moving or I'll rip it off, norm,” the stickie grated.
Ryan decided he'd take that chance. Twisting onto one side, he drew his panga from its sheath, the keen blade sliding out with practiced ease. Swinging the razor-sharp edge from the elevation of a high arc, Ryan brought it down on the unprotected back of the stickie's neck. There wasn't enough leverage of weight behind the blow to totally decapitate the mutant, but the blade still sunk down into flaky, yellowing skin with a satisfying thunk.
Hot blood sprayed out from the bite of the blade as the attacked mutie yowled in shock and pain, reaching back with one hand at the injured area. Feeling the sucker-enhanced grip loosen around his lower legs, Ryan pulled himself and the panga free, rolling on his back now and kicking out explosively, shutting up the mutie's cries of agony with the heel of his boot.
The creature's head snapped back like a sprung trap, breaking its neck. A sharp crack was the only sound heard as the shrieks from its throat were cut off sudden and quick by the killing force of Ryan's blow.
Behind Ryan, Jak danced lightly off to the right, hurling out a series of leaf-bladed throwing knives. The starlike blades zipped forward, one after the other in a rapid succession as quick as shots fired from an automatic weapon. The albino's keen, ruby-red eyes were designed for this sort of fightingin near darkness with the only light for illumination coming from the crackling fires.
Like a feral creature, he was obviously delighting in regressing to a near animal state as he threw the blades. Like an arcane form of magic, a blade would appear in his hand, only to disappear with the flick of a wrist, then instantly reappear in the face or throat of one of the marauding stickies.
Still, more of the muties were coming, this time by rope ladder as far as Ryan could tell. Another smart move on the part of whoever had planned this attack.
And some of the muties seemed to have a brain between them since they were actually starting to lay down a covering of automatic-weapons fire, chilling Rollins's last sec man quickly and effectively.
”s.h.i.+t,” Jak spit from between clenched teeth, his Colt empty. ”All out.”
”We're getting outnumbered and outgunned,” Ryan bellowed. ”We've got to retreat. There's not enough cover to try and save the roof.”