Part 26 (1/2)
”Right.”
J.B. went back to his task, making another quick adjustment.
”Okay. Dean?”
”Yeah, J.B.?” the boy replied.
”Oh, never mind.”
”What?”
”I was going to tell you to step back to the rear of the cell, but if this thing goes off, it's not going to matter where you're standing.”
”Oh,” Dean said, debating this. ”Thanks for thinking of me.”
”I've got one wire left to cut on this sec lock. Cutting it should short the current and allow the door to be slid open without activating the charge.”
”Guess the key word here is 'should,' right?”
”Yeah.”
”You think I should crawl under my bunk?”
”Only if it would make you feel better.”
”Nah. Guess I'll stand here and face it with you.”
J.B. reached out with the miniature pair of pliers. ”There is one thing you could do for me, Dean.”
”What?”
”Stick your fingers in your ears. That way, you won't have to hear the blast in case I did screw up.”
Before the boy could offer a reply, J.B. squeezed the pliers shut and cut the connecting wire.
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Beck Morgan, puppet master of Freedom, had chosen his stand near a former Royal Thomasville Furniture Store that had been remodeled into a tattoo parlor. The wooden chair hanging over the doorway and marking the store's entrance hadn't been removed when the new tenants came in. All they had done was add a posed mannequin covered in a patchwork of ornate body art showing off the proprietor's wares.
Morgan had gotten out his private a.r.s.enal and was battling a bottom-floor stickie horde almost single-handedly. The leader of Freedom Mall was bleeding from several superficial wounds, most of which appeared to have been caused by shrapnel from the blown wall or from the pieces of brick and concrete the stickies were lobbing at him instead of bullets.
The mastermind behind the stickies' attack on Freedom had chosen their lower point of entry and advancement well, blasting in through a former side entrance into the predark mall that had once been nothing but tinted gla.s.s and metal framing. The wall had been bricked shut and reinforced during the Freedom renovation to make the former retail pleasure palace a virtual fortress, but this was still a potential weak point that had been allowed to exist without worry or fear.
Until now.
”Come on, you stupe b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! I've got a lead tattoo for your sorry a.s.ses!” Morgan boomed before launching into another steel-jacketed salvo. He knew his supplies of ammo were running low, but he couldn't afford the luxury of taking the Uzi in his hands down to single shot.
A huge mutie came rus.h.i.+ng around the temporary barricade of rubble and debris Morgan had chosen for his safe haven. The man-beast's arms were flailing, and its eyes rolled in their huge sockets like pinwheels as the creature ran, bare feet slapping hard on the tile floor. Before Morgan could squeeze off a round, the mutie had eagerly jumped the barricade.
”Budd will get you,” the mutie proclaimed.
”Death at close range or far off, it doesn't matter much to me, a.s.shole!” Morgan cried as he snapped the clip of his blaster and fired at the stickie, causing the brute's wide torso to churn up in a frothy, b.l.o.o.d.y mess. The shots didn't even slow the big mutant as it continued to lumber forward, grabbing the shocked leader of Freedom by the s.h.i.+rt with both hands and boldly lifting him up into the air.
Blood continued to pour from the wide furrows Morgan's weapon had made into the stickie's chest, and still the creature lifted the man even higher. The mall administrator kicked his feet weakly as he struggled in the crus.h.i.+ng grip, trying to shut out the unearthly shrieking the mutie was making in a language only others of its kind could hope to understand.
Ryan, in the lead of his own group of friends, saw the situation, took in the risks and made his choice, launching his lean body like a missile and hitting the big mutant at knee level. Knocked off balance, the already injured stickie buckled beneath Morgan's weight, and both of them crashed to the floor as Ryan rolled frantically away to avoid joining the pile.
The one-eyed man whipped out his panga as he got back to his feet and buried it into the back of the stickie's exposed head even as Morgan pressed the advantage Ryan had given him, managing to pull a .38-caliber pistol from an ankle holster. He squeezed the trigger once, then twice, sending a twin barrage of bullets at another stickie who had chosen that moment to also try to come over the barricade.
By this time, Jak, J.B., Mildred, Krysty, Doc and Dean had pulled their own various pieces of steel hardware and readied them for battle.
”Cawdor,” Morgan said. ”See you fetched your boy.”
”No thanks to the lock on the cell door.”
”Never dreamed they'd launch this kind of a.s.sault so suddenly. One of the mutie b.a.s.t.a.r.ds has some mercie training, that's for d.a.m.n sure,” Morgan said.
”We help wrap this up and get you out, we're done, Morgan,” Ryan told him.
”Fine,” the mall leader replied.
Doc clawed out his ma.s.sive Le Mat revolver, thumbing back on the hammer. Steadying the heavy blaster as best he could, he aimed the portable cannon at the midst of another advancing swarm of stickies and fired. The thunderous boom of the weapon came hurtling out with a sound that managed to still the battle cries of the living and the dying.
More slugs whizzed over the group's heads, many of the lead-alloy-core bullets coming dangerous close to finding a target. One near-fatal bullet cut into the upper notch of J.B.'s battered fedora, pulling it back off his head where it landed softly on the ground. The Armorer reached down with a curse and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the beloved hat, searching for the possible hole the weapon's firing might have made.
”Clean,” he said after a brief perusal. ”No holes.”
”Glad the lid meets your approval, J.B.,” Ryan said loudly over the tumult. ”How about admiring it later when the chilling's finished?”
”That you, One-eye?” The question came from the stickies' side of battle.
”Who wants to know?”
Ryan's query was ignored. ”You and your group are dead, One-eye! Chilled and buried! We'll put your head in the fire, let it cook for an hour or so, see if that mutie s.l.u.t of yours wants to ride you then!” a disfigured man said in a near scream of a voice that came from the ruined slash of a mouth. It was a voice that Ryan had heard before, along with the name ”One-eye,” a voice of a man he had to have met before to be aware that Krysty possessed mutant abilities.
”Another Freedom burned to the ground, One-eye! What do you think about that?” Norm jeered, and when the man with the half-melted visage said those words, Ryan knew who he was now facing.
”Lester?” Ryan asked in a disbelieving manner. ”Lester, is that you?”
”Who?” Dean replied.
”Quiet,” Krysty whispered, cutting the boy off.
She didn't want to think about Lester, or Baron Willie Elijah or, most of all, Lord Kaa, who had chosen her to be his bride and to mother his successor, his child and future mutant ruler of the Deathlands.