by James Axler
Krysty stuck her arm and half her face around the jamb and fired three quick shots from her short-barreled handblaster.
“Looks like they’ve got reinforcements arriving, lover,” she said. “There’s nearly thirty of them out there, near as I can tell.”
Squatting low in case somebody was in firing position where Krysty’s head had vanished, Ryan peered around. He didn’t bother trying to shoot his SIG.
Sure enough, more men in ragged camo and EUN armbands were crowding in doorways and huddling behind the heaps of scavvy and high-piled carts that dotted the corridor.
“Looks like they’re nerving themselves up to charge,” he said, pulling back to safety as a volley of blasterfire cracked past. “They’re way beyond nuke-red pissed. We’re not going to stop them this time.”
“One more gren,” Jak reported, tossing the item in one white hand like a matte steel apple. “Save and take with?”
“Never save your magic bullet, as Trader used to say,” Ryan said. “Give it to J.B. When they look poised to go, give them that. It’ll slow them at least a couple of seconds.”
He glanced at the interior chamber with its six armaglass walls.
“Get ready to move inside, and triple-fast,” he said. “As soon as we’re in, I’m initiating the jump.”
“Ryan!” Krysty said.
He looked at her. Her emerald eyes were wide.
“Seems hard to leave the kid now,” J.B. said, gesturing with the gren.
“Yeah, well, hard times make for hard calls. Kid’ll have to take his chances here. Not like we got any better to offer—”
“Hey!” a voice called from down the corridor. “Wait for me!”
“It’s him, Ryan,” J.B. said, peeking around the corner. “Running balls-out. With all the monsters on the whole rad-blasted island coming hard on his heels!”
“And they’re not on our side!” the kid screamed.
Ryan leaned out over his friend. The boy was flying down the corridor toward the EUN troops, who had stopped what they were doing and turned to look. A whole flood of chupacabras were leaping and hissing right behind him. So were at least two packs of the scorpion dogs and what Ryan thought was an actual armor cat bounding and growling at the rear.
“Holy shit.” He pulled back. “J.B., give them the gren to clear the kid’s way. Everyone else in the mat-trans!”
* * *
AS HE THUNDERED TOWARD the EUN sec men in the corridor and crouching in doorways, Ricky’s heart, already beating as if it was going to explode, jumped in his throat. The hated coldhearts were aiming their blasters.
But not at him. At a hundred monsters charging down on the goons with blood in their eyes.
Of course, being out in front of dozens of autoblasters when they cut loose at once wasn’t an ace long-term survival strategy even if they weren’t shooting at you. Especially with the kind of rat-ass fire discipline the late, unlamented and now partially digested El Guapo had managed to terrorize into them.
Ricky stared up the muzzle-brakes of a score of longblasters.
Mami, Papi, he said in his mind, I’m coming.
A flash went off right among the sec. A blastwave knocked five or six down shrieking. Blood and bloody chunks of flesh flew everywhere.
The rest ducked, unsure of how to respond to attack from both directions at once. A couple stood in Ricky’s way like jacklighted mountain sheep.
He hauled out his handblaster and shot them out of his way. Vaulting the writhing bodies, he raced down the corridor.
Behind him a pandemonium of snarls, barks and screams erupted. The screams quickly came to predominate.
Ricky skidded around the corner into the room where he’d seen the companions. They’d retreated into a weird, smaller room, with six walls made of some kind of glass.
Standing in the entrance, Ryan beckoned him. His mouth moved, as if he were calling his name. Ricky heard no sound.
Maybe his pulse was just too loud.
Something growled greedily right behind him. Ricky put on one last impossible burst of speed, although his lungs felt as if they were tearing themselves to pieces in his rib cage, and slid into the mat-trans unit. Immediately Ryan shut the door. A fine mist seemed to swirl from the ceiling, and it seemed to Ricky that the disks in the floor glowed.
Infinite blackness, shot through with red and purple lightning, enveloped him.
Ricky fell away from the world he knew....
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781459238541
Copyright © 2012 by Worldwide Library
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