James Axler - Shaking Earth

The echo of the shuddering muzzle-blasts seemed to continue for heartbeats after the flame flicker died away, or maybe it was the ringing in the companions’ ears. When they were able to hear anything else again they could hear moaning and thrashing from outside.

“Let them writhe,” the Armorer said, pulling the spent magazine from the Uzi. “Help keep the bastards’ minds right.”

As Ryan had just moments before, he hefted the empty magazine in his hand. “Running low. Can’t be doing that shit much more.”

Jak looked at Mildred. “Any weps? Ammo?”

She shook her head. “No trace. If any were here they were the first thing the muties cleared out.”

J.B. walked around the wag to the sprawled bodies of the looters he’d shot when they first rolled into the garage, knelt to inspect them.

“We’re a little bit lucky,” he said, pulling something gingerly from the waistband of the loincloth one wore. “We got a Colt .45 ACP, Government Model of 1911, or reasonable facsimile, in not too bad a shape, all cocked and locked.”

He held up a hefty blaster with checkered wooden grips pinched between thumb and forefinger. “This chill’s even got a couple spare mags on him.”

He straightened and prodded the corpse with the toe of his boot. “And you know what? He ain’t even a mutie.”

“Seen a couple of what looked like norms,” Mildred said. “That first dude I ran over was one.”

“We’ll sort out the mystery later.” Ryan strode over to Doc, who was sitting slumped, his head lolling to the side. He took a pinch of the old man’s cheek, which hung slack, pulled his head up.

“Doc,” he said. He patted the old man’s other cheek. “Doc, you can’t zone out on us now. We’re already down Krysty. We need everybody else to hold the fort until we can figure a way to get out of here with all our parts.”

The old man moaned. Then he blinked twice, shook himself, and sat upright. “No need to take on so, my dear boy,” he said, standing and shooting his cuffs. “Just resting my eyes.”

Ryan slapped him on the shoulder. “Good enough. Welcome back.”

“We got an exit strategy?” Mildred asked, backing out of the Hummer holding J.B.’s M-4000 shotgun.

“Our best defense is still driving real fast,” J.B. pointed out.

Ryan nodded, rubbing his long chin. “Yeah. Mebbe we can hold them off until dark, thin them out some. Then try to bust out.”

“They strike me as raiders, like the Scythians of yore, albeit lacking horses,” Doc said. “They will naturally incline toward a transient strategy, rather than a persisting one.”

“Which translates as hit-and-run’s their style, rather than sticking around to keep us under siege,” J.B. noted. “Probably even true. Mebbe we get out of this crack after all.”

“If they don’t burn us out,” Mildred muttered.

“Likely a last resort,” Ryan said. “They’ll want our wag and blasters. All the same, we better get set to discourage that sort of behavior. Mildred, is there a back way out?”

She nodded, making her beaded plaits rattle softly. “Rear of the little office. Big water jug in there, too, while I think of it. Seems clean.”

“That’s something, anyway. You and Jak hold in there, watch the front and back doors. J.B. and Doc can hold in here.”

“What about you?” J.B. asked.

“I’ll take the rifle up top, see if I can do a little street-cleaning.”

“I’d better check on Krysty first, real quick,” Mildred said, ducking into the office.

“Make quick,” Jak called from the other room. “Muties coming.”

Ryan entered the Hummer. Krysty lay on her pallet in the cargo compartment with her green eyes open. “Lover,” she whispered in a cracked voice.

Ryan leaned over to extend a water bottle to her. She reached for it. “Uh-uh,” he said. “Just lie back. You need to conserve your strength.”

Reluctantly she let him tilt the bottle to her lips. “Gaia’s with me,” she said more clearly when he pulled the bottle back. “But it’s hard.”

“You just lie back, try to sleep. Let your mind and body concentrate on healing.”

“Outside—?”

He shook his head. “We’ll handle it. If we can’t, having another body on the line too shaky to hold up a blaster wouldn’t do us any good. This is your fight, Krysty. Stay with it.”

He capped the bottle and laid it beside her. Her hand gripped his with feverish strength; he felt the heat of the battle against infection raging inside her body. She pulled the back of his hand to her lips and kissed it. Then she laid her head back down and closed her eyes.

Ryan placed her hand on her chest and made himself let go. There wasn’t any more that he could do for her in the best of circumstances. She was young and strong and healthy, as tough as they came, and she had that Gaia-aided gift of healing. She’d pull through.

He wouldn’t even think of the alternative.

A bang from outside. A hole appeared in one of the doors, knocking a slatlike splinter loose to stick out at a crazy angle from beneath it. J.B. ripped a short burst in response, blind through the wood.

Ryan ducked quickly out of the Hummer, slung his Steyr. J.B. handed him the .45, square butt foremost. “Take this and the extras. Don’t want to burn out that SIG.”

The one-eyed man accepted the heavy handblaster and tucked the two full reloads into his waistband. The SIG-Sauer was a wonderful weapon for stealthy chilling, but the integral suppressor, aside from making the weapon heavier and less wieldy, tended to hold in heat. It had a tendency to lock in a firefight, and too much sustained firing would burn out the barrel. The .45 would spare the SIG for a while, not to mention their dwindling stocks of 9 mm rounds.

A wooden ladder hung on hooks by the wall, so that a person could scramble right up it to the hatch—and pull it up after, an old Indian trick from Pueblo days long before the twentieth century that Doc had told them about. Ryan climbed up to the hatch, carefully slid aside the iron bolt. He sucked in a deep breath, snicked off the big Colt’s safety and slammed open the hatch.

Sunlight fell against his face like scalding water. He thrust the .45 up into it and swarmed after.

To find himself staring along the rounded black top of the weapon into a pair of huge black eyes, shot through with veins and flecks of gold.

The face surrounding those eyes wasn’t norm, being drawn out into a dark snout with nostrils as convoluted as a bat’s. But the surprised expression was unmistakable all the same.

For as long as it took Ryan’s forefinger to exert about three pounds of pressure on the trigger.

The eyes and the top part of the head that held them vanished into a dark haze. The mutie’s body rolled over flopping, black blood spurting from the lower jaw and stub of neck that remained. Ryan sprang upright on the roof. A norm-looking ambusher was frozen, having just crawled over the tall roof parapet behind the mutie whose head Ryan had just blown apart. He clutched a spear tipped with black volcanic glass. Ryan shot him twice. He went backward over the parapet with arms flailing.

Something struck Ryan in the back beneath his left shoulder blade. He whirled into a crouch, brought the heavy handblaster around in a two-fisted combat grip. A bandy-legged norm stood on the roof of the next house, desperately trying to notch a second dart to the end of his throwing stick. Ryan centered his sights on the white stripe conveniently painted down the front of the norm’s ribby chest, pulled the trigger. The 1911 bucked and roared. The man sat, dropping dart and launcher. He felt his chest, looked up reproachfully from the blood on his fingers to Ryan, and fell backward out of sight.