She held her .38 Smith & Wesson in one hand, but was using the barrel as a club, her arm moving in an almost beautiful economy of effort to whip the barrel against the flesh of any stickie that was within range, the sight on the end of the snubbed barrel cutting through tender flesh and drawing blood and cries of pain from its victims. Those stickies who got past the barrel found that Krysty had a superb sense of balance, as she used one foot to anchor herself, and the other to shoot out a series of gracefully executed yet rock-hard kicks, the silver tips on the toes of her blue Western boots striking home hard. One stickie who got past her guard and right up to her felt the hard bone of her elbow as she drove it back and into its face when it tried to grab her from behind. The stickie’s cheekbone shattered under the impact, the compression forcing one eyeball from its socket to dangle wetly on its cheek as it fell backward, screaming with a piercing, high-pitched shrill.
A small victory for the Titian-haired warrior, but she was as aware as Jak of the fact that she was only keeping them back, not making headway. And soon she would start to tire.
Farther back in the line, Dean was encountering problems. His Browning Hi-Power had taken out a couple of stickies with accurate shots that had removed chunks of scalp and cleaned most of the brainpan. But once again, he had discovered that the sheer weight of numbers was telling against him, and the Browning slipped from his grasp when a stickie had cannoned into him from behind, driving him forward and causing his arm to drop. Another stickie grabbed the fallen arm and bit into it, drawing blood with the needle-sharp teeth and making Dean scream with the sudden pain. His arm temporarily deadened by the pain, he dropped the blaster, which was lost beneath an onrush of bodies.
Dean found himself weighed down by four stickies: one behind and three attempting to drag him down from the front. With his free arm, he jabbed and caught one of his attackers beneath its ribs, doubling it with pain and causing it to fall back. Twisting, he flung the stickie on his back over his shoulder, trying to pinball it into at least one of the pair that still clung on to the front of him. But although the stickie on his back rolled over his shoulder and hit the ground with a bone-jarring shudder on its shoulder joint, dislocating the right shoulder, it failed to connect with either of its intended targets. Which left the young Cawdor in grave trouble. The momentum of his twist had unbalanced him, leading him right into the grasp of the stickies that clung to his front, enabling them to pull him to the ground, where he landed face first. He felt the suckers on their fingers pulling at him through his clothes, and he lashed out with his leg, hoping to catch one of them a glancing blow with his heavy boot. But he could only hope for assistance before the agony of having his flesh ripped and eaten by the stickies.
Assistance that Mildred would have given if she, too, was not under dire threat.
When the stickies burst from the bushes and down from the trees, Mildred had tried to draw her Czech-made ZKR target pistol, but found that a sharp-eyed stickie—with considerably more cunning and intelligence than could be expected from such a mutie— had picked up a stone and skimmed it with remarkable accuracy. It caught her between the thumb and index finger, dealing her a blow that was at first acutely painful, but within a fraction of a second numbed her hand, causing the pistol to drop from her fingers. Before she had a chance to recover, the group of stickies was upon her.
Mildred struck out with her hand, pushing with power from the shoulder, her fingers outstretched and rigid. She caught the leading stickie in the throat, causing its eyes to bulge and a bubbling, strangled cry to escape from its throat. The only drawback to this first blow was that her iron-hard fingers penetrated the thin skin and soft flesh of the stickie, catching in the tangle of veins, arteries and tendons that crowded the throat. A sickening sucking sound emanated from the already chilled mutie as Mildred tried to pull her hand free.