Gloria stood upright beside Jak, who held his .357 Magnum Colt Python, his red eyes fixed on the approaching horde. Gloria had her Vortak raised, clasped easily but firmly in both hands, steadying herself for the jolt of the first shot. Despite the tension that coursed through her frame, fueled by adrenaline, she stood as easy as the albino at her side.
“Ready, sweets?” she murmured to him.
“Now,” Jak answered without moving his white head.
Gloria let out an ear-piercing scream that acted as a signal for the onslaught to begin.
The distant rumble of the approaching horde, running and tumbling over one another in their crazed blood lust, chattering excitedly at the prospect of blood and flesh within their grasp, was suddenly drowned by the roar of massed blasterfire as the Gate and the companions started to fire. J.B. chose his Uzi, set to short, controlled bursts, over his other blasters. Ryan used the Steyr, sighting carefully so as to not waste a single shell.
And it was because of this that he noticed that these stickies were less vulnerable than any others they had encountered.
“Problem, people,” the one-eyed warrior shouted over the noise. “These fuckers are gonna be really hard to chill.”
“Why?” Gloria yelled back. “See through the sights,” Ryan replied shortly. “Unless you blow the fucker’s head off, it doesn’t wound easy. They don’t fucking bleed!”
“Shit—genetics,” Mildred screamed above the noise, “work on the clotting agent.”
“My, this will be fun,” Doc remarked to himself, reloading the LeMat and attempting to sight yet another stickie for a full load of shot, this time raising his aim for a head shot. A body blow might not stop them, but at least a stickie with no head would find it impossible to keep moving.
The old man fired the LeMat, the charge catching one of the advancing muties full in the face. It was about twenty yards away when the grapeshot hit, and even at that distance Doc was able to discern the way the mutie’s features blurred and distorted beneath a mist of blood as the shot spread across the head, traveling at a high velocity. Where the sharp, pinprick eyes and the needlelike teeth had previously been the prominent features in a bland, papery face, now they disappeared beneath a hail of metal and ripped flesh, the teeth smashed beyond repair and the eyes burst so that the viscera spread back into the sockets, driven back by the force of the shot as it ripped through the soft bone and softer flesh.
The head of the stickie—noticeably distorted at the rear of the cranium, Doc was able to note quickly before that cranium was ripped apart by the charge from the LeMat—vanished in a haze of blood, bone fragments and shredded flesh. The mutie, short of what little brain it possessed to power its motor functions, stumbled in its run and fell to the ground, crumpling like an old sheet dropped from a moving wag.
Doc was satisfied that it was one less, but knew with a sinking feeling that it wasn’t enough. Even in the time it took him to reload the LeMat, having loosed the ball prior to the charge for once, the advancing stickie horde had gained ground. There were simply too many of them for a blaster such as his. With a sigh, he holstered the large percussion pistol and drew the swordstick from its silver lion’s-head cane.
If it came to close combat, then he would be ready.
And he knew that it would.
Around Doc, the rest of the Gate warriors were reaching the same conclusion independently. The men behind were firing over their head with the machine blasters and rifles, standing on the wags to clear their own people, but the fact that—as men—they had little battle experience was showing up badly in the few stickies they could stop. The vast majority of ammo that was discharged caused some wounds to the advancing horde, but there were few shots that bit home to chill. The rapidity with which the stickies stopped bleeding meant that they were able to keep coming, some of them on their knees or in loping, stumbling runs where legs had been rendered useless by shots severing tendons or smashing bone. The lack of pain or blood loss meant that the injury didn’t register in their mutie brain.