Suddenly, the rest of the Core became visible once more as they ran from the edge of the cliff where the heavy APC dared not go again. As Gaza leaned forward to urge the machine onto greater speed, he and Alar locked eyes for a long heartbeat as the leader of the Core fumbled to pull a gren from within his cloth rags. The APC hit the man, and he folded completely over the prow before flying. He was still airborne when the gren detonated in a blinding flash, a searing fireball expanding above the city, waves of flame stabbing outward from the miniature sun violently brought into creation.
His heart pounding, Gaza watched as the fireball thinned away on the wind of its detonation. That had been a thermite gren! The mil antitank charge would have blanketed the APC in chem flames hotter than a thousand Molotovs and roasted them alive. Alar had to have been saving that just for Gaza, but he used it one split second too late.
Unexpectedly, more spears hit the war wag, and as the rear women shot wildly, Allison frowned in concentration and then swept the nearby sand with the forward fifty to expose the underground members of the Core with bloody geysers as each round found living flesh. Literally torn to pieces, the broken bodies rolled along the desert, leaving a crimson trail as they went straight over the cliff and joined their aced leader on the last train west.
Braking to a halt, Gaza panted behind the steering yoke, glancing about in every direction, trying to find new targets. But the desert seemed to be empty.
“Another trick?” he demanded, looking to his right.
Allison shook her head and waved a hand in a slicing motion, explaining that everybody was chilled.
“Let’s just make sure,” Gaza growled, turning off the engine and grabbing a rapidfire before exiting the vehicle.
The sand swirled around his hand tooled leather boots as the man did a recce outside the LAV 25, checking the bodies of the slain. Most of the Core were obviously chilled, with limbs gone, or steaming holes in their chests from an explosive 25 mm shell. Resting the stock of his blaster on a hip, Gaza sneered at the sight. He was preparing to conquer the world, and a bunch of sand muties thought they could challenge him? The feebs deserved to die twice for such arrogance.
Joining him on the churned sand, his wives proceeded to loot the bodies of the fallen, finding a few blasters and another gren. Also several bags of jinkaja. Those they tossed away in disgust, and wiped their hands clean afterward as if the addictive juice were rank sewage.
Watching them work, Gaza was pleased. His wives knew their jobs well. He should have cut out the tongues of every slut in the ville and had an army of women. By the nukestorm, there was a good idea. A female army with him the only stud!
Chuckling at the notion, the baron went to the front of the APC and inspected the gory streaks left behind from the Core leader. The bloody rags partially hid the scorch marks received from blasting out of Rockpoint. Pity the ville no longer existed. He would have dearly loved to return and level the hellhole until rivers of blood flowed. But it wasn’t to be. Pity.
A low boom of an explosion echoed from the nearby preDark city, and Gaza walked to the very edge of the cliff to look down upon the buildings with conflicting expressions. This would be his new home. Canned food for the rest of their lives, preDark liquor, machines and more blasters than could be counted. An empire to challenge the preDark days. Nobody could stand before him then, not the Trader or Ryan. Now his death should be something special. Hawk had known many things, and the baron learned the important tricks before killing the man. There was a way to torture a victim for weeks, without blood loss, and keeping him or her conscious without even the sweet release of fainting. Eventually the victim would go insane, but that was half the fun.