Glowing ash drifted past the two people like a snowstorm in hell, the red hot residue floating on the thermal currents of the destruction, gray soot mixing with the sparkling cover of salt dust everywhere and turning the clean wintry appearance of the Texas city into filthy graveyard pallor. Softly in the background came the constant crashing of glass as window after window shattered from the pressure and heat, the shards and slivers raining down to smash onto the sidewalks and streets once more.
Many of the corpses in the street were reduced to bones and shoes, their clothing removed by the sharp beaks of the buzzards and vultures to reach the dried flesh and organs. But the scavengers were starting to leave, abandoning the wealth of food to fly away and take roost into the windowless stores of the city, to start anew on other bodies. Only the millipedes in the street stayed, the insects unconcerned with the growing heat and the smoke.
Staying well clear of the writhing bugs, Gaza and Kathleen kept in the open as much as possible and used their weapons freely. Time was pressing and ammo spent saved precious moments. A sudden flurry of movement at a sewer grating made the baron jerk back and fire a long burst from his M-16. The hardball ammo threw off sparks as it hit the corroded grating, but a few rounds passed through the small holes and something shrieked in the darkness. Echoing slightly, the cries faded as if retreating into the distance.
“We’re in a goddamn mutie pit!” Baron Gaza roared, dropping the spent clip and slapping in a fresh one. “Shoot anything that moves and let’s haul ass!”
Breaking into a stride, Kathleen braced the rapidfire at her waist and sent a spray of lead into a flock of buzzards in their way. Several birds dropped to the ground in a fluttering of feathers and gore, while the rest rose hurriedly into the gray sky. With some measure of satisfaction, Gaza was chilling the millipedes, grinding their bleeding forms under his boots. A scrawny desert rat darted from underneath a car to grab a juicy morsel of an aced bird, and Gaza contemptuously kicked it aside with a crunch of bones. The rodent flew across the street to impact on the front counter inside a shadowy store, then fell limply to the floor, blood dribbling from its slack mouth and both hind feet still twitching as it tried to escape.
Brass arching in streams, the man and woman blasted a path through the feasting scavengers and reached the wire fence encircling the park only to find this section clear of anything living. It was as if they had crossed an invisible boundary that nothing was allowed to pass.
Or was afraid to pass, Baron Gaza realized grimly. But the sec hunter droid was destroyed; he had seen it crash and explode. There was nothing to harm them here. This was a safe zone in the middle of the hellish ruins. But no one ever got chilled by being too careful.
“Stand guard,” he ordered brusquely, walking sideways toward the nearest APC. It was just beyond a crashed truck, set between a huge Army tank and two crashed Hummers. “I’ll grab the wires and we leave.”
Breathing deeply through her nose, Kathleen vigorously nodded in agreement as they proceeded past the tank. From the other side of the wire fence, hundreds of things seemed to be watching them, from the nooks and crevices of the city, as if hungrily waiting for the people to exit the park. Their hatred was palpable, like the beat of a powerful engine.
In a thunderous roar, a building down the street sagged inward and started to collapse, pieces of rubble slamming to the street and smashing cars while others hit lower structures like flaming meteor strikes.
Snapping her fingers for his attention, Kathleen twirled a single finger in the air, then made a fist.
“Bet your ass I’ll hurry,” Gaza grunted in reply, then gestured a direction with his rapidfire. “Check the Hummer for any more of those rockets. We may need to blast our way out of here.”
She nodded and started that way as he worked the latch of the heavy rear door and slipped into the APC. The interior was almost pitch black, and he scratched a road flare to life, filling the wag with searing red light. A scorpion on the wall scuttled away, and Gaza thrust the flare at the creature, searing off its pincers and cracking open the shell. Thrashing wildly, the scorpion fell to the corrugated floor and started stinging itself in blind madness. Grimacing at the sight, Gaza deliberately stepped over the dying creature so that it would linger in agony as he proceeded deeper into the steel box.