Making a guttural sound deep in her throat, Kathleen bumped him with a hip, urging the man to leave. Gaza agreed and eased around the APC, trying to keep its bulk between them and the approaching droid. Oddly, it didn’t seem to be after the norms in particular. Mebbe it was merely returning to the tank where it had first been seen, like a guard on patrol. Suddenly, the baron had a strong urge to see what was inside the preDark war machine that needed such a high level of protection. Nukes? Nerve gas? But the danger of the droid was too great to risk a recce, and he followed his wife away from the imposing hulk of the huge preDark juggernaut, its titanic cannon resting against its armored prow and pointing uselessly at the ground. Or could it be the tank itself that needed guarding?
Dimly the man recalled a memory from childhood when a similar machine had been found in the ruins of West Virginia. The local baron had called it a Ranger, and claimed it was a thinking war wag, as if a droid and an APC had been combined. The very idea of obtaining such a weapon made the baron slow his departure until shied onward by the urgings of Kathleen.
Careful not to trip over the corpses on the pavement, the man and woman crossed the intersection keeping low behind the lines of cars and trying to stay out of direct line of sight of the droid. But then the tentacles of the unseen thing in the sewer made another grab for their boots and got Kathleen around the ankle. As she swung her AK-47 down to blast it away, Gaza knocked the weapon aside and slashed with a knife. The flesh was spongy and severed easily. Gushing piss-yellow blood, the amputated tentacle slithered away, as an inhuman mewling and gurgling issued from the dark sewers. The baron had no idea what kind of a mutie was under the city, but was resolved not to be taken alive by the thing. There was something unclean about it that disturbed the man.
Keeping a finger on the trigger of his M-16, Gaza watched the sewer grating for any further movements as Kathleen got off the street by stepping through the smashed window of a store. He was right behind her, covering the rear.
Inside the building, the two glanced about at a line of chairs standing before a long mirror, the walls covered with pictures of people with strangely cut hair.
What the place could have been the baron had no idea whatsoever.
Only yards away, the fight in the street was growing; more and more millipedes were arriving to feast upon the dead and the dying. And apparently summoned by the death cries of their own kind, more of the camou stickies were dropping off the sides of buildings to land on top of the droid. Its blades tore them apart, but there were always a few suckers left behind on its hull, and the chrome ran thick with the mutie blood.
Shambling past the open window, a brick colored stickie on the sidewalk turned to stare at the two norms, then lunged for them. Trapped, Kathleen fired a burst into its face, the impacts driving the mutie back against a car at the curb. But even as they watched, the bullet wounds in its chest began to close and the stickie started taking on the metallic sheen of the sleek preDark vehicle.
Seemingly bemused by the combat, the corpse behind the steering wheel was sporting tinted sunglasses and a white silk scarf draped around a shriveled brown throat.
As Kathleen fired again, Gaza lit another flare and shoved it into the stickie’s left eye. Hooting in pain, the creature stumbled away, sucker covered hands swatting at the flaming stick sizzling inside its distorted face.
Unfortunately, it had been too little, too late. The droid had heard the blaster shots and was heading their way fast, the millipedes and other stickies ignored at the appearance of the armed humans.
“Aim for the eyes!” Gaza cried, slinging his M-16 over a shoulder and drawing his knife once more.