Big Mike didn’t stop the bus at the main compound, but drove on to a pounded rectangle of dirt roughly one hundred feet square. Inside it, huddled on the ground, were sixty to seventy people. The seated Deathlanders didn’t rise to their feet when Mike parked the bus beside them, nor did they make any sign of greeting or curiosity. Few of them, in fact, even bothered to look up.
“Why are they just sitting there like that?” a man standing behind Huth said. “Are they rad blasted dimmies?”
FIVE’S top whitecoat could have answered the drunk’s question, but he didn’t. He knew that no matter how many troops had crossed over to this reality, there were certain jobs they wouldn’t tackle themselves-—dangerous tasks that were better left to an expendable indigenous population. Because the Byram ville fools hadn’t noticed or guessed the significance of the silver bracelets and anklets worn by the driver, the whores and all the people seated on the ground, they were in for a very unpleasant surprise. It pleased their former latrine engineer and kick toy to keep it that way.
The woman standing beside Huth lifted one of her gigantic naked breasts and idly scratched the skin underneath it. “Hey, Big Mike,” she slurred, swaying on her feet. “Where’s them fancy new shitters you told us about? Gotta pee me a river.”
“What the fuck is that?” cried one of the men, pointing out an open side window.
From a bulkhead doorway in the biggest of the domed huts a squad of black armored creatures poured forth. They carried massive tribarreled long blasters. They jogged with grim purpose toward the bus.
“Giant fucking mutie roaches!” a young man exclaimed.
“Monsters! Rad-blasted monsters!” someone else shouted from behind.
“They’re gonna eat us!” the woman cried. “Do something!”
There was nothing to be done.
Fear quickly sobered Huth’s fellow passengers, but not before the black warriors had fanned out and surrounded the vehicle. There wasn’t time for any of them to scoot out the door or crawl out the side windows. When they realized there was no escape from the horrors that waited outside, their fear turned to panic. Bleating like sheep, the passengers hurled themselves under the seats. Huth was the only one left standing.
Mike the Drunkard climbed from the driver’s seat. He didn’t waste energy trying to pry the passengers loose himself. Instead, he shouted down the aisle to his trio of sluts, “Get ’em out of here!”
The sluts advanced, wielding long, thick, black-tape-wrapped batons. From the looks on their faces, it was the high point of their day. It was their turn to do the prodding.
The pink-haired slut didn’t swing her club at the legs of the first passenger she came across; she merely tapped him on the buttocks with it. There was a sharp crackling sound, and a fat blue spark jumped from the tip of the baton to the seat of his pants.
“Ee-yow!” he cried, jerking away from the baton tip so violently that he crashed the top of his head into the wall. As he scrambled onto the seat, he waved his hands in the air. “No, no…no more!”
“Get out!” the slut ordered him.
The man stole a sideward glance out the window, cringed at the black creature looking back at him and seized hold of the seat back’s bar with both hands. He hung on to it, white knuckled, and refused to budge.
When the pink haired slut tried to touch the back of his hand with the electric prod, he deftly moved it out of the way, sliding it along the tubing but still maintaining his death grip. Obviously, this wasn’t the first time a victim had tried the maneuver. The woman immediately countered by pressing the tip of the baton to the bar.
Blue sparks flew and the air crackled.
From the effect, Huth judged the voltage discharge was considerable. In an instant it brought the man bolt upright from his seat. He crouched there, shuddering, his teeth clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out like cables, unable to open his smoking hands and pull away from the pain. Only when the pink haired slut drew back the baton and released him from the paralysis could he begin to scream. She waved her magic wand at him once more, and he took off down the aisle, running past Huth and down the steps.