Mildred let them come. They were trying to time their blows in unison, figuring she couldn’t deflect both, so one would have to land. When they struck, she darted away from the wall, under the arcs of their swings. She hip checked Greasy-hair as she passed him. Already committed and off balance, he slammed into the wall, then bounced into Bristle-nose.
For a split second, his back was turned toward her, his arms locked up in his companion’s.
Mildred brought the hammer down behind his left ear, which protruded from between the oily plaits of dark hair. Again, she struck with the flat end—she couldn’t risk getting the point stuck in his skull.
A light blow to the mastoid would have just knocked him out.
It wasn’t a light blow.
Blood and bone sprayed across both Bristle-nose and the wall.
As Mildred retreated, the huge robber surprised her by throwing his partner’s limp body on top of her. Her feet tangled and she went down hard on her behind.
Before she could get up, the bearded guy had her throat in his huge, powerful hand. He squeezed her neck, closing her airway and shutting off the flow of blood to her brain. He held the point of his ax raised high over her head. He was grinning at her again, showing off his corroded yellow-and-brown stump teeth.
“This is for Bucky…” he said.
WHEN DOC AND JAK heard the hubbub, they were within a few strides of the sledge-loading area.
“That’s Mildred,” Doc said.
Jak dropped his bag and broke into a dead run. His speed was truly amazing. By the time Doc exited the side tunnel, the albino was already halfway across the main tunnel. The older man’s heart skipped a beat. A big, filthy man was leaning over Mildred, holding her pinned by the throat while he prepared to strike a killing blow. As fast as Jak was, he couldn’t close the gap in time to stop the tragedy.
The teen realized that, too, and didn’t even try. Instead, he threw his ax, timing the toss with a forward lunge, putting his full body weight and momentum behind it. The ax sailed end over end in a whistling blur. It spiked into the top of the big guy’s head with a solid thunk.
The ax hit so hard that it drove the tattooed man off his feet and sent his face smashing into the wall. The ax tumbled from his fingers. Mildred rolled away and catlike regained her feet as the man’s legs buckled under him. His cheek and nose slid down the glass, leaving a wide smear of blood.
“Close one,” Jak said, looking at the broken heads of the four corpses that lay around their sledge.
“Too close,” Mildred said, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “Thanks for the help.”
Jak grunted.
Unable to free the ax point from Bristle-nose’s skull with a straight pull, he used the sole of his boot to try to lever it loose. It wouldn’t come out. The ax was buried past the handle.
“Shit,” he said, letting go of the ax and allowing the head to drop to the floor. He left his ax where it was and picked up the one the dead guy had dropped.
The chilling Jak and Mildred had performed made a big impression on their fellow slaves. They were so impressed that during the fight none of them had moved to steal the robbers’ ore, which sat in an unattended sledge. Now that the battle was over, none dared make a move for it.
“Those were some very bad men,” Huth said. “They were the ones who knocked my teeth out.” He pointed at the nearly full cart and said, “Aren’t you going take their ore?”
“Divvy up,” Jak said to the milling slaves.
The laborers looked at him, then at one another in astonishment.
“Go on, do what he says,” Mildred told them. “The thieves stole it from you in the first place. Everybody take a chunk until it’s gone.”
For Ground Zero it was a very unusual proposition.
Instead of dog-eat-dog, every man for himself, it was more like all for one, one for all. The very prospect of decent, humane treatment made some of the slaves start crying—those who could still remember what their lives had been like before Slake City.