Ryan rounded the end of the bed. As he did so, Melchior and two other ville bigwigs, having stood up to confront their attackers, were now backing up at top speed, trying to retreat to the cover of the next row, firing wildly as they went. Melchior’s ponderous bulk lurched to the side as a blast from J.B.’s scattergun caught him in the torso, under the left arm. The Armorer had loaded the weapon with lead pellet rounds, and the impact made the flab of the headman’s face shudder. He lost his grip on his Ruger revolver, and it went flying, end over end. A smaller man would have gone flying along with it.
Before Melchior could recover his balance, he was struck again, this time at the knees. Clutching at his ruined legs, he went down, the scattergun’s roar drowning his cries.
As J.B. advanced, he worked the M-4000’s butter-smooth slide. Holding the trigger pinned, he hammered the other two bigwigs, sending one pinwheeling into the plant bed headfirst, and blowing the other off his feet with a center chest hit.
Kneeling at the corner of the bed, Mildred followed up on three more retreating figures—an extremely heavyset woman in a shapeless gunnysack of a faded, calf-length, print dress, and two lanky boys in their late teens. The heavy woman was packing a .32 Beretta blaster. One of the teenagers carried a Government Colt remake, the other a .38 Smith & Wesson with a five-inch barrel. As the trio backed up, they fired without aiming, hoping to somehow hit J.B., Ryan, Krysty and Mildred with lucky shots.
Mildred, on the other hand, took very careful aim. She fired three quick rounds from her ZKR 551. The first hit the heavyset woman high in the flabby forearm of her gun hand. The little .32 tumbled from fingers numb with shock. Mildred hadn’t been trying to hit bone, but bone had been hit. And shattered. The second round passed through the Government Colt boy’s bicep. The third clipped the shoulder of the other teenager. Two more gunhand hits. Both boys managed to hold on to their weapons, but neither could raise them to return more fire.
Realizing they were helpless to defend themselves, all three turned and ran. Mildred was pleased to see them able to run. The other companions drew beads on their retreating backs, easy shots to make, given the distance, but no one fired. It was obvious that these three were no longer in the contest.
Ryan glanced over his shoulder at the tent and was relieved that Dean and Leeloo were nowhere in sight. Whatever else happened, at least they had made it safely to the circled wags.
As he turned back to the action, blasterfire erupted from beside the looter wags. Dirt puffed up all around the fleeing woman and two boys as they tried to cross the ville’s main street and rejoin their people. They went down in a tangled heap in the middle of the road, the heavy woman crashing on top of the teenagers.
“Shit!” Mildred cried, returning fire. Krysty joined in, as well. As J.B. scrambled back to retrieve Doc, Ryan unslung the Steyr longblaster and flipped up the lens protectors on its telescope. With the forestock braced against the frame of the plant bed, he swung the sight post over the nearest looter wag. A roustie peeked around the front bumper, KG-99 in hand, looking for something else to chill. Ryan held the top of the post way low to adjust for the short distance to target, and squeezed off a shot.
The man kneeling behind the bumper jerked upright as if flicked by a giant, invisible finger. Arms flying wide, he did a midair half twist and hit the ground hard. He wasn’t dead. Back arching, he kicked his legs and thrashed his arms.
Nobody rushed out to help him.
Ryan was searching the line of wags for a second target when he saw bullet impacts from the opposite direction kicking up dust. The ville folks’ flanking attack had begun. The carny chillers were about to get themselves sandwiched. He flipped down the lens caps on his scope. He didn’t need ten-power magnification to see what was going on downrange.