The ant line of looters moving between the cabins and the wags disintegrated as small weapons fire swept over it. From the hard cover of Taco Town, the ville sec force sent volleys of lead down the narrow lanes between the low shacks, through the walls of the shacks themselves. The blasting was indiscriminate; the folk of Bullard were in an outraged frenzy at having their personal belongings taken. The looters caught flatfooted by the barrage dropped where they stood, hit by dozens of rounds at once. Arms heaped with clothing, tools, utensils opened and spilled what they held. Other rousties managed to dump their booty and run, only to be cut down after taking a few steps. The only chillers who had half a chance were the ones closest to the wags. At least they could dive into the wags for cover.
Bullets rained down on the three Winnebagos.
“These folks aren’t going to be satisfied until they’ve chilled every outlander,” Krysty said to the others. “They’re going to grind up the rest of the rousties and then they’re going to roll over us.”
“Time for us to try and pull back, Ryan,” Mildred said. “While we still have a prayer of making it.”
“It’s now or never,” J.B. agreed.
Before Ryan could speak, the engine of the second Winnebago roared to life, and an instant later, with spinning rear wheels, it swerved out of line. It accelerated, fishtailing wildly.
“Fireblast!” Ryan growled as the driver regained control and the looter wag shot across the road.
As if it was locked on a target, the RV barreled down on them.
Chapter Eighteen
Baldoona’s adult head peeked out from the shadows between a pair of trailers. The boy and girl had stopped running, but were still moving its way. If they continued on their current course, they would pass within a yard of its hiding place. The adult head ducked back, out of sight.
The baby head was drooling and chuckling. It had been drooling and chuckling like that for more than forty years. It had always been a baby head. The adult head had started out that way, but it had matured along with the rest of the body.
For more than forty years, Baldoona had lived in a cage. Even among scalies, the birth of a huge, two-headed infant was altogether too frightening and bizarre.
When Gert Wolfram’s scouts had spotted the young scalie, they’d attacked and captured the freak of nature. None of the pack had tried to defend the youngster against its kidnappers.
Despite the adult head’s whining complaints about the unsanitary accommodations and rough treatment, despite the fact that it was momentarily free of its cage, it had no intention of ever escaping from the carny. The adult head wasn’t smart by any stretch of the imagination, but it was smart enough to understand that freedom for Baldoona the Two-Headed Scalie meant a slow death by starvation. Baldoona had never made its own way in the world. Chow came to it regularly, instead of it having to chase down the chow, which because of its weight it could never catch unless said chow was staked and tethered, or blindsided. The two tender young morsels walking his way were a case of the latter. If it could surprise and stun them, it could have them. As Baldoona’s adult head drew even deeper into the shadows, it considered the moist, succulent flesh, the sweet blood, the crisp bones. It wiped the drool from its chin, then from the baby chin.
Contemplating at extreme close range the ruddy, contorted face of its shouldermate, the puffy eyelids, the ever-wet-from-snot upper lip, the perpetual puke breath, the adult head allowed itself to admit the real reason that it hadn’t somehow arranged to have the ugly, messy knob chopped off decades ago. The baby head, whatever else it was or wasn’t, was the adult head’s only friend in the world. Even though it couldn’t talk, even though it woke him up four times a night, even though it crapped in what the adult head considered its pants, even though it regularly barfed all over the adult head’s shirtfront, without the baby head Baldoona would have had to actively make its own living in the world. It would have been just another big, fat, dumb scalie.