The baby head, suddenly all alone in the world, and facing at close range a nightmare of gory saber fangs, squealed even more shrilly. Six inches from the tip of its button nose, blood from the neck stump, a rude knob of red meat and bone, sprayed in a superfine mist, sprayed in time to the pounding of its no longer shared heart. The terrible crushing power of the lion’s jaws had at least temporarily sealed off the clusters of severed arteries and veins.
The mutie cat made no move to bite off the little head on the big body. It stood there, watching, as the great, flabby scalie lurched to its feet and tried to run. Baldoona took a single step before falling to the ground. It lurched up again, the baby head grimacing from the effort.
And fell again.
“Look!” Leeloo said. “The baby head doesn’t know how to walk.”
It was true.
Baldoona struggled up again, its monumental bulk teetering horribly for a second, arms flailing for balance, then it crashed to its knees and started to crawl. The exertion and the repeated impacts broke open the compression sealed vessels in its neck stump. As the baby head tried to pull itself away from danger, a gusher of gore spewed forth, bathing the side of its face, splattering into the dirt before it. The blood loss was massive. Baldoona managed to crawl only a few more feet before collapsing in a heap.
The lion burped, licked its paw, then scrubbed at the side of its face where blood had spurted, seemingly oblivious to the armor shuttered Winnebago coming full speed around the curve of the tent.
As the RV bore down on them, Dean pivoted and swung up the Hi-Power, preparing to fire.
“Not shoot,” Jak said, clamping his hand over the blaster’s slide and pushing it away, “Ryan. See him take wag.”
The albino wasn’t the only one who’d seen it. Bullard ville sec men charged out from the cover of the plant beds, firing wildly at the RV as they ran.
The Winnebago skidded to a sideways stop ten feet from Dean and the others, shielding them from the bullets. The rear door opened at once. Krysty waved everyone in from the back bumper. She didn’t have to tell them to hurry.
Dean followed Leeloo into the wag. The girl, uncharacteristically it seemed to him, immediately sought shelter in Mildred’s open arms. Mebbe her close call with Baldoona had really scared her? he thought. She was tough, but she was still just a little girl.
The mountain lion hopped in last. Even though it did so almost silently, on its huge soft pads, the wag’s springs and shocks creaked and the entire cargo box shifted from the additional half ton of weight. If any of the companions objected to its presence, no one said a word.
As the wag began to move, Dean climbed forward to the driver’s compartment and braced himself between the driver’s and front passenger chairs. His father accelerated past the doomed menagerie, cutting around the perimeter of the circled wags. A flurry of bullets sparked and zinged off the steel shutter that protected the windshield. Blasterfire from the rousties still scrambling about, Dean presumed.
“How many of the carny wags did you wreck?” J.B. asked Jak from the shotgun seat. “Cut tires on eight,” Jak said.
“That’s all?”
“No time more.”
“Shit,” J.B. said.
“We have to let the girl off before we bail on this place,” Mildred said.
“She’s right, Ryan,” Krysty said from beside the rear door. “Leeloo needs to stay here with her own people. We can’t take her with us.”
“We can put her out on the other side of the tent, near the entrance,” Mildred stated. “She should be safe there.”
“Come over here now,” Krysty said to the girl. “We aren’t going to be able to stop for long. You’re going to have to jump out quick.”
Dean and Leeloo shared a look as she stood up. He smiled at her and nodded; she nodded back. Then Leeloo moved beside the rear door with Krysty.
As Ryan slowed to a stop near the tent entrance, Krysty opened the door. She held Leeloo’s arm as the girl prepared to jump off the back bumper. Before she could do that, once again bullets sang all around them. The ville sec men had anticipated their exit route and circled around the far side of the tent. They were lined up in a double row, massing their fire to catch the RV as it came around the curve of the tent, and before it could head for the break in the berm wall.