As Crecca straightened, Jackson let out a soft whine. The mutie was quivering, head to foot, with excitement. That wouldn’t do. Not at all. The carny master showed the stickie the rifle butt.
Jackson immediately dropped to its back in the dirt and offered its trainer its soft underbelly.
“That’s better,” Crecca said. He unclipped the chain from the choke collar and pointed at his heel.
The little stickie meekly obeyed.
Crecca shouldered his M-16, then stepped off the road and into the trees. The thick, rough barked trunks were unevenly spaced. Some grew only inches apart while others were a double arm’s length from their closest neighbor. Blocked from sunlight, most of the lower branches had withered and fallen off. Around the base of each tree was a ring of rotting debris: a rat’s nest of dusty needles, twigs and small and large limbs. Some of these brush piles stood as high as Crecca’s waist.
By staying as close as possible to the trunks, he avoided most of the tinder-dry material. He was forced to advance at a snail’s pace, watching the placement of each step, occasionally toeing a rotted branch out of the way when he couldn’t safely see past it.
The nine carny chillers moved in a widely spaced line behind him. They followed his trail exactly, keeping close to the tree trunks, stepping in his steps. Because they were pros at both chilling and stalking, they made only the slightest rustling noise as they advanced; Crecca could hardly hear it over the thudding of his own pulse in his ears.
The carny master couldn’t see the road because of the wall of trees, but he knew that he had to be close to it—no more than thirty or forty feet away. He also knew that he had to be just about on top of Cawdor and the other ambushers…if they were really there.
As Crecca paused for a moment, his back pressed to a tree trunk, Jackson started acting nervous. The stickie wasn’t whimpering or mewling; it was making the softest of soft kissing sounds while gazing warily at the butt of the M-16. The expression on the little stickie’s face said it was trying hard to keep quiet but couldn’t.
Cawdor was near, all right.
Crecca turned around the trunk, holding the assault rifle at hip height, his finger inside the trigger guard, lightly resting on the trigger. As he brought down his right foot, something unseen crunched under his heel. With the weapon poised, he froze, scanning the row of trees in the gloom directly ahead. He saw nothing, and was about to make another jump forward when, not ten feet away, leaning against the base of a tree, he caught the shape of the scoped Steyr longblaster.
A hair-raising jolt of adrenaline coursed through his veins.
As Crecca opened his mouth, before he could get out a warning shout, a hand appeared from under the pile of debris, grabbed the sling and snatched the rifle away.
RYAN LAY BURROWED under a brush pile of his own making, with a peekaboo view of the empty road. From his position, he couldn’t see Krysty or any of the others on the opposite side. The heat under the debris was sweltering. Beads of sweat ran down his spine and trickled in rivulets over the sides of his rib cage. Dust mixed with body oils and perspiration had turned the backs of his hands ash-gray.
Ever since he and the others had taken cover, he had been counting the elapsed time in his head. He had figured it would take the chillers mebbe four minutes to close the quarter-mile gap if they were moving at a quick pace. And under the circumstances he couldn’t see them doing anything but double time to catch up. At that rate, they should have been in his sights more than two minutes ago. With every second that passed, his concern grew.
It wasn’t a sudden noise that first alerted him to the danger they were in. It was an awareness. A vague presence. A pressure. From behind. He had been counting on the dry deadfall to give them plenty of advance warning of an enemy approach from the rear. Listening hard, he could hear the rustle of branches not twenty feet away. The enemy was closing in, and there had been no alarm. He picked up a twig and flicked it at J.B. to get his attention. The Armorer immediately reached over and nudged Jak, who turned to look Ryan’s way. Doc looked at him, too, but his eyes were unfocused.