“Way ahead of you!” J.B. shouted, and threw a lit bomb at the runts among the stalagmites. The bottle arched high and crashed in the middle of the muties, coating them with the deadly mix of the alcohol and wag grease.
Their bodies covered with flames, hair sizzling like fuses, the runts dashed insanely about, setting others on fire, until the unharmed muties turned their weapons on their burning comrades, mercifully cutting them down and ending their screams.
Her .38 Smith amp; Wesson spewing flame, Krysty blew the head off a runt. Then a rain of stones hit the barricade, one going past her head so closely that for a split second the woman saw her own distorted reflection in the lump of crystal. She fired again and another fell off the rock face. But more were crawling behind, fresh troops arriving every minute.
“Now what?” Mildred demanded, launching an arrow into the chanting throng. It missed one, merely nicking his throat, but it slammed directly into the chest of the runt behind him. The mutie beside the wounded male snatched away his dagger and started forward.
Rocks from the slings were slamming into the slope and boulders as steady as machine-gun bullets. Ryan fired twice more, runts grabbing their ruined faces as they dropped, but more took their places, the chanting starting to rise in tempo as the muties prepared for a rush.
Then a squad of female runts in stiff leather armor, carrying bone-tipped spears and round shields studded with crystal shards, burst through the mob.
“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc roared, waving the smoke away from the muzzle of his huge blaster. “Sec men!”
Ducking out of the way, Mildred dodged a barrage of rocks. “Those shields are going to be trouble,” Mildred grunted, notching in a fresh arrow. Four of the steel-tipped ones remained. She had to make each one count.
“Not,” Jak stated, and, stepping out from behind a boulder, the teenager leveled his blaster and fired. The steel-jacketed .357 Magnum round plowed through a shield, knocking a runt off her feet, the slug plowing into the female behind her, and sending several more to the floor in disarray.
As Jak dived for cover, J.B. stood and lobbed another Molotov, with devasting results.
Crossbow in hand, Krysty waited for a runt to stick his head around the mouth of the tunnel. She thrust the crackling torch into his face with enough force to dislodge the crawler. His hair on fire, the mutie hit the slope and rolled downhill to smack into a stalagmite with a sickening crunch.
Mildred put a steel-tipped arrow into a warrior, then, as she loaded a wooden shaft for a regular mutie, she cried out, dropping the crossbow and grabbing her head.
“It’s that whistle again!” Mildred shouted, her face contorted in pain.
“They’re going to cut the lights,” Ryan said in comprehension. The little bastards were smart. The companions were trapped, and the runts knew it. They would never make it up the exposed slope alive. It was too easy to pick them off. Only two shots remained in the SIG-Sauer, and Doc and J.B. had about the same. He needed a diversion, or someplace to fall back and take the fighting hand-to-hand where their size and strength would work against the little warriors.
A fiery dart streaked across the cavern from the tunnel overhead, the burning arrow heading toward the caves on the left wall. Ryan glanced at Krysty, and she looked to the right instead. He nodded, and she smiled. Then he pointed to either side of the barricade, and Krysty hastily withdrew into the passageway. Five more runts crawled around the edge and dropped into the tunnel, just as they all heard the shattering of glass. A fireball blossomed to fill the tunnel, the muties dying where they stood, flapping their arms as the Molotov consumed them whole.
Shouting a battle cry, the armored warriors started forward and J.B. shot four with the Uzi. Three dropped, and one staggered away, wounded in the thigh. The rest quickly retreated behind stalagmites and threw spears.
“That’s it,” the Armorer said, pushing the blaster behind his back to get it out of the way. “I’m down to four Molotovs and my knife.”
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