THERE WERE FURTHER COLUMNS of smoke, and soon they could actually taste the flavor of roasting meat. Finnegan was all for pushing on at best speed, going in with blasters spitting, taking what they wanted and icing anyone who stood in their way,
He was overruled by the others.
“Slow and easy, Finn, Usual way. Let’s go and do it.”
SPREADING ACROSS HALF the roadway was a tumbling mass of brilliant azaleas, a rainbow of brightness, dazzling in the dullness of the morning. Away beyond were the buildings of the town, but the smoke from cooking fires was closer. It emanated from a dip in the land in which lay a maze of shallow swamps.
“Flowers pretty,” said Lori, staring open-mouthed at the display.
“Road sign, yonder,” said Krysty, pointing to a small rectangle of dark green, well over a mile beyond the flowers.
“It name the ville?”
She stood on’ tiptoe, straining, her face wrinkled with concentration. “La something. Yeah. Layayette. Lafayette, and it says West Can’t West Lowellton. Nearest place looks like it’s called West Lowellton. Maybe Lafayette’s farther.”
Doc looked across at her. “I believe that Lafayette was a city, Miss Wroth. Perchance West Lowellton is a suburb of it.”
A dozen muties appeared from behind the azaleas. Suddenly and silently. One second the road was clear; the next second the creatures were there.
“Fireblast!” breathed Ryan, dropping into a blaster’s crouch, gun braced against his hip, checking to make sure the others had fanned out.
About forty paces ahead, the swampies stood in a frozen group, staring at the invaders as if they were men from deep space.
Ryan checked them out, trying to guess precisely what their mutation was, wondering if it might be safest to simply chill the whole lot of them in a raking burst of lead. But there might be three hundred of them around the next bend.
The first thing that struck Ryan was their stocky build. Not one was taller than about five-two, and not one, including the single woman, weighed less than about two-twenty. Most of them had negroid features, with flattened noses and thick lips. Their hair was short and curly, and came in all shades from black to white, through red and yellow. Ryan noticed that their eyes protruded slightly, surrounded by nests of scars, like old tattoos.
None of them had fingernails.
As they glared at Ryan and his companions, their mouths sagged open as though their noses were blocked. There was not a blaster among them, though several had peculiar small crossbows strapped to their forearms. Each one, including the woman, wore long pangalike knives at the hip.
They were dressed in cotton shirts and patched short trousers, with flapping sandals on their feet, hacked from chunks of old tires.
For several heartbeats nobody moved on either side.
Then Finn opened fire.
Immediately all the others started shooting. After all, who was going to stand there shrugging his shoulders and complaining he hadn’t been involved in a tactical planning discussion?
Two utilities raised their feeble little crossbows as if to retaliate, but the wave of fire sent them crashing down in a tangled heap of thrashing arms and legs.
Ryan saw his triple bursts wipe three of them away. First the woman, two 4.7 mm rounds smashing into her neck, nearly severing the head from the torso.
“High,” muttered Ryan, automatically adjusting his aim. Finn’s actions hadn’t entirely taken him by surprise. The chubby blaster had never been known for his patience. And after Henn’s murder
The swampy beside the stricken woman was on a crutch, half his left leg missing. Ryan shot him through the stomach, spilling his tripes in the dirt.
Ryan’s third victim had already been knocked off balance by one of his falling comrades, and Ryan’s bullets hit him through the upper chest, on the left side. A clear heart shot, fatal within thirty seconds or so.
Perhaps fifty rounds were fired by Ryan’s party, laying them all down. Peculiarly, none of the muties screamed or cried. Just a faint mewing from the dying.
In the loud silence, Ryan turned to face Finnegan, who was clearing the Heckler amp; Koch, reaching for spare ammunition.