“Ryan? Let’s go see what happened.”
“Wait, Doc. Keep quiet and wait. Don’t move or speak till I say so.”
Time crawled by. Ryan tried to keep his mind off Krysty Wroth. Her face, voice, body. The only woman who’d ever meant more than a fleeting fuck to him. Common sense told him that along with Lori and Finn, she had probably been chilled. The sec men of the baron, with their superior firepower, had sent them all to buy the farm.
Unless
“Unless he wanted prisoners,” he muttered to himself, hardly aware he’d spoken at all.
It was a hope. Best he’d got.
IT WAS SEVEN MINUTES past noon, by his wrist-chron. At twelve he and the others had decided to go and find out what had gone down on the edges of West Lowellton. And to bury their dead.
If Krysty, Lori and Finn had been taken, it wasn’t going to do them any good to rush in like a blinded steer charging into the shambles.
It was still seven minutes off noon, by his wrist-chron, when he caught the whisper of stealthy movement somewhere behind them, inside the motel.
He shrank back into the narrow stone kennel, fingering the trigger of the Heckler amp; Koch. The noise sounded like the plastic end of a blind-pull, tapping on glass in the wind. But the wind had fallen, and the air was still.
The tapping came again. Three, spaced out, then two, closer together. Then more tapping, repeating the same pattern.
“It’s Finn,” Ryan whispered, warning Doc and the Armorer. “Cover me, J.B., while I make a run for the door. Then Doc, then you.”
In thirty seconds they were all safe inside the motel, the security door locked behind them, the steel bolt thrown across it.
“Finn!” called Ryan. “Finnegan, we’re here.”
They heard footsteps, dragging a little, moving slowly toward them along the corridor, from the direction of the games room and the main entrance.
“That you, Finn?” There was a note of tension in Ryan’s voice. “Speak up.”
“It’s me.” The words sounded as if they’d been uttered by someone who had witnessed an unspeakable horror. At Ryan’s side, Doc shuddered convulsively. “Yeah, it’s me. Only me.”
FINNEGAN WAS ONE of the toughest of all of the Trader’s longtime blasters. He’d been in more firefights than he’d spent night in beds. He drained most of a quart of Jim Beam, spitting on the floor, wiping the back of a bloodstained hand across his mouth.
“Now?” asked Ryan.
“Sure. Heard ’em coming. Krysty heard ’em first. But there was a lot of the fuckers. Ten or more of those fat-tired mothers. Looked like someone seen us. Told the baron. Sent out the sec men. We holed up in a square of houses. Pretty little places, I guess. If you like fucking pretty. Lot of bones round there. We’d got us some tins and packets of freeze-dries. Real nice. Shrimps and sauce and all.”
He took another swig from the bottle. Doc looked as though he was going to interrupt him, then changed his mind and reached out for the bottle to take a pull on it himself. He passed it on to Ryan, who shook his head, and J.B. took a single mouthful, rinsed it around and spat it out.
“I took the front, Krysty on the flank. Put little Lori safe as I could round the back.” He glanced at Doc. “Best as I fucking could.”
“How many men? What blasters they carry?” Finn sighed, looking at J.B. through narrowed eyes. It was obvious he was ragged, near exhaustion. “Some of the swampwags were bigger. I guess mebbe fifty or more of the fuckers. Most got old M-16s. Carbines. Some got Browning pistols. Nothing big. Two of the buggies had gren launchers. They were good. Smart fucker in a white suit giving the orders. Had a couple of shots at him. Made him duck. Got mud an’ shit all over him.”
“Go on,” said Ryan.
“Not much to tell. Too many of ’em. Figure I chilled seven or eight. Not great at street firefighting. Kept moving. They made a rush, got between me and the girls. No way I could get back. No way.”