Deep Trek

Steve and Kyle had both been ready, nerves straining, and they both reacted with blinding speed. One of the things that astronauts had was wonderful reflexes. In a flash, each of them drew a handgun from hiding.

Jim grabbed so fast for the Ruger in his belt that he nearly dropped it.

“Machine gun’s mine!” he yelled, knowing that there lay the greatest danger. The massive full-metal-jacket .44 would have gone clean through an automobile.

It all took less than three seconds after the crack of Carrie’s Smith & Wesson 2050.

In that splinter of time, she had squeezed the trigger twice more, lying prone on the seat, arms extended, right wrist gripped in the left hand for steadiness.

The armed men were taken totally by surprise at the burst of fire from the hidden, unsuspected assailant. The range was below twenty feet, and they were close together.

Carrie’s first shot was best aimed, hitting the nearest target through the bridge of the nose and kicking him onto his back. He died before he crashed onto the ground, legs flailing, fingers opening and closing convulsively. Blood was pouring from the shattered rear of his skull.

Her second shot struck the next man through the right shoulder, making him drop his M-16D4 on the highway.

Her third shot knocked the bullhorn from the leader’s hands, exploding it into jagged fragments.

The half-dozen enemies were slow to react to the burst of shooting.

Kyle and Steve both emptied their weapons, and most of their thirteen rounds found flesh and bone.

Only one of the paramilitary men managed to fire in retaliation. But he was already dying, going down into the darkness, as he sprayed a dozen full-automatic rounds into the side of the truck, opening bright silver holes in the rusted metal.

The farthest away was the figure by the machine gun, but he reacted slowly to the crimson ballet of death that was flowering before him. The cigarette fell from his open mouth, and he made a fumbling gesture toward his weapon.

Jim took a long, deep breath, holding it in and steadying the heavy blued-steel revolver at arm’s length, his index finger settling firmly on the wide trigger.

The spurred hammer clicked back, and there was a frozen moment before the Ruger fired. A moment when Jim Hilton knew with an absolute clarity that a miss was impossible.

It hit the machine gunner through the base of the skull as he started to turn away. It drilled upward, already tumbling, then exited through his half-open mouth, spinning his body down to the ground.

Then nobody moved, the men on the ground still in the pools of blood around them, and the survivors in a frozen tableau as if they were afraid to believe that they still lived.

At last Jim lowered his weapon dazedly and looked around.

Sly was lying in the back of the pickup, hands between his thighs, sobbing quietly to himself. Steve and Heather were sitting by him.

Jim was amazed at the way his young daughter coped with the horrors of life after Earthblood.

She’d scrambled out as soon as the shooting stopped, perky as though it had been hide-and-seek at her eleventh birthday party back home.

Steve and Carrie checked out the dead. Since his gun was empty, it had been up to the woman to administer the coup de grace to two of the wounded. She kneeled without a moment’s hesitation beside them and pressed the muzzle of the warm .22 to the backs of their heads, near the left ear. The shots made the bodies jerk before they sank into final stillness.

“You did real good, Carrie,” said Jim, reloading his own revolver. “Brilliant. If there was a government to recommend you to, then I’d…well, I’d recommend you for the finest medal.”

“Thanks. The rest of you did good, too.”

“Pretty well. But you, Steve,” he said, raising his voice, “and Kyle. Try not to leave yourself with an empty gun. Count your shots and save one. Never know what you might need it for.”

“Yeah,” said Steve. “Sorry.” Kyle simply nodded his agreement.

“I can’t believe that I had to put them out of it,” Carrie said, shaking her head. “Both men had about four bullets in them—and they were still living.”

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