“I only injured my pride,” the scholar rumbled, straightening his rumpled clothing. “Running from a pack of overgrown bedbugs is hardly conducive to vainglorious edification. Gloria brevis!”
That was old talk, from before even skydark. Ryan rubbed his chin. “Which means what?”
“All glory is fleeting.”
“Yeah, but getting aced is forever,” the one-eyed man added grimly.
From the nose of the APC, Jak groaned. “My arm…”
Hurrying closer, Mildred checked over the albino teen. “It’s not broken, just dislocated,” she said. “You know what that means.'”
“Fix,” he growled through clenched teeth.
Placing her boot in the youth’s armpit, Mildred took his limp arm by the wrist, gently turning it ever so slightly, then in one fast move pulled with both arms while shoving with her leg. There was a hard smacking noise and Jak bared his teeth from the intense pain, then relaxed to exhale deeply, gingerly flexing his fingers, then elbow. “Th-thanks,” he gasped. “Better.”
“No charge,” Mildred said, probing the shoulder with her fingertips. There was no deep tissue damage; it had been a clean separation. “How about you can do me next time?”
“Deal.”
“Hot pipe, I can’t see anything out there,” Dean said, squinting through an air vent. “There’s a lot of smoke.”
“That’ll take a while to clear with no ventilation system working anymore,” Krysty stated. “Unless something is on fire. Mother Gaia, what about the fuel dump!”
“If it had caught fire, we’d be ashes already,” Ryan stated firmly. “But we better go see, just in case.”
Forcing himself to walk to the rear doors, he released the handle and the hatch swung down to loudly slam against the hull. The noise painfully stabbed through his forehead, and this time Ryan touched the sore spot to find his hand coming away smeared with dried blood. Fireblast, just how long had they been unconscious?
While J.B. and Dean had moved close beside the man, their blasters out and ready to give cover if needed, Ryan stepped through the hatchway and carefully stood.
The garage was in ruins, the predark wags smashed against the walls, even the Hummers had been flipped over, one of them dribbling oil from a cracked engine block. Ryan relaxed a bit when he realized it was the puddle of oil that was burning and causing the dense smoke. A thick plume rose from the blaze, spreading across the ceiling in a roiling blanket of fumes. Thankfully, the fuel storage closet seemed undamaged from here.
What little remained of the mutant bugs was scattered absolutely everywhere in a grisly display of pinkish organs and black legs. Several pieces of millipede were lying in the puddle of motor oil, spitting grease as they cooked from the heat. The horrendous stench hit them now, and the companions were forced to tie cloth over their faces to keep from retching.
“An emperor worm by any other name,” Doc muttered from behind a handkerchief.
“Stop mixing your Shakespeare,” Mildred replied haughtily, holding a sleeve across her face. “Even though I agree with the sentiment.”
Standing near each other, Ryan and Krysty shared a private look and briefly touched hands. They had taken a hell of a gamble, but it worked and they were still alive.
J.B. had cut the single stick of dynamite in his possession into four smaller charges and stuck them into coffee cans filled with office staples. When the dynamite exploded, the entire garage had been filled with a brief hellstorm of flying shrapnel. More than enough to kill every bug in the room.
“Unfortunately, the blast also got the wags,” J.B. commented dryly, waving his crumpled hat to fan the air. “The ones that weren’t wrecks before, sure as hell are now.”
“Better them than us,” Jak said, coughing slightly.
Ryan started to reply, then cursed instead. There was a clear puddle of fluid in front of the supply closet. The source was trickling fuel from a score of punctured containers. The spill was only yards away from the oil fire and extending fast.
“If that goes, we’re dead!” Dean cried, pulling off his jacket. Advancing to the fire, he started to beat the flames. “We’ve got to get this out!”