Blood gushed over his arm and shoulder, flooding into the dirt. There was just time to remove the slick steel and step aside, avoiding the plummeting, dying creature, who landed on the corpse of its fellow.
But the last of the stickies was almost up at the fork of the tree, climbing with unusual agility, his leering face turning back toward Ryan. The mutie spit venom at him, his lidless eyes wide with triumph, knowing that he could no longer reach him, and J.B.’s sleeping figure was helpless in front of him.
Ryan dropped the panga and started to draw the blaster, his heart knowing that it was going to be too late. He was certain that he would be able to chill the third stickie, but only after the stickie had taken the life of his oldest friend.
He heard the thunderous boom of the scattergun, and the gibbering mutie was hurled backward as though he had been kicked from the live oak by an invisible mule. The body vanished in a cloud of acrid smoke, arms and legs flailing, landing four paces away, suckered fingers scrabbling in the leaf mold.
As the smoke cleared, Ryan could see the devastating effect of the M-4000 Smith amp; Wesson 12-gauge. Awakened from sleep by the scream of the castrated stickie, J.B.’s fighting reflexes had been swift enough to level and fire the shotgun, gripping it by the pistol butt, bracing it against his own chest. The shot exploded with twenty of the inch-long Remington flechettes, the tiny, razored-steel darts that shredded anything in their path.
They had flayed the mutie’s face, blinding, stripping away all the hideous features, pocking the raw bone of the angular skull, turning it into a ghastly, mocking ornament of violent death.
“Time to move,” Ryan said.
J.B. quickly threw down the rifle, slinging the scattergun over his own shoulders, jamming on the fedora and sliding from the tree. “Hang on while I” He pulled out his glasses and hooked them on the bridge of his bony nose.
“That shriek’ll bring any bastard stickie within five miles,” Ryan said, waiting anxiously.
“Ready. Yeah, and a bright moon like this is all we need. We going to hole up?”
Moving too fast was, as the Trader often remarked, sometimes worse than moving too slowly.
It seemed a high probability that there were more stickies in the surrounding forest, maybe a lot of them, which meant the risk of charging into them like headless chickens.
But the amount of cover was minimal.
They hadn’t seen any buildings for some time. In any case they would be the first targets for any hunting muties seeking vengeance for their three slaughtered brothers.
“Don’t forget those boobies and mines the map shows,” Ryan cautioned.
They stood still, breath held, listening. The death screech of the second of the stickies had frozen the forest, silencing every living thing. Wherever they looked, Ryan and J.B. saw only stark silver light and deep, etched shadows.
“Can’t hear anything.” The Armorer bit his lip, shifting his feet as he noticed that the pool of blood from the three corpses was spreading near him.
Despite their clumsiness and general stupidity, some stickies were able to move quickly over short distances, and most of them had great stamina, being capable of holding on to a pursuit for hour after hour.
“Might as well carry on north.” Ryan took a last look around. “Got a better idea, brother?”
J.B. shook his head. “North it is.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Wolfram had insisted that his “guests,” as he so fulsomely called them, should join him and the Magus for breakfast that morning.
They were all released from their locked and bolted huts, and marched over to the quarters of the joint leaders of the fortress. The sec men had their hand-blasters drawn and cocked, circling the prisoners, watching them warily. They were particularly suspicious of Jak’s fiery spirit, keeping several paces away from the albino teenager.
Doc had almost refused to join them, complaining that he preferred to eat alone rather than with the mongrel scum of Deathlands.
Mildred had taken his arm and gentled him like a spooked horse, suggesting that there was no point at all in antagonizing their captors.
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