“Ace on the line!” the Armorer yelled. “Best finish them off now.”
Now that the explosion had been and gone, Ryan realized that there had been a real danger of the concussion triggering off a chain reaction among any of the other land mines buried close by them. So far they’d been lucky.
So far.
He stood, able for the first time to appreciate the bloody scale of the carnage.
The mine had been pitched right at the feet of one of the gangs of advancing stickies. From the torn relics of mutated humanity, it seemed that there might have been close to a dozen of them. But it would take a careful computation of the amputated legs, hands and other assorted ragged limbs to try to match them to headless trunks and faceless skulls.
On one side, where the force of the explosion had been most powerful, it looked as though someone had taken the contents of a butcher’s shop and heaved them into the splintered lower branches of the pines.
It didn’t bear much resemblance to anything that had once been vaguely humanoid.
Just lengths of ragged cloth.
And raw meat.
The group of stickies that had been trailing Ryan and the Armorer had been just far enough back to be spared from the force of the land mine’s blast. But they had come lumbering forward, standing and staring at the scene of the massacre with a brutish, grunting lack of comprehension, hands at their sides, rheumy eyes wide in curious dismay.
One or two of their wounded companions had managed to get to their feet and were staggering around in circles, mewing feebly, blood pouring from terminal gashes.
One was blinded, a great flap of skin hanging down from his forehead over the top part of his face, revealing the glistening expanse of smeared bone beneath. Another was clutching a jagged spike of resinous wood that had been driven clean through the lower stomach, spilling his guts into the trampled mud around his bare feet.
Ryan made himself a lightning summary of the initial butcher’s bill.
Six or seven dead. Roughly the same number critically injured. One or two recovering from unconsciousness. And about ten in the second, hapless group.
Ryan left the Steyr in the dirt, drawing the SIG-Sauer from its holster, wincing as he rubbed away a gobbet of bloody flesh from the butt.
“Let them have it,” he said. “And watch where you’re putting your feet.”
But before they could open fire, the blinded stickie had tottered across the path, hands groping at the sulfurous, smoky air, stumbling in among the torn trees on the far side of the narrow hunting trail.
In among the small piles of disturbed earth.
“Fireblast!” Ryan turned away and threw himself facedown in the dirt, immediately followed by J.B., who had only just picked up his fedora.
The second explosion seemed louder.
This time the two men were marginally better prepared for it, cupping their hands over their ears, closing eyes and keeping their mouths open to absorb the pressure from the land mine as the dying stickie detonated it.
Once again the white-hot shrapnel scythed out sideways and upward, ripping into the shell-shocked survivors of the first explosion.
This time, as Ryan rolled back onto his hands and knees, leveling the automatic, he realized that there were virtually no targets left standing.
The ground was a rolling mass of torn, blood-sodden flesh and smashed bones. The earlier screaming had almost stopped, replaced by a low chorus of moaning, dissonant and patheticutterly without hope.
In the middle of the carnage, a single stickie stood, miraculously unharmed. His clothing was even more torn than it had been before, and his body streamed with blood. But it was the blood of the others.
His hands were in front of his face, making feeble fluttering movements, as though he were trying to drive away an invisible cloud of tiny moths.
“Dark night,” J.B. whispered, looking around and picking up his crumpled fedora, taking the greatest care where he set his combat boots.
“Best get out,” Ryan said, having to clear his throat of the choking dust. “If there’s any of the bastards still left alive in the woods, those explosions’ll bring them running.”