James Axler – Cold Asylum

Whatever the napalm touched caught fire.

Guiteau and his group stopped, all hanging on to the handrail for support.

Not far below them, Ryan and the others were halfway out the door when the bomb went off.

And the invincible ville of Sun Crest, in the old state of Kansas, began to die.

Chapter Thirty-Six

While hastily preparing his makeshift booby trap, J.B. had broken open several of the cases that held samples of explosives or grens, hoping that the explosion would scatter the flames and set fire to the whole gallery.

It succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.

Within a dozen heartbeats the dry wood and the elegant draperies were ablaze. Even with the power on to work the pumps, it was doubtful that much could have been done to save the ville. The damage might possibly have been limited to the north tower if there had been light for the defenders to work out what was happening. And work together to fight the inferno.

But the place was in almost total darkness, most of the servants massed in and around the main courtyard and hallway inside the front entrance.

Within seconds there were more muffled explosions, one of them blowing out a row of windows on the topmost floor, splinters of glass showering around Ryan and his companions. Slavering tongues of fire protruded from the shattered casements, licking hungrily at the damp air.

The chem storm seemed to have sucked all the light from the sky, leaving the land midnight black.

“To the trees, quick!” Ryan shouted.

The one-eyed man led the way, the others tumbling out of the narrow doorway onto the muddy grass, among the frightened horses and panicked hounds.

“Take mounts?” J.B. yelled.

“Too spooked. We got the blasters and they’re in chaos. Once we get in the trees we head to the redoubt and watch our backs. I don’t think they’ll follow us too close.”

Both men had paused on the side of the cleared land nearest to the ruined mill, having to raise their voices above the roaring of the swollen river.

“That blood-eye bitch and her father might want to hunt us down, whatever the cost,” the Armorer shouted.

At that moment there was another cataclysmic flash of lightning and a demonic peal of thunder that made the earth shake with its violence.

Simultaneously Harry Guiteau raged from the doorway, followed by four sec men. A second later Marie Mandeville was out, with her father a few steps behind her.

Ryan was closest to the forest, J.B. at his shoulder. Because of the size of the entrance and the broken wood that blocked it, the others were strung out, Doc and Dean only a few yards ahead of the sec sergeant.

On the heels of the thunder and lightning, the downpour of torrential rain began anew, cutting visibility to less than fifty paces, blurring the action.

“Take them!” Marie screamed, her hands raised as if she were about to claw her own eyes out of their sockets.

But now the scales had tipped radically in favor of the outlanders.

The sec men were both outnumbered and outgunned. They skidded to a halt, Armalites only half-raised.

The baron had drawn his revolver and was steadying it, aiming toward Ryan, who was about to gun him down with the SIG-Sauer. Only Doc was quicker.

His ornate, gold-plated Le Mat boomed, its lower barrel firing the single 18-gauge round at the baron at almost point-blank range.

The scattershot ripped through the man’s curling white beard and opened up his throat, slicing the arteries apart and flooding his lungs with his own blood.

He staggered a few steps backward, tripping over his spurs, crashing down, hands reaching out helplessly toward the doorway of his ville.

The shot was the signal for everyone to open fire.

Ryan put down one of the sec men, while a burst from the Uzi destroyed two more.

Krysty chilled the last of them with a couple of well-aimed rounds from her snub-nosed, double-action Smith amp; Wesson 640.

But not everything went the way of the outlanders.

Marie dodged to the right, stooping and picking up her father’s fallen blaster, snapping off two rounds toward Michael’s crouching figure.