It was one of those moments when a man’s life rested in the hands of the blind maniac gods of chaos and chance. One of the blasters still held a live round.
The other didn’t.
As Ryan began to cock his wrist, ready to try a final desperate throw of the bloodied steel at Mervyn, knowing that if he lost the gamble it would be way too late, the index fingers of both the brothers tightened simultaneously on the grooved target triggers of the two Smith amp; Wessons.
Then came the boom of the explosion, the whine of the powerful bullet.
And the flat clicking sound of a hammer falling on a spent cartridge.
A bullet erupted from the barrel of dying Titus’s blaster, as the man fell forward onto his face and lay still. The round had hit the door of one of the stalls, punching out a splintered hole larger than a man’s fist.
“Twelve,” Ryan said, checking his action with the panga. “All gone.”
Mervyn squeezed the trigger on his empty revolver a second time.
And a third time.
“Guards have lost the fuckin’ redoubt after all all this time,” he muttered to himself, puzzled, staring past Ryan at his dead brother. “You’re no help to me, are you, Titus?”
Ryan moved closer, trying not to get cut by the sharp splinters on the blood-slick floor, where the water was already three or four inches deep.
Mervyn still seemed despondent rather than fearful, unworried by the approach of his own death. “Of all the guards of all the redoubts in all of Deathlands, you had to come and pick on this one,” he mumbled.
For some reason that he couldn’t place, the words seemed oddly familiar to Ryan.
But it didn’t slow his advance.
Just as he judged himself close enough, he caught a glimpse of Jak out of the corner of his eye, the white-haired teenager already gripping a throwing knife in his right hand. J.B. held the Uzi at the lad’s shoulder.
“Mine,” Ryan said firmly.
Mervyn spotted the death thrust already on its way, and he reacted with surprising speed, trying to parry it with the empty revolver. The barrel glanced off the steel, deflecting the lunge, but the blade angled down and opened a deep-lipped cut across the man’s wrist, making him yelp in pain and drop the useless blaster to the floor.
He took a half step backward, his feet crunching over the broken porcelain and glass, his muddy eyes wide with pain.
Ryan feinted toward his stomach, getting Mervyn to drop his hands, then swung the panga in a hissing circle of blood-slick steel.
He aimed at the angle of neck and shoulder, the blade cleaving flesh, jarring against the spinal column. Mervyn tried to pull away, nearly twisting the panga out of Ryan’s hand, blood fountaining out from the severed artery.
Ryan got the knife clear, hefting it ready for a third cutting blow, but stopped at J.B.’s calm voice. “No need, bro. It’s over.”
It was.
The body slumped gracelessly to the floor, the fountain of blood slowing with the fading pulse until it became a feeble trickle that eventually stopped.
Now everyone was crowded into the doorway, even a rheumy-eyed Doc.
“You all right, lover?” Krysty asked, hesitating barefooted at the layer of crimsoned water that covered the broken glass. “They hit you?”
“No. Few minor cuts from splinters. They came up behind me as I finished shaving. They planned to chill us all.”
“I fear that they were madder than the proverbial shithouse rats,” Doc said.
“Looks like we’ll move on and leave the redoubt a better, safer, cleaner place,” Mildred added.
Ryan turned on one of the chrome taps, holding his hands under the running water, washing clean the dozen or so tiny cuts. He splashed more water in his face. To one side of him the broken pipes were still pumping out more water from the redoubt’s huge central reservoir.
There wasn’t much that could be done to check it. And they’d be leaving in the morning, anyway.
“Back to bed, friends,” Ryan said.
“How about the bodies?” Dean asked.
“Just let them lie, son. They aren’t going anywhere and they can’t hurt us.”