“Where’s Krysty and Carl?” Ryan asked. “Anyone see them?”
“They were supposed to be out to the south, by the park, weren’t they?” Mildred said. “Haven’t heard any shooting or noise from over that way.”
IT SEEMED like it was over.
Neither Krysty nor Carl had heard shots for a minute or more, though a group of women screamed somewhere off the main street, and several dogs barked hysterically throughout the ville. A light wind rustled gently through the trees and bushes.
“You going to stay here for a while, Krysty?” Carl asked, sighing and sitting on a bench at the edge of the park.
“No. I wish I hadn’t come at all, Carl. Like I said before, you can never go back. Not really. Good to see you. Wish you well. Truly.”
“Some folks’ll want to see you.”
“Just tell them hi from me and that I had to get back on the road.”
She had sat on a bench facing Carl, studying her old friend, seeing in the stark morning light the ravages that time and liquor had wrought in him. She was saddened that such a handsome boy had become so weary and defeated. Krysty ran her fingers through her bright red hair, feeling how tense and coiled it was, responding to the danger that still lingered in the air.
“Wish I could get away from Harmony and go on the road like you and Ryan and the others,” he said, toying with his short-handled hammer.
“It wouldn’t work. But you could get away from here. Find a new ville and a new life. Get a good woman and settle and have kids. That’s what you should do, Carl.”
He looked up and grinned at her, revealing a flash of the teenager that had once made love to her. “That’ll be the day, pilgrim.”
“You could” She stopped in alarm as Carl leaped to his feet, his face contorted into a mask of hatred and rage. He moved toward her, the crushing hammer lifted in his right hand.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Krysty staggered sideways and fell over as Carl pushed out at her with his left hand, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a feral snarl of anger.
Her hand was reaching for her blaster, ready to try to take him out when she suddenly realized what was happening.
The last two stickies from the gang of killers had escaped from their safehouse and had been hiding in the shrubbery behind her, waiting their chance to strike.
Carl had stopped them just as they were emerging at Krysty’s back, their suckered hands reaching for her.
The lead mutie was grappling with Carl, while his skinny partner was groping toward Krysty, lying helpless on her back in the middle of the overgrown path. There was a hideous smile of triumph on its suppurating face.
The fight was short.
Carl managed to swing the heavy hammer at his adversary, breaking its upper arm as if it were a dry branch. The stickle squealed and lurched clumsily away from him, the limb dangling helplessly. Belying his bulk, Carl was after it, striking again, this time the blow glancing off the hairless skull and snapping the right shoulder.
“You dirty fuck!” Carl panted, swinging again and again, aiming at the stickie’s head. Krysty heard the noise, like a thick bowl of soup being crushed, and the creature went down, blood seeping from its open mouth.
But the second attacker wasn’t done. He had drawn a straight razor from under the ragged shirt and flourished it at Krysty, missing her face by a scant couple of inches. She felt the whisper of its passing and smelted the exhalation of rancid breath from the threatening mutie.
“Got your friend, now I’ll get you!” Carl roared at the top of his voice, stepping toward the stickie with the clubbing hammer raised.
In his newfound pride, Carl failed to look where he was setting his foot and he stepped into the oozing trickle of blood from the dying stickie, his boots slipping, throwing him off-balance for a moment.
“No” Krysty breathed, seeing the horror before it had happened.
The surviving stickie gave a high-pitched cackle of laughter and swung the razor at the man, catching him across the front of the neck, the steel cutting deep into the flesh, slicing through the sinews, veins and arteries, so that Carl’s head drooped forward and blood jetted out, vivid scarlet, into the bright early sunlight.