James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

“We aren’t doing anybody any good chained down here,” Lester said.

The other slaves shouted their agreement, but there was something in their eyes that J.B. didn’t like. He wasn’t sure which side they’d fight on if they were freed.

Through the end of the communication tube, they could hear the canvas-ripping sounds of sustained auto-fire, only distorted, tinny.

“There is something you can do,** J.B. told them. “Does the elevator still work?”

The slaves nodded.

“We had to stop running it because there were too many people trying to pack into it,” Lester said.

“But you can bring the elevator car down to this floor?”

“Sure,” the sec man said.

“What are you thinking, John?” Mildred asked.

“I’m thinking I might have a way to get us out of here alive.”

Chapter Nineteen

Mure his son rammed the steel-shod butt of his Uzi carbine into the face of the resisting toadie. Clutching his shattered nose, the man abruptly sat on the staircase. Blood squirted out between his fingers.

“Out of the way!” Murchisson shouted at the others. “Clear a path!”

Things weren’t going well.

When the bead sec man and the baron had laid out the plans for the defense of Willie ville, they hadn’t thought an attack would happen in daylight, with most of the norm population outside the hotel’s tower. The plait, should the berm walls fail, should the mines fail to stop an advance, was to make the stickies pursue the baron’s sec men up the twisting stairwells, where they could unleash withering, concentrated fircpower. The key to the strategy was an orderly and rapid retreat They needed to be able to withdraw in order to keep the mutants at a safe and proper blasting distance.

In the real world of unforeseen events, that wasn’t possible.

The line of retreat was blocked by the bodies of the toadies and their kin packing the stairs. The sec men

at the bottom of the stairwell couldn’t back up without falling over their own.

Over Murchisson’s shoulder the din of autofire shook the stairs. Cordite smoke coiled up the well. When he turned and looked down, he could see the stickies hurling themselves onto the barrels of his men’s weapons. The suicidal bastards absorbed dozens of high-power rounds so the monsters who followed could climb over them and onto the momentarily trapped sec men.

The baron’s sec chief considered using fraggers to clear the bottom of the stairwell, but he knew the shrapnel spray would take out many of his men. He glared at the clot of norms on the stairs above him.

What was holding things up?

Using the butt of his Uzi, Murchisson battered his way through the crowd. “Move! You worthless sacks of shit,” he told them.

When he reached the next landing, he found it blocked by a mass of people. They were pounding on the steel fire door, which was closed and evidently locked.

“Let us in!” the toadies cried.

“No. You’ve got to go higher. Keep moving up the stairs!”

He pushed back the blockage and looked around the corner of the landing. People packed the stairs all the way up as far as he could see.

“Damn!” the sec man said. Turning back, he shouted for a squad of the rearmost sec men. They

came crashing, kicking up the steps. The toadies and their families crushed to the sides of the well to get out of their way.

“AH right,” Murchisson said, “I want a path opened all the way to the top. Get going.”

The sec men were only too glad to oblige, because it put distance and bodies between them and the raging stickies. Tramping up the staircase, they used fists and feet to drive a wedge between the norms. The stubborn ones were knocked over the railing.

Murchisson stepped into the wake his troops made. “Up!” he said to the toadies. “Follow us up!”

Above the seventeenth floor the stairwell was clear. Murchisson and his men took the steps three at a time. When the head sec man reached the open fire door to the twenty-fourth floor, he immediately started herding the norms behind him inside.

“Move to the end, dammit!” he shouted, waving them past the elevators. “To the end!”