The cream of Willie ville funneled, dazed and shaking, down the hallway lined with looted couches and chairs.
RYAN SWUNG HIMSELF over the rail of the fourth-floor balcony. Hobbled by ankle chains, he made an ungainly landing on a patio table. He tied off the end of the rope on the rail. Finding the slider locked, he picked up a metal chair and smashed in the glass.
The dark hotel room consisted of a bathroom, bedroom, open closet and a built-in dresser. The wall mirror was long gone, as was every other bit of furnishing not nailed or screwed down. He checked the bath, which was empty. When he stepped out into the dim hall, he came face-to-face with the crowned muzzle of a hogleg, stainless-steel blaster-a Ruger Redhawk.44 Magnum with a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel.
The toadie norm on the other end of the Redhawk was shaking up a storm. He could hardly miss at this range, though.
“K-k-kill you,” the man said. Ryan swept the Ruger’s long barrel aside and clamped his hand over the blaster’s cylinder. The toadie tried to discharge the weapon into Ryan’s leg, but with the cylinder trapped, the hammer wouldn’t rise on double action.
Ryan hit him once in the stomach with his left hand. The blow doubled the man over and dropped him to his knees. He let go of the.44-caliber blaster.
The one-eyed warrior turned the handcannon around and cocked it.
“Don’t shoot me,” the toadie begged between gasps for air.
Ryan ignored him. He put the pistol’s muzzle against the first link of the ankle chain and fired. Flame belched from the barrel, and the hallway rocked from the blast. His ankles were no longer connected. He swung out the cylinder and saw he had three live rounds left.
“You shouldn’t be down here,” Ryan told the man as he snapped the action closed. “Nobody should be
this close to the ground. The stickles can climb up the outside of the building. Is anybody else on this floor?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, get them the hell out. And quick. Before the stairwell is cut off.”
When the toadie just stood there, Ryan realized he was going to have to do it himself. He shoved the man ahead of him as he stormed down the hall, kicking and pounding on the doors. “Everybody out!” he yelled. “Stickies are coming! You can’t stay here. You’re not safe!”
Behind him the doors opened a crack, and the hiding norms started filing out.
Ryan had just one immediate goal, which was to recover their weapons. The last time he’d seen them, they were twenty-one floors up. He headed for the stairwell door. He didn’t have to put his ear to it to hear gunshots and screams.
It was already too late. The sec men had retreated to a higher floor. There was nothing but stickles in the stairwell.
Ryan didn’t say anything to the norms. He couldn’t help them. He abruptly turned and pushed past them, moving back the way he had come.
“What do we do?” one of the toadies cried. “What do we do?”
Die, Ryan thought You die.
When the one-eyed warrior reentered tjhe balcony room where he had tied off the rope, stickies were already scrambling over the rail onto the patio. Three of
them rushed at him through the broken slider. He raised the Redhawk and tired once.
A foot of flame leaped from the muzzle as the weapon roared. The single 240-grain slug smashed through the first mutant’s head, then the second and finally the third. They toppled like dominoes. He walked over their shuddering hulks and out onto the balcony. As he did, another stickie popped up over the railing. The massive handblaster bucked as Ryan shot it in the face, point-blank. The stickie’s bald head blurred into a red mist. Its body dropped, then stopped. The sucker hands were still stuck to the steel railing. They held the headless corpse dangling there while blood bubbled from the stump of its neck.
Tucking the Ruger into his waistband, Ryan untied the rope, jumped up on the railing and launched himself into space. As he swung out, he could see stickies climbing from patio to patio on the outside of the hotel. In seconds they would be swarming over the fourth floor.