James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

Roonie-Two’s face went livid. “You think we’re some kind of pets, Poppadaddy? So it doesn’t matter if you lock us away and starve us or leave us for the stickies? Well, I’ll show you! I’ll show you what we are!”

Moving with amazing speed, she darted over and

picked up the Redhawk from the floor. Without another word she poked the muzzle at the middle of Elijah’s sternum and pulled the trigger. The big blaster boomed and jumped out of her hand, flying over her shoulder. As Elijah’s body leaped back, flames licked up through his mass of white chest hair. He crashed into the wall, then fell forward onto his face. He was so dead he didn’t even quiver. The smoking exit wound in his back was big enough to put a boot through.

Before Ryan could stop her, Roonie-Two dashed out onto the patio with her baby in her arms. She scrambled onto a tabletop, and from there to the railing. From the railing she jumped off into space, all without a pause. As she dropped, the tips of her long, corn-silk blond hair lifted straight up by the wind. Then she was gone.

“What are we going to do now?” Skeen wailed. The man was groveling on his knees, hiding behind Ryan’s legs.

The one-eyed man snatched a blanket from the couch and, into the middle of it, threw an armful of the gear Elijah had confiscated. He grabbed stuff at random and when he had as much as he figured he could safely carry, he tied all four corners together in a double knot

“What now?” Skeen repeated, rising shakily to his feet

The world rocked without warning. The floor under their feet lifted so violently that both men crashed to the carpet. Ryan winced at the heat of the explosion; he could feel the scorching pulse right through the

floor. He instinctively raised a hand to protect his sole surviving eye. Through the floor he could hear the whoosh of fire spreading through the corridors below, the squeal and sizzle of the stickies caught in the blistering shock wave.

Ryan jumped up from the carpet at once. Tongues of orange light were flicking up through the bullet holes in the floor around him, and the foam backing of the carpet was already starting to smoke and flare. He recognized the handiwork. His first thought was that maybe the Armorer wasn’t dead, after all.

“Oh, no,” Skeen shrilled. “They’re coming again!”

Over the escalating roar of the fire, Ryan could hear the tramp of bare feet running down the hall. The stickies on their floor had recovered from the blast. As they rounded the corner, Ryan was already on the patio and he had slipped the knotted blanket over his head and under one arm, carrying the load in a sling over his back, which left both hands free for fighting and for climbing.

“Don’t leave me here!” Skeen bawled.

As Ryan took hold of the rope and hopped over the railing, he looked back and saw the man kneeling in a spreading puddle of his own piss, while dozens of stickies closed in and sheets of flames swept up the walls.

As THE ELEVATOR CAR crept up to the twenty-fourth floor, stickies jammed the long hallway on either side of the shaft. They had already ripped all the norms

within reach to tiny shreds and were eager for the fresh meat they thought the car was bringing them. They stood not only on the floor, but on the couches, the chairs, on the sprawled dead bodies of their kin. After they had opened the twenty-fourth floor’s fire door, stickies from the stairwell had rushed in and filled every room to the corners. There wasn’t enough space between the mutants for them to move more than a few inches in any direction. Such close confinement didn’t bother the stickies. They liked to bump into one another as they danced.

And they were dancing as the top of the elevator car rose up above floor level.

Almost instantly the stickies closest to the opening caught the sharp scent of spilled accelerant. Realizing that disaster was close at hand, they signaled a warning to their assembled kin.