James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

Then they heard the groaning sound from above.

“What’s that?” Mildred said.

There was no time for an answer, even if J.B. or Doc had had one-which they hadn’t. The severed elevator cable came exploding back through the hole in the ceiling. The tension on the winding drum sprang loose and the gears overhead ground together. Doc tried to hold the clutch lever back only to have it jerk from his hands with such force that it snapped off at the base. The steel bar shot across the room and hit a slave square in the face, practically beheading it.

J.B. dived at Mildred, pinning her against the wall with a shoulder.

Without a clutch there was nothing to stop the great

wheel from turning. And turn it did, going from zero to one hundred revolutions per minute in the blink of an eye.

Chained to the whirling spokes, the helpless slaves were lashed and battered against floor and ceiling. And then the elevator car, which dropped from the top of the hotel, slammed into the bottom of the shaft. The impact did something to the alignment of the machinery. Sparks showered from the ceiling, then the whirling gears broke loose. They dropped like giant buzz saws into the spokes of the wheel, and the room was instantly full of shards of metal and chunked slaves.

J.B., Doc and Mildred hurriedly backed through the doorway. Flames from the crushed elevator car billowed out into the hall. Their hands shielded their faces from the intense heat.

“At least you didn’t lie to those unfortunates, John Barrymore,” Doc said as they searched for a staircase leading up.

“How’s that?”

“You promised the poor bastards they’d never have to turn the wheel again.”

RYAN LOCKED HIS ANKLES around the rope and slid down from the penthouse. Thirty or so stickies were on the balcony of the 24th floor, having a dance-in-place party. Without music. Or maybe there was music, but only they could hear it. Ryan stopped just out of their reach. They weren’t paying him any mind. Wildly gyrating, waving their arms, they were watching the

fire race through the floor they were on. They didn’t seem to realize that the rope on which Ryan hung was their only hope of escape. Or if they did, they didn’t try to jump for it

He could see more of them inside the smoke-filled rooms, hundreds, perhaps thousands, dancing as they burned up. It was as if they were unable to break the spell of the flames.

As Ryan slid down below the level of the balcony, another explosion ripped the air just over his head. And it was suddenly raining stickies, burning stickles. The intense heat had blown out the balcony’s glass slider and with it, the patio full of naked stickies. Ryan was blocked from the withering wall of flame by the building, but not from the falling mutants. He clung to the rope as their bodies bumped him on the way down, living comets hurtling to earth.

When he looked up, he saw that the heat surge between floors had been so hot that it had started his rope on fire. He loosened the grip of his ankles around the line and let himself slide faster. The friction ripped die hell out of his palms as he tried to control his fall. He dropped past balcony after balcony, but he didn’t see any more stickies-any more signs of life inside, period. The mutants had swept up through the hotel, slaughtering everyone they found.

Below him, about ten stories, a couple of straggler stickies hung on to the rope. They weren’t climbing; they were just hanging there, blocking his path. And tripling the amount of weight on die flaming rope.

Ryan could’ve drawn the Redhawk, which he’d tucked into the back of his trouser’s waistband, but shooting them would’ve meant stopping and aiming and maybe missing what with the way the rope was swaying. So he took a page from the sandbag success earlier and just loosened the grip of his hands a bit more.

He rocketed down the rope, digging the sides of his boot heels into it to take some of the pressure off his tortured hands. When he was within fifteen feet of the stickies, he swung his boots out to shoulder width. It was an uncontrolled dead fall.