James Axler – Deathlands

Ryan emerged around the side of the farthest hut in the line, with only the lake behind him. A half-dozen warriors were supposed to be there, covering any attempt at escape into the water. But the slaughter in the square had lured them from their posts, and the end of the village was completely deserted.

His informed guess was that more than half of the slavers would have bought the farm in the first three or four minutes of the assault, which meant that a part of the plan had worked.

But it didn’t mean that the fight was over and won.

As if to confirm that, Ryan spotted three of the slavers, on foot, running toward the lake. He stood in the shadow of one of the huts, and they hadn’t yet seen him.

One had a broken stump of an arrow protruding from his upper arm, just above the elbow, dark blood staining his cream shirt. Another had a gaping wound across his thigh, looking like a slash from a machete.

All three carried their blasters, darting toward the miraculous possibility of safety, constantly glancing back over their shoulders.

The men were less than thirty paces away, coming fast, the one with the bleeding leg limping heavily.

Ryan gripped his right wrist with his left hand, aiming at the leader of the escapees, bracing himself against the kick of the powerful automatic.

Without saying a word he opened fire, chest shots, the safest option against moving targets. It didn’t matter much whether you were a couple of inches high or low or to either side. High and you took out the throat. Low and you had a gut shot, which was likely to be a killing hit with a 9 mm round fired from the P-226.

Either side of the breastbone and you were still wiping out some of the ribs and probably the lungs, and possibly the heart, as well.

You hit when you missed with a chest shot.

Ryan’s first shot was dead center, splintering the sternoclavicular joint apart, shredding the man’s lungs with fragments of lead and bone.

The second man, with the wounded arm, was quick, snapping off a shot toward the muzzle-flash in the shadows.

Being quick didn’t mean being good.

He missed by a country mile.

Ryan’s second bullet wasn’t quite as central, straying a tad high. But it was close enough, hitting the slaver through the Adam’s apple, snapping his neck as efficiently as a good hangman and blowing out most of the throat.

The third man tried to turn, but his injured leg betrayed him and he went over in the slippery dirt, falling awkwardly, dropping his blaster.

Ryan was just able to check himself from squeezing the trigger on the SIG-Sauer a third time, wasting a round over the top of the tumbling man.

“Save me, Jesus!” the slaver screamed, on hands and knees, peering toward Ryan, who put the third full-metal-jacket round through his forehead, drilling a neat hole from front to back. The impact lifted a flap of skull into the air, anchored by the scalp and the long, greasy hair, so that it flopped back down again, like a crooked toupee. The man rolled soundlessly onto his side in the trodden mud and didn’t move again.

“Guess Jesus wasn’t listening to you, friend,” Ryan said.

DESPITE THE WOUND, Bivar was rallying his men for a desperate charge for safety.

“Time for the thermite, Doc!” J.B. yelled.

“Hope this is the time it works,” shouted Mildred, who was kneeling behind a wall, calmly reloading the target revolver.

Doc thumbed the self-light and applied it to one end of the fuse, while J.B. did the same to the second length of cord. Both men watched as they fizzled and spluttered into life, snaking fast through the dust and smoke.

The old man held up crossed fingers.

Ryan stayed where he was, watching the last stages of the firefight.

Bivar had gathered the survivors around him, ready for a last stand, waving his blaster in the air, taking potshots at any of the villagers he could see.

Unnoticed by the slavers, but spotted by Ryan, two threads of white smoke fizzed through the trodden, bloodied dirt, worming their way toward the group of frightened horsemen and their desperate leader.