James Axler – Exile to Hell

“Huh?”

Kane pulled the strong-arm in front of him, stepping back half a pace. He trained the Sin Eater on the small of the man’s back, but he didn’t touch him with it. He had been taught never to get that close with a blaster, only with a knife. A professional could easily stamp down hard on his instep and pivot around to whop his gun aside.

“We’re moving out,” Kane said. “Slow. You stop when I tell you to, or I’ll stop you. Permanently.”

Raising his voice, he called, “Grant! We’re coming out! Don’t shoot me by accident.”

Grant shouted back, voice full of impatience, “After what you’ve put me through, it wouldn’t be any damn accident!”

Kane and Dos edged out of the squat, facing the opposite building.

“Hey, Uno,” Kane said loudly, “I’ve got your brother here, so why don’t you come down and talk this over?”

Dos mumbled something in a peevish tone.

“What?” Kane inquired.

“I said he’s not my fuckin’ brother.” He was breathing easier now.

“Dos says you’re not his fucking brother,” Kane called. “Even without that familial connection, I’m presuming you don’t want me to chill him. Right?”

After a long moment, an uncertain voice wafted from the window. “Right. Guess so.”

“Can I come out now?” demanded Grant.

Raising his voice, Kane shouted, “Hey, Uno! Grant wants to know if he can come out now.”

There was another long moment of silence from the second floor. “Yeah. Sure. Guess so.”

Cautiously Grant straightened up from behind his stone-littered shelter, Sin Eater aimed at the window. He began a careful crab-walk toward Kane and the strong-arm, eyes and blaster not wavering from the second floor of the squat.

From Dos, Kane asked, “Why did Guana order this chill? And why Grant?”

The strong-arm shrugged. “I just follow orders.”

“As do we all. Where’d you get the blasters?”

Dos shrugged again.

“Who’s the girl?”

“Girl?”

“The albino girl.”

“That’s Domi.”

“She work for Guana, too?”

Dos hesitated. “Sort of.”

“Well, you sort of chilled a Magistrate, so maybe I’ll just sort of chill youunless you and Uno start singing without me having to prompt you.”

Grant stopped his advance and shouted angrily up at the window. “Better come down, you rad-blasted mongrel! You don’t want me to come in after you!”

The darkness beyond the window snapped flame and noise. Slugs rippled across the ground, and Grant, roaring a curse, hurled his body backward and down. As he fell, he worked the trigger of the Sin Eater, snap-shooting at the muzzle-flash. He missed.

Uno didn’t. The bullets from the mini-Uzi stitched a straight line across the ground, chewing up the turf, spitting up gravel, tracking and intersecting with Dos.

The strong-arm screamed and toppled backward, arms windmilling. Staggering under his weight, Kane felt a storm of bullets striking Dos’s body, as if a work gang were pounding his torso with sledgehammers.

With slugs kicking up dirt all around him, Kane tried to fling the inert body aside and raise the Sin Eater. Something hard and hot smashed across his forehead and sent him flailing back. He felt himself falling, suddenly blinded by a fiery wetness. Dos fell on top of him, pinning him to the ground.

The stutter of the autoblaster ceased, but the trip-hammer roar of Grant’s Sin Eater continued for a few seconds, then there was silence.

Kane lay beneath the bullet-riddled body, not moving, not even breathing. He was astounded that he was breathing and not thoroughly dead. He heard the rapid scutter of running feet, and then Grant was leaning over him. He heaved Dos’s body up and rolled it aside.

“Hell, Kane, don’t you be dead”

Kane lurched into a sitting position, swiping at the scarlet liquid streaming warmly down his face. “I’m not. Let’s get him.”

Spitting the squashed ruin of the cigar from his mouth, Kane came to his feet in an enraged rush, and nearly fell as a wave of dizziness swept over him. His head began to throb in agonizing cadence with his pulse. Grant caught him and manhandled him down behind the masonry pile.

“Bastard’s gone by now,” Grant rasped, probing at the wound on Kane’s forehead with his fingers. “We’ll get him. A graze, that’s all. Probably caught one that went through Dos’s shit-for-brains, so it was already partly deflected.”