James Axler – Freedom Lost

“Give me a good automatic any day,” Rollins told her.

“To each his own. Like I said, the extra shots don’t mean much in that kind of situation. My pistol has a smooth trigger action, again adding to accuracy. And in a pinch, I can fire a variety of bullet loads, even though this one’s been chambered to take a Smith amp; Wesson .38-caliber round. Try doing that with a 5.56 mm auto.”

“You make it sound damn near perfect. Although that hand cannon is bulky and takes much longer to reload compared to an automatic. Autoloaders help, but you still lose seconds opening up the chamber, lining up the bullets and closing shop. And we both know the velocity falls short of an autopistol. High muzzle velocity will always provide the maximum penetration.”

“Why, Mr. Rollins, perhaps you know more about guns than you’re letting on.” Mildred said with a smile.

Rollins returned the grin. “Could be.”

“What have you got stockpiled?” J.B. interrupted, an uncharacteristic twinge of jealousy making him speak up.

“Not as much as I’d like. We did have more, but a lot of the good stuff has been used previously. Mr. Morgan had more blasters and ammo on order from a baron upstate who was open to trading, but they never arrived.”

“Hope the stickies didn’t end up attacking a convoy and getting the damn things.”

“You and me both.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was a morass of skyscrapers and smaller buildings aligned in a boxy grid network. During the boom years, it was known as the city that tobacco built, and locals wore the label with prideuntil smoking became a habit less and less tolerated by the general public. Harvested crops went unsold, and advertising avenues continued to dry up, until finally the use of tobacco in the United States became an almost underground movement.

The tobacco companies found their salvation in overseas sales. Asian companies, as well as the former Soviet bloc countries, had always had a lustful gleam in their respective eyes for the various brands of American cigarettes. When the big business of tobacco found their own country was more than willing to cast them out, and the special interests and bought-and-paid-for friendships had evaporated with the prevailing political climate, there was no looking back.

And Winston-Salem was never the same again.

That part of North Carolina hadn’t been struck with the explosive force and precision of the mighty earth-shaker bombs during that cold January in the year 2001, nor had nuclear devices been detonated anywhere nearby. Some chem warfare had been launched farther down at the base of the Triad area, but of a form and fashion that only killed off the surviving humans in rapid fashion while leaving the buildings and machinery and other nonliving constructs intact. The primary stickie base in that part of Carolina was located way downtown in a ramshackle old tobacco warehouse on Liberty Street. The large double doors were padlocked shut, but there was a private back entrance that allowed full access to open space within, a wide-open space that housed an entire community of the freakish mutants.

Many of the muties were quiet, half-sleeping from inactivity and boredom, loath to step outside into the sunlight. A more active splinter group was seated in a semicircle made of old recliner chairs and sofas.

“Norms,” one of the stickies said in a thick, halting voice.

A period of time passed while damaged, rad-altered and inbred brain cells tried to shake themselves into providing enough energy to fire the necessary pinprick burst of electricity for another coherent thought. Five minutes passed, maybe six. There were no complaints. Many stickies had no concept of time. Sunup and sundown was the extent of how their own internal biological clocks ticked. Stickies needed very little sleep due to their higher body metabolisms. The only thing fast about them were the killing rages they could be induced into by high stress and fireworks and explosions.

The same stickie spoke again. “Normssuck,” he declared.

“Yeah, Howie,” a second mutant agreed, his words articulated with more care and speed . “You said it. Took you long enough, but you said it for all of us.”