Their numbers reduced to a handful in only minutes, the few remaining coldhearts hastily retreated, firing wildly. A spray of 9 mm rounds from J.B. made them dive into cover, then Dean and Doc threw their grenades. With a blinding flash, the double blasts ripped the men apart, tossing arms and legs everywhere.
As the smoke cleared, few coldhearts were still shooting. Standing amid the fiery destruction, a lone man stood bleeding from both ears and weakly pulling the trigger on a wheelgun that only clicked in response. Mildred trained the M-4000 scattergun on the man, and in spite of the range, his belly was blown apart, entrails scattering to the wind.
Popping into view for only a tick, Clem expertly shot a man directly between the eyes, then plunged a nimrod into his musket, packing in a fresh wad and ball.
With his spine pressed tight against a tree trunk, one of the coldhearts was frantically fumbling in his pockets for loose rounds, the slide kicked back on his weapon, showing the clip was out of ammo. Caught completely by surprise, the coldhearts weren’t properly armed for a sustained fight, and nobody had even been able to get close to the armory in the log cabin.
His pockets proved to be empty, and the man glanced over the dead searching for a weapon. That was when he realized how many of his crew were goneBig Charlie, Hanson, Mickey, Laura-Lee, Clint, Joker enough.
“Head for the river!” the man yelled, throwing away his useless blaster and turning tail.
Several others followed the strategic withdrawal, but soon it was a mass rout, the coldhearts leaving behind then- spent longblasters and charging headlong into the thickets.
“After them!” Clem shouted, waving his musket.
“Let them go,” Ryan ordered, wrapping the leather strap of the Steyr around his forearm to steady his aim. Standing upright, the Deathlands warrior moved the crosshairs in the scope from man to man, dispatching each of the cannies without mercy until there was no more movement in the forest.
Dropping in a fresh clip, Ryan swept the field with his good eye, looking for more targets. “Anybody dead?” he demanded loudly.
“Bob,” Dean answered, thumbing fresh rounds into an empty clip. His clothes were splattered with blood, none of it his own. The boy slammed the clip into the grip of his Browning and jacked the slide.
Taking a bag of shells from a corpse with a shotgun, Mildred cracked open the scattergun and reloaded. “Looks like a clean sweep.”
“Mebbe,” Jak said, gesturing with his wheelgun. Several tents stood near a stout log cabin, where smoke rose from the brick chimney.
In the cab of the windowless truck, Stephen dramatically moaned as if just recovering from the blow to the head he had received from Ryan during the initial assault.
“Yellow cur,” Hector growled in disgust.
Drawing the SIG-Sauer, Ryan advanced toward the cabin with a blaster in each hand. “Doc, right flank. J.B., go left. Mildred and Dean, cover fire. Jak, Hector and Clem with me.”
Preparing their weapons, the companions started toward the cabin when a sharp whistle caught their attention.
“Incoming!” Doc shouted, gesturing down the hillside.
Returning to the wall of bushes edging the slopes, Ryan and the others took positions in the greenery and looked down the slope. A swarm of coldhearts, led by a huge man on a horse, was striving up the grassy incline. Their leader’s face was disfigured by a hideous scar. Each cannie was armed with longblaster or crossbow, and the scar-faced man sported a huge U.S. Army M-60 machine gun, with a glittering golden belt of ammo dangling from the side port of the deadly weapon.
“Fireblast!” Ryan cursed bitterly, ducking out of sight. “That’s trouble.”
His lip split, J.B. spit blood on the ground and removed the partially loaded clip from the Uzi to slap in his second-to-last full one. “Must be the ground crew from the next part of the trap.”
“Must be fifty of them!” Krysty cursed. Her face was unnaturally pale, and she stood with shoulders slumped, her hair limp, as if completely exhausted.
“Sixty-two,” Ryan corrected, guessing the distance. Eighty yards, certainly no more than that. They were moving slow, waiting to be attacked. Ryan cradled his rifle but did nothing. His five remaining rounds weren’t going to stop the charge of five dozen.
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