The stubby .63-caliber smooth-bore shotgun vomited lead and smoke, a barrage of pellets hitting the stonework and bars of the window. Screaming, Ki clawed at the ruin of his face, teeth shattered, blood squirting with every heartbeat, one eyeball dangling on his cheek at the end of its cord. Half-blind, the man slammed shut the door and twisted the key in the lock, his hands slipping in the volumes of blood.
“Never get in,” he cried madly.
Arm extended, Doc lunged at the bars, the Spanish sword darting between the bars and stabbing the sec man directly in the heart. The twitching man exhaled once, a rattle sounding in his torn throat, and he collapsed out of sight.
Fishing about with the gory blade, Doc managed to catch the ring of keys and delicately haul it through the bars. Unlocking the door across the passageway, he dragged the bodies into the storage room, then opened the kiosk and took a position behind the barred window with a stack of AK-47 blasters by his side. The only door to the ville was again under Nathan’s control, and Overton would get no fresh troops from outside. That was a major point in their favor of regaining control of the ville, but his main objective hadn’t been achieved.
“Where could Krysty be?” Doc demanded rhetorically, watching both directions of the tunnel while reloading the LeMat with expert speed.
RYAN, J.B., NATHAN and the others converged on the barracks, weapons at the ready. The thick door was ajar, the interior black and smoky from the earlier fire.
Suddenly cheering sounded from above, and the armed troops looked up to see the villagers waving at them from the second- and third-story windows.
“Shut up!” Nathan ordered. “Want to tell the bastards where we are?”
The people recoiled in fear and closed the window shutters in a series of wooden bangs.
“Goddamn idiots,” a sec man growled.
“We’ll cover the street,” Nathan said, hoisting his weapon. “Take five of my men and see what you can find. Even one more blaster would be a big help.”
“Agreed. But I’ll take four men in a standard two-on-two defense formation,” Ryan replied, slinging the Steyr and drawing his SIG-Sauer. “Ready?”
The brown shirts looked blankly at Ryan, unsure of where to go or what to do.
“Fireblast,” he growled. “You four watch each other’s asses. I’m on point, and J.B. covers the rear.”
“Go,” J.B. said, leveling the Uzi.
Swift and silent, the six men entered the damaged building. The barracks was completely different from when they were last there only hours earlier. Corpses lay underfoot everywhere, and the fire from the Claymore had consumed huge sections of the structure until the sky was visible in most areas.
In the front, the blaster rack was burned to ashes, the remaining weapons destroyed by the heat. However, several boxes of ammo had fallen free and survived the ravages of the flames. The sec man gathered the crumbling boxes eagerly, filling their pockets with the shiny brass shells. Outside the bunk room, the stack of blasters in the hallway was untouched, merely covered with hot ash. The excited sec men gathered armloads of the precious weapons, and two carried the first batch outside to the waiting troops.
Standing dangerously near the sagging doorway, Ryan could see that beds and the floor of the room had tumbled into the watery basement, swamping the cesspool and masking its purpose. Several roasted corpses lay amid the destruction, their clothing reduced to ashes. It could have been anybody until Ryan noticed the good boots. They were blue shirts, but Ryan hoped the suffocating smoke and awful heat of the fire had aced them, and not the fast clean blast of the powerful Claymore.
Reaching the rear office, Ryan darted into the empty room first. The browns stayed in the hallway as J.B. followed his friend with the stubby Uzi leading the way.
The office was bare, not even a corpse on the floor from the blues they had rendered unconscious.
“Deserted,” Ryan stated, shoving aside the chair to glance under the desk. Nobody was hiding there. “And they took damn near everything not nailed down. Overton must be going for a last stand at the keep.”