The last stickie seemed oblivious to the massacre of its fellows and still came on, mouth open in a silent scream. Ryan switched the aim of the G-12, pumping out a triple burst. Unfortunately Doc Tanner, who was just waking to the awareness of the attack, staggered to his knees and called out to Lori, distracting the mutie at the crucial millisecond that Ryan squeezed the trigger. The creature turned in midstride, launching itself at the old man, suckered fingers reaching greedily for his throat. The strength of a stickie’s grip was notorious. Ryan had per-sonally seen a man pull a stickie’s hand off a friend’s face, bringing half the cheek and one eye with it.
The trio of bullets missed the stickie’s body, barely clipping the top of its legs, punching the creature off-balance. The snarling mutie fell, only a hand’s span from Doc Tanner. Though not normally a great fighting man, Doc calmly drew the rapier blade from his swordstick and thrust it into the stickie’s open mouth. The angle was perfect, the steel penetrating a foot and a half down its throat. Doc twisted his wrist like a master of the duel, opening the inside of his enemy’s neck. Blood spurted between the bared teeth, splattering across the pebbles. The stickie reached convulsively for Doc, its fingers fail-ing to find a grip on the blood-slick steel.
48
“Move,” Jak ordered, leveling his pistol, waiting until the old man had withdrawn his sword and scrabbled out of the way. Then he put a booming bullet through the back of the dying mutie’s skull, kicking it into a jerking tangle of twitching limbs.
“All done?” Ryan asked, his voice sharpened by the sudden explosion of violence.
“I counted twelve in, and I counted twelve down,” J.B. replied, calmly holstering his mini-Uzi.
“Where’s Lori?” Doc asked, wiping the blade of his swordstick on the rags of the nearest of the stickies, then sheathing it once more. Stooping, he picked up his faded hat and jammed it on his head.
“There,” Krysty called, pointing along the narrow pe-ninsula toward the looming forest.
Showing an unsuspected burst of speed, the old man darted like a disjointed crab to where they could now see the motionless figure of the young girl.
The others followed, Ryan and the Armorer taking a few moments to check that all of the dozen attackers were truly dead. With stickies you never could be too careful.
They were all chilled.
“Oh, my sweetest little darling,” Doc sobbed, bending and cradling the girl in his arms. His knee joints cracked as he knelt on the stones, pressing her head against his chest. “My sweet dove of innocence,” he moaned.
Having seen the way Lori Quint had ruthlessly butch-ered the drowning mutie after the incident with the im-plo-gren, Ryan Cawdor wasn’t too sure he agreed with the description of her as an innocent dove.
“She is slain,” Doc Tanner cried, his grief unres-trained. His head was thrown back, and he was howling like a tormented animal.
“She’s alive, Doc,” Krysty said, kneeling at his side.
49
“What?”
“Alive, Doc.”
“No.”
“Yes,” Jak said. “Tits move. Breathing. She’s alive.”
“Oh, thanks be to the Almighty! By the three Kenne-dys but it seems barely possible. After those vile mon-sters had…”
“Best let me take a look at her,” Krysty suggested.
“Look at? Oh, of course, my dear girl. Do look after the child.”
Krysty stared down at Lori. “Light’s no good. Ryan, carry her to the fire. Jak, get some wood from the trees there.”
“I know where to get wood,” he sniffed, insulted at the suggestion.
“Then do it,” she snapped. “She’s taken a hard knock on the temple. I can feel the lump. Move, Jak!”
It took several minutes before Lori began to show signs of recovering consciousness. The fire by then was blazing brightly, with the pine branches spitting and crackling. Jak and J.B. had gone to the end of the finger of land, watching carefully in case any more of the stickies were lurking there and waiting for a chance to attack. While Krysty worked with Lori, Ryan and Doc managed to shift the bloodied corpses of the muties, dragging them by the heels and allowing the force of the Hudson to roll them away into the night.