“Our food! Our wag!” Mixy groaned. “We got no food or nothing. What’s you going to do t’them? Tell me that.”
Renz didn’t know. His philosophy of life was very sim-ple. If someone was more powerful than you, then you crawled, belly down. If you were stronger, then you beat the shit out of them. These six strangers turned his guts to water.
“Want us t’take the rest of the food?” Jak asked. “There’s some dried stuff an’ self-heats in the wag. Last us a coupla days.”
“No. Leave ’em be. Get aboard. Start her up. Krysty and Lori, go with him. Doc, you too. Me and J.B.’ll watch ’em here.”
“How about their blasters, Ryan? Better to take them with us?” Krysty pointed with the toe of her boot to the pile of pistols and shotguns by the fire, where Jak had left them.
“Leave them. Once we’re on the way an’ the doors are closed, it’d take more than them flea-flickers to harm us. Get moving.”
The albino boy led the way, followed by the girls and Doc Tanner. Ryan watched Renz and the rest of the fam-ily. Behind him, there was the deep roar of the wag en-gine as it kicked into life.
123
Jak clashed the gears, making the heavy vehicle lurch forward. It bumped into the stump of a tree with a rend-ing crack. Both Ryan and J.B. glanced around to see what was happening.
It was all the old man needed to make his move.
He had a knife tied to the inside of his left forearm, and he pulled it out, launching himself at J.B. The old woman dropped to her knees with a piercing scream. Renz, re-flexes honed Deathlands-sharp, dived for the scattergun with the sawed-off stock and barrel. His wife reached for the open razor she wore sheathed between her mottled breasts.
The little boy stood still.
Against double-poor stupes it might have worked. Against the Armorer and Ryan Cawdor it had about as much chance of success as trying to beat a prairie rattler for speed.
“Hit ’em!” Ryan shouted, shooting from the hip at the white-haired old man. The burst of lead kicked him into a moaning heap and he rolled into the dying fire. Blood poured from the triple wound in the center of his chest, hissing onto the flames.
J.B. dodged sideways, firing the mini-Uzi one-handed, spraying the group of men and women as he moved. Thirty-two rounds of 9 mm ammo ripped out at a muzzle velocity of just over eleven hundred feet per second.
As the Armorer moved forward, his boots slipped on an empty can and he fell, finger still clamped on the trigger, more or less holding his aim.
Renz and his family were huddled together, and the burst of fire was tight and controlled.
Boy went dancing away, half the side of his head blown off, his paddling little hands groping at the empty air as he fell, dying.
124
Mixy was hit through the knee and went down scream-ing in a welter of blood and splintered bone. As she fell, several rounds stitched across her stomach, spilling her guts into the dirt so that they tangled around her feet in crimson-streaked gray coils and loops.
Valli caught five rounds, the lead lifting her clear off her bare feet and sending her seeping corpse smashing into the lower branches of a tumbled oak. A jagged branch went straight through her, piercing her rib cage, holding the woman’s kicking, jerking body several inches from the blood-sodden earth.
Amazingly, amid the carnage, Renz stood untouched. He had reached the pile of blasters, but Ryan’s G-12 was tracking in his direction.
“Feel lucky, stupe?” Ryan asked, his voice loud in the sudden quiet. To the side of the clearing the wag had stopped, stalling, engine ticking into silence. Krysty led the others out of the main door, guns ready.
But it was over.
“Don’t shoot me, you bastard. You chilled everyone in m’family. Even Boy.”
“It’s okay,” Ryan called out. “All right, J.B.?”
“Yeah. Didn’t figure on chilling the whole brood, though. Caught my foot.”
Ryan shook his head dismissively. The family had been stupid enough to try against armed men, just holding blades. He didn’t feel any sympathy for them. That’s the way it always was in the Deathlands.