Everyone took up their positions inside, blasters ready. They’d all been in on the firefight planning, all finally agreeing that Chrissy should lead them out and then try to let them know when it was best to make their play against the would-be chillers.
The woman and Jem, now recovered, waited immedi-ately behind Jak and Ryan. They’d been offered fresh clothes, but both of them had insisted they’d wait until after the ambush.
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“There’s around twenty,” Jak said, “and I can see a spiked pole ‘cross the track. Just this side of the bridge.”
At this point, just beyond the southern suburbs of what had once been Harrisburg, the Susquehanna was about a third of a mile wide, and looked like a glittering silver co-bra winding through the gray-green land.
Ryan felt the familiar buildup of tension. When he’d been a very young and callow boy, he’d told a stone-faced shootist that he wished he didn’t get nervous. The man had looked at him for a moment without speaking, then he said, “You feel that way, means you got nerves. Means you care ’bout getting chilled. Time comes you don’t feel that no more is the time you start to die. Might take days or weeks. But you’re deader’n a coonskin coat.”
Ryan Cawdor had never forgotten those words. Now his stomach was beginning to knot with the anticipation of shooting. Adrenaline was flowing fast, his mouth was dry, and the palms of his hands were slick with sweat. He wiped them on his pant legs.
If the two survivors of the massacre were telling the truth, the ground was going to get larded with several corpses in the next quarter hour.
“Take it slow and steady and pull her up when they tell you,” Ryan said.
Jak nodded, concentrating on steering the heavy wag through the bumps and wheel tracks that came together near the bridge.
“What they got?” J.B. asked from the back of the ve-hicle.
“Looks like a bunch of M-16s. Smith & Wesson hand-guns in belts. Can’t see any gren-launchers or heavy blasters,” Ryan told him.
“Best set your G-12 on continuous. Going t’be sharp down there,” the Armorer advised.
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Ryan nodded. If the girl was telling the truth, then they should have a chance to start shooting and take the squatters by surprise. But if she was lying and they were being set up…
They were about a quarter mile off, Jak keeping the wag moving steadily in low gear. Jem was right behind him. Ryan thought he caught the faint sound of metal on metal, and he swung around and saw both Jem and Chrissy fiddling with their leather belts. Both of them grinned as he turned, keeping their fingers hooked in-side, out of sight.
“Nice wag, this,” the man said, speaking quickly. “Volvo-Benz, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” Jak said. “What was your truck…before the muties got at it?”
Ryan noticed a slight hesitation on Jem’s part, but he was concentrating on the bridge and the men ahead of them, who stood in a loose half ring, waving them to a halt. As he listened, Ryan was already reaching for the main door control lever.
“It was an old Nissan. Kind of beat-up, but it ran well.”
“Fucking right, Jem,” the woman agreed, leaning against the back of Ryan’s chair. She was so close to him that her breath stirred the long hairs at his nape. “Jem kept that better’n he kept me. Pa inted and polished it everyday.”
That was it!
The wag was easing to a stop, everyone ready to move to the exit to jump down. Ryan’s hand was on the door lever.
Without even looking around, he jabbed back and up with his left elbow, feeling it crack home on the side of Chrissy’s jaw. A stab of pain shot up his arm, but he ig-nored it. Dropping the Heckler & Koch from his lap, he
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drew the panga with his right hand. He turned in a fluid movement and sliced at Jem’s exposed throat.
“Trap!” Ryan yelled. “Chill ’em all, outside!”
He was facing the back of the dimly lit sec wag and saw the expressions of shock and horror on his companions’ faces.