With everyone on board.
There was a little light filtering in through narrow strips of wired glass set in the entrance doors. Only about three inches wide, they offered no chance of escape.
But Ryan stumbled toward them, holding the SIG-Sauer in front of him, dragging Krysty with him. Mashashige followed them, ignoring the mayhem behind as men fell down, bleeding from the eyes, noses and mouths, hands clawing at their own faces to try to relieve the agonizing effects of the gas.
“Can’t get through there,” Krysty panted.
Ryan pressed the muzzle of the heavy blaster against the nearest panel and fired three shots, shattering the glass, letting in a tiny amount of fresh air. He did the same on the second and third of the three strips, pressing the barrel out into the cool air of the hallway and firing off the rest of the mag.
He was glad that the built-in baffle silencer had finally given up the ghost some months earlier, allowing the full-throated roar of the blaster to echo out into the rest of the Best Eastern Serendipity Overlook.
“Someone will hear and come,” Mashashige said, coughing, his voice muffled by the wide sash that he’d wrapped around his narrow, angular face.
Behind them there was a scene of nightmare horror.
Ryan glanced over his shoulder, wiping his streaming eye, seeing that the gas was still vomiting from the vents, swirling around, flooding the lungs of every man there.
“This,” Krysty panted, pressing the short-barreled double-action Smith amp; Wesson 640 into Ryan’s hand. “Use it as it as well”
He pushed it through the broken glass, the muzzle snagging a moment on the torn reinforcing wire. He pumped the trigger with five spaced shots, the boom of the .38s seeming deafening in the confined space.
“Push face against holes,” he panted to Krysty. “Get bit of clean air.”
“And you, lover.”
“Not room.”
Ryan could feel the gas burning deep in his chest. His tongue felt swollen and tender, his lips as though someone had peeled them and rubbed them with sliced jalapenos. His right eye was watering, hot liquid gushing down his cheek. The raw socket of the missing left eye was brimming with fiery salt.
Breathing was becoming more and more difficult, and he could already sense that he was losing control over his mind. The swirling feeling was like the worst jump ever made, but with the additional burden of the choking gas.
“Do it,” he panted, grabbing at her, his fingers locking in her tight-curled hair. He forced her in front of him, onto her knees, pressing her face toward the shattered glass in the locked sec doors.
He felt her struggle against him, but only weakly, like a drowning puppy.
The noise from behind Ryan was coming in waves, louder and quieter. Several men had pushed against him, trying to get at the doors, but he’d fended them off, beating at them with the butt of the empty SIG-Sauer. Mashashige was at his side, sword drawn, using it in great scything sweeps to hold back his own men and keep the doors free.
The shogun was barking at them in short, coughing bursts of Japanese, but they were all around him, like weeping, rabid dogs, lurching and coughing, strings of bloody phlegm dangling from mouths and noses, eyes protruding like the stops on a mission-hall harmonium.
Ryan felt Krysty move against his hand, her fingers pinching his leg. He bent to hear what she was trying to say.
“Mildred”
Now the air was filled with a helpless, hopeless screaming, like lost souls in the deepest circle of purgatory. Ryan opened and closed his good eye, unable to tell any difference. There was so much pain that he was blinded by it, fighting for breath, losing his hold on Krysty.
There was a freezing agony suddenly, from somewhere in front of him. A cold wind from the dark side of Hades, searing his tender skin.
Hands reached for him, pulling at him. Ryan made a last attempt to drive away these new demons, clubbing at them, but the darkness gathered around his legs and swept up his body like a rising black tide.