James Axler – Rat King

their cue. A bloodthirsty yell of revenge and bravado rent the air as the ville

dwellers charged, those in front firing their blasters at the sec men.

For a first front-line assault, it was a good result— five sec men hit the

ground, chilled or about to catch the last train west, shells from the

large-caliber rifles or shot from the scatterguns riddling their bodies.

Two of the sec men were chilled by their own people. Hearing the yell and the

roar of blasterfire from behind them, the men next to them had turned while

still firing, cutting their own men to shreds.

“Spread out… Lay down a suppressing fire… Chill the fuckers!” Murphy yelled,

panicking as the unexpected action left his mind racing. He had no idea what to

do. Nothing in the manual or regs covered this. Nothing he had ever experienced,

or had been passed down from his forebears, had prepared him for such an action.

He reloaded rapidly, fumbling in his terror as he sped toward the wags, right

toward the angry mob of ville dwellers. Looking up, stumbling across the earth,

he was sure he saw the albino bastard’s white hair and flashing red eyes appear

in the crowd.

“No blasters,” Jak yelled, “too close. Hand to hand.”

Leading by example, one of the leaf-bladed knives left his hand, flashing

through the hot, tense air and hitting a sec man beneath the eye, chipping the

bone beneath the socket and deflecting upward to lodge behind the eyeball and

into the brain. The ruptured eyeball spilled down his cheek as he hit the earth.

Murphy’s men didn’t eschew the use of blasters. They still tried to fire into

the crowds. It was bloody and wasteful. Although several ville dwellers were

chilled or injured as the shells ripped into them, the spray of fire also took

out three more of their own men.

“Cease fire! Retreat!”

Murphy’s voice penetrated the noise, a high, keening, hysterical edge to his

yell. He was frightened beyond any capacity for tactical thinking. He just

wanted to get the hell out of there.

That was okay by his men. Eleven of the twenty-four were down, nearly half the

force wiped out. Two of the drivers were amongst those chilled, which meant that

only two of the wags could return.

Some of the ville dwellers pursued the sec men as they piled into the wags, but

most remembered that part of the plan was to let them escape if possible.

Because they were the way into the redoubt, even though they didn’t know it.

Dean, looking desperately around, caught sight of the ruined shack. “Hot pipe!

Dad!” he yelled, running toward it while keeping himself covered.

RYAN HAD MADE IT almost to the back of the shack, and the safety of the open

doorway, when a sheet of corrugated iron had fallen from the wall and pinned

him. It didn’t have enough force in it to knock him out, but it did slow him

down. The rusting metal sheet was thick and heavy, but he was glad that the

fates had let it cover him, as he felt the impact of ricochets scream off the

metal. The force was still enough to make him wince as he felt one slug punch

the metal into his kidneys, a wave of hot nausea sweeping through him.

He stayed still for only a moment, allowing the wave to sweep over him and die.

It subsided, and he made a decisive move. The iron lay heavy on him because he’d

been crawling across the room, but it wasn’t so heavy that he was unable to move

at all. Bracing his hands on the dirt floor, feeling the grit and stone

fragments in the dirt bite into his palms, Ryan began to push down, his biceps

straining as they took the whole weight of the sheet. His back ached, the

muscles pulling hard as the weight of the iron was lifted on his back. As he

gained more height, so the weight spread down the line of his body, the muscles

rippling on his torso as they began to relieve his arms and spine of the strain.

His thighs lifted off the dirt, his combat boots biting into the earth floor as