Armorer and throw itself at him.
Mildred prayed that the howling winds would drown out her footsteps, even though
she ran with as light a step as she could manage. The figure was now on top of
J.B., facing in the opposite direction to her, so at least it couldn’t sight her
as she tried to make ground.
She cursed the bundle of rags for being so shapeless and flowing. There was no
way she could risk a shot as the rags spread out over the prone Armorer, making
it impossible for her to delineate where the attacker ended and J.B. began.
The hissing sounds of low speech reached her ears when she came within range.
Why wasn’t John trying to fight back?
Without breaking stride or pausing for thought, Mildred tossed the ZKR in the
air, catching it by the barrel and preparing to use the butt as a club. As she
came within a few strides, she was sure that the bundle of rags could hear her,
as it seemed to suddenly pause and incline its head.
But Mildred was quicker, bringing the butt crashing down on where she thought
the skull would be located under the rags. She felt some satisfaction as the
slumping figure fell off J.B. He looked up at her like a man waking from sleep.
“What was that about, John?” she asked by way of greeting. The smile on her
face, however, faded quickly as she felt the pricking of a sharpened blade
penetrate through the thick coat on her back and draw a bead of blood in her
lumbar region. The warm blood trickled across and down, mixing with the sudden
cold sweat.
“Drop the blaster, missy. I don’t think Tilly is going to be too happy with you
when she comes around—if you haven’t broke her bastard skull.”
Mildred raised her hands and let her pistol fall to the ground.
She looked at J.B., who was still seemingly dazed, and shrugged.
“Some days you just shouldn’t get up. Am I right?”
KRYSTY STAYED behind the rock, keeping as much of the open space as she could
see through the swirling dust clouds. Through the roar and howl of the storm she
could hear scattered shooting and the yelling of voices. Roughly estimating the
size of the enclave from what she had seen so far, she figured that it wasn’t
that large, which made it all the more frightening that she couldn’t see what
was going on a few yards in front of her. But she had heard Dean’s shouted
exchange with his father, and watched the boy zigzag past her to find cover. She
knew that Ryan was waiting for them at the pass out of the enclave, and wondered
how they would all get to somewhere they couldn’t even see.
Her ears were sharp enough to detect the distances between the different sounds
of blasterfire and movements that she could hear in the enclave. Sharp enough to
tell when someone was running toward her.
Krysty whirled to face the direction of the sound and leveled her blaster.
“It’s me,” Dean whispered as he appeared through the curtain of the storm, his
Browning raised and on the defensive.
“Gaia! I nearly chilled you, Dean,” Krysty replied, dropping the blaster from
its targeted spot over Dean’s chest.
“Had to move quickly. They’re gaining ground on us all the time,” Dean said
breathlessly as he slid in next to her behind the rock. “Dad’s waiting at the
pass, Jak’s gone back to try and find Doc ’cause he’s gone missing. Don’t know
about J.B. or Mildred. This storm is slowing us up.”
Dean reacted with concern when he saw the way that Krysty’s fiery red hair was
moving about, coiling in tendrils about her head, neck and shoulders.
“Something wrong?”
She nodded. “Not sure what. But something other than what we’re prepared for.”
“Murphy’s sec men know this land well—and seeing as they got outside before us,
I reckon it’s not too hard to see how they could get the upper hand on this
terrain. We should expect anything from them.”
Krysty smiled at Dean. He was learning fast, but still hadn’t quite caught up.