Egregious watched as Spadecrawler stumbled through the fluttering, interlacing rays. He might as well have fallen into a web of band saws. Bloodlessly, he sizzled and came apart.
The light show lasted for a second or two at most. As if on cue, all the spheres dropped back to the ground and were still.
Egregious stood rooted to the earth, barely daring to breathe. Spadecrawler lay chopped into hundreds of pieces on the path in front of him. Even though he knew damn well the mines were on the ground around what was left of the man, he couldn’t pick them out from the other rocks. He also knew if he didn’t figure an escape plan, and quick, he was going to be down there in pieces, too. The only jump-up mines he’d ever seen had had trip-wire triggers. Assuming these chirping bastards were no different, the way he’d come in was clear; if he could just retrace his path, he’d be safe.
But these mines were different. There was nothing so crude as a trip wire. And some were set to go off at second, third or fourth contact, instead of the first. Egregious took one step backward, and it was his last.
As rattraps clattered shut all around him, and the triple-deadly, spinning spheres jumped up, he managed to get one word out.
“Shit!”
And it hung in the air longer than he did.
CROUCHED BEHIND A PILE of rubble about one hundred yards from the mutie camp on Main Street, Gore did a quick inventory through the Steyr’s scope.
And he liked what he saw.
By itself, the fully functional, all-terrain vehicle would bring enough jack to spell easy retirement for a cannie with late-stage oozies. No longer would the Right Reverend have to hunt down his own dinner. After today, he could afford to buy his meat, have it brought in live and on the hoof.
He put the cross wires on one of the armored figures. The scope had a built-in range finderdistance could be estimated by fitting the target between the horizontal marks, which were calibrated to the height of an average man at ranges from 100 to 800 meters. At the distance indicated by the finder, the Steyr’s 7.62 mm x 51 round was a flat-shooting son of a bitch.
The muties did have a slight numerical advantage, but Gore was counting on the longblaster to change that in a hurry. The scrounger’s story about firing squads of Moonboy’s finest failing to drop these muties, even if true, didn’t really concern him. After all, there was a huge difference in muzzle velocities and knockdown powerbetween black-powder pistol balls and a slug fired from a metal-cased, military rifle cartridge. Gore figured that head shots with 173-grain, M-118 boattails would open up the backs of those greasy black helmets as if they were paper bags full of mashed yams.
Because of the view angle he had, which was straight up the street, Gore couldn’t see where Egregious and Spadecrawler were hiding, but he had a perfect view of Giggly Jane as she sidled, jaybird naked, down the other end of Main. When all five muties turned to look at her, he had the jump on them, and he took it.
The Steyr bucked hard against his shoulder. He rode the rifle’s recoil wave, immediately bringing the scope back on target. The shot was a clean miss! He marked the dirt puff, wide to the right. Cursing, he ejected the hull and chambered another round. Lucky for him, the triple-stupe muties were just standing there, like they didn’t get the picture. He was about to give it to them, in full color. Snugging the rifle tight to his shoulder, Gore adjusted his aim point for the degree of miss and fired again.
On the other side of his target, the bullet kicked up dirt.
Gore looked at his trigger hand. It wasn’t shaking. It was rock steady. And there was no wind to push the bullets off track. Something had to be wrong with the scope’s zero. Maybe the tube got bumped. Glad to see that the muties still hadn’t moved, Gore halved the distance of the last miss and squeezed off another shot.