Backlit by the tell-yous, a head leaned over him. Its long hair and beard were twisted into a corona of greasy spikes. The major caught the glint of the thick goggles that covered the man’s eyes. He saw the black plates of an armor vest and a pair of muscular arms, bare to the shoulders, and covered with a mass of interwoven, dark tattoos.
“Wake up, Lujan,” the man said. “It’s time to die.”
The major recognized the voice. It belonged to Thrill Bill.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ryan leaped through the passenger compartment doors to the street, one hundred yards from the mob surging over the other APC. Unarmed, enraged people hurled themselves against it, first rocking, then overturning the lethal machine. The sight was so awesome, so unexpected that it made him freeze. Then he was struck by an overpowering stench. Not burning plastic, this time. Burning people.
Ryan looked around and saw the swath of slaughter created by the other gunner’s sloppy aim. He had never imagined, not even in his most hideous mat-trans jump dream, that such a battlefield could ever exist. For five hundred yards, there was nothing but mounded dead, a rolling landscape made up of charred body parts, steaming like freshly turned compost. On either side of the arc, there were survivors. People sat on the ground clutching melted faces, and the stumps of scorched-off limbs. Damm and Nara joined him outside the APC. “Oh, fuck,” the mercie gasped as he took in the carnage.
Nara’s eyes widened. In her hand the pulse rifle began to shake uncontrollably.
As a huge crowd began to close in on them from all directions, Ryan raised his own weapon to his hipand prepared to fire. He looked into faces full of fury, faces that didn’t care if they died so long as they got the chance to pull a nice big chunk out of him.
“Ryan, don’t fire,” Nara said. She let the tribarrel slip from her fingers and drop to the concrete. “It’ll only make things worse.”
“Captain’s right,” Damm said.
Ryan wondered how in the name of hell things could get any worse. Going against his gut instinct, he laid down his rifle, too.
Predictably, the mob surged over them at once, kicking and punching. On the other side of the street, there was a loud explosion. Ryan was too busy to pay much attention. He fought back as best he could, returning blows whenever it was possible, managing above all to keep from being pulled to the ground where he could be stomped.
Then somebody in the mass of swinging fists yelled, “It’s him! Stop! It’s him!”
The man standing in front of Ryan was winding up with a four-foot length of metal pipe, preparing to knock his head off his shoulders. The guy held up on the swing, a surprised look spreading over his face. Surprise quickly turned to delight.
“It is him!” the would-be batter cried. He pointed the end of his pipe at the tell-you screen hanging from the ceiling high above them. “Hey, everybody, it’s the Shadow Man!”
Ryan looked up at his own image, magnified hundreds of times.
The people nearest to him turned and started shoving the others back. Damm and Nara were both down on the pavement; the mercie had covered her with his body. Ryan helped them up.
As he did, the crowd began to stomp and chant “Thrill Bill! Thrill Bill! Thrill Bill!”
Down the street, Cawdor could see the mob parting by the overturned APC, parting before a wedge of sec men. A tall, ramrod-straight figure strode behind the wedge. When the man waved his hand, the crowd sent up a deafening wave of cheers. On either side of the tall guy, Ryan could see the tops of black helmets and a bunch more sec men. Two men in armor were being herded along like cattle.
As the tall man came closer, Ryan could make out his features. They didn’t inspire confidence. The spike-haired and spike-bearded guy stopped an arm’s length away. Behind the thick goggles strapped to his head, a pair of hard gray eyes sized up Ryan.
“I didn’t think you were real,” the man said. He reached up and twisted the tip of one of his beard spikes, drawing it into an even tighter point. Then he looked over at Damm and Nara. “You’re running with a bad crowd, Shadow Man. Those two will get you nothing but roasted.”