James Axler – Stoneface

The campsite was screaming, bloody chaos. Blasters blasted, lances lanced, knives sank into flesh and skulls were split with gun butts. The sec men were finally fighting back now that they were overrun, and they shot, slashed and clubbed.

He saw Jak use a snapping right-arm toss to bury one of his leaf-bladed throwing knives into the breastbone of a Sioux, before smoothly pivoting on one heel. With a blade held in his left hand, he expertly slashed the throat of another attacker.

Doc shot a warrior who was drawing a bead on Mildred, and the big .44-caliber round knocked the man backward into the side of the AMAC, splashing the armor plating with a wet scarlet pattern.

J.B. let loose with the Uzi, the rapid-fire slugs smashing the faces and upper bodies of two Indians, twisting them off their feet, their arms waving in crazy floppings.

Mildred picked and chose her targets methodically, aiming for an extremity whenever possible. At one juncture, her ZKR target revolver shot the rifle out of a warrior’s hands, causing no more damage than temporarily numbing his fingers. Of course, an instant later her humanitarian impulse was ruined by a sec man who blew the Sioux’s chest out with a controlled burst from an SA-80.

A series of fat pops ! reverberated through the air. Four cylinders spewing plumes of white smoke sprang from the launch tubes atop the AMAC and bounced across the battleground. The cylinders rolled and hissed, and almost immediately the campsite was engulfed by blinding clouds of vapor. Shrieks of surprise came in the wake of the grenades.

War cries, yells of pain and shouted obscenities became incomprehensible as the gas was inhaled by the combatants. The smoke seared eyes, lungs, nostrils and bare flesh, and the warring parties staggered around the killing ground, groping for whiffs of fresh air, not for each other.

Ryan crouched, trying to get beneath the clouds of gas. He inhaled some of it, and for a moment he gagged himself blind. Through the jiggling, burning water in his eye, he caught glimpses of shapes moving through the billowing chemical vapors.

The Indians seemed to be engaged in a slow, stubborn retreat back toward the shadows, hoping to melt into the night. They were obviously unwilling to give up the struggle despite the heavy losses they had incurred and the fact that they were all but incapacitated by the gas. Almost everyone was coughing, weeping and gagging. Here and there came the choking gasps of people vomiting.

Ryan heard a female cry of pain from behind him and the thud of a body hitting the ground. He feared opening his mouth to call out for Krysty, so he moved as quickly as he dared in the direction of the cry. Blinking hard, trying to focus through the fiery blur of his vision, through a part in the swirling vapors, he saw two figures at the far edge of the campsite.

For a heart-stopping instant, he thought it was Krysty facedown on the ground, but after he knuckled his eye, he saw a thin Sioux warrior kneeling on Fleur’s back. One hand was tangled in the long mahogany fall of her hair. He was pulling her head up and back, exposing the white column of her throat to the knife he gripped in one fist.

Ryan sprinted toward them, firing the SIG-Sauer’s remaining four rounds so rapidly the shots were a single solid sound. The warrior sprang from the woman’s body and into the shadows. Because his eye was blurry and leaking tears, Ryan wasn’t sure if the Indian had been knocked away by the 9 mm slugs or if he’d simply jumped.

Standing over Fleur, he reached down to help her up by one arm. She raked the hair out of her dirt-streaked face and looked up at him in astonishment.

“You helped me?” Her voice held an incredulous note.

“Actually I saved you,” Ryan said. He sucked in a lungful of untainted air. “Are you all right?”

Before she could answer, a bare arm darted from the darkness, hooked around Ryan’s neck and jerked him backward. Instead of resisting the force, Ryan kicked himself off the ground, throwing his full weight against the body behind him.