James Axler – Stoneface

“A baby-sized Lincoln Memorial,” Mildred said. “Appropriate in kind of a sick way.”

Both of them jumped to the roof of the miniature memorial and clambered down to the floor. They walked carefully down Pennsylvania Avenue, looking for any movements or signs of life, straining their ears and eyes. The sound of their footsteps echoed unnaturally loud. Evidently the “city” wasn’t equipped with the sound-absorbent shielding of the storage level.

“You know,” Mildred whispered, “if I could have imagined a place that had become a refuge for survivors of the nukecaust, trying to evade death and retain some semblance of their former lives, this would be the place.”

The ceiling was fairly high, perhaps fifty or more feet, tapering upward to armatures holding electric light fixtures. Very few of the buildings were more than six feet tall, and Ryan and Mildred felt uneasy striding among them like giants.

Ryan had only seen pictures of America’s capital city, and walking through a toy version of it disturbed him for reasons he couldn’t identify. Mildred, of course, had visited D.C. before sky dark and remembered it well.

” ‘There were giants in the earth in those days,’ ” Mildred muttered, bending down to peer into the windows of a building.

“Don’t you start. One of the reasons I accepted this job from Hellstrom was the prospect of getting away from Doc and his flashblasted quotes.”

“Sorry,” Mildred said. “It’s only natural for the child of a preacher to quote scripture. Besides, if Doc was with us, he’d be talking some obscure shit about Gulliver and Lilliput.”

The room containing the city was so long that its far end was indistinguishable in the shadows. There didn’t seem to be any doors or any way out. Suddenly Ryan felt the fine hairs on his nape lift.

The cold, still air blazed with automatic gunfire. Bullets smacked into a building beside them, digging white pockmarks in the brickwork, shards scattering in every direction. Ryan and Mildred responded instantly, in lunging rushes for cover on opposite sides of the avenue.

Men in business suits, brandishing handblasters and autorifles, bounded toward them from all directions. Ducking behind a four-foot-high office building, Ryan fired the Walther MPL in a stuttering spray. He heard ricochets, screams and curses, and the snapping snarl of Mildred’s MP-5.

A machine gun was unlimbered. The chatter of the weapon was amplified, and echoes of the rapid reports were sent booming back and forth. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan glimpsed a shadowy shape and heard automatic fire. He flung his body to one side as a shower of rock chips swept against him.

He saw the man running toward him between two buildings, an autoblaster spitting flame, lead and noise, held at waist level. The Walther loosed three rounds and the man flipped backward, his chest blown out.

Another stream of autofire chewed the air over his head. Ryan tried to press his body into the building as the slugs stitched a red-hot path against the opposite wall of his refuge. Cordite smoke and pulverized stone filled the air.

Suddenly the autoblaster fire stopped. Ryan didn’t wait and wonder why. He sprang away from the office building, holding down the Walther’s trigger.

Only one man was out in the open, about thirty feet away. He was holding a small skeletal weapon Ryan recognized as a SIG-AMT autocarbine. He seemed to be having difficulty with its breech system, which Ryan, from prior unpleasant experience with the gun, could have guessed. The man saw him and swung the eighteen-inch barrel in a semicircle, trying to catch up with Ryan’s sidewise lunge. Three rounds from the Walther broke his head apart before he managed to get his blaster operational again.

Ryan didn’t see him drop. He was too occupied with angling his body toward a collection of several buildings and avoiding more slugs that burned the air all around him. Reaching the cover, he drew the SIG-Sauer and put it next to him while he popped a fresh clip into the MPL.

He didn’t see Mildred, so he thumbed the transmit stud on the transceiver in his pocket. “Mildred, where are you?”

“About forty feet to your right,” came the crisp response. “You made a head count yet?”