James Axler – Trader Redux

“Bastard!” she spat. She gathered her strength and breath, and yelled out once more for the sec men.

Ryan stooped and picked up the can of oil, twisted the cap off and splattered it all over the woman, drenching her from head to toe.

Trader had managed to get in a good right cross to Cissie’s jaw as her attention was distracted and she staggered sideways, waving her dimpled arms for balance.

“Door!” Ryan yelled, seeing it start to open.

He moved quickly toward the windows onto the balcony, snatching up another of the lamps as he did so, knocking the glass chimney off with his left hand.

His attention was focused on the surviving daughter of the ville, who was standing staring at him, like a fighting bull about to charge.

“Come on, bitch,” he growled.

Three frightened young sec men stood behind her, jostling together for mutual courage, holding their blasters in nervous hands.

A maddened two-fifty-pound woman was out of the ordinary for Trader to handle, but the trio of guards was easy meat and drink to him.

He broke the nose of one of them with a fierce blow from the side of his hand, hitting the youth so hard that the nose was pulped and shards of needle-sharp bone were driven deep into the cavity behind it. Already dying, the sec man dropped his single-shot carbine.

By then Trader had, almost casually, snapped the wrist of the second guard, making him lose his grip on a rebuilt .32-caliber automatic. As the older man wrenched at the shattered radius and ulna, the agonizing pain made the sentry pass out.

The third man was panicked by the speed and efficiency of the attack and freaked by the sight of the woman’s corpse on the floor. He snatched at the trigger of his revolver, sending a bullet into the plaster of the ceiling.

Trader kicked the man behind the knee, bringing him down, then struck him once just below the ear with his right fist, sending him into the dark.

Ryan was vaguely aware of the skillful mayhem being carried out on the far side of the room, but his attention was still centered on Cissie.

She seemed oblivious to the way that the balance of power had tilted away from her. The woman didn’t even seem aware that her younger sister lay dead on the stained carpet, and she ignored the rancid lamp oil that dripped down her legs, gathering in a limpid pool around her polished boots.

“You’re dead,” she grated, spreading her arms wide and running at Ryan, where he stood with his back to the balcony.

“No, you are.”

Ryan threw the lamp straight at the woman, striking her across her sagging breasts. The flame caught the oil, and she blossomed into red-orange fire.

For a heart-stopping moment, Ryan made a catastrophic error. He was hypnotized by the success of his plan, seeing her hair burst into flaring light, her chubby cheeks blistering. Despite her agony, Cissie was still determined on revenge, lunging toward the one-eyed man, trying to clasp him to her, so that he could share her burning doom.

Only at the last nanosecond did he realize his danger, and he dived to his right. He felt her hands brush against him, the sudden warmth of her passing. As he rolled up into a crouch, he saw the woman, unable to stop her murderous charge, reach the balcony beyond the bedroom.

There was the dry splintering sound of breaking wood, and Cissie was gone from their sight, leaving a trail of flames across the room, the curtains already ablaze, one of the beds starting to burn.

Trader rushed with him to peer out into the blackness, careful not to step onto what had been the hand-hewn balcony. Both men saw the falling star, trailing silver fire like a blazing comet, plummeting the nun-dreds upon hundreds of feet toward the distant, invisible river.

“There she goes, Ryan.”

“Time for us to go, too. Noise’ll attract some interest any moment.”

“Yeah.” Trader picked up the automatic and put bullets through the skulls of the two unconscious sec men, moving back as their heads bounced off the floor with the impact of the .32s. He ignored the one with the broken nose, who was clearly already sinking into his death throes.