Squeezing some more until he was sure the man was dead and not trying a trick, Harold laid the corpse on a filthy bunk in the corner and covered him with a thin blanket. Now drawing the .44 AutoMag from his holster, Harold started up the dank wooden stairs to the first floor of the brothel, his face an inhuman mask carved from ice.
Let the storm rage and thunder outside—this was his wedding day.
Chapter Twenty
Digging in their heels and shouldering the door to the shoe store open, Ryan and Krysty burst onto the street. Instantly, the wind slammed the door shut, shattering the glass. The sandstorm invaded the shop ruthlessly, overturning displays and sending shoes flying madly about in a whirlwind. Sacrosanct for a century, it was now just another dead store amid the crumbling predark city.
Hunching over to walk against the fierce gusts, the companions started toward the destroyed skyscraper. The once mighty edifice had been reduced to a mere ironwork skeleton from the fires, but it still served as a landmark to direct them through the madness to the tunnel.
Thunder rumbled in the murky sky as the quieting sandstorm still raged over the ruins, the winds howling along the barren streets, driving the sand before it with pounding fury. The windows of the buildings shook, and loose debris flashed by to disappear into the maelstrom. More than once, they found a dried splotch on a wall, marking where a lizard had braved the storm and had abruptly become part of the landscape.
The pair was completely wrapped in strips of cloth bleached to mottled colors to help blend into the storm. Desert camouflage. Their right hands were swaddled in lumpy balls of oily cloth. Even their faces were hidden behind overlapping layers, only their eyes showing through the narrowest of slits.
The wind noticeably lessened as they moved to the lee of a bowling alley, and Ryan and Krysty paused to examine a dead man embedded in the ground, his mouth packed solid with sand. The body was flayed to bones in spots from abrasion, and a smashed muzzle-loader that lay nearby showed he was from Alphaville. Tightening their own masks, the pair moved on.
Suddenly, there was a tremendous crack and a billboard flew by overhead, tumbling end over end as the winds tore it apart. As if renewed by the destruction, the storm rose in power until the whole world seemed on the verge of shattering. The pair was forced flat against the wall, helpless to take a step in any direction. Then the winds diminished, dropping to a soft breeze. The lightning and thunder also eased, then died away completely. For a few moments, the companions stood listening to the blood pound in their ears as they adjusted to the unexpected silence. Then the tempest returned, but not as strong as before.
“Almost over,” Ryan shouted, using a knuckle to rub the windblown grit from his eye.
“Too fast!” Krysty replied. “We need another hour!”
“We aren’t getting it! Better hurry.”
A single strand of her fiery hair flying free, Krysty gestured onward with her cloth-wrapped hand when a figure walked around the corner of the building. The man was dressed in military fatigues, with a handkerchief covering his mouth and an M-16 assault rifle in his grip.
Instantly, Ryan raised his swaddled hand and fired, the silenced SIG-Sauer coughing once inside the big shoe box, the rags outside muffling the noise to almost inaudible. But the wind shifted his aim and the sec man staggered, only wounded in the shoulder.
Snarling in pain, he pointed the M-16 and savagely pulled the trigger to no results. The dirty autofire was hopelessly jammed. Lunging forward, Krysty stabbed the sec man with the stiletto knife in her free hand. Dropping the blaster, the sec man fell backward clutching his gushing throat.
Kneeling, Ryan finished him with a slash of the panga. Reloading their blasters was impossible until out of the storm, so every bullet counted. Which meant no mercy shots for the merely dying. Checking the body for any explosives, Krysty found none and the companions moved away from the site.
“Fireblast, we better watch that wind shear,” Ryan cursed, lowering his arm so the hot shell rolling about in the shoe box didn’t rest on his bare skin. “I almost chilled the both of us with that.”