Coldly, the others turned their blasters on the latest victim as he was lifted thrashing into the sky. Pistol shots sounded from above, then screams, and then limbs started to fall, closely followed by a bloody torso.
“Get inside!” Wu-Lang screamed, feeling sick to his stomach.
Rifle over his shoulder, Baldy was already tugging on the handle with both hands. “The door’s stuck! No, I got it!”
With those words, the door silently swung open and Baldy was dragged inside, the closing door nipping off his fingers as the screaming man desperately clawed at the jamb to stay out of the killing darkness.
Firing their machine guns wildly, the handful of survivors formed a rough circle, keeping their backs tight against one another. It was a plan forged by instincts created by a million years of plains apes learning how to counter a charge by the savage jungle cats.
“They ain’t getting us from behind now!” Brian shouted triumphantly over the booming of his shotgun. “Head for the ammo boxes! We’ll chill these fuckers yet!”
As they awkwardly scuttled off, a spatter of rain hit the ground exactly where the group had been standing seconds earlier, the asphalt sizzling from contact with the moisture. In stark comprehension, Wu-Lang understood what was happening and cast aside his blaster to frantically run for his life.
“Gutless coward!” Brian spit, training his shotgun on the retreating man.
Soft rain parted down, coating on their hands and faces. Shrill screams of hideous torment sounded as the coldhearts clawed at their dissolving faces while the dark shapes moved among them slashing throats. Moments later, there was nothing alive in the parking lot.
The only sounds were the hiss and crackle of the dying embers in the campfire.
Then the echo of running boots sounded from the streets of the ancient city, and the stars winked out as something very large eclipsed the heavens, moving to the sound of snapping canvas.
Chapter Ten
Crackling torches dotted the streets of the ville in reddish light, the illumination reflecting off the honeycombed glass of the many greenhouses. The streets were deserted with every door closed, every window bolted shut, only the murmur of soft voices coining from inside the lower levels of the intact buildings and from underneath the gutted ruins. Beyond the pile of smashed vehicles composing the great wall, sec men watched the sky with blasters in hand as the scintillating beams of the searchlights swept the cloudy sky, endlessly searching for an enemy that would attack without notice. In the far distance, a wolf howled in agony for a lost mate. Cursing under their breaths, grim sec men moved closer to the lights and made sure their weapons were ready for combat.
Cutting through the alleyway between the market place and a partly built greenhouse, Leonard Strichland strode purposefully across the dark plaza heading toward the bright lanterns of the baron’s palace. After the revolution, the open area before the converted museum had been painstakingly cleared of structures so that the defenders inside would have a clear field of fire against any attackers. Leonard considered that a practical idea. If the old baron had thought of such things—indeed, if the despot had considered anything other than harshly disciplining his people—then the man might still be in charge of Alphaville instead of a chained prisoner in the dank basement of his former home.
The walls of the predark museum soared twenty yards into the sky, a louvered expanse of granite strips interlocking into a solid homogeneous whole of amazing strength. No windows marred the three sides of the predark structure. The entire front had once been a window, but the new baron had bricked up the vulnerable area, both inside and out, giving it a relative stability almost equal to the granite sides. On the roof, sec men steadily patrolled the perimeter of the building, bolt-action longblasters held at quarter-arms.
Secretly, Leonard knew there were also small kegs of black powder with homemade fuses in a locked munitions box up there to drop on invaders. Any attacking force would be met with fierce opposition. Born and bred on the dirty streets of Alphaville, Baron Gunther Strichland didn’t make the same mistakes as his dethroned predecessor.