Cursing, Jak fired his .357 Magnum, blowing off the leaves covering the door latch. But try as he might, the hatch couldn’t open. “Jammed! Ivy in the hinges!”
“Why is it attacking?”
“We dropped a building on it!”
Turning in a circle, J.B. sprayed his Uzi in a figure-eight pattern, not sure what to aim at. “How the fuck do you kill a plant this big?”
“Flamethrower” Doc shouted, his pistol holstered, his sword out and moving. The slashing steel blade sliced a clear space around them, but more ivy filled in the spot almost instantly. “We have got to get inside! Use the flamethrower!”
“Dean,” Ryan shouted. “The can!”
The boy lifted the container of fuel in his hand and threw it at the side hatch of Leviathan. The canister was still airborne when Mildred blasted it with her revolver. The fuel detonated, fire spreading over the side of the craft, and the ivy retreated.
Together, the group grabbed the door. Forcing it open, they piled inside and slammed the hatch shut. A single tendril of ivy stabbing for Mildred was cut in two and fell to the floor, quivering.
“Dark night,” J.B. heaved, a thermite gren primed in his left hand, his index finger in the ring. “No wonder nobody has ever looted this place!”
“Not deserted,” Jak agreed, a dark spot on his arm spreading outward, a thin trickle of blood appearing on his wrist.
Crushing the vine under her boot, Mildred grabbed her kit and ripped open the teenager’s shirt. “Just a flesh wound,” she declared. “Nothing senous.
“Poison?” Jak asked, ready for the worst.
She wrapped a white bandage made from a naval officer’s class A uniform around his forearm. “No sign of it,” the physician said, splitting the end with her teeth and tying it off in a fast field dressing. “I’d say you’re clear.”
“Everybody else okay?” Ryan queried, sliding shells into J.B.’s M-4000 scattergun.
“I thought…” Dean started again. “Where’s Krysty?”
Startled, Ryan jerked his head around. One glance told him that she wasn’t in the tank with them. Rushing to a blasterport, the one-eyed man blew away the outside greenery with a single discharge and looked frantically at the alleyway. Ivy was everywhere, thickening by the second like an incoming tide.
“Second floor!” Doc cried, standing at the rooftop periscope.
Ryan turned and found her, dangling from the grip of the mutie plant twenty feet in the air. Her .38 discharged once, pointing at nothing in particular. Then she was hauled over the rooftop and gone.
“Combat positions,” Ryan ordered, striding past his friends and sliding into the driver’s seat. “We’re going after her!”
Nobody spoke. They just obeyed, knowing that seconds counted if they wanted the woman back alive.
Callused hands darting over the controls, Ryan primed the flamethrower pump, set the spray for maximum and hit the switch. It was a design similar to the flamer used by the Trader in War Wag One. Orange hell hosed outward from their roof and the windshield cleared of the plants, giving them a clear view of the rustling green alley. Ryan lowered the angle and washed the craft itself with burning gasoline. Waves of heat flooded in through the blaster-ports, and a thin wavering lance of flame reached inside from the rear louvers, hovering in midair to stretch toward a startled Jak before dying away.
The ivy retreated. Already in gear, the freed Leviathan lurched into motion and started to crawl away at its pitiful top speed.
“Watch for her,” Ryan said, fighting to retain control of the vehicle as it bumped over the mutant plant. “It must be taking her somewhere. When it sets her down, we do a recce and snatch.”
“Sure as hell going to try,” J.B. said, scanning the sky. “But where could it be taking her?”
“And us,” Mildred added softly. She- wondered if the plant wanted just the redhead, or if it was only using her to pull them someplace special. Cheese on a string.
“A rooftop,” Doc said, bare sword in hand. “The heart, head, whatever, of the plant will be on the roof.”
“Plants need sunlight,” Jak agreed.
“But they feed from the roots!”