Feed. Ryan felt ice fill his veins, but forced the word out of his head. Thoughts like that would only muddle his thinking. This was a time for quick action. He could consider the danger later, after he had her back safe and sound.
“What’s our missile status?” Mildred asked, sliding into the front gunner’s chair and hitting switches.
“None,” Doc replied, loading a fresh belt of shells into the Vulcan 40 mm cannon. “We have several of the LAWs left, but they’re armor piercing. No napalm or AP rounds.”
“Useless against this,” Mildred stormed.
Pumping the clutch and working the choke, Ryan maneuvered Leviathan past the roof of the toppled building lying shattered in the street. “What about the 75s?” he asked, putting a burst of flame before them. The wiggling ivy crisped into ash, the rest fleeing to a safe distance. For a while.
“Willy Peter and AP both.”
“Excellent.”
Dean was confused, then remembered Willy Peter was oldtalk for white phosphorus. The chemical burned at a thousand degrees and water only made it hotter. Killed nearly anything.
“Fuel level?” Ryan demanded. The building on the corner over which Krysty had disappeared was a clothing store with something unreadable on sale for half price. A flexible iron grating covered the big windows as protection against thieves in the night. Unfortunately, Ryan wasn’t sure the slow-moving tank could get through any of those.
“Half full,” Mildred answered, checking a dial. “Goddamn flamethrower eats gas like crazy.”
“You kill, we’ll fill,” J.B. told her, unscrewing the internal feeder pipe to the gasoline tanks. Without being asked, Dean arrived with two of the twenty-gallon cans from the lockers.
“Reg or condensed?”
“One of each.”
“Hot damn. Any more?”
“Six or so.”
“Keep them coming!”
A soft blastershot sounded from their left.
Moving along the littered streets, Leviathan rolled over lumps and assorted junk, crushing everything underneath them. Vines shot out at crazy angles, the slim tendrils going through the iron grid to lash at the windows. But the resilient glass stopped any further invasion. Ryan gave them a touch of flame, and the killer leaves retreated.
Another shot, softer than the others.
“Everybody quiet!” Ryan ordered, killing the engines.
Silence reigned, except for the soft rustling of the mutie plant all around them. There was another gunshot and the shattering of glass.
“There!” Mildred shouted, pointing. “Seems to be coming from that furniture store by the vacant lot!” The yard was strewed with ancient wreckage and assorted rubbish completely unidentifiable.
“A furniture store?” Dean asked, lugging over two more cans.
“The second mistake,” Ryan growled fiercely. “J.B., prep a satchel charge, the biggest you have. Set it for five minutes.”
“Can do. Diversion?”
“Yeah. A furniture store means a loading dock big enough for Leviathan to get through to the cellar.”
“Cellar?” Dean queried, pausing in emptying an-other gas can into the access pipe.
“That’s where plants feed,” Ryan reminded him grimly. “The roots.”
Ramming a timing pencil into a block of C-4, J.B. tied shut the canvas sack full of plastique and moved to the roof hatch. Cradling his hurt arm, Jak was there, the locking bolt already thrown.
“Throw!” Jak shouted, as the tank lurched to the right and started into an ivy-infested alley.
Flames washed over the craft once more and as they went into the alley, Doc flipped back the hatch and J.B. heaved out the satchel. But as quickly as Jak slammed shut the hatch again, a dozen vines wiggled in and struck out at anything near them. Boots and knives finished off the invaders.
“Hellhounds, robot tanks, killer ivy.” J.B. cursed, crushing a vine as if it were a cigarette butt. “Damn the day we ever opened that redoubt!”
“A Pandora’s box for sure,” Doc said, skewering a vine and splitting it lengthwise. “But as with the Grecian myth, we still have hope.”
“And blasters.”
“There it is,” Ryan said, trying not to shout his impatience over the sluggish advance of their craft. He could outwalk this bastard thing going uphill! A wooden gate barring the end of the alley offered no resistance. Relentlessly, he drove the tank straight through a heap of bones and bent motorcycles piled toward the rear of the store.