Fast and neat, the group split apart, their pistols and rifles barking a staccato reply. The figure jerked at each deadly impact, but he didn’t fall or drop his weapon. Oddly, neither did he return fire. Then the impossible happened. Without dropping his rifle, the stranger opened both of his hands as if majestically offering a holy benediction and two heavy black balls landed on the carpeting with soft thuds, breaking apart and releasing their slim handles.
Chapter Two
“Grenades!” J.B. yelled, dropping his Uzi and diving toward the black spheres. Landing hard on his stomach, the Armorer punched out hard with both hands. He scored a double hit, and the charges bounded down the hallway, disappearing into the darkness.
“Three!” he yelled, covering his head with both arms.
“Open your mouths!” Mildred added, dropping fast.
“Two!” LB. roared, “One!” Ryan said, closing his eye.
Double explosions blossomed at the end of the hallway, filling the corridor with flame and thunder. Briefly the fireball silhouetted the hanging man, then violent concussions slammed into the group. A searing wave of heat washed over them, closely followed by a rain of broken ceiling tiles and smoking debris. It made Ryan think of an ant in the barrel of a cannon. Somebody cried out in pain, and a rifle discharged.
In rumbling fury, the blast expanded over them and moved down the corridor, smashing lights and slamming aside doors. Glass shattered somewhere, and an alarm began to sound. Partially deafened and battered, Ryan took heart at that. It meant power was still on somewhere in the redoubt, and each passing second brought them closer to safety. He knew a person died in the first few seconds of an explosion or else survived.
Slowly the strident force died away in ragged stages, leaving in its wake a ringing silence with streamers of acidic smoke moving in the air toward the ducts like ghostly fingers.
“Sweet Jesus!” Mildred coughed. “I.. .I’ve had fun before and this isn’t it!”
Rolling onto his back, J.B. sat upright and worked his jaw a few times to try to pop his ears clear. “Yeah. Close one.”
Leaning against the wall, Krysty hawked and spit to clear her throat. “Too damn close!”
“Everybody okay?” Ryan asked, using the rifle to lever himself uptight. Fireblast and hell, he’d felt better after torture.
A ragged chorus answered in the affirmative, then a sudden movement in the smoky darkness caused a wild fusillade of blaster fire.
“Cease firing!” Ryan snapped, shouldering his long blaster. “It’s just the meat. He isn’t alive.”
“Not anymore, you mean,” Dean corrected, removing the spent clip from his Browning and slamming in a fresh one. He stuffed the exhausted clip into a pocket where it rattled against others.
“No, he never was alive,” Mildred said, patting her hands over her body in a quick check for wounds. There were a couple of holes in her shirt, but nothing worse. “Not for us, anyhow.”
Whitish smoke drifting past his pale face, Jak was almost invisible in the dim corridor. “Possum?” He frowned.
“See for yourself,” J.B. said, gesturing. Then he froze and touched his bare head. “Damn!” He turned and started down the corridor, scanning the floor.
Blaster in hand, Jak advanced carefully and pulled a match from a pocket. Striking it on his belt, he studied what remained of the hanging man in the tiny flickering light.
“Dead,” he pronounced solemnly. “For while.” Sharp spikes of rusty metal jutted from a wooden board that pierced the man’s body in a dozen places.
Ryan stepped beside the albino teenager. “Nailed in place.” He craned his neck to see into the smashed ceiling. The other end of the board was screwed to a truck-door hinge attached to the concrete roof. The match sputtered and died, so Jak struck another and lit a candle stub. Doc and Krysty did the same. In the soft glow of the triple flames, the scene lost its ghostly feel and became merely another killzone, as familiar as their own faces.
Nudging a lump of twisted steel and plastic on the floor, Dean bent and lifted the dropped weapon. “M-16 A-i carbine,” he said.
“Good?” Doc asked.