Instead she yelled, “Hey! There’s anyone up there, I wanna talk! Ryan’s got a
booby on him, ready to blow!”
Koll muttered, “It’s original.”
There was silence. Koll licked his lips, stared at the back of Hunaker’s head,
at the green hair cropped short and tight. He glanced at Samantha, locked eyes
with the black girl for a couple of seconds, raised an eyebrow. Sam leaned back
against the wall and clasped her hands together in front of her. Koll noticed
that she began twining her fingers restlessly. J.B. stared at the opposite wall.
As usual, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
“Hey!” yelled Hunaker. “This is for real!”
More silence, then Samantha nodded and said, “Yeah, they’re coming.”
To Koll and the others there was more silence, then at last they heard bootsteps
ringing hollowly far off.
A voice shouted, “Shut the fuck up, bitch, or you get hurt bad!”
Shaking his head, Koll murmured, “Uninspired. We already know that.”
Hunaker said loudly, “I got something on Ryan. Strasser don’t know it.”
They could hear voices raised in argument, but there was no definition to the
sound. Then the ringing of boots came closer, two sets, clattering down the
concrete steps. Hunaker moved away from the bars. The sec man came nearer. The
man called Ferd was in front, and behind him the guy Krysty had kicked, who had
not had a wash and brush-up in the interim.
He was saying, “If there’s some kind of fuck-up and Strasser finds out we knew
about it all along he’ll have us eaten.”
Ferd said coldly, “You just be ready ta shoot the shit outta these monkeys. I
don’t trust ’em.”
The man with the red-smeared mouth cautiously peered into the cell from the
side. He gulped, moved around so he could get a better view, his eyes flickering
to the right and taking in the slumped figures on the floor. In the split second
he took in this part of the scene, he noted that although he could see both the
blond guy’s hands, he couldn’t see those of the man called Dix, who appeared to
be lying on them in a hunched kind of way. But this didn’t seem to be in any way
significant, so his gaze whipped back to where the green-haired young woman was
lounging against the wall, her head back, her eyes half closed, her lips parted.
She was breathing heavily. One hand held her shirt up and the man with the
bloody mouth could see her right breast. The other breast was half hidden
beneath the busy lips of the black girl who was leaning across her from the
side.
The sec man swallowed again. Ferd shoved him aside and snapped, “Lemme see.” He,
too, stared in, but his face was darkening as he watched. He was marginally less
stupid than the man with the bloody mouth and tended not to take everything at
face value.
He snarled, “It’s crap. There’s something up.” He shouted, “Hey, you!”
Hunaker dropped her head, smiled sweetly and said, “I can’t hear you very well.
I’m wearing earplugs.”
This was so bizarre that Ferd’s mouth dropped open and he said, “I don’t…”
But that was all he did say that was understandable because a vicious cracking
blast drowned him out. For a microsecond the steel door was haloed in orange
flash fire before it erupted outward, slamming the two men back as it bowled
across the passageway, clanging against the opposite wall. The man with the red
mouth was punched against the wall, the back of his head cracking open like an
egg, his brains spilling out like yolk down the concrete. The man called Ferd
was dead already, the steel door having pulverized his face into a scarlet pulp
as it smashed into him, and such was the force of the blast that he sailed
backward with the door as though he were glued to it. His skull, too, hammered
against the wall and fractured-at the top, so that blood and brain fluid
geysered in a pinkish spout. Bones in both men’s bodies split and shattered as
they were hurled against the concrete. The door banged down onto the floor, half