creature’s fingers caught the heavy object and held it, almost as though the box
had suddenly become a part of it, a clublike extension of its arms. It swung the
box and smashed it into Scale, slamming him over into a stack of crates, which
swayed, teetered, crashed to the ground.
That saved Scale. The crates rolled and tumbled, some splitting open and sending
cans of food spraying out. The sticky blundered into the avalanche and was
hammered off balance, going down under what for a normal being would have been a
bone-crushing weight of tins. Scale scrambled up and darted to one side, then
disappeared down the long storehouse toward the far end.
Krysty, her mouth dry with fear, risked another glance upward. Another sticky
was bounding along the wall, high up, like a crazed spider, hand over hand, its
long arms supporting its weight with only an occasional kick with its suckered
toes to keep balance. Both creatures were naked save for tattered pants. The
sticky made it to the upper chamber and vanished into the gloom.
Breathing a prayer, the red-haired young woman closed her eyes again.
Concentrating, she let her mind do the work, let it dive into itself so that the
light within increased even as her focus became smaller and smaller. Her ankles
were now free from her outstanding new strength, her magic, and she could run
for it, but her wrists were still tied and without the use of these she might
just as well be hobbled again. All she wanted were a few seconds, just a few.
She felt the familiar lightness in her head, a feeling like that of bare
electric wires of almost no voltage brushing her wrists.
This was power. Woman power in earth: the mind as place. This was strength over
material things, a power so strong and so centered in one place that it
commanded all it touched. But she wanted desperately to open her eyes, to check
for new threats, new horrors that might even now be looming over her. It seemed
to her, in the power state, that she had been in a totally vulnerable position
for literally minutes on end.
Then she got up, her hands free though her wrists throbbed, the torn cords
falling away, her eyes darting to the pyramid of cans so very close to her.
Nothing stirred. She could hear no sounds from the other side of the barn. She
put her legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge for a few seconds
breathing in deeply, oblivious of the general stench of the place. She got to
her feet, shakily. She was still wearing her boots but her jump suit was in
shreds, ripped and torn from breasts to knees. It looked like an animal had been
at it, which was pretty much the truth. Glancing down, she saw streaks of blood
staining the insides of her thighs and was aware of the dull ache in her womb.
She gathered up what remained of her panties—flimsy shreds of cotton—and screwed
up one strip. Squatting, she inserted it deftly into herself as a makeshift
tampon. Then, still breathing quickly and managing to control the shivering fit
that threatened, she hurried across the room to the open box of grenades.
She grabbed four, stuffing three of them into various untorn pockets, keeping
the fourth in one hand. She backtracked to where five automatic rifles leaned
against the outer wall, and selected one. No mag. She cursed, picked up another.
Same again. Desperately she picked up the remaining three. None had mags. She
stared around. This was insane. There was an MG lying on the floor, but she
wasn’t sure she’d be able to control the kickback on that. There were many more
rifles but she could see now that all were empty. Then she noticed that one of
the crates had burst open, revealing mags aplenty. They didn’t seem to be
greased and factory fresh, but had been piled in willy-nilly, all kinds, all
types, straight, banana, long curve, short curve. More loot from a land wag
train. Her eyes flicked at the leaning row of rifles and SMGs and she picked out