the grenade, hunched over it, acting almost like a sandbag. Except a sandbag
would not have hurled gobbets of flesh and bloody entrails all over the place.
The pillar she’d squirreled up had gone and that part of the upper chamber’s
floor now sagged drunkenly to the floor, unsupported. Other pillars nearby
looked about ready to collapse, and she glanced up at the roof fearfully; it
seemed safe enough from what she could see through the dust and the gloom. Steel
splinters from the blast had flayed the surrounding area, scoring the wooden
walls, tearing the table apart. Heads now lay about the floor in macabre
confusion. Miraculously, none of the windows had blown.
She thought, I’ve got to get out, got to get out.
She wondered why no one had burst in on her from outside after the explosion.
Where in nukeshit were Scale and the second sticky?
Among the mess she spotted the first mag, the one she’d dropped, and hastily
bent to pick it up. As she did so she was dimly aware of sounds from outside:
the muffled roar of engines, accelerating; the stammer of automatic fire and the
heavier punch of MGs; shrill cries of panic. Suddenly she could smell smoke.
Confused, she stood up and glanced to her right and saw that something was
burning under the sagging floor of the upper chamber. Delayed action from the
grenade blast. Had to be. Even as she watched, a tongue of flame caught a rotten
plank and leaped up it, gathering strength as it gathered height. In two seconds
or less, the single flame had become a leaping wash of fire, greedily engulfing
the tinder-dry beams, soaring toward the roof. Dense, white smoke, caught by
drafts, billowed around, mushrooming upward. Shadows trembled, became distorted
by the lurid glare of the flames. The smoke caught her and buried her in a
swirling fog, the acrid fumes choking her.
She bent again, groping for the mag, her right hand that held the SMG thrusting
outward as she stooped. She grasped the curved shape of the magazine, but the
H&K 9 mm was snatched from her hand.
She sprang upright, swung around.
Screamed.
The second sticky was only a rancid breath away from her, starkly outlined
against the blaze, its eyes glittering.
She flung the mag at its face, sobbing with terror.
And the door to the barn burst open with a thunderous crash.
Krysty caught sight of a tall man, black garbed, dark haired, an autorifle in
his hands. The man had stormed through the doorway and now the sticky turned and
moved with astonishing, horrifying speed, dropping the H&K and leaping for the
newcomer.
The man fired a 3-round burst, but was off balance from the follow-through jump
after kicking in the door. The slugs burned air, hammered the wall opposite. The
sticky flew at him, enveloped him, both figures crashing to the floor close to
the blaze that had volcanoed monstrously from the open door’s in-draft.
Blazing timbers crashed down to the garbage-strewn floor, which caught in
seconds, flames leaking everywhere. The heat was corrosive, clawing at exposed
skin.
For what seemed long moments Krysty stood like a statue, her green eyes taking
in the struggling figures as they rolled and jerked on the floor. The sticky had
suckers to the tall man’s face, was pulling its arm back, the face seeming
almost to expand outward. Hoarse cries mingled with the thunder of the flames as
they eagerly devoured the timber beams and tarred roof.
Krysty came out of her trance and grabbed up the fallen mag and the dropped SMG.
She felt calm now, completely in control of herself. Perfectly in control of
events. She slipped the mag up into the Heckler & Koch and moved across the
struggling pair, her hands working the gun.
She went around to one side, deliberately pushed the stubby barrel of the SMG
toward the mouthless face of the sticky and squeezed off a controlled 3-round
burst. The slugs tore through flesh and bone, smacking the head sideways even as
they punched it apart in a greasy explosion of brains and glutinous blood. She
fired another burst at the neck, this time uncontrolled, and the bullets tore