with bottles on it.
Ryan snarled, “Shit!” and two-rounded him. It was the only thing he could do.
The guy flew backward through the door and the tray crashed to the floor, glass
shattering. There was a shout from the room beyond, more of surprise then alarm,
but already Hun was flying down the passage, her boots almost not touching down,
her short loose coat billowing out behind her like bat’s wings. She leaped into
the room on the turn and the MAC-11 was spitting even as her feet hit carpet.
Ryan, pounding after her, heard glass smash, metal clang and whine, and a sound
like someone coughing loudly and very fast.
He reached the doorway, saw Hunaker lowering the machine pistol, a savage
expression on her face.
She said “Damn” in self-disgust and turned away from him.
The room was a kitchen. The only guy there had been butchering meat on a block
in the center of the room with a cleaver. He’d taken most of the MAC’s mag, had
been powered back into a table with glassware and copper pans and skillets on
it, and now sagged backward, feet in the air, arms hanging, most of his chest
blown out and blood splashed over floor and walls.
Hunaker was muttering curses in a harsh undertone. Ryan knew she was cursing
herself as much for butchering one single guy who hadn’t even been truly armed
as for making such a row.
“You had to do it blind,” he snapped. “Could’ve been a garrison in here.”
The room stank of powder and blood. It smelled like a slaughterhouse. Ryan
touched the young woman on the arm, then clasped her to him, his eye taking in
the fact that the windows all were shuttered and there were three doors off to
one side. He could feel her trembling slightly.
Hunaker said in a tight voice, “Shit, she was such a sweet kid, Ryan. I’ll miss
her, dammit. You dunno what it’s like.”
“No. Probably not.”
She shook herself, clenched her eyes, then opened them again and said, “Okay,
let’s go. I’ll get us all killed at this rate.” Her smile was terrible to
behold.
Ryan checked out the three doors. Storerooms. Nothing there. They went back
along the passage, through the big room, still smelling strongly of cordite,
warily out into the hallway. Koll gave them the thumb.
Ryan muttered, “You hear anything?”
“What’s to hear?” The tall blonde gestured at the door through which they’d just
come. “Good paneling there, Ryan. Thick as hell. You make any noise, then?”
“Clearly not so’s you’d notice.”
He glanced up, saw J.B. at the head of the stairs, alone, holding up his left
hand, four fingers extended. His expression was deadpan.
Four kills. Everything jake.
Ryan shot a look at Hunaker and discovered that she was staring straight at him.
He inclined his head toward the right-hand door under which no light could be
seen and raised an eyebrow. Hunaker nodded almost eagerly as she slipped a third
mag into the guts of the MAC-11.
Ryan said, “You sure?”
Hunaker hissed, “For Christ’s sake, Ryan!”
He shrugged. It amused him how people still invoked the name of a deity, or, as
he understood it from his reading way back in… well, when he was reading, some
kind of secondary deity who seemed to be a son of the primary deity. But he did
it himself, when cussing or expressing shock or anger, often using words that
had no meaning for him whatsoever, although that of course was a legacy from his
father who’d done exactly the same, and probably his father before him, and so
on back to pre-Nuke.
For a second, as he thought like this, the image of his father began to form in
his mind. But he blocked it off quickly, the hand that held the SIG clenching
involuntarily, so that he nearly squeezed off a round into the floor. He shook
his head to clear the image finally, shake the memories away. These days it was
easier, thank God.
A brief smile twitched his lips as he caught that. There you are, he
thought—thank Godl
He stepped to the right-hand door, thought about powering in as before but