“Got to bandage that now,” the physician said, opening her kit. “Deeper than it looks.”
“Once we’re at sea,” he said. “No time now. J.B., Doc, cover me. We should check the toolshed.”
With the others flanking him for support, Ryan clumsily drew the weapon with his left hand and kicked open the door, ready to shoot. But there were no sec men on duty inside, only some chained slaves dressed in tattered rags. The skinny prisoners cried out in terror at the sight of the armed people, and huddled together whimpering. After making sure no sec man was hiding in their midst, Ryan started to leave, then turned and fired, the 9 mm slug blowing the lock off the long chain looping through their ankle cuffs.
“Head to the north!” he barked, and the prisoners dashed away, going in every direction. Some headed straight toward the approaching jungle fire.
With a somber expression, Dean asked his father a silent question.
“They’ll confuse our trail,” he explained.
“Right,” the boy answered.
A minute later, they started across the fields once more when a slave stumbled back from the greenery, his face split in two, eyes and brains sluggishly flowing from his ghastly head wound. Then swarms of the tentacled muties came shambling out of the trees hooting madly.
“Stickies!” Krysty cursed, firing her blaster.
In his whole life, Ryan had never seen anything like this before. Each stickie was armed with a stone ax, the shaft attached to the right arm with layers of vines tied in place. Across each of their chests was a crude shield of bamboo wrapped with leather straps. A new group had joined the battle for Cold Harbor ville, and their bizarre army was coming straight for the norms.
“Aim for their heads!” Ryan shouted, switching to his right hand and wincing every time he fired. Blood dribbled from his hand, but the man didn’t slow or stop.
More stickies boiled out of the bushes, and J.B. flipped the switch on the Uzi to full-auto. The chattering little machine gun sprayed a halo of hot lead death at the scampering creatures.
Lowering the LeMat, Doc held down the trigger and fanned the hammer. The Civil War hand cannon repeatedly thundered in discharge, blowing a foot-long lance of flame from the barrel, followed by a dense blast of black smoke. Stickies fell, but more replaced them.
“Shit. There’s too many,” J.B. cursed, working the bolt on the Uzi to clear a jammed round.
The booming .357 penetrated the crude armor, chilling with every hit. Ryan fired nonstop, chilling with every round, but the man was becoming pale, his sleeve red with blood.
“Use the grens,” Ryan panted, dropping a clip from the SIG-Sauer, and needing two tries to insert a fresh magazine.
While J.B. and Mildred maintained fire, the rest of the companions dug the black-powder grens from their pockets, pulled the pins and threw. Then they wisely ducked, not knowing how well the reloads would work.
Two of the charges exploded in the air, showering everybody with hot steel. Doc felt a tug on his frock coat from passing shrapnel, Jak jerked as a piece of the shattered casing hit his jacket but failed to penetrate the razor blades hidden inside the lapels. He muttered something and threw the other repaired gren as far as possible—without pulling the pin first. Damn things were worse than useless.
Bleeding from a hundred wounds, the stickies broke their charge and stood dumbly picking at the wounds. Two more grens hit the ground and did nothing, but the last three finally detonated, sending pieces of muties skyward. Startled and frightened, the stickies started attacking one another, and the chaos soon spread until the fields were filled with the creatures hacking each other to bits with the stone axes.
Rummaging in his munitions bag, J.B. unearthed two real grens and used them to clear a gory path through the infighting. Running and shooting, the companions reached the trees again, and stopped to chill some stickies coming after them. When it was clear, they continued for the lagoon, leaping over the exposed roots and ducking under low-hanging limbs. Cannonfire from the harbor could still be heard, but it was more sporadic. The battle was being won by somebody. Not good news.