“C’mon, One-eye, I’m waiting.”
Ryan crouched, pushed off from the wall and slid across the smooth tiles of the shower floor. He struck Purvis’s legs while still moving at a good clip, and the big man toppled, landing hard on his shoulder.
Before the man had time to recover, Ryan was on his feet again. He kicked out with his right foot, catching the side of Purvis’s head with his heel. The blow seemed to have little effect on the downed man because he managed to get to his feet as if he’d received little more than a tap on the shoulder.
“You’re fast,” he said. “I’ll give you that.”
Ryan decided if it worked once, it might be worth trying again. He knelt, got onto his hands and swung his feet out in a wide arc, taking Purvis’s feet out from under him again. This time the big man fell backward, landing hard on his back and striking his head on the hard, wet floor.
Purvis seemed to be in pain so Ryan moved in to take advantage. But when he got close, Purvis reached out and grabbed the one-eyed man’s feet, pulling him off the floor. Ryan managed to break his fall with his hands, but still landed heavily on the tiles, smacking the right side of his face hard enough to see bright sparks of pain flashing behind his eye.
After his heavy falls, the big man was slowly getting stronger, and Ryan knew that if he managed to get close, it was possible that he would be smothered in his grip.
A crowd of slaves had gathered at the entrance to the shower, but there were still no sec men in sight, which meant that only one of them would be walking out of the showers alive.
Ryan backed away from Purvis until his back touched one of the shower room’s tiled walls.
“You can’t run from me, One-eye.” Purvis grinned, taking the move as a sign of weakness.
But in truth, Ryan was merely putting as much space between himself and the big man as he could. A second later he was off running, leaping through the air and throwing his shoulder and all of his body weight into Purvis’s chest.
There was a large whoosh as Ryan knocked the air out of the man’s lungs, and then a hard smack as Purvis fell backward with Ryan on top of him.
Purvis gulped for air.
Ryan took hold of the man’s head and kept slamming it onto the hard tile floor until the back of his skull was crushed. Blood leaked onto the shower floor.
He let go of the big man’s ruined head and looked over to the shower entrance. The slaves were gone and in their place were two sec men. They didn’t look all that surprised to see a dead man lying on the shower floor. If Purvis was anything special, you sure couldn’t tell from the sec men’s expressions.
“What happened to him?” one of the sec men asked.
“Slipped on some soap,” Ryan answered.
“Second one this month,” the other sec man commented.
Chapter Nineteen
“Are we there yet?” Dean asked. The sun had set, and the boy was feeling tired.
“Almost,” Clarissa answered as she led them up-river to some unknown destination.
“Patience, my dear boy,” Doc said. “If the woman leads us to a safe place in which to spend the night, the peaceful rest we will receive will be more than worth the walk.”
“There it is,” she said, pointing off into the distance. “Just behind that rise.”
The companions continued on, followed tirelessly by a group of muties, like seagulls trailing behind a ship hoping to catch something churned up by the ship’s wake.
When they reached the rise, J.B. stopped abruptly and grabbed Clarissa by the arm. “There’s nothing here,” he said, taking another look around. “If you double cross us, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
“No double cross. You wanted someplace safe, so I’m bringing you to my home, or at least the place I’ve been living these past few months.”
“But there’s nothing here.”
“Nothing on the surface, but there’s plenty underground. Follow me.”