He walked over to the remains of Duncan’s body and grabbed the man’s jacket collar. He began to drag the corpse toward the beach where they could bury it properly and with an appropriate ceremony.
J.B. HAD THE FOUR .50-caliber machine blasters out of the P-39. All of the parts had been fairly well preserved, and a few of them still had a light sheen of oil.
“I thought we would only be using two of these blasters?” Doc asked.
“We are,” J.B. answered. “I’m going to use the best parts out of the four to make two.”
Doc sat and watched the Armorer work. There was pleasure to be had watching someone who thoroughly enjoyed his work, and that was J.B. He had quality blasters to fiddle with, and he looked just like a boy in a toy store. There was a strange look of pleasure on his face, as if he couldn’t wait to fire the .50 caliber, or to see the 37 mm cannon blow apart the side of a building.
Doc envied the man’s simple pleasures and wished he could become so lost in something. Instead, he spent his time thinking of his dear Emily and the two children they’d had together, Rachel and Jolyon.
With all the talk of breeding going on the past couple of days, Doc took solace in the fact that he had sired two of the most beautiful and vibrant children in all of the eastern states. They would have lived their lives out long ago, and while he was sure that Emily had raised them right, he often wondered about what they made of their lives, and if his family name or bloodline had lived on into skydark.
J.B. tried the gun he’d been assembling, pulling the trigger and gauging the action by the sound the mechanism made. He looked pleased.
“Impressive!” Doc commented.
“Rate of fire of five hundred rounds per minute, a muzzle velocity of 895 mps, and a range of 10,000 feet,” J.B. said with a look of pride on his face. “This blaster can destroy any soft target it can reach, and that includes buildings.”
Doc nodded, silently wondering if it might have been better if none of his descendants had survived the nukecaust.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“How are you?” Mildred asked. She had been assigned to the circle to help with the wounded combatants. She hadn’t had much to do so far except pronounce two of them dead.
Ryan looked over his arms and shoulders. “Not a scratch on me yet.”
“Try and keep it that way,” Brody said. He had suffered a cut on his right arm.
“Intend to,” Ryan said.
“I don’t think Richmond and Hambly are likely to team up this next round. Something about sec men and muties that just don’t mix. If anything, Richmond will be after you, wanting to give you payback for chilling Salazar. Hambly will either be taken out by Mog and his men, or he’ll be hugging the edge of the circle hoping a wound will take him out at the next break.”
“Can’t he just quit?”
Brody shook his head. “He could, but that would make him a laughingstock.”
“On your feet!” called Grundwold.
Ryan and Brody stood along with the others.
“In this round, all combatants will remove their shirts,” the sec chief ordered.
Ryan took off his shirt. The crowd seemed to enjoy the sight of bare, bloody and sweaty flesh.
“Ready?” the sec chief bellowed.
The crowd screamed its approval.
“Fight!”
As Brody had suggested, Mog and his men went after Hambly, allowing Richmond the chance to go after Ryan.
Brody made sure Dorfman, Billingsley and Foghat remained with Mog and didn’t try to take out Ryan amid the confusion.
“You’re good with the knife, Cyclops,” Richmond said, calling Ryan by the name the sec men on the farm seemed to favor.
“Better to be quick with a knife than quick with my mouth.”
Richmond was a tall, lanky man. Ryan estimated they weighed about the same, but Richmond stood about three inches taller. Unlike the knife scars he’d seen on other sec men and slaves here, Richmond had a big round blaster scar on his right shoulder that was about three inches across. The wound was set back in the flesh about an inch, as if someone had scooped out a patch of flesh with a knife. “You want me to put down the knife, Cyclops?”