It slowly began to fall—toward the wag.
“Uh, might I suggest that we move our vehicle to avoid an unhappy circumstance,” Doc said.
J.B. didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to get the wag out of the way of the falling tower.
WHEN THE EMERGENCY lights came on, the baron was gone.
And so was Krysty.
But there was little time to dwell on that with so many sec men in the room.
In the dark, Mildred had retrieved her ZKR target pistol, and when the lights kicked in she was ready. She fired two shots at the sec men at the door to the nursery, hitting the first in the head, blowing a chunk of skull off the top of it. She caught the second in the throat, and he fell to the floor clutching at his neck in a futile attempt to staunch the flow of blood.
Grundwold was still moaning in pain on the floor, trying to get to his feet despite the wound to his shoulder. Mildred lowered her blaster and put a round into his heart before he had a chance to get onto his knees.
“What’s going on in here?” asked the old woman, who up until now had been taking care of the newborns in another part of the nursery.
“Liberation,” Mildred said. “We’re getting out.”
“These people don’t know anything about freedom,” the old woman told her. “I remember it, but most don’t know any other kind of life. In fact, some even like it here.”
“Well, maybe now at least they’ll have a choice.”
The old woman shrugged. “I suppose. Good luck to you. I’ve got children to tend to.”
Mildred reached down and took the Persuader 500 pistol-grip longblaster from the holster of the dead former sec chief. “Here,” she said. “It might come in handy.”
The old woman took the blaster and hefted it in her hand. “It might at that.”
Then she picked up Krysty’s Smith & Wesson from its hiding place and tucked it into the waistband of her jeans. Obviously Krysty had been taken hostage by the baron and his new sec chief.
The two men might as well have signed their death warrants.
WHEN THE FIRST BOOM sounded, Ryan thought it might mean that J.B. was near. When there was a second boom and the lights went out, he was sure of it. “That’s it,” he told Maurice. “Time to move.” The two men left the cabin and headed for the main building.
SEC CHIEF GANLEY had been first over the fence at the onset of darkness and was now helping others climb down from the wooden ladder.
In the distance, something boomed like a cannon for the second time.
The sound startled one of the raiders who was at the top of the outside ladder and crossing over to the one on the inside of the complex. The man faltered and was forced to reach out with his hand and grab at the fence. He screamed loud and shrill in anticipation of the electricity that was about to flow through his body.
But nothing happened.
“The fence is down,” Ganley called out, realizing they’d just been given a lucky break. “Everyone over as quick as you can.”
Minutes later the raiders were roaming the orchard freely, hunting for breeders.
HUNGRY MUTIES POURED IN through the broken front gate like water through a sluice.
And when they realized the power was out, they began climbing over the fence, too, surging into the complex from all sides.
In the eerily dim glow of the emergency lights, sec men raised their blasters at the charging muties, but hesitated when they saw how many of the hunger-mad creatures they were up against.
Some sec men fired; others ran, as far as the front gate and beyond.
Most ended up as meals for the starving mutants.
The lucky ones were chilled quickly.
The unlucky ones were eaten alive.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ryan left the cabin and, along with Maurice, ran to the main building. The sec men in the area didn’t seem all too concerned with their progress as the thud of a large-bore weapon and the crackle of heavy-caliber machine blasters had them all scrambling for cover.