The same was happening on the other side, except that it had become a race between Jak and Doc to see who could come up and fire first. Doc was surprisingly swift for such a frail-looking man. His deceptive strength was matched by a burst of speed that saw him roll and aim in a fraction of a second.
But the albino was quicker. Death had always been Jak’s trade. Hunting animals or people, it amounted to the same thing. The Colt Python barked fractionally before the roar of the LeMat, causing the two attackers standing to their side of the road to dive haphazardly for cover that wasn’t there.
Things were now equal, and also stalemated. With no cover for either side, it was a firefight that could only end in complete annihilation for one side. There was nowhere to run and hide as the laser rifles crackled their beams of intense light and heat, failing to find range because of the fire from the more conventional blasters.
There were more of Ryan’s people firing, but they had the problem of reloading, while the laser rifles seemed to have an indefinite life.
Automatically, Jak and Krysty had fallen into firing alternately to allow each other and Ryan more loading time, also covering Doc while he reloaded the LeMat.
On the other side of the road, J.B. kept up short bursts of Uzi fire while Dean and Mildred alternated shots with their blasters.
“Time for a little change,” the Armorer muttered to himself as he laid down the Uzi and extracted the M-4000 scattergun. J.B.’s favored shot from the blaster were barbed flechettes that would cause considerable damage, even at this range.
Covered by Dean and Mildred, and pushing his fedora back on his head, J.B. lined up the M-4000 and let fly with the scattergun. The barbed metal charge spread out in the air, scratching the paint on the side of the wag, scraping the opaque glass on the helmets of the nearest two attackers and tearing into their flesh. The thin material of their uniforms was no defense against the charge, and both went down beneath the hail of hot barbed metal.
Whether they had been chilled was unimportant. It brought the brief and bloody firefight to a close as one remaining male attacker kept up a covering fire while the remaining woman hurriedly gathered the laser blasters, throwing them into the rear of the brightly colored armored wag. That done, she climbed in and helped pull in the man whose knees had been ripped to shreds, and who had been attempting throughout the firefight to edge toward cover.
The man covering their retreat edged toward the rear door, pausing only while the woman assisted one of those wounded by the flechettes to struggle into the wag.
With one last covering blast, the man climbed into the wag, the door slamming shut as the engine coughed into life. The wag shot forward enough to complete a tight turn before screeching past them and back down the blacktop the way it had come, disappearing toward the horizon.
Ryan and J.B., on their respective sides of the road, had already signaled the firing to stop, and the retreat had been carried out with only the bare minimum of cover to stop the laser blaster taking accurate aim. It was pointless to waste valuable ammo on a retreating force.
The companions regrouped on the blacktop, looking down at the corpses of the chilled attackers.
“What do you make of that?” Ryan asked.
“Not see sec like that before,” Jak said, gesturing at the corpses.
“Or blasters like that. They’re impressive when they work,” J.B. added. “No idea of how to shoot in a firefight, though.”
“Perhaps just as well in the circumstances,” Doc added. “Interesting that they should take such care to recover their arms, do you not think?”
Krysty looked down the road, where the wag had vanished over the horizon. “They came from the way we were headed,” she said quietly.
Dean pursed his lips, shaking his head. “Hope they don’t come from the ville we’re headed for, then.”
“You hold that thought, son,” Ryan said. “Because we’ve got to press on, see what we find.”