“Sentries, any sign of rooftop fires!” Zanders yelled at the wall. There was no reply to the summons. “Captain of the guard, report!”
The searchlights moved back and forth along the palisade, and the guards should have been easy to spot in the glare, but he didn’t see a soul. As he marched closer, his suspicions grew until he spotted a bloody arm dangling over the side of the wall, dripping red onto the streets below. Shit, poor bastards had to have been hit with shrapnel from the blast. Then the sec man drew his blaster. Or maybe Alphaville was under attack. This whole thing would make one hell of a great diversion.
“You three,” the sergeant barked, pointing with his blaster. “Get the fuck up there and see what’s the trouble.”
Hesitantly, the men obeyed, climbing the ladders welded to the side of the cars and leading to the wooden walkway on top of the wall.
“Well?” Zanders shouted. “Any signs of muties?”
“No, sir,” a private called down. “Just dead men without faces.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, sir!”
How odd, muties usually attacked from behind.
“Hey, Sarge! Here’s Leonard!” a sec man cried out.
The sergeant knew that Leonard had recently reconditioned a big batch of predark fire extinguishers and had to be hauling them over for the troops to use. Good man. The kid was worth ten of the father.
But the squat APC rolled straight down the street past the burning wooden skeleton of the brewery, then turned right and charged directly toward the tunnel, traveling much too fast to ever stop in time.
The sergeant couldn’t believe his eyes. That idiot lieutenant had been correct. “Jail break!” Zanders bellowed, leveling his blaster and cutting loose, the rounds ricocheting off the armor plating of the military half track as if he were throwing stones. Several of the other sec men followed his example, but the .75-caliber lead miniballs of their muzzle-loaders did even less damage.
With everybody else out fighting fires, the lone sec man in the machine-gun nest swiveled the repaired blaster on its stanchion and started firing in controlled bursts as he expertly tracked the approaching war wag. The half-inch-wide bullets punched a line of holes through the chassis of the armored personnel carrier.
Then the machine gun mounted on top of the APC chattered nonstop as it raked the nest, sandbags spitting dust, sparks flying off the ground and car bodies of the wall. A lantern burst, and the lone sec man cried out and dropped. Unencumbered, the vehicle vanished into the tunnel, spewing oil from a punctured housing.
“WE MADE IT,” Krysty said, shifting the med kit on her back, struggling with the bolt of the machine gun to free a jammed round. The baron didn’t take good care of his weapons.
“Any damage?” Ryan asked, shifting the steering levers.
“We got a line of holes along the aft end of the half track. Nothing much.”
The road ahead was poorly lit by the predark headlights, and Ryan cursed as he worked the gears. He was unfamiliar with this machine. “Get ready to jump. We should be in the middle of the tunnel soon.”
Krysty glanced at their cargo. The wag was stacked with all of the ammo and fuel they were able to load from the garage in the few minutes they had after killing the driver. “Think it’s enough to collapse the tunnel?”
The APC took a pothole with only the smallest jounce. “Damn well hope so. With this closed, they have no way to chase us.”
“No sign of anybody yet,” she announced, checking through the aft ob slit. “Must be too busy fighting the fires. Nope. Here they come.”
“Buy us some time,” Ryan snapped, killing the headlights. He had already smashed the taillights of the wag before leaving so it would be difficult for snipers to triangulate on the wag. Unfortunately, feeble as they were, the headlights outshone the aft bulbs and silhouetted the APC in stark relief, making it a near perfect target. Driving by the yellow parking lights was tough, but the vehicle took the potholes with ease.
A small wag of some kind roared into the tunnel, and its driver foolishly clicked on its headlights. Bracing herself against the moving vehicle, Krysty pointed directly between them and fired, moving the stream of bullets slightly upward, the phosphorescent tracers creating a dotted line along the tunnel. The wag veered wildly and slammed into the wall, whooshing into flames.