from the wolves, the local baron will shit himself inviting us inside the
wall."
"What we gonna call the jolt this time?" Harlan asked.
"Tell them it's painkillers."
Samson patted a small wooden crate at his side. "Or, ah, antibiotics," he said
stumbling over the long word.
"Either way, one taste and we own them." Wu-Lang smirked.
"Aye, it's a good plan," Brian agreed, giving a snaggletoothed grin. "Our best
yet. Putting it into the water supply thins down the jolt too much. Some of
the stronger folks don't get hooked, and we have a fight on our hands."
"Takes longer to cook, too."
"Time wasted working when we could be drinking and fucking."
A skinny fellow with a feverish expression lowered an adult magazine, the
pages brittle and yellow with age. "Think of all their women. Clean women! And
they got to do whatever we want or no jolt." Harlan rubbed his crotch and
resumed looking at the old pictures. "For as long as they live."
"Or least, still warm," Wu-Lang added.
"Yeah& "
Exhaling sharply, Rev cast away his dead cig. "And nothing is gonna stop us.
We got it all this time.
Food, blasters, wags and fuel." He waved about them. "These ruins are a gold
mine. Who knows what we'll find in the next store?"
Just then, the stars overhead blacked out for a moment, and a sudden
exhalation of air moved over the parking lot, bringing a hint of the desert
heat.
"What the fuck was that?" Harlan demanded, dropping his nudie mag and drawing
a huge revolver. The old S&W .357 Magnum was spotlessly clean, the blued
barrel glinting dimly in the reflected lights of the
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bonfire.
"Don't know," Rev said, unlimbering his MAC-10 and snapping the bolt.
Following his lead, the rest of the crew hauled blasters into view. Even Jimmy
whipped out a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun from an archery quiver on his
back.
Rising to his full height, Samson hoisted his Marlin rifle to his huge chest,
working the bolt to chamber a round. Nearby, Wu-Lang lifted an M-16 into view
from a packing crate. With clumsy hands, he eased off the safety and fumbled
with the bolt. He cursed as it sprang back, almost costing him a finger.
Shitfire, the police station SWAT armory had yielded a dozen of the
autoblasters, but no frigging instruction manuals.
"Probably just a bird," Jimmy whispered, holding the shotgun as if it were a
good-luck talisman. "A
vulture mebbe. Or an owl. We heard one before. There are lots of them in these
parts."
"Yeah," Harlan whispered, cocking back the hammer on his blaster. "An owl."
"Mebbe it's that flying mutie the runaway was talking about," Brian muttered
thoughtfully, holding a revolver in each hand.
"Nonsense," Rev snapped, struggling to keep the terror from his words. Before
dying, the sec man had described the terror of the ruins. Covered with his
blood, they had laughed at the speech, but now a chill invaded the drug
runner's stomach as he scanned the night sky.
A wet crunch sounded from the dark.
"That you, Hal?" Wu-Lang asked. "Step on one of those tarantulas again& ?
Shitfire!" The man retreated from the night, staring at the ground.
Rolling and bouncing out of the darkness and into the firelight came a bloody
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human head. The features were slashed, ribbons of flesh hanging off the bloody
skull, but what remained of the face was still recognizable as one of their
sentries. The neck was severed in the middle, with no ragged marks of biting
or chewing. The end of the flesh was smooth as if the man had been beheaded by
an ax.
Then a torso plummeted from the sky to land on the bonfire, extinguishing the
flames. Darkness enveloped the parking lot.
"Bloody hell!" Rev yelled, spraying a wreath of 9 mm tumblers into the sky
above.
Everybody cut loose, rounds ricocheting off the stone walls of the library and
shattering glass like crystal thunder.
Calmly waiting for a target to present itself, Samson stepped out of the
reddish glow of the dying embers to let his vision adjust when a wind ruffled
the hair at the back of his head. Annoyed, he patted it back down and was
surprised when he found his hand sticking to his hair. The giant could feel
warmth trickling down his neck, into his new shirt, and knew it was his own
blood.
Baring his teeth in a wordless scream, Samson triggered the Martin, explosions
of flame illuminating the parking lot for yards. Briefly, something on top of
the stack of ammo crates was caught in the flash, and then was gone. A [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]