Ice and Fire

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The stickies had initiated the attack, taking the impetus from the men of Snakefish. Most of the muties rushed toward Zombie's group, ululating and waving their suckered fingers. Some turned back as they saw Ryan leading his twenty or so men over the rim of the hill and down into the valley.

"Let 'em get close!" Ryan yelled.

The muties had a slight numerical disadvantage, but they made up for that by their unbridled ferocity. Other than the night assault at the feeding, few of the men from the ville had ever seen a stickie and many were almost paralyzed with terror at the hideous sight of gibbering death running at them.

Some turned and fled in panic.

Almost all of them died early.

The skinny man who'd asked the question about what to do if he got grabbed by a stickie got his answer with horrific speed.

He stumbled blindly into the embrace of two of the scuttling muties. One was a female, with pendulous breasts, who used her suckered hand to tear away the man's clothes, leaving bleeding weals on his pale flesh. Her other hand clutched at his groin, the tiny disks clamping to his shrunken genitals. With a slobbering whoop of delight, the creature exerted all her power, emasculating the screaming man and flourishing the severed flesh and sinew above her head before lifting them greedily to her mouth. Her companion had already buried its face in the side of the man's neck, near the throbbing temptation of the carotid artery.

Death was mercifully rapid.

Scatterguns boomed all around, interspersed with the lighter, thinner sound of the .32 which were the common handblasters of the ville.

If Ryan's original plan had been followed by the group containing Zombie and Norman Mote, the initial wave of the assault could have hoped to chill sixty to seventy percent of the hostiles. Now it was a bloody battle for the upper hand.

Ryan had his rifle set on triple burst, knocking over any mutie that came within easy range. He made sure that the caseless rounds were head shots, exploding the blank-eyed skulls like eggs under a mallet.

Ryan nearly tripped over a human corpse on the far side of the valley, near the opening of one of the caves, recognizing who it was only from the pair of dark blue spectacles that lay near the headless body. Layton Brennan, in his air wag, would soon learn that his grandfather was dead.

The sand was rapidly becoming a quagmire of trampled mud, with the stench of death hovering above.

The biker called Freewheeler was facing a stickie who'd snatched his scattergun, but couldn't work out how to fire it. The Hero had drawn a long-bladed knife and was cutting away at the mutie's chest and stomach, opening up gaping wounds in the rubbery flesh, but hardly harming the creature.

Ryan was about to blast it when he heard the crack of Doc's Le Mat pistol. A section of the creature's face and jaw became detached, dangling loose like a broken storm shutter. The stickie staggered then reached up and pulled away the chunk of bone and flesh, peering at it bemusedly until Doc shot it once more at close range between the eyes.

"This appears to be easier than stealing candy from a little baby," Doc shouted.

Ryan leveled his G-12 and fired a trio of bullets, missing Doc by less than a yard. The old man stumbled sideways, his jaw dropping in shock. He glanced behind him and saw a stickie falling over backward, half its face blown away by Ryan's shots.

"Some little child!" Ryan yelled. "Watch your bastard back, Doc!"

Riddler was nearly pulled down by two young female stickies as he fumbled in the pockets of his denim vest for more ammunition. They mewed at him as their hands reached out, their bloodied teeth exposed behind leathery lips.

He swung the butt of his shotgun in two clubbing blows, knocking both muties to the crimsoned earth. He thumbed the twin hammers and leveled the twin barrels at the semiconscious females. "Eat lead," he snarled, firing first one round and then the other. Both the heads disappeared in a spray of bone, skin and blood.

Riddler grinned at Ryan. "Best advice anyone ever gave me," he bellowed. "Shoot 'em in the head and they fucking die! Right on, bro!"

The combined firepower of the attackers finally tipped the balance firmly in their favor. The initial charge by the stickies left, at Ryan's swift count, around eight or nine of the norms dead. But the shotguns were taking their toll, aided by the blasters of Ryan, J.B., Doc and Jak. Well over half of the stickies were already dead meat.

The remaining creatures had begun to retreat, heading away in a clumsy run over the ridges, while others backed off into the shallow caves where they were easily trapped and butchered. This part of the day's hunting, Ryan noticed, was particularly relished by Norman Mote and his whooping, jeering son.

J.B. joined Ryan, carefully reloading his blaster. "Looks close to done," he said quietly.

"Yeah. Looks that way. Could have gone worse, I guess."

"Least none of us got caught by any stray lead. There was plenty flying for a while."

"Where's the baron?"

J.B. turned and pointed. "There. Near where his brother bought the farm."

"Best go see to him. Wouldn't want any accidents to happen. Not now."

They were almost too late.

The air was filled with the rumbling explosions of the scatterguns, and the thinner cracks of the small-caliber pistols. The valley was brimming with the stench of powder smoke, hazy and blue.

"There he is," the Armorer said.

Edgar Brennan, a kerchief pressed to his red-rimmed, weeping eyes, was moving unsteadily down the far side of the valley.

"Let's go help him. Looks flattened by his brother's chilling."

He and J.B. walked quickly across, feeling the stickiness of the dirt on the soles and heels of their combat boots. The sounds of gunfire were dying down.

When they were only a few yards from the stumbling little man, he looked up and saw them, still rubbing at his eyes. "Rufus has..." he began. But his feet slipped from under him and he fell, full length, rolling toward them.

Simultaneously the earth behind the baron exploded in great bursts of mud. Both J.B. and Ryan, their ears tuned to the sounds of a firefight, picked out the sharper noise of the shooting. Each man immediately recognized the distinctive sound of the blaster that was being used.

"M-16," J.B. shouted, rolling for cover.

"Yeah. Dern. There he is."

The owner of the gun shop stood on the ridge, about a hundred paces behind them. When he saw them looking his way he hesitated, then stood and waved to them.

"Chill him?" J.B. asked.

"He's one of Mote's boys," Ryan replied. "Could push things over the brim and get the pot boiling on the fire."

Dern began to approach them, rifle at his side. "Hollow tooth, brothers!" he called. "That was close. I was aiming at a stickie behind you, but there's something wrong with the sights on my blaster."

Brennan had stood and brushed himself clean, his hands trembling with shock at the near miss. "He tried to chill me."

"Yeah, Baron, but I'd keep my lips zipped," J.B. suggested. "This isn't the time or place, with all Mote's men round us."

"For sure, John, but..."

Dern reached them. "Never known this blaster to let me down. That was terrible. Could have gunned down the baron."

Ryan looked him in the eye. "You could have, but you didn't. Now, that's either lucky or unlucky. Depends on how you look at it."

"I don't understand, Mr. Cawdor."

"Yeah, you do. If you'd killed the baron, some would say that was lucky. Some might say it wasn't. You missed him. Some'll say the same."

Dern swallowed hard and looked away. "I sure don't know..." he began.

But J.B. interrupted him. "One thing to keep in mind, gunsmith. Anything happens to the baron now, we'll know who to come looking for. Won't we?"

Zombie joined them with six of his chapter. Ryan had seen one of them — Vinny, he thought — go down under an unusually tall stickie, his body a welter of blood.

The gunfire had faded away. The fight was over and won.

"That's it," the Last Hero said. "We got 'em all. Don't think a single one escaped. We found us some tinies in one cave. Blowed them away. Can't let the fuckers breed."

"Sure," Ryan agreed. "We going back to Snakefish now?"

He looked at Baron Brennan, but the little man was still too shaken by his narrow escape and the death of his brother to make any sense. It was Norman Mote, arriving with his arm around his son's shoulders, who answered.

"Surely will. And thanks to everyone here. Y'all played your parts. We'll have a service of thanks this night."

"And you got some burying to do, Reverend," Ryan said.

"And I have to see to the obsequies for poor Azrael Twelve, Brother Cawdor. And pursue the quest to find out who butchered him. Perhaps it could have been the stickies. Then again... perhaps not."

Ryan looked around the place of blood and death, resolving that he and his friends had to leave Snakefish as soon as possible. Before it was too late.