Neutron Solstice

Chapter Twenty-Three

"One move, and you're all swamp-fodder." The sec boss looked mad, his eyes bulging, white froth hanging from the corners of his lips. His suit was stained with soot and mud and was torn across one shoulder. But the muzzle of his carbine was rock-steady.

The men on either side of him were typical stony-eyed sec men, their uniforms also smoke-stained and scruffy; their guns covered the five people in the cellar.

It was desperate ill-luck that none of the three men in Ryan's party were able to get immediately at a blaster.

"Baron's making ready to leave the ville. Set up house somewheres else. IТm going with him with a few good men like Rafe and Pierre here. You bastards have done in one night what, the dirt-poor under the snow wolf haven't done in years." He stared at Ryan Cawdor with an intense curiosity. "Baron been doomseeing you, mister. Man with only one eye. Figured it would be his ending."

Ryan said nothing, easing away from Krysty, freezing as one of the sec men shifted his aim to cover him more closely. J.B. hadn't moved an inch since Mephisto appeared. Doc had let go of Lori, standing with his hands on his hips, looking contemptuously at the three gunmen.

"Don't look like his ending, mister. Looks more like your ending."

"Why don't you take us to see the Baron?" asked Krysty. "You know he likes me and the straw hair. Might be angered if you don't."

The sec boss shook his head. "Sorry, slut. It's going to be here. And it's going to be now."

Ryan's reflexes were stretched adrenaline-tight, ready for a last desperate, hopeless try, before they were all ripped apart.

It was Lori who checked the executions. She took a step away from Doc, teetering as she often did on her ridiculously high heels, drawing eyes as she wobbled. "I'm sick," she said. "Got to take clothes off." Her speech was slurred as if she were drugged.

"Get the..." began Mephisto, his voice drifting away as the beautiful blond girl hoisted up her scanty red skirt and began to peel off her panties.

Directly in front of the sec men, Ryan and J.B. were unable to risk any sudden moves. Doc Tanner stood a little more to one side, his shoulders stooped Ч a defeated old man, waiting for death.

Suddenly the defeated old man had a cannon in his right hand.

It was his thirty-six caliber percussion Le Mat revolver, nine-chambered. But the unique quality of the pistol was that it had a second smooth-bore barrel, chambered to take an eighteen bore single scattergun round.

There was a smile on the wrinkled cheeks and a merry twinkle in the old man's eyes as he squeezed the narrow trigger.

The boom of the explosion drowned out the crackling of the flames from the corridor. A great burst of black powder smoke filled the cellar, blinding everyone. Ryan heard screaming as he pushed Krysty to one side, the G-12 falling ready to his hands and snapping off a double burst toward the doorway.

The Armorer's Uzi barked a quarter-second later. Some ballets whipcracked off the stone walls, pinging and ricocheting off the metal pipes. Some tore into soft flesh.

As the smoke cleared, it was almost as though a master magician had performed a skillful illusion. Mephisto and the two sec men had disappeared. Then Ryan made out a pair of boots, sprawled in a corner, of the corridor, moving spasmodically.

He edged sideways, seeing that all three of the baron's men were down and done. The single round from Doc's blaster, at point-blank range, had been perfectly aimed. The shot spread just enough to hit all three men at face level. Both guards lay kicking, one mumbling for aid through a mouth filled with blood. The lead had ripped into their eyes and cheeks, tearing flesh from bone. The impact had been sufficient to send them all staggering backward, easy prey to the torrent of lead that followed from J.B. and Ryan.

Doc joined them, beaming at his success, manipulating the action, on the smoking Le Mat, ejecting the spent cartridge and reloading from one of the capacious pockets in his old frock coat. He shifted the hammer so that it rested over one of the thirty-six caliber rounds.

"Upon my soul, Mr. Cawdor, but that was vastly enjoyable. To see the wicked so smitten and righteousness triumphant."

"Early days, Doc," grinned Ryan, watching the wounded sec men. "But you done real good. And you, Lori," he called. "Fucking great."

"Thank you," said the girl, breathing hard with excitement. "Wanted to see the motherfuckers drown in their own shit and blood."

"You done that," J.B. commented dryly.

"The matter is not quite concluded," Doc said, looking down at the three men. One of the guards was already still, his chest and stomach ripped apart by the G-12 or the Uzi, his blood and bone and intestines mingling on the floor. The second sec man was dying, his face shredded from taking the worst of the Le Mat's shot. He was moaning, rolling from side to side, his hands holding his ribs from where blood oozed.

"The quality of mercy is not strained," said Doc. Still smiling broadly, he knelt and placed the muzzle of his pistol into the raw hole where the sec man's mouth would have been. He squeezed the trigger. The bullet bounced the man's head off the stone, killing him instantly. Doc thumbed back the hammer once more, turning to look at Mephisto.

The sec boss was dying. Several pieces of shot had pocked his face, one bursting his left eye. And more bullets had stitched across his chest from Ryan's and J.B.'s shooting. But he still breathed, flat on his back, his carbine thrown several feet away. Smoke drifted down from the main part of the burning building, and the heat was growing appreciably.

The firing from the front entrance had slackened. Ryan guessed that Jak Lauren's army had vanquished most of the baron's shattered forces.

Mephisto blinked up through the blood that ran down over his one good eye. "Still won't catch Baron. Too clever for you."

Krysty looked coldly down at him. A sudden anger washed over her, and she spat in the dying man's face, wanting to tear and hurt him. Lori was at her side, also looking down at the sec boss with bitter hatred on her lovely features.

"Bastard killer," Lori said, lifting her foot and stamping down with all her weight. The heel of the red leather boot struck Mephisto in the center of his one good eye, splattering it to a bloody liquid. The tinkling silver spur hooked in the corner of the socket, and the girl jerked at it. Mephisto shrieked in stunning pain as his head was rolled backward and forward. Finally the spur was wrenched clear, tearing the flesh away like raw meat.

Doc straightened, leveling the antebellum pistol, squeezing the trigger once more. The ball splintered the blood-slick forehead of the sec boss, killing him.

"Should have left him gut-shot," said J.B.

"Better dead," Doc said, bolstering the heavy gun.

Ryan looked along the corridor. The billowing smoke was tearing at his lungs. "Gonna be roasted if'n we don't move fast."

"That mother said the baron was making a run. Which way? "'asked Krysty.

"Got to be across the far side. By the lagoon."

"There is boats there," said Lori.

"Boats?"

"Canoes. Small ones," amplified Krysty. "And the biggest mother of a gator I ever seen in my life. Makes the one that tried for Finn look like a baby."

Ryan hesitated, then turned to the Armorer. "J.B., we gotta go help Whitey and his group? Sounds like it's going well."

"Want me to go check? And you go after the baron?"

"Yeah. Take Doc and the women."

"Sure."

"I'll come," said Krysty.

Ryan shook his head. "Way I look at this, it's kind of personal. It's like a debt."

"You don't owe anything to anybody, Ryan," said Doc Tanner. "Except myself. Now let's move."

The blaze had become a full-fledged firestorm. A gusting wind tugged and howled about the inferno that had once been the Best Western Snowy Egret. Jak's men were already mopping up, trailing and killing any of the bewildered and demoralized sec men they could find.

Some had managed to escape the withering fire of the assault party and headed blindly toward the depths of the swamps. As Ryan and his group emerged from the smoke at the rear of the motel, Jak saw them and came dancing over. Hearing their news, he told them of his own total success.

"Not total if some of the sec guards have 'scaped free," said J.B.

"The Cajuns don't love 'em. With Tourment gone, they'll kill 'em all. Cajuns or the swampies."

"I'm going after the baron. Seems he's gone 'cross the lagoon in a canoe." Ryan pointed to the left of the raging fire.

"I'm coming," said Jak.

"No. He's mine."

The boy pointed behind them, to the mutilated corpse of his father, still hanging from the flagpole. "Not after that. Mine."

"Time's wasting," J.B. said.

Ryan looked into the boy's crimson eyes, seeing the flames reflected in them; the mane of white hair, torn free from its binding, swayed in the strong wind. Ryan was a good judge of men, and he saw that he would have to kill the fourteen-year-old if he wanted to stop him from going after Tourment.

"First one there chills him Whitey," he said, turning and leading the lad toward the lagoon and the mysterious island.