The Savage Horde

Chapter 35

"Kill the heathen!"

The man with the torch shouted it, Rourke already lowering the muzzle of the CAR-, his trigger finger moving once, gutshooting the man where he stood.

The screaming was louder now, drowning out the screams of the crucifixion victims—but the cries from the wildmen and their women—"Kill the heathen!"

Rourke had the CAR-to hip level now, pumping the trigger in rapid, two-shot semiautomatic bursts. Men and women ran everywhere, screaming, some running toward him, some running blindly like trapped animals. He could hear small arms fire from the far side of the ring of crosses—Rubenstein, he hoped.

As a wedge in the wildmen opened he could see something more immediate. The wifdman he'd gut shot had somehow crawled toward the pyre beneath the cross on which Henderson was hung—and the pyre was beginning to burn.

He started to run, toward the cross, the flames licking higher, fanned it seemed by their own heat, higher pitched than the screams and curses and threats of the wildmen the scream from Henderson—Rourke could see the man's face, orange lit and shadowed, as the flames seemed sucked up toward his flesh.

"Help me!"

Rourke spun half left, pumping the CAR-'s trigger again, putting down a man rushing him with a machete. He pumped the CAR-again, a woman with a revolver. Red flowers of blood blossomed on her chest as she stumbled back.

Hands reached for him, Rourke sidestepping, a bear-sized man grasping at him.

No time to shoot, no way to swing the CAR-'s muzzle on line, Rourke hammered out hard to his right with the rifle's butt, doubling the man forward. Rourke's right knee smashed upward, catching the face midway between the lips and the base of the nose, blood spurting as the shout issued from the mouth that now looked like a raw wound.

Rourke swung the CAR-forward, still counting his shots, firing rapid two-shot bursts into the running, screaming men and women around him. He was ten yards from the cross now, changing sticks for the CAR, Henderson's screams beyond what could have come from a human, Rourke thought. The flames were licking at the skin of his bare legs, the words Henderson screamed unintelligible save for the agony they expressed.

Rourke slammed the fresh magazine home, working the bolt, turning as three men and a woman rushed him. He pumped the CAR-'s trigger, nailing the nearest of the four, then pumped the trigger again, getting the woman.

The two men came at him in a low rush, Rourke losing his balance as he pumped the trigger, shooting one of the men in the chest, the body rolling away. The second man's hands were on his throat, Rourke stumbling back, hitting the ground hard, the flames there scorchingly hot on his hands, his neck.

The fingers were closing tightly on htm—floaters were crossing his eyes, gold, yellow, green.

Rourke's left hand found the butt of the Sting IA, his fingers jerking it free of the leather. He began stabbing it, into the strangler's right side. In—out.

In—out. In—out.

The grip seemed only to tighten, the colors of the floaters going lighter, unconsciousness coming, his right arm pinned in the sling and useless.

Rourke smashed up with his right knee, feeling it strike the hardness of bone rather than the crushing softness of testicles.

The knife. It was out, his left arm going limp.

He spun his arm downward like a pendulum, feeling the blade bite deep, the stickiness of blood spurt covering his left hand, the weight of the man above him beginning to sag, the grip in the fingers not loosening.

He wrenched the knife free, then using the last strength he had, hammered it downward, contacting the tip of the spearpoint, pear-shaped blade against the bare upper arm, blood gushing as the skin ripped while Rourke dragged the knife down and along the arm's length.

The grip on his neck eased.

He smashed his right knee upward again, hammering with it in short jabs, searching for the testicles—there was a scream, the first sound the man had made—Rourke felt the squish of flesh against his knee.

The grip on his neck loosened completely, Rourke jabbing the knife in again, into the chest, the body lurching back.

Rourke rolled onto his stomach, coughing, gasping for breath, his right arm numb.

His left hand, sticky with the blood, snaked toward the Detonics pistol under his right armpit, found the rubber grip, wrenched the pistol through the speedbreak through the trigger guard and out of the leather, the thumb slipping against the small spurred hammer because of the wetness of the blood. The man was up, hurtling himself forward, the knife still impaled in the right side of his chest, the right arm covered in blood.

Rourke's right thumb swiped again at the hammer, the hammer coming back, Rourke pulling the trigger once,

then once more, then once again, the wildman's body rocking with each slug, spinning, stumbling, then falling over, forward, bouncing once, blood splashing from the arm and the chest as the body impacted.

Rourke, the Detonics still in his left fist, used the fist to push himself up, his right arm starting to get the feeling back. Another man was charging at him.

He pumped the trigger—the Detonics bucked in his hand once, then once again.

Rourke wheeled, half stumbling, coughing still, his throat burning—half from the pressure of the strangler, half from the smell of Henderson's burning flesh, A woman with a machete was rushing him. Rourke fired the last round in the pistol, her body taking the slug, reeling, falling.

The slide still locked back, Rourke jammed the pistol into his belt.

He flexed his right fist as he reached up awkwardly with his left hand to the Detonics under his left arm. His thumb coiled around the front strap of the grip, he ripped, the pistol coming free of the leather. He twisted the gun in his hand, worked the hammer back and .started forward, toward Henderson.

The man Rourke had gutshot was getting to his feet, the torch still in his hand, the arm beyond the hand blackened where the flesh had singed in the heat of the pyre's flames.

The man swung the torch, Rourke stumbling back, firing the Detonics, hitting the wildman executioner in the face twice, the head exploding like an overripe melon hitting concrete.

On the ground near the base of the cross was a machete. Rourke wrapped his still numbed right fist around it, trying to find a way of reaching past the tongues of flame.

"Damn!" he rasped.

The flames were too high, too hot.

He pulled back, Henderson still screaming.

"Think! Think, Rourke—think, damnit," he shouted to the flames, to himself.

"Look out, John!"

Rourke wheeled, the Detonics in his left fist punching forward. It was Rubenstein, visible past the turned forward and down windshield of a jeep, the jeep bouncing and rolling from the far side of the ring of crosses.

Rourke shouted, "Paul—drive her into the base of the cross and jump clear—hurry!"

There was no answer, just something halfway between a wave and a salute, Rourke sidestepping, pulling the trigger on another of the wildmen, this one with a spear. The body lurched back and fell.

Rourke's right hand was working again—it pained but functioned. He dropped the machete, ramming the second Detonics into his belt beside the first one, swinging the CAR-forward, spraying out the magazine into the wildmen as they ran from the oncoming jeep.

The CAR-was empty and Rourke let it drop in its sling, drawing the Python from the flap holster at his hip, double actioning one of the -grain jacketed soft points point blank into the chest of one of the wildmen. He turned, the jeep snaking past him, one of the wildmen clambering onto the hood. Rourke pushed his right fist to full extension, double actioning another round from the six-inch, Metalifed Python, missing, then firing again.

The second shot caught the wildman on the hood of the jeep in the left side, the body rolling off, gone. Rourke jumped back, Paul's jeep crashing through the flames at the base of the cross, Paul jumping clear, rolling, coming up, his subgun firing into the wildmen.

Rourke snatched up the fallen machete from the ground, shifting the Python to his left fist, jumping the flames at the perimeter of the pyre, reaching the cross, Henderson screaming, his legs afire. Rourke dropped the revolver and the machete, lowering his hands into the

damp ground and the light covering of snow, scooping up handfuls, putting them on the flames. There was a dead wildman near him.

Rourke snatched at the animal skin half covering the man, using it like a blanket, swatting at the flames, smothering them, then throwing his body over the animal skin to deny the flames the last of the oxygen they needed.

He pulled back the animal skin, the smell of burnt flesh nauseating him.

He found the machete, hacked with it at the ropes binding the ankles to the stem of the cross. Flesh fell away, stiffened, blackened.

But the legs were free, Henderson moaning incomprehensibly.

Rourke started for the ropes on the leЈt wrist, recoiling for an instant—spikes had been driven through the palms of the hands.

He felt something, snatching up the Python from the snowy ground, firing it point blank into the face of an oncoming wildman.

The big Colt in his left fist, he hacked with the machete in his right—at the ropes tied around the wrists of Corporal Henderson.

There was a gutting hook near the base of the machete—or whatever its purpose, it looked like a gutting hook. Rourke started to work at the massive nail driven through Henderson's left palm—he stopped. He touched his hand to Henderson's neck, then set down the machete. He raised the left eyelid—Henderson had died.

Grasping the machete, raising to his full height, Rourke turned—a wildman raced toward him, a butcher-sized Bowie knife in his upraised right hand.

It was a sucker move, Rourke thought.

He stepped into the attacker's guard, batting away the knife with the six-inch barrel of the Python, then slashing the machete in a roundhouse swing, severing the

attacker's jugular vein—the life had gone from the body before it plopped to the ground, spurting, splashing as the heart still pumped.

Rourke dropped the machete—Rubenstein's subgun was still firing.

Rourke could hear it.

He pumped the last two rounds in the Python into another of the wildmen, then bolstered the revolver still empty.

A fresh stick for the CAR-from the musette bag—he inserted it up the well, stuffing the empty away.

He worked the bolt, pumping the trigger, taking out two more of the wildmen, using only six rounds.

He let the CAR-hang on its sling, taking'one, then the other of the Detonics .s—he rammed fresh magazines up the wells of both pistols, from the Six Pack on his belt, putting the empties in their places, filling the slots.

One pistol in each fist, he started forward—there were still men to save—men with mangled bodies, bleeding wounds—men who hadn't yet been set aflame.

He started firing, killing.