Twin Cities Run

Chapter Ten

Blade savagely rammed the stock of the Commando into the stomach of a Wack who’d grabbed him from behind. As the crazy doubled over. Blade spun, firing, nearly cutting his attacker in half at the waist.

A stone dropped down from the darkness, catching Blade on the left side, bruising his ribs.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Geronimo shouted.

Another Wack, heedless of personal risk, came at them from the right.

Geronimo held the Browning braced against his right hip and fired.

“You got him!” Blade exulted.

Amazingly, the assault ceased.

“Where’d they go?” Geronimo asked, searching, believing the respite might be a deliberate ruse.

“Maybe to regroup,” Blade suggested. “They’ve lost a lot already.”

“Over two dozen,” Geronimo guessed. “I can’t believe they just keep coming.”

Blade checked the magazine in his Commando. “If they do keep coming, I’m going to run out of ammunition. We’ve got to get back to the SEAL. We’ve plenty of ammo there.”

“Where’s Hickok and Bertha?” Geronimo anxiously inquired.

“I told them to get back to the transport,” Blade answered. “They must have made it.”

“I hope so.”

“How’s Joshua?”

Joshua was still on his knees, pressing his left hand against the gash in the back of his head. His long hair was matted with dried blood. “I’m able to stand,” Joshua replied for himself. He grit his teeth and managed to heave erect, weaving.

“Take it easy,” Geronimo admonished him. “We’re right here. We’ll help you.”

“Sorry to be such a burden.”

“You’re no burden,” Blade stated. “It looks like they’ve gone, so we can get out of here.”

From the blackness to their left bellowed the familiar refrain:

“MUH-EET! MUH-EET!”

“Damn!” Blade crouched, waiting, knowing the Wacks weren’t through with them.

“Let’s go!” Geronimo urged, leading the way.

The Wacks literally poured from the darkness, filling the road in front of them.

“They’re trying to block our retreat!” Geronimo yelled.

Blade, furious, fired, holding the trigger down, unleashing a lethal barrage into the writhing mass of hostility in their path.

It wasn’t enough.

“Now!” a male voice screamed, and all the Wacks there let fly with whatever they were holding in their hands.

There was nowhere to take cover.

Blade, Geronimo, and Joshua futilely attempted to shield their bodies from the downpour of stones, bricks, glass, metal, and other objects. They twitched and convulsed as they were pelted, lancing agony piercing their limbs and torsos.

The Wacks howled, still tossing their arsenal.

Blade gave Geronimo a slight shove. “Get the hell out of here!”

“I won’t leave you,” Geronimo snapped defiantly.

“Think of Joshua,” Blade reminded him. “Head east. I’ll catch up in a bit. You’ll need me to cover for you. We’re too exposed on this avenue. I’ll hold them off, then join you.”

“I don’t know…”

Joshua moaned, almost collapsing.

Geronimo caught him with his left arm.

“Go!” Blade ordered. “This is no time to argue!”

Geronimo grimly nodded. He supported Joshua, leading him from the road, hurrying to find any cover, any defensible position.

Blade watched them go, aware the deluge had stopped. Geronimo and Joshua disappeared, and he was totally alone. He turned his attention to the Wacks, startled to discover they had vanished too.

Damn!

Where were they? Planning another attack? Bertha had said the Wacks were crazy. How crazy? What were the limits of their mental capacities?

Could they carry out a complicated method of attack?

A solitary rock hurtled from his left, missing.

Annoyed, Blade fired a short burst in the direction the projectile had originated from. He was rewarded by a shriek of pain.

Serves the bastards right!

Slowly, alertly, Blade backed away, intent on following Geronimo and Joshua, afraid they would get too great a start and be impossible to locate in the dark.

A shadow ran at him from the murky gloom, a female Wack with a knife clutched in her left hand.

Blade remorselessly mowed her down.

“MUH-EET!”

Where was the bozo with the monosyllabic vocabulary?

Blade reached the eastern edge of University Avenue, hesitating, hoping he could lose the Wacks in the nocturnal terrain. He doubted it, though.

Considering their accuracy, the crazies must possess exceptional night vision. Possibly, after decades of hunting and foraging after dark, their eyes were adjusted to the lack of light.

The snap of a twig apprised him of the danger an instant before a zany jumped at him with a pitchfork.

Blade rolled, the rusted prongs of the pitchfork lancing by his head. He fired from the prone position, on his back, the heavy slugs ripping the Wack from the crotch to his neck.

“MUH-EET!”

Blade crouched, debating. It was definitely time to haul butt and catch up with Geronimo and Joshua. He ran, hunched over, trying to make his body as small a target as he could. Bushes and weeds choked the lawn he was crossing. A tree rose in front of him and he dodged the trunk, hearing a scraping above him as he passed under the branches.

Damn!

The Wack pounced on his back, bearing them both to the grass, iron fingers closing around his throat, the Commando useless, pinned under his chest.

Damn!

Blade tried to rise, but the crazy on top of him was endowed with the abnormal strength of madness.

“Want the legs!” the Wack babbled.

The legs?

“Legs taste good!” the Wack cackled. “Legs taste good!”

Blade groped for the dagger on his left wrist, finding the handle, drawing the knife from its sheath and sweeping it back and up.

“Uuuurrk!” The Wack, shocked, released the death grip.

Blade shoved upward, dislodging his assailant. He clutched the Commando, whirled, and fired. The crazy flopped and tossed as the bullets ravaged his body.

Definitely time to get the hell out of here!

The next blackened form was already coming at him from the other side of the tree.

Blade pressed the trigger as the Wack swung a tire iron, expecting the chattering blast would decimate the lunatic.

The Commando jammed.

Blade brought the Carbine up, blocking the iron. He brutally jabbed the stock into the Wack’s throat, crushing the windpipe.

“MUH-EET!”

Blade threw caution to the winds and ran, heedless of the risk and the undergrowth impeding his progress. He considered dropping the Commando, but the gun was too valuable to lose. Holding the useless Carbine in his left hand, he drew a Vega with his right.

Something swished through the air and imbedded itself in Blade’s left thigh. He stumbled and went down, intense agony racking his entire leg.

What the…?

Blade probed, his fingers contacting a thin shaft sticking into his thigh.

An arrow! He’d been shot with a damn arrow! The Spirit help him!

The brush around him came alive with soft rustlings and indistinct whisperings.

The Wacks were coming for him!

Blade angrily gripped the shaft with both hands and wrenched the arrow free. Moist blood flowed freely over his thigh.

The nearest shrub parted and someone stepped into view.

Blade grabbed the Vega and fired three times.

Whoever it was fell out of sight.

Blade shuffled forward, determined to escape. There was still a chance he could shake his pursuers. He had to find Geronimo and Joshua! He had to!

“MUH-EET!” came from behind him, the basso bellow of the town crier.

The weeds thinned out, ending in a paved square that once had served as a parking lot for fifty automobiles.

Blade paused, wavering over the peril of exposing himself in the open.

But then what choice did he have? Pressing his left hand on the arrow wound to suppress the flow of blood, he hobbled across the tarmac, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling from a sense of anticipated menace.

Another arrow zinged by his right shoulder.

Blade twisted, catching a glimpse of a form standing near the pavement. The bowman notching another shaft. Blade raised the Vega, carefully sighted, and fired. The boom of the gun and the scream of the Wack were instantaneous.

As Hickok would say, Got ya!

Blade limped on, heading for the far side of the parking lot. There appeared to be dense brush and trees ahead, and if he could reach that cover, he could elude the crazies on his heels.

The pounding of feet on the tarmac behind him reached his ears.

Blade glanced back over his shoulder.

Four Wacks had burst from the weeds, intent on catching him before he could attain the other side.

Blade knew they’d be on him before he could fire twice. This was no time for the gun. He smiled grimly. This situation called for dirty infighting, his specialty. He quickly holstered the Vega and drew his two Bowies, reassured by the feel of the heavy handles in his hands. Let them come!

They did.

The first attacker came at him with an upraised shovel, the tool held over his head. Blade jumped in close, before the Wack could swing, and slashed the Bowie in his right hand across the zany’s left wrist.

The Wack’s left hand dropped to the ground, the man frozen in his tracks, horrified, watching the hand flap for a few seconds as the fingers twitched.

“Clorg!” the crazy shouted, terrified, holding the stump up to his face and gaping as blood spurted in every direction. “Clorg!”

Blade was already in motion, avoiding the first stab of the second assailant, who leaped at him with a knife. A flash of pale flesh revealed Blade’s target, and he buried his left Bowie in the man’s neck. To the hilt.

He fiercely twisted the blade, then yanked the Bowie clear.

The third Wack came in fast and low, diving for Blade’s legs.

Blade cried out as the attacker collided with his injured left leg, and he went down, trying to orient his position in relation to the two Wacks still capable of fighting. He lashed with his right foot and caught the man who’d tackled him in the face, crushing the Wack’s nose.

Where was the fourth one? Blade struggled to rise. There had been one more when…