Desolation Angels

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Once again they paused to return fire. Bullets cracked through the air around Ryan. One bounced off the pavement right ahead of him and howled away in ricochet.

J.B. paused by the corner of the tilted brown-and-black skyscraper to fire a burst at the Angels under the slanted structure. Ryan saw one go down, yelling and kicking. The others dropped to take cover among the rubble.

That turned out not to be a good idea. Apparently the fallen skyscraper wasn’t altogether stable. Or perhaps the earth had just shifted in a tremor Ryan was too preoccupied to feel. A block of masonry the size of one of the Motor City’s most famous products—a big old gas-guzzler sedan—dropped straight down and crushed a kneeling Angel. The others cut off their assault and scuttled away like frightened quail.

“That was more luck than we deserve,” J.B. commented. He fired another burst but didn’t seem to hit any of their pursuers.

Ryan raced past him. J.B. grinned as he flashed by and moved to follow.

Jak had burst in among the colorful shacks. To his surprise Ryan realized it was an active marketplace of sorts. The colors came from old scavenged signs, cracked panels of plastic and that old standby for Deathlands building and decoration both, hammered-out soda cans. The shacks themselves seemed to consist largely of nonmetallic car body panels.

The people swapping goods and gossip broke apart like a flock of pecking birds that had had an alley cat dropped in their midst. Some of them, mostly keepers of the kiosks of fresh fruits and ancient predark goods, stood their ground, shaking fists and shouting in outraged anger at the intrusion.

“We’re sorry!” Krysty and Mildred shouted as they ducked between the stands. Mildred knocked over an angled rack of brightly colored garments and sent them fluttering to the ground, which was bare earth hard packed by decades of feet.

Ryan glanced back as he and J.B. came among the stands. The group of Angels that had chased them out of Nikk’s domain had appeared behind them. As he watched, so did the ones the block’s fall had flushed.

Shouts and shots started to fly from the two groups of Angels. Fortunately, with all the kiosks and the bodies of fleeing customers, Ryan and his friends had plenty of concealment.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much cover available. The rapidly dwindling number of incidental bodies would stop bullets much more reliably than the fiberglass panels.

“What you wanna go and bring the Angels here for?” a sturdy-looking woman in an apron and a red bandanna shouted at Ryan as he darted around her table full of what looked to him to be fried rats on sticks.

“Didn’t have much choice in the matter, lady!” he yelled back.

At that moment a wrinkly stepped from between two booths up ahead, raised a giant black single-action blaster in two palsied hands and shot Doc in the head from twenty feet away.

Chapter Eight (#ulink_d7886c9b-366e-5e1c-bb0a-06efbc7c1fc9)

“Fireblast!” Mildred heard Ryan yell.

From his tone of voice she knew something bad had happened. She turned, feeling sick fear in her gut. That last shot had sounded shatteringly loud, meaning it had been fired from nearby.

Mildred stopped, turned and saw Doc reeling, a hand clapped to the side of his head. Blood flooded between his fingers and down the back of his hands, ran down his cheeks and dripped onto the lapels of his long coat. And off to her right stood an old guy, wearing nothing but a grimy loincloth stained with she didn’t even want to imagine what. He held a big battered Ruger Blackhawk in both his pale, liver-spotted hands, and he was trying to crank the single-action hammer back with his thumbs.

Mildred’s reaction was automatic. Inevitable. She’d taken a half step to turn her right side toward him. She raised her right arm, stiffened. Her ZKR 551 target revolver was held at the end of it. By reflex she thumbed the hammer back as she brought it up.

The blocky sights aligned on the old man’s stringy-haired head, as if the upper half of it were sitting on top of the front post. At that instant she pressed the trigger.

She saw blood spray pink out the side of the elder’s head. His skinny legs and grubby fish-white body folded beneath him. She had chilled him and never given it a thought.

He was just trying to defend his place in the world, she thought, then reality set in. Tough titty. Her survival, and the survival of her companions, was paramount. She had done what needed to be done.

Now, blaster still in hand, she was moving swiftly toward Doc. He was still on his feet, but barely.

“No!” Mildred heard Ricky scream from behind her.

“Come on,” Krysty said firmly.

From the youth’s protests Mildred guessed the redhead had grabbed his arm and was physically dragging him onward among the now almost-deserted booths and stands.

Mildred was by Doc’s side. He tried to wave her off with his nonbloody hand.

“Go ahead, dear lady. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

As if to prove the truth of her words, he reeled and toppled into her arms. Fortunately, she was professional enough a shooter to have her finger outside the trigger guard when she didn’t intend to fire the weapon. His weight was considerable, more than was expected by the look of him. But it wasn’t deadweight. He was still conscious. Just woozy.

“Jak!” she heard Ryan shout as she staggered back a step. For all his protestations, he hadn’t been too proud to drape his free arm around her neck for support. “Find us cover right now!”

He and J.B. appeared, flanking Doc simultaneously. The Armorer grabbed his left elbow while Ryan grabbed the right. They hauled him out of Mildred’s arms and kept running.

They scarcely even slowed.

Shouts erupted from behind them. The pack was closing in. The Angels were already among the southern booths, though fortuitously none of them had line of sight on their prey. Yet.

Without looking Ryan stretched his right arm back and cranked off two shots from his SIG. A stout black lady in a red turban scurrying for cover threw up her hands with a wail of despair and fell to the ground.

Mildred steeled her heart and turned to run after the three men. Ryan didn’t like to chill without need any more than she did. But if random third parties got in the way of shots he fired in defense of himself and his friends—even just popped off to try to spook some caution into whatever happened to be chasing them—he wouldn’t lose a second’s sleep over it.

She doubted he’d even remember it five minutes from now.

But she would. And she’d likely lose the sleep for him.

* * *

“WHY ISN’T DOC DEAD?” Ricky asked.

Krysty looked over the bottom of the large, empty front window, her snub-nosed .38 clutched in both hands. A large man, bent over with his big gut hanging out the front of his open vest, approached through the waist-high weeds and brush of the overgrown parking lot. She quickly lined up the sights and fired.

To her surprise the man dropped straight down out of sight, as if she’d actually hit him from fifty feet away. That was far from a given with her handblaster.

The overgrowth lit up and began to shake from multiple muzzle blasts as the Angels lying among them returned enthusiastic fire.

They ran into a former fast-food restaurant—the nearest available cover on the northwest side of a five-way intersection just north of the market. Its roof had been blown off so that its walls stood open to the sky. For what it was worth, it offered a decent field of fire in three directions. The way they had come was mostly clear for about twenty feet before the weeds kicked in. To the southwest a hundred feet of rubble-choked former parking lot—a lot of twisted ankles just waiting to happen—separated them from a stand of chest-high wheat and barley. On the northeast side, a wide, fairly intact street lay between them and a three-story red-brick building.

Ryan lifted his head cautiously above that wall and peered across the street.

“I’m not seeing any activity over there,” he reported. “Yet. If they put snipers on the roof, we’re going to have a long afternoon.” He jerked his chin at the structure, whose rooftop gave a commanding view of the far third of the former dining area where they had gone to ground.

“Doc got shot in the head,” Ricky said. He ignored the storm of bullets cracking over his head and flying over the counter into what had been the kitchen area of a derelict KFC. “Why isn’t he dead?”

“It wasn’t a fatal shot,” Mildred replied. Doc sat with his back to a side wall near the dark-haired youth while Mildred crouched next to him. She had the lid of one eye skinned wide-open with her thumb. “He isn’t going to die. Of this, anyway. But he is concussed.”

“So how is he not dead?”

“A person’s skull is pretty good armor, Ricky,” she said. “It’s possible that a handgun bullet could bounce off, even fired from point-blank range. This was just a graze. Lots of blood, but a small wound.”

“Probably a .38 slug,” J.B. said. He crouched beside the naked metal frame that had been the front door. “Soft lead, round nose. If the old guy had been cranking full-power .357s through that Ruger cowboy gun, we might be singing a different tune.”

The Angels hadn’t rushed them yet. Now the defenders were hunkered down just inside the open-to-the-air windows and doors, waiting for the inevitable assault. They had shucked their packs and left them in the back storage area where they wouldn’t be underfoot.

At least we’re getting a chance to drink some water and catch our breath, Krysty thought.

Mildred bandaged Doc’s head quickly, using some unbleached linen strips they’d traded for at a post.

“What’s our prospect of breaking out the back?” J.B. asked.

A partly collapsed building stood right behind the one they occupied, across a narrow alley. To its southwest was the rubble of a thoroughly destroyed building, a long, low mound coming up as high as Krysty’s breastbone in places. The street on the other side was partially blocked a bit farther down by another tall building that had fallen east.

“Not like,” Jak called. He was unseen in the back of the store, keeping an eye on the rear entrance. “No way through.”

“Looked as if there’s mostly more open fields off past it, anyway,” Ryan said. “Be hard to get out unseen.”

“There sure seems to be a lot of open space around here, for a big city and all,” said Ricky, who was crouched by the southwest wall. Nothing remained of the interior furnishings but the counter. The kitchen stoves and sinks and whatnot had long since been pillaged for scrap.

“It’s Detroit,” Mildred said, cutting off the end of the last bandage with a pocketknife. “The Motor City. There, old man. You look as if I just treated you for toothache, but at least you won’t bleed out.”

She glanced over at Ricky to see him giving her a blank look. “They used to make cars here,” she told him. “So they had lots of cars. I reckon a lot of that space they’ve got growing crops and weeds used to be parking lots. Also, every third building seems to be a parking garage.”

“How you feel, Doc?” J.B. asked.

The old man shook his head. “I’ll be right as rain,” he said. Krysty noticed that his words were slurred. “Just let me sit here until the dizziness passes.”

“Concussion,” Mildred said. “That’s another reason not to make a break for it. This old coot isn’t fit to run any foot races. Least of all with bullets.”

“Why haven’t they attacked us yet, lover?” Krysty asked.

“Waiting,” Ryan said. “Working their way into a position they like. Mebbe waiting on reinforcements. Then they’ll rush us.”

Krysty glanced over the wall. Her heart skipped a beat.

“Here they come!” she yelled.

* * *

AS IF KRYSTY’S warning cry had been a signal, a furious storm of blasterfire erupted from outside.

Ryan drew his SIG, cursing himself for paying so much attention to the multiple-story building across the street. Sure, if the Angels got blasters in there, it would be triple bad, but he’d seen no sign of them even trying. And anyway, if Trader had caught him back in the day obsessing over potential danger with an obvious, actual one hanging over all their heads like an ax ready to fall, he probably would have left him high and dry in some pest-hole ville.

But regrets and reproach wouldn’t put a fired bullet back in the blaster.

J.B. leaned forward to fire his Uzi left-handed out the front door. He ducked back hastily as bullets started skipping in through the opening and across the floor right next to him.

It was obvious what the Angels were trying to do. A bunch of them were cranking shots into the former fast-food restaurant as fast as they could to keep the defenders’ heads down while other Angels charged the place. They had enough blasters out there to make it work. As long as they were careful not to hit their own attacking people.

Ryan wouldn’t have wanted to be one of those coldhearts trying to storm the restaurant, caught right between blasters like that.

“Right!” he yelled as bullets zinged and screamed crazily around the roofless interior. The same stout brick walls that kept bullets out also kept bullets fired in. “Let the bastards come, then blast them when they try to get in.”

J.B. sat on his heels with his back to the wall by the door. His right hand now held his shotgun muzzle upward by the pistol grip. His left clamped his fedora on his head as if against a high wind. He caught Ryan’s eye and gave his head a quick shake.

Ryan knew what he was thinking. It was a terrible plan. And it was.

Just better than any other option they had right then.

The bullet storm slacked. “Stay low, and get ready!” Ryan gritted out. That lull almost certainly meant the charging Angels had almost reached their goal. But if one of the companions popped up to shoot now, he or she would invite a reflex shot from one of the Angels ready to lay down covering fire. Or from one of the coldhearts about to break in.

He duckwalked to the front wall to avoid extreme-angle fire from the Angels’ covering force. He drew his panga in his left hand. It would be ideal to keep the bastards from getting in at all.

Real was dealing with whatever actually happened.

“Jak!” he called. “Keep an eye on that west window.”

Then they hit them.

A man rushed through the door. Prepared, J.B. stuck out a leg and tripped him. The attacker fell hard on his face and skidded, his long hair flying. Then the Armorer stuck his shotgun around the doorjamb and pumped out two quick blasts.

Men screamed. Ryan shot the fallen man in the side of his head as he blearily tried to push off the concrete floor, blood streaming from his face.

He plopped back down. He had a cowboy-style handblaster, similar to the one the wrinkly in the market had used.

Ryan shifted back two steps along the side wall to give himself an angle on the front door and window. He was gambling that there now would be too many Angel bodies in the way for there to be much risk of somebody sniping him from out in the weeds. The men lying out there were still shooting, which put Ryan back in his earlier frame of mind about not envying the assault force.

It was time to make the ones getting shot in the backs by their buddies look like the lucky ones.

A man swung a leg over the sill between the crouching Krysty and Mildred. Krysty promptly stabbed her knife through the back of his calf above his boot. He shrieked as she forced the knife out, cutting his hamstring. The leg was sucked right back over the wall and out of sight.

More bodies suddenly appeared, clogging the window and door. The Angels were so eager to get inside they were getting in one another’s way. Ryan shot a man who’d gotten stuck in the middle of the door in the belly. Nothing like having a downed comrade thrashing and howling in intolerable pain to take the rod out of an enemy’s pecker.

The Angel sagged back, screeching. A wild-bearded man to his left tried to throw him out of the way and barge in. Straightening, J.B. wheeled around the doorjamb and postponed the steel-shod butt plate of his M4000 right into the middle of the angry black-fringed face.

Both of them fell back against the crowd pressing them from behind. The man who had been on the gut-shot Angel’s right raised a remade 1911-model .45 blaster at Ryan. The one-eyed man shot him through the bare chest. He dropped to the floor.

Doc’s under-barrel shotgun roared. A man who had dived through the window, rolled and come up with a short-barreled revolver in hand screamed as the shot charge exploded his face, ripping off the skin on the whole upper half, knocking chunks of flesh from the cheekbone and blowing open that side of his skull. An exposed blue eye rolled wildly in its socket, then rolled upward as the man fell onto his back.

Concussed or not, it seemed, the old man still could focus his mind on the task at hand when the shit and the bullets began to fly.

* * *

KRYSTY KNELT BY the wall. She and Mildred angled their fire into the bodies and faces of Angels trying to climb in the big front window. Blood fell on her face like torrential rain.

The 5-shot cylinder of her 640 was rapidly exhausted. She looked around. Several handblasters and a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun lay inside the window where their former owners had dropped them.