Chapter Thirty-Five

 

 

 

The explosion in the small building that held the stickies' supplies of cooking and lighting oil was devastating. It turned the wet and windy night into the brightest day.

 

The falling rain resembled a great wall of red and orange flames, spitting into the lake of mud. The liquid from the ruptured containers streamed everywhere, pouring into the kivas, where it also ignited, making the circular ceremonial pits look more like blazing oil wells.

 

The deep, echoing boom bounced around the camp, seeming to become amplified beneath the cliff. It was welcomed with wild cheers and whoops from the triumphant stickies, giving them extra courage to surge across and finally begin to drive out the surviving lepers,

 

"We have to go now," Ryan told his companions. "If we don't, then we could get stranded in here. Won't take Charlie long to get himself reorganized and sweep the place to find us. Think he might even bring our execution time forward for us. Just try and keep close."

 

"But the fire makes it easy for anyone to spot us. Perhaps we should be better advised to try and remain hidden."

 

Ryan closed his eye for a moment, drawing a slow breath to control his anger. "Fine, Reverend. You stay here and wait to be crucified by the stickies. Mebbe you could really enjoy that. Give you a deep and meaningless experience."

 

"But the rest of us is going." Abe grinned. "Here and now."

 

 

 

A DEAD LEPER LAY SPRAWLED half off the wooden bridge, one abbreviated hand trailing in the foaming water. It worried Ryan, as it looked like the man had been chilled while trying to escape the camp, rather than gunned down during the attack. It could mean that some of the lepers were already out ahead of them, hiding somewhere in the dank woods.

 

The center of the firelight was clearly away at the far end of the encampment, where the remainder of the lepers were trapped under the overhang, forced into a bloody and savage last stand. The gunfire was slowing, as victims were picked off one by one.

 

Ryan glanced behind them once more, making sure his little group was still together after the dash down the slope.

 

"Get on," Jarman shouted, "before the mutie curs see us."

 

The rain was sheeting down in swirling banks of water, pitting the mud and turning the puddles into frothing orange lace. Ryan picked his way up the slippery steps on the other side of the ravine, marveling at their good fortune in managing to get away without any of the stickies spotting them.

 

"Lose some, win some," he said over his shoulder to Abe, who was next in line.

 

But the skinny man was on his knees, the hunting rifle lying in the dirt. His face was contorted with pain and his hands were pressed to his stomach, low on the right side.

 

"Lose some," he said, making a brief try for a brave grin and failing by a distance.

 

"Bad?"

 

"Like being kicked in the kidneys by a fucking mule. Oh, jeez"

 

The scream of rage from behind them was chillingly recognizable as Charlie, being told that his choice captives were off and running.

 

Jarman pushed by Krysty, knocking the wounded man to one side of the path. "Stand away!" he bellowed at Ryan.

 

If he hadn't been concentrating on how best to play Abe's injury, Ryan would have killed the preacher without hesitation.

 

The tall white-haired figure bounced away from them, quickly vanishing into the wet darkness near the old Visitor Center.

 

"Get going, Ryan," Abe said, his voice surprisingly calm and gentle.

 

"Shut it."

 

"Bad hit. Had 'em before. Tell you it's a bad one. Leave me."

 

"We can carry him between us," Harold offered, lifting himself up a couple more notches in Ryan's estimation.

 

"Won't make it very far," Krysty said.

 

"Yeah," Abe agreed.

 

A couple of bullets hissed through the night and kicked up plumes of spray behind the small group.

 

"Give me the rifle," Dorina suggested. "I'll keep the bastards' heads down."

 

"Do it," Ryan ordered.

 

"Leave me here, Ryan. You four can make it."

 

"No."

 

"Rain covers tracks. Go andohhh, hurts. Put one between my eyes, Ryan. Old times' sake. Be a friend, won't you?"

 

Abe was doubled right over, one foot tapping uncontrollably in the slime. He was moaning now on every indrawn breath.

 

Dorina leveled the Steyr and fired off three spaced rounds.

 

"Get any?" Harold asked.

 

"Difficult to see. Think one went down. Light's near impossible."

 

"Don't waste ammo," Ryan warned.

 

"Come on, man. Do it for me. I'm going to get you all chilled. Time's ticking fast."

 

"Cover us, Dorina. Harold, give me the Magnum. Get Abe on your back. Just as far as the top. Then I'll come and help. Can you?"

 

"Sure." He handed over the borrowed blaster. "Upsadaisy, Abe."

 

"I said"

 

"Shut the fuck up, Abe," Ryan said. "Krysty, go with him. Watch for lepers up top. Or any stickies. Just watch for anyone."

 

Dorina fired again, this time slapping her hand delightedly on the muddied stock of the rifle. "Got one, clean through the head. Only way to take out a stickie for sure."

 

Harold was gone, feet splashing in the pools of water. Krysty was at his heels, her Smith amp; Wesson 640 ready in her right hand.

 

They could still hear Abe moaning, some way above them.

 

But now Ryan was able to focus all of his attention across the bridge, where he figured Charlie would already be trying to rally his people.

 

"You okay?" he asked Dorina.

 

"Never better. Pay back the rapists. Only way they know. Dead man rapes nobody."

 

They were both as wet as you can get, staring toward the Anasazi houses. The camp fire was extinguished by the storm, but the oil still blazed in a haze of yellow light and black smoke.

 

"Them lepers gone?"

 

The voice came from a stickie, who'd emerged from the thick brush at the side of the path where he must have been hiding, terrified, oblivious to the group of norms making their escapes right by him.

 

"Nearly squirted my shorts when I saw them. Ugly bastards!"

 

He was short and chubby, his sunken eyes and dark skin marking him for a breed, the product of a stickie mother and a norm father. It wasn't very often the other way around.

 

"Hey, I asked if"

 

The penny still hadn't dropped when Ryan shot him through the bridge of the nose with the SIG-Sauer P-226. The 9 mm round exited the back of the head, taking with it a piece of bone the size of a small dinner plate. The contents of the skull were sucked out by the misshapen bullet in a great gout of brains and pale blood.

 

Quite literally mindless, the stickie staggered a few steps on automatic pilot, then vanished off the path, crashing back into the undergrowth where he'd been hiding.

 

The baffle silencer on the blaster still functioned fairly efficiently, and Dorina blinked at the muted cough, seeing the devastating effect of the single shot.

 

"Way to go, Ryan," she giggled.

 

 

 

IT WAS A CONTAINED, organized withdrawal. Under fire from the rifle, Charlie had enough combat sense to realize that he wouldn't chance a frontal attack. As the rain continued to pour down, the river was once more a raging, impossible torrent, meaning that the narrow, exposed bridge had become the stickies' only option.

 

Ryan waited until he felt that Krysty, Harold and Abe had been given enough time to reach the top of the steep incline, then he tapped Dorina on her shoulder and jerked a thumb upward. She put one last round in among the shadows below them and joined him, scampering agilely up the streaming steps.

 

There was no return fire.

 

Abe was laid on his back on a carpet of pine needles, under the spread branches of an enormous tree. Rain dripped around him, but he was relatively dry. The first fumbling fingers of dawn were appearing in the eastern sky. In their pallid light, the wounded man's face seemed a sickly gray.

 

He looked up as Ryan and Dorina came jogging into view.

 

"Chill me some, lady?" he asked.

 

"One or two," she replied. Dorina was streaked with great gobbets of crimson mud, making her look as though she'd been on the losing end of a brawl in a slaughterhouse.

 

"Good on you."

 

Harold was leaning against the trunk of another big pinon, fighting for breath and trying to look casual about it.

 

Krysty grinned at Ryan. "We made it, lover. If we take turns with Abe we can still do some reasonable time. Find some place to hole up. Rain takes out the tracks."

 

"Any sign of the Reverend Jarman?"

 

She shook her head. "No. Long gone." She sucked in a great breath of the cool morning air. "Being free beats all, lover."

 

"We want to stay that way we'd better get moving again. Charlie won't wait forever before he sets his hounds after us."

 

Dorina looked around them in the widening light. "There's some tough peaks upstream. Why not go down and have the easy running?"

 

It was Harold who answered her question. "Ryan's right, sweet thing. Stickies goin' to figure we took the soft road. Me and Ryan can manage old Abe here for a good few hours yet."

 

Ryan managed to conceal his grin at the soft boy's new confidence. Wouldn't be right to tease him about it, but he knew in his heart they were setting themselves a triple-tough row to hoe by climbing north.

 

"What about J.B. and the others?" Krysty asked as she helped Abe painfully to his feet.

 

"Could be anywhere from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon," he replied, using one of Doc's favorite sayings.

 

 

 

IN FACT, J.B. and the others were less than a mile away, on a converging trail. All of them had blasters ready, fingers on triggers.

 

Minutes later it was Mildred who fired a single shot.

 

With a fatal result.