Chapter Thirty-Three

 

 

At least five of the cold hearts were sleeping together in the church. They were the first of the targets for Ryan, Krysty and Carl.

 

They waited in the lee of a stone wall to the east of the building. Harmony was as quiet as death, with not even a distant howling coyote to disturb the silence.

 

"What's time?" Carl was breathing hard with tension, and Ryan could almost taste his sweat.

 

"Two more minutes. You all right?"

 

"Sure. Want to get started is all."

 

Krysty was sitting cross-legged, hands flat along her thighs, eyes closed, looking as serene as a Buddhist statue of calm. The calm before the hurricane.

 

Ryan checked his chron again. "Right," he said. "Carl, take that side door and chill anyone coming out of it." He gripped him by the shoulder. "Anyone, Carl. Hold back for a moment and you'll be buying the farm."

 

"Don't worry," he replied hoarsely. "You wouldn't have a small jug of drinkin' liquor anywhere around, would? No, I guess you wouldn't."

 

He vanished into the opalescent dawn light, creeping through the dew-decked grass.

 

"Ready, lover?" He kissed her softly on the cheek, seeing her eyes open.

 

"Ready. Let's go do it for all of the dead and for Harmony."

 

 

 

THE OAK DOOR WAS STUDDED with heavy iron nails. The handle was cold and damp as Ryan carefully turned it, his eye half-closed, wincing against the expectation of squeaking hinges.

 

But the door swung open quietly, revealing a small porch with a pair of muddied boots in one corner. The door into the body of the church was partly open and Ryan ghosted through it, the SIG-Sauer drawn, the rifle across his shoulder. Krysty was at his heels like an avenging angel with hair of living fire, holding her own Smith amp; Wesson blaster.

 

The church was white and wooden-framed, with stained-glass window facing the east. The first weak shimmering rays of the dawning lit up the picture of the blessed Saint Buebo of Ishmailia, smiling beatifically while defeating the great worm of Salonika with a fiery trident.

 

There was enough light in the building to show Ryan and Krysty the sleeping men, sprawled between pews, one of them lying drunkenly across the stained top of the altar. Most were wrapped in blankets, making it difficult to tell if they were norms or muties.

 

Ryan counted and held up six fingers, looking around to see if any others slept in the shadows.

 

Krysty shook her head. She held up seven fingers, pointing with the barrel of the Smith amp; Wesson toward the pool of darkness between the pulpit and the covered font.

 

"Yeah," Ryan whispered. "Got him." Hie chron's dancing digital figures glowed as he checked them again. It was nearly time.

 

 

 

IT WASN'T A FIREFIGHT, not at all at the start, and not very much at its ending. It was simply a straightforward series of executions, carried out with clinical efficiency.

 

Trader used to say that it was always better to slay a sleeping enemy rather than one wide awake.

 

 

Ryan catfooted to the man on the alter and brought the barrel of the SIG-Sauer to his nap, angling it toward the occipital bone at the rear of the skull. He looked behind him to see that Krysty had takes a similar position, kneeling by one of the sleeping gang of killers.

 

Four fifty-nine and fifty-seven seconds.

 

Eight.

 

Nine.

 

Five o'clock.

 

Ryan pressed the blaster against the warm skin and pulled the trigger before the man could lurch out of sleep. The 9 mm round drove through into the deeps of the slumbering brain, bringing death before wakefulness, giving a dark mercy that the killer had done nothing to deserve.

 

Once that first marker had fallen due, it was quickly on to the second, before the muffled echo of the shot had traveled around the building. His heavy booming SIG-Sauer was followed immediately by the lighter, flatter crack of Krysty's 5-shot, short-barreled revolver.

 

The murderers died without waking, with the exception of the one who'd been sleeping near the pulpit. Ryan was still a step away when that figure started to throw back the blankets, the beginnings of a scream birthing in his throat.

 

Ryan pulled the trigger of the SIG-Sauer, and the bullet smashed through the front of the killer's head, exiting into the base of the font in a welter of blood and brains, drilling a hole clean through the carved wood. The body slumped down, the holy water leaking all over it, streaming darkly down the center aisle of the church.

 

As the corpse rolled clear of the blanket, there was enough light for Ryan to see that he'd killed a middle-aged woman with short, curly hair.

 

Krysty walked across to join him, the heels of her Western boots ringing on the stone flags, carefully avoiding the spreading pools of dark blood.

 

"Done?" she asked, pausing as she saw the last victim. "Gaia! That's Martha Pachelbel. I knew her when I was little. Lived next How come you ?"

 

"Just another person in a blanket," Ryan said, swiftly replacing the empty rounds.

 

"I guess if she was sleeping in here with them then Hear more shooting."

 

Ryan nodded. "Others getting on with the business. Let's move. Every second's precious."

 

They left the building by the front door, calling for Carl to join them from his watch on the side entrance.

 

"You get them all?"

 

"Yeah. Seven. Never felt a thing." Ryan didn't mention the woman. Time for that later.

 

 

 

J.B. AND MILDRED had been given the school. It seemed that this was one of the centers for the muties, and the firepower of the Uzi and Mildred's uncanny accuracy with her Czech revolver could prove vital.

 

J.B. took the back, slipping in past the outhouses into a small cloakroom, lined with benches and rows of pegs. Mildred walked along the grass at the side of the gravel path to the front door, which stood slightly ajar. There was the strong smell of smoke, and she could make out the remains of a big fire still glowing in the grate, which was another pointer to the presence of stickies with their notorious love of flames and explosions.

 

She entered the single classroom at the same moment J.B. appeared from a door at the side of the teacher's desk. The first dawn light was just enough, as Ryan had said it would be, for them to make out the sleeping enemies.

 

The Armorer started to check his chron, but his keen hearing caught the sound of shooting from over toward the church and he knew that it was time to start.

 

There were six sleeping figures, mostly snoring through open mouths. All were unmistakably stickies, with eroded, corrupt features, scabbed skin and the tiny circles of the suckers on their hands and fingers, opening and closing rhythmically, in time with their breathing.

 

J.B. had the Uzi on single shot and walked briskly between the sleeping muties, killing each of them with a single bullet in the brain.

 

The shots came at three-second intervals. The fifth stickie was partly awake, sitting up, rubbing at his eyes as the Armorer shot him through the suckered palms, straight into his skull.

 

Only one woke enough to make any sort of move, and Mildred shot him smack in the center of the low, brutish forehead, the impact of the big Smith amp; Wesson .38 round knocking him into a scrabbling heap, where his thrashing legs kicked over a predark globe of the world.

 

"So far, so good," J.B. said, reloading the Uzi, his scattergun still slung unused over his shoulder.

 

 

 

JAK AND DOC ALSO HAD their primary target.

 

It wasn't one of the larger buildings in Harmony, like the church or the school. The recce had identified the old sheriff's office, where Ludlow Thompson had once enforced the law, as a place where several of the norms in the gang were staying during the night.

 

Neither Doc nor Jak had superaccurate comp-controlled digital wrist chrons like Ryan and J.B., but the albino had an uncanny sense of time passing and he had been mentally counting down toward the five-o'clock mark.

 

"Is there long to go, dear boy?"

 

"Four minutes, I make it."

 

"We should hear the shooting once the others open fire, should we not?"

 

"Should. Your blaster full ready?"

 

Doc's commemorative gold-plated Le Mat J. E. B. Stuart special had been fieldstripped, oiled and cleaned, unloaded and reloaded by the Armorer while they waited for the dawn to draw closer, with some scabrous comments about Doc's neglect of the beautiful weapon.

 

The .65-caliber grapeshot round was devastating and had saved the old man's life on several occasions. But it was a one-off shot and, once fired, it was fiddling and perilously time-consuming to alter the hammer to make it engage on the nine chambers of .44s.

 

So it was going to be the .44s spitting from the weighty cannon.

 

They waited in a narrow alley at the rear of the building. The curtains were open, and Doc could see that there was an oil lamp still lit in the back, where Carl had told them the cells were situated.

 

"Think that the ungodly are still awake?"

 

Jak shrugged. "Find out three minutes."

 

Doc took a long deep breath and did several knee bends, though the explosive cracking of the joints made Jak look worriedly at him.

 

"Sorry, dear lad, sorry," he whispered. "Presume not that I am the man I was."

 

"Two minutes."

 

A shadow passed across the face of the lightening sky, swooping low over the sheriff's office, its great eyes staring down at the two men. Doc ducked under its whispering feathers.

 

"Barn owl," he said. "I assume that it is returning to its nest after a night's hunting. I hope it has been successful. I hope that we shall be successful."

 

"Know soon."

 

"Time is passing. Should we not ready ourselves closer to the door?"

 

Jak nodded, his stark hair burning like a mag-fire in the first dawning. "Let's go do it, Doc."

 

Harmony still slept as the ill-matched couple, the old man towering over the teenager, made their way up the path to the back of the sheriff's building.

 

Jak went first, stepping lightly onto the porch and testing the door handle. He looked back to give Doc the thumbs-up as it eased open. light spilled out past the slim youth, reflecting off the satin-finish Colt Python with its six-inch barrel. He gestured with it for Doc to go around the front, where he could cover any attempts to escape.

 

Doc nodded and walked along the side, past a barred window, to find himself on the shadowy main street. Just as he reached a position to cover the front door, he heard shooting erupt from two different places in the ville.

 

"All done in the tying of a cravat," he muttered to himself. "Time, gentlemen, please."

 

Jak slipped in through the door, seeing that a game of cards had been in progress, though all but one of the players had fallen asleep, slumped facedown among the tumbled bottles, stained cards and half-empty glasses. The stink of liquor and sweat was heavy in the room.

 

Only one was still awake, but drink had totally fuddled his brain and he blinked at the apparition. He was fat, in his fifties, with thinning hair pasted across his scalp. His fingers were covered in cheap rings.

 

"You brought the breakfast for us? Well, it's way too fuckin' early, so you can go away and stick it up your ass, kid." He giggled. "Less you want somethin' else up your early-mornin' ass, kid?"

 

"Don't call me 'kid,' asshole," Jak said, shooting him through the upper chest, knocking him backward out of the chair. His legs kicked the table over, waking the other three members of the gang.

 

Knowing his limitations with blasters, Jak aimed for the safe, broad target of the upper chest, not risking the head shot. He put the other men down and dying with three bullets, leaving himself two more rounds.

 

Doc heard the muffled rumble of the rapid gunfire and a single yell of terror, and transferred the Le Mat to his left hand, propping the swordstick against a hitching rail. He wiped the sweat from his right hand before taking up the heavy blaster again.

 

He was just in time as the door was flung open and two men raced out, one wearing only a shirt, the other in a pair of shorts, both barefooted, neither armed. One of them was screaming at the top of his voice.

 

Doc hesitated for a moment, then remembered the crucified bodies and the raped girls. He leveled the Le Mat and squeezed the trigger, cocking it and firing it again. At less than twenty feet, both the .44s were perfect aces on the line, tumbling the fleeing thugs like shotgunned rabbits.

 

A half minute later Jak appeared in the door. "Nobody else here," he said, looking at the two corpses leaking dark blood into the dirt. "Got them both? Good."

 

"I heard more shooting, Jak."

 

The boy paused, head on one side, the light breeze blowing his long white hair back off his chiseled face. His red eyes darted around the ville. "Be out and running any second. Be some more shooting."

 

Nineteen were dead, or down and dying, in the first minute and a half of the raid.

 

Roughly ten norms and a couple of stickies were left alive in Harmony, all of them jerked from deep sleep by the sound of shooting, broken by the occasional scream.

 

Ryan hesitated outside the church, looking at the ville, wondering how the others had done so far.

 

The first drillings were just the beginning.