the air with its heavy bolt locked back to cool it.
“Down to three mags,” he said. “Way too few to be hosing them blind through the door.”
Ryan nodded. The flash of annoyance he’d felt at his old friend was already forgotten. The companions followed Ryan’s lead. Not his commands. J.B. had spotted a weakness in their deployment and acted promptly on his own initiative to correct it.
It had been a good call. That meant they all got to live a little longer. They were a team, which had always been their mainstay.
For what it was worth now.
Ryan eased his head back above the parapet, looked through 180 degrees, ducked back, duck-walked a few steps left, raised up, checked the other half circle. The rooftops were clear of marauders, or at least any who happened to be on roofs were keeping out of sight.
“This is mebbe not so good, Ryan,” J.B. said quietly. “Street right out in front is clean, but you can bet your last meal the houses around us are swarming with the bastards. And I can see them all over the streets surrounding. There must be a couple hundred of them out there.”
Ryan lay on his back, gazed up toward the sun, knowing enough not to look directly at it. It still rode high in the sky. There was plenty of daylight left.
“Think we’ll make it until sundown?”
J.B. laughed, took a swig from a canteen, recapped it and tossed it toward Ryan, who caught it.
“Nah. Not that it’d make a spit of difference. These bastards are taking it personal. If they didn’t have their black little hearts bent on seeing the color of our insides, they’d have cut stick and pulled out long since from the hurt we’ve laid on them.”
“How about making a run for it?”
The Armorer shrugged. “They blocked us once. They might do it again. Still, it’s probably our one and only shot. Even if it likely doesn’t mean anything but the difference between getting chilled moving and getting chilled standing still.”
He looked at Ryan. “Doc says the muties keep hollering something about a ‘holy child.’ It’s like their war cry. Don’t know what damn good that does us, but there it is. Whoa, what’s that?”
The flat dirt-covered roof had shaken beneath them. The two men stared at each other. It came again, a quick triple shake that evoked unnerving creaks from the roof timbers beneath their feet.
From somewhere distant there came a groan, a rumble, a dull vibration.
“Earthquake,” Ryan said. “That last was a wall coming down, mebbe a whole house.”
“Now we know why such a neat little ville has big piles of rubble lying about the bastard alleys,” the Armorer said. “Damn tremors must come frequent enough to keep the locals rebuilding and repairing, not leave them much time to worry about cleaning up all the wreckage.”
“Former locals.” Ryan had stuck his head up again, looking around. He could see nothing. But he could sense movement around them. He could smell the odors of rank and not all human bodies on the heavy moist breeze, hear the scrabbling like a horde of locusts stripping a cornfield: not loud, but ominous. The muties, he knew, were preparing another onslaught.
Then he frowned. “Hold it,” he said softly. “J.B., you hear something?”
“Other than my pulse going like a scared horse down a flight of stairs?” Then he frowned, too, and tipped his head to the side.
“Dark night, but I think I hear—”
“Motors.” Ryan stood upright, looking off to the northeast. “Wags, mebbe a big bike.
“Coming this way.”
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