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.”
Chapter Eight
A heavy thudding sounded from the distance, like a hammer pounding nails. Big hammer, big nails.
J.B. smiled beatifically. “Browning M-2 .50-caliber machine gun. Sweetest music these ears ever did hear. Called a Ma Deuce predark.”
From around them came, more than a sound, but rather a sensation of stirring, like rats in walls. “Seems like our friends have gotten tired of playing and are takin’ their toys and heading home,” J.B. said.
They heard a cracking sound, not quite a gunshot, too sharp for an explosion. “What was that?” Ryan asked.
“You got me.”
J.B. walked to the open hatch. “Hey, down there,” he shouted. “Looks like our bacon’s saved. Cavalry’s coming.”
“And precisely what—” Mildred’s voice came floating back “—makes you think they’re on our side?”
J.B. looked at Ryan and shrugged. “There’s an old saying, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’” Ryan said helpfully.
“And we know what a steaming load that one is,” J.B. said. “Okay, Millie, you win. But the guys we know want to cut us up and mebbe eat us are going away, which even a pessimistic cuss such as yourself has to admit is a positive development.”
“What was that you called me?” Mildred’s voice came again, dangerously low.
“What? ‘Cuss.’It was distinctly ‘cuss,’ and Ryan will back me up on that.”
Leave me out of this, mouthed the one-eyed man.
“Besides, you know I never stoop to foul, fucking language, Millie.”
“We can always polish our baron’s jester routines later, if we happen to live,” Ryan said. “Now let’s all pipe down, hunker down, get ready to play whatever hand’s dealt us next.”
Ryan and J.B. crouched behind the roof parapet, watching the streets below and surrounding their hideout. They heard the rattle of small-arms fire—a pretty serious volume; whoever these newcomers were, they didn’t seem to have a lot of worries about ammo. The .50 thumped away, growing steadily louder. And intermittently they heard the sharp, loud cracks.
The marauders seemed to have no appetite for hanging around and getting better acquainted with the interlopers. They began streaming openly along the streets away from the approaching gunfire and motor sounds, a ragged, starved-looking band of muties and apparently normal humans mixed together indiscriminately. What might cause the norms and muties to cooperate like this Ryan had no idea. There was nothing impossible about it, of course. It was just that the hostility between norms and muties was usually so bitter and deeply ingrained that it was rare for them to coexist without bloodshed, much less to fight side by side.
He glanced at his old friend. J.B. looked back at him, shook his head, pulling down the corners of his mouth. Neither of them felt a reflex hatred of muties, obviously; Krysty Wroth was a mutie herself, albeit a beautiful one even to norm eyes. But Ryan, having all his life heard the cliché about having an itchy trigger finger, was actually feeling a tingle in that digit here and now, what with a river of potential targets flowing by right under their chins. He could tell the Armorer felt the same way.
But the raiders were headed the right direction—away—and showing no further disposition to bother them. Shooting at them would serve no useful purpose. At best it would waste scarce ammo. At worst it would draw return fire from the retreating
