slaver, the sand flying up in tiny puffs from the impact of each round.
Impossible! Rolph thought in growing terror. Nobody could shoot that close together in unison. These had to be—what was the word?—rapidfires! Working predark rapidfires, with more ammo than a dozen barons!
Capturing the mother and child no longer seemed important, and Rolph felt a rush of raw greed at the thought of the deadly barkers in his possession. Rapidfires! Just one of those and he could become a baron himself! Checking the knife in his belt, Rolph reloaded the handblaster with his last two rounds, and notched a fresh arrow into the crossbow. After that he was down to a knife, but there was nobody better than him at blade chilling in the Deathlands. Especially in a nightcreep.
Let them come! I’ll slit every throat before they even knew I’m here. Those fancy blasters are already mine!
Forcing himself to breathe slowly and calmly, Rolph dared to risk a look above the tall grass edging the road. Less than a stone’s throw away three machines were parked in a group, their headlights throwing blinding cones of white light. The figures sitting on the back of the two-wheelers each held a weird double-barreled longblaster of some kind. The machines didn’t seem to be working; they shook slightly, and he could see the waves of heat radiating from the compact engines.
Muttering something low and guttural, one of the men slid off his machine and fell to the ground. Instantly, the other climbed off their machine and went to aid their fallen comrade. For a second, their features were lit by the reflected shine of the lamps. Rolph saw they were big men with all sorts of mil stuff dripping off them, as if they were a group of sec men.
The man on the ground had an arrow sticking out of his chest, and he snarled as a barrel-chested man took hold of the shaft and slowly pulled it out. The wounded man grunted as it came free, then went limp. The big man tossed the shaft away, as another one opened the back of a black two-wheeler and pulled out some items. Kneeling on the ground, the tall man started to bandage the wound, while the barrel-chested man stood guard. Occasionally, he would trigger a burst from the rapidfire randomly into the darkness of the crater, the muzzle-flash resembling a fiery flower.
Med supplies, bikes and blasters? Who were these sec men? Wisdom said it was time for Rolph to leave, but lust for the blasters filled his heart, and the slaver stood to fire the handblaster at the two closer strangers.
Even before the smoke of the discharge cleared, the night was filled with chattering fire and something red-hot punched Rolph in the shoulder, belly and hip. He staggered from the multiple impacts and tried to run. But then the two rapidfires rang out in staccato destruction, and white hot knives stabbed him across the back, red blood blowing out from his shirt.
The world became chaos then, the pain blurring consciousness. Rolph tripped on a rock and went flying. He hit the ground hard, and the raw wounds flared with pain until he blacked out.
AN ETERNITY LATER Rolph sluggishly came awake. A pair of boots stood near his face, shiny new boots without patches. Worth a fortune! Then one of the boots kicked him hard in the side. Rolph wanted to play dead, but he couldn’t stop himself from grunting at the blow.
“Still sucking air, eh?” a voice snarled.
A knee dropped into view and somebody roughly grabbed his hair to painfully haul his face upward. Rolph found himself looking into a furious face. This was one of the bikers. Thick bandoliers criss-crossed his chest, full of little metal boxes stuffed with live brass. Clips. He had dozens of ammo clips. The wealth of an entire ville was on display only inches away. If only he could snatch one of those….
Angrily, Edward slapped away the bloody hand of the dying man. “Ya got balls, I’ll grant ya that,” he said grudgingly. “But it was a triple-stupe move to shoot at us. Ya hit my bro.”
“I th-thought…you were s-stickies…” Rolph panted, forcing out the words.
“Shut up,” Edward ordered, backhanding the wounded slaver. “You’re just lucky that Robert is gonna live, it was only a flesh wound. If you had aced him…”
Edward backhanded the slaver again, harder this time. “If he had been chilled, John and I would have done things to you that’d make a cannie vomit.” A knife came into view, the moonlight reflected off the razor-sharp edge. “But as it is, we’ve got friends coming. So we have to leave.”
Not sure that he wanted to know what was going to happen, Rolph tried to think of a bribe to offer for his life, when the big man reached out and slashed the laces of his boots. Then he yanked them off, leaving Rolph barefoot.
What the frag? Rolph tried to summon the strength to ask a question, when there came a terrible pain at his ankles, and warm trickle sensation could be felt. Bleeding, he was bleeding!
“I just cut your tendons,” Edward said with a chuckle, displaying the crimson-smeared blade. “Now ya can’t walk.”
“Please…” Rolph whispered, holding on to his aching chest. “I…have many…”
But the slaver was interrupted by a distant hoot. Everybody froze motionless. The cry was answered by another hoot, closely followed by several more.
“And here comes the welcoming committee,” Edward said with a chuckle, slowly standing. Wiping the blade clean, he tucked it away in a sheath on his belt. “My brother lived, so you live. Say hi to the muties for me, feeb.”
“No! Please…chill me…” Rolph begged, his throat constricted from the racking pain in his chest. Weakly, he tried to rise, but his feet merely flopped at the end of his legs like dead things.
Edward only laughed in reply.
“Don’t leave me like this,” the slaver whined, tears on his dirty face. “Please, I’ll be your slave! I’ll do anything you want. Anything!”
Sneering in disgust, Edward kicked the slaver in the ribs again, doubling him up with the pain. Then the big man pulled something from a pocket.
“Hurry along,” an inhuman voice called from the bikes. “The stickies are coming. We must get moving.”
“No prob.” Edward chuckled, twisting off the cap of a cylinder to scrape it across the nubbin that had been underneath.
With a sputtering rush, a reddish flame extended from the fat cylinder, and Edward stabbed it into the muddy ground. The bank of the little pond was now clearly revealed in the crimson glow as if painted in blood.
“Just so the stickies can find their meal,” Edward said, turning to leave. Then he stopped and looked over a broad shoulder. “Our name is Rogan,” he said clearly. “Remember that as they tear you apart, feeb. We’re the Rogan brothers!”
As the biker joined the others on their machines, Rolph felt a surge of blind panic. Flipping himself over, the slaver started to madly crawl for the pond, using his fingers and knees.
I can hide under water, he thought. Yes, that would work! The road flare was throwing out a lot of stinking smoke that should mask the smell of my blood from the mutie. I’m not aced yet! Get going, keep moving, crawl…
But Rolph made it only a few feet when the inhuman face of a stickie rose above the swaying weeds, and the mutie looked directly into his eyes. Starting to scream, Rolph clawed for the knife on his belt and drew it across his own throat. But he was too weak and only managed a shallow gash. There was no telltale spurting
