of it.
Chunks of rubble big and small had fallen from the crazy-angled building. The Angels had to slow to pick their way over, around and through that, but no more than they had to. Ryan snapped a couple shots their way.
Once again they paused to return fire. Bullets cracked through the air around Ryan. One bounced off the pavement right ahead of him and howled away in ricochet.
J.B. paused by the corner of the tilted brown-and-black skyscraper to fire a burst at the Angels under the slanted structure. Ryan saw one go down, yelling and kicking. The others dropped to take cover among the rubble.
That turned out not to be a good idea. Apparently the fallen skyscraper wasn’t altogether stable. Or perhaps the earth had just shifted in a tremor Ryan was too preoccupied to feel. A block of masonry the size of one of the Motor City’s most famous products—a big old gas-guzzler sedan—dropped straight down and crushed a kneeling Angel. The others cut off their assault and scuttled away like frightened quail.
“That was more luck than we deserve,” J.B. commented. He fired another burst but didn’t seem to hit any of their pursuers.
Ryan raced past him. J.B. grinned as he flashed by and moved to follow.
Jak had burst in among the colorful shacks. To his surprise Ryan realized it was an active marketplace of sorts. The colors came from old scavenged signs, cracked panels of plastic and that old standby for Deathlands building and decoration both, hammered-out soda cans. The shacks themselves seemed to consist largely of nonmetallic car body panels.
The people swapping goods and gossip broke apart like a flock of pecking birds that had had an alley cat dropped in their midst. Some of them, mostly keepers of the kiosks of fresh fruits and ancient predark goods, stood their ground, shaking fists and shouting in outraged anger at the intrusion.
“We’re sorry!” Krysty and Mildred shouted as they ducked between the stands. Mildred knocked over an angled rack of brightly colored garments and sent them fluttering to the ground, which was bare earth hard packed by decades of feet.
Ryan glanced back as he and J.B. came among the stands. The group of Angels that had chased them out of Nikk’s domain had appeared behind them. As he watched, so did the ones the block’s fall had flushed.
Shouts and shots started to fly from the two groups of Angels. Fortunately, with all the kiosks and the bodies of fleeing customers, Ryan and his friends had plenty of concealment.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much cover available. The rapidly dwindling number of incidental bodies would stop bullets much more reliably than the fiberglass panels.
“What you wanna go and bring the Angels here for?” a sturdy-looking woman in an apron and a red bandanna shouted at Ryan as he darted around her table full of what looked to him to be fried rats on sticks.
“Didn’t have much choice in the matter, lady!” he yelled back.
At that moment a wrinkly stepped from between two booths up ahead, raised a giant black single-action blaster in two palsied hands and shot Doc in the head from twenty feet away.
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