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smoke. Yet even through the din, Doc saw the guard go over the side and fall
to the cobblestones to land with a meaty crunch.
"Praise the lord and pass the ammunition," Mildred
growled, then flinched as a slug hummed by so close she felt its warmth on her
cheek. She turned quickly, but didn't see the source of the incoming rounds.
Doubling her speed, the woman tried to ignore the itchy feeling between her
shoulder blades of a crosshair marking her as a viable target.
Checking around a corner, Ryan whistled sharply at the others and held up a
restraining hand. Listening to the growing noise of the fire and rioting fill
the ville, the man watched the stables across the courtyard for any sign of
activity. But he could only detect the natural motions of the horses, nothing
fugitive suggesting hiding troops.
Taking point, Ryan sprinted across the open street to jump over a split rail
fence and hit the wall of the stable. Then he swung inside with his blaster,
searching for enemies. But there were no guards at the corral, the adobe brick
stalls containing only horses, mounds of hay and tack. The animals were
shuffling in the straw on the floor, their eyes wide with terror. The animals
were reserved for the baron and officers, so blasterfire would be well known
to them, but the thick smell of smoke stirred primitive fear response that no
amount of training could completely overcome.
There was a movement near the fence, and Ryan almost fired until he saw it was
J.B. covering his blind side. Good man.
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The Armorer stood guard while Ryan gave the signal and the rest of the
companions charged into the stable, grabbing blankets, saddles and bridles to
throw onto the animals.
After her horse was saddled, Krysty looked around for anything useful to steal
and spotted some sagging bags hanging from a wooden peg sticking out of the
bricks. It took only a touch to realize they were water bags. Grabbing two,
Krysty looped the first over the pommel of her saddle, then did the same for
Ryan's horse. Finished with her own mount, Mildred saw the
action and did the same, along with Doc and Jak. Dean searched for any feed
bags for the horses, but couldn't find any.
During this, Ryan and J.B. had remained by the fence, ruthlessly chilling
every sec man who appeared on the street, the bodies scattered along the
surface like drunks after an orgy.
"Let's move out," Krysty called, guiding her frightened horse to the fence,
with two more in tow by the reins.
Swinging open the gate in the fence, Ryan and J.B.
climbed onto their animals, briefly checking the saddle and reins. Just then a
sec man ran by, clutching the stump of an arm, blood spurting at every step.
"That's no blast wound," J.B. said, tightening the reins as a precaution when
his horse reared in terror as a cougar lopped past the corral with a human
hand sticking out of its fanged mouth.
"The lunatic!" Mildred cursed, fighting to control her mount. "Sparrow said
the baron guarded the junkyard with some big cats. Cougars!"
"Must have released them to try and get us," Dean said, stroking the neck of
his mare to try to calm her.
The animal responded to his touch, but became jittery at the moment he stopped
the soothing caress.
"More likely they escaped, terrified of the fire," Ryan stated grimly, forcing
his combat boots into the narrow stirrups. "But its still triple-bad for us."
"Look out!" Jak shouted, levering the Winchester with only one hand, the other
tight on the reins.
Snarling and spitting, another cougar appeared from around a corner, chasing
an armed sec man. The fellow fired blindly over a shoulder, and the big cat
leaped through the black powder cloud to land upon
the man, driving him to the ground under its weight.
Then the man screamed as the cougar buried its fangs into the small of his
back and savagely shook him, audibly snapping the spine, then cast him aside.
In a blur of movement, the animal was gone, leaving a trail of bloody paw
prints to mark its passage.
"We stay together!" J.B. commanded, inserting a fresh clip into the Uzi.
"They're less likely to attack us in a group! Let's move it!"
The companions galloped through the billowing clouds of smoke, heading
directly for the front gate.
There was no more time to waste on subterfuge or tricks. The faster they got
out of Rockpoint and into the desert, the better were their chances of staying
alive.
Unexpectedly, the two cougars joined in the courtyard, snarling their blood
chilling cry as they padded through the smoky ville, attacking sec men and
civilians indiscriminately. But anybody who discharged a blaster was brutally
attacked by both animals and literally torn limb from limb.
Even as he fought to not get sick from the slaughter, Dean filed away the type
of attack in his mind. The cats were a pair, male and female, working as a
team. He had never seen animals do that. Most muties attacked in a mob but
without any order, these killers weren't even eating the people they aced.
Just chilling and moving on to find another. The very idea made the boy wish
he had taken a longblaster instead of a crossbow from the temple armory, and
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he clenched his hand around the checkered grip of his Browning Hi-Power,
privately wishing it was something more than a 9 mm pistol.
"They seem to be heading for the gate," Krysty said, struggling to keep her
horse from bolting. The combination of fire and the cats was driving the
animal into a frenzy.
"Stay behind the cats," Ryan ordered. "They'll clear the way for us."
"What if they turn?" Doc demanded, the Webley held in his right hand as he
cocked back the hammer with a thumb.
"Left shoulder!" Ryan stated, holding the reins in his left hand, the right
keeping the Steyr braced in his hip for immediate use. "Not the heart or head!
And don't fucking miss!"
As if understanding the words, a cougar glanced backward to snarl at the
mounted people, and the companions leveled their arsenal of weapons at the
beast. For a moment, it seemed like the male cougar was going to charge, then
the female sprang sideways and seized an old woman by the throat ripping away
most of her neck. Gushing a horrible fountain of blood, the wrinklie fell to
her knees, as the cougar mauled her with its front paws. Her high pitched
scream never stopped as the blood sprayed everywhere. Then she went limp and
the cat raised its gore streaked face to snarl at the sky.
At the sight, Krysty started to aim the Hollands &
Hollands, but stayed her hand. The old woman was already dead, and they needed
the help of the cats to reach the gates. Once there, she would blow their
heads off with the Nitro Express.
Horses, dogs, civilians and sec men fled from the approach of the cougars, the
chaos in the smoky ville increasing as the alarm bell began to ring again from
the keep. Or was it sending a message to the sec men?
There was no way of knowing.
With the bravado of ignorance, a sec man jumped out of an alleyway firing two
big bore wheelguns at the big cats in a storm of lead. But they dropped to the
ground at the first round and then leaped, the male seizing his gun hand by
the wrist and the female raking
her claws across the man's head, flipping over the scalp to fall across his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]