Desolation Angels. James Axler

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       Chapter Five

      J.B. spotted them right away, off toward a broad ramp descended from the level above.

      The muties looked like tiny humans, not much smaller than Jak. They were as vicious as any creature in the Deathlands, human coldhearts included. Their noses were vertical slits, and their mouths were filled with needle teeth. They also had tough, rubbery skin, which contributed to making them double-hard to chill. Many needed a shot to the head to chill, but the companions had run across plenty who could be taken out by any kind of mortal wound.

      J.B. now understood what had been tickling Jak’s sensitive nostrils, despite the overlying smell of death. It was the distinctive reek of stickies. The death stink that hid theirs probably came from victims, human or animal, the muties had either not finished eating yet or got tired of and just left to rot where they lay.

      He gave the muties a couple blasts of #4 buckshot without even slowing them. Unless a lucky lead ball happened to punch through one of those big, staring eyes into the malevolent inhuman brain beyond, it had little chance of killing one of them. But one stickie fell down, shrieking and slapping at its body with its sucker-tipped fingers, and the other staggered back a pace or two.

      “Full speed!” Ryan yelled.

      Jak stopped long enough to hold his Python out the full length of his arm and trigger a shot. The blaster’s roar bouncing between the concrete floor and roof made its usually unpleasant noise seem to clap the sides of J.B.’s head like planks of wood. But that beat what happened to the stickie’s head. The 125-grain jacketed hollow-point round imploded its right eye and blew the brains out the back of its round skull in a black fountain.

      Shooting broke out from behind J.B., more than his friends alone could account for....

      * * *

      RYAN LOOKED BACK. People stood in the street behind his companions. After just a handful of seconds inside the darkened parking structure, they seemed to swim against a sea of dazzle. A couple opened up with handblasters.

      Ricky leaned out from around a stout concrete pillar painted in badly flaking yellow and fired a shot from his DeLisle. A figure went down, dropping a semiauto handblaster as it did. The other three or four pursuers continued to pop off shots into the structure.

      Sooner or later, they’d catch a break and hit somebody.

      Ryan rapidly holstered his SIG and unslung the Scout. Turning and dropping to one knee, he raised the longblaster to his shoulder.

      There was no time for the variable-power Leupold scope. And at twenty, twenty-five yards max, no need. As soon as he had a target in his ghost ring he squeezed the trigger, sharp as he could without jerking it and pulling the shot offline.

      A jeans-clad leg buckled under an enemy. The man dropped a lever-action longblaster as he fell flat on his face on the hot asphalt.

      The other pursuers threw themselves down as well, but they kept shooting.

      “Handblaster, Ricky!” Ryan shouted to the kid. “Covering fire, but keep coming.”

      He turned as he straightened.

      A gibbering, chittering horde of stickies was flooding the ramp now. “Run!” Ryan yelled at his companions. “Just run!”

      He fired a snapshot into the mass. A couple of the muties squealed and fell as the 7.62 mm bullet punched through their torsos. It wouldn’t keep them down for long. But following muties tripped over them and fell. With their bloodlust amped all the way up, the creatures began to snarl, slap and snap at each other in crazy rage.

      Others came flowing around them. They fanned out to attack the encroaching norms.

      Jak was already by the far exit. He emptied his blaster at the stickies. Ryan saw another go down with the back of its head blown out.

      He СКАЧАТЬ