Chapter Eight

 

 

Shards of splintered basin and slicing lengths of broken glass cascaded all around Ryan, cutting at him. He wriggled a little to one side, out of sight, covered by the central row of basins. The air was rank with the stink of gunfire.

 

Despite the racketing noise, the ricocheting bullets and screeches of delight from Titus and Mervyn, Ryan's combat mind was working like a well-oiled machine, calculating movement and action and time.

 

Obviously J.B., Jak and the others would hear the thunder of shooting and be out there to help him, but that was going to take at least several seconds.

 

Way too long.

 

The nickel-finished revolvers each held six .44-caliber Magnum rounds.

 

One of the things that Ryan did as second nature in a firefight was to count bullets. Titus and Mervyn had already fired eight shots between them, in that first crazed crescendo of flying lead. But Ryan had no way at all of knowing which of the psychopathic brothers had fired how many rounds.

 

Four bullets each?

 

Five and three?

 

Even six and two?

 

"Go that way!" It was impossible for the one-eyed man to tell which of them had called out.

 

A bullet missed his curled-up legs by a few inches, burying itself in the wall, gouging a huge hole from the crumbling concrete.

 

Five and four?

 

Six and three?

 

There hadn't yet been a pause long enough for either of them to reload.

 

The unsheathed panga was still no use against the pair of matched Smith amp; Wessons. Ryan reached out quickly with his left hand and scrabbled together a fistful of the larger splinters of broken glass, some of them several inches long, edged like razored steel.

 

A tenth round passed so close to Ryan's face that he felt its burning breath on his skin.

 

Five and five?

 

Six and four?

 

He came up into a fighting crouch, trying to watch both ways at once. This kind of combat situation was the one time that the loss of his left eye became a serious handicap. It sliced down his peripheral vision, making it immeasurably hard to look out for the brothers.

 

He tried to guess which of them would come at him first, be it from left or right.

 

The answer arrived a second later.

 

Titus from the left.

 

He appeared in a half-crouch, holding the revolver in both hands, pointing it at Ryan, his lips peeling back from rotting teeth.

 

"Got yer" Titus gloated.

 

Ryan didn't waste time or breath on a reply. He hurled the handful of shattered glass into the man's face from close range, aiming at Titus's eyes, seeing the sparkling shards find their targets.

 

The twin staggered back, mouth sagging, pulped eyes carved open, blood bursting from his pale, unhealthy skin and dappling his shirt. "Fuckin'" he began, squeezing the trigger of the Smith amp; Wesson, the gun bucking in his hand, the bullet ripping into the ceiling.

 

That made eleven rounds fired by the brothers.

 

One left.

 

Ryan wasn't sitting back admiring the partial success of his plan.

 

The instant the jagged splinters left his hand, he was moving after them, powering himself from the crouched position, jabbing with the sharpened point of the eighteen-inch panga, aiming at his adversary's thorax.

 

Titus screamed at the realization that he was blinded, waving his hands desperately to try to prevent the attack that he knew was coming.

 

It was easy for Ryan to dodge the flailing fists and thrust the panga home, a little to the left of the breastbone, twisting his wrist with savage power as the honed steel pierced both heart and lungs.

 

There was a great gushing torrent of bright crimson blood, which spouted over Ryan's hand and arm, pouring onto the floor among the broken fragments of the basins. Some of the copper water pipes had also been broken by the gunfire, and water flooded around Ryan's bare feet.

 

Titus staggered away, pulling himself off the panga, stumbling backward. Just as Ryan started to turn to face Mervyn, he found the other brother was already aiming his revolver at him, grinning wolfishly, seeming oblivious to his dying sibling, now on his knees.

 

"Guards win!" he crowed.

 

It was one of those moments when a man's life rested in the hands of the blind maniac gods of chaos and chance. One of the blasters still held a live round.

 

The other didn't.

 

As Ryan began to cock his wrist, ready to try a final desperate throw of the bloodied steel at Mervyn, knowing that if he lost the gamble it would be way too late, the index fingers of both the brothers tightened simultaneously on the grooved target triggers of the two Smith amp; Wessons.

 

Then came the boom of the explosion, the whine of the powerful bullet.

 

And the flat clicking sound of a hammer falling on a spent cartridge.

 

A bullet erupted from the barrel of dying Titus's blaster, as the man fell forward onto his face and lay still. The round had hit the door of one of the stalls, punching out a splintered hole larger than a man's fist.

 

"Twelve," Ryan said, checking his action with the panga. "All gone."

 

Mervyn squeezed the trigger on his empty revolver a second time.

 

And a third time.

 

"Guards have lost the fuckin' redoubt after all all this time," he muttered to himself, puzzled, staring past Ryan at his dead brother. "You're no help to me, are you, Titus?"

 

Ryan moved closer, trying not to get cut by the sharp splinters on the blood-slick floor, where the water was already three or four inches deep.

 

Mervyn still seemed despondent rather than fearful, unworried by the approach of his own death. "Of all the guards of all the redoubts in all of Deathlands, you had to come and pick on this one," he mumbled.

 

For some reason that he couldn't place, the words seemed oddly familiar to Ryan.

 

But it didn't slow his advance.

 

Just as he judged himself close enough, he caught a glimpse of Jak out of the corner of his eye, the white-haired teenager already gripping a throwing knife in his right hand. J.B. held the Uzi at the lad's shoulder.

 

"Mine," Ryan said firmly.

 

Mervyn spotted the death thrust already on its way, and he reacted with surprising speed, trying to parry it with the empty revolver. The barrel glanced off the steel, deflecting the lunge, but the blade angled down and opened a deep-lipped cut across the man's wrist, making him yelp in pain and drop the useless blaster to the floor.

 

He took a half step backward, his feet crunching over the broken porcelain and glass, his muddy eyes wide with pain.

 

Ryan feinted toward his stomach, getting Mervyn to drop his hands, then swung the panga in a hissing circle of blood-slick steel.

 

He aimed at the angle of neck and shoulder, the blade cleaving flesh, jarring against the spinal column. Mervyn tried to pull away, nearly twisting the panga out of Ryan's hand, blood fountaining out from the severed artery.

 

Ryan got the knife clear, hefting it ready for a third cutting blow, but stopped at J.B.'s calm voice. "No need, bro. It's over."

 

It was.

 

The body slumped gracelessly to the floor, the fountain of blood slowing with the fading pulse until it became a feeble trickle that eventually stopped.

 

Now everyone was crowded into the doorway, even a rheumy-eyed Doc.

 

"You all right, lover?" Krysty asked, hesitating barefooted at the layer of crimsoned water that covered the broken glass. "They hit you?"

 

"No. Few minor cuts from splinters. They came up behind me as I finished shaving. They planned to chill us all."

 

"I fear that they were madder than the proverbial shithouse rats," Doc said.

 

"Looks like we'll move on and leave the redoubt a better, safer, cleaner place," Mildred added.

 

Ryan turned on one of the chrome taps, holding his hands under the running water, washing clean the dozen or so tiny cuts. He splashed more water in his face. To one side of him the broken pipes were still pumping out more water from the redoubt's huge central reservoir.

 

There wasn't much that could be done to check it. And they'd be leaving in the morning, anyway.

 

"Back to bed, friends," Ryan said.

 

"How about the bodies?" Dean asked.

 

"Just let them lie, son. They aren't going anywhere and they can't hurt us."

 

They left the washroom, where both of the bodies were already beginning to float sluggishly on the rising tide of water.

 

 

 

AFTER THE DISTURBANCE, and with the knowledge that the only threat to them had been permanently removed, everyone slept more soundly for the latter part of the night.

 

Dean woke first, lying on his back, looking around the semidark room, puzzled for a few moments, trying to remember where he was. The memory of the triple-crazy brothers came back to him, and he sat up in the bed.

 

The big room held two other sleepers.

 

Jak, his hair blazing like a distress flare, was at the far end of the dormitory, lying flat on his back, hands folded, looking like a carved image on a tomb.

 

Doc was on the far side of the room, also on his back, snoring.

 

Dean had been sleeping in shirt and pants, his combat boots standing on the floor by the side of his bed. He swung out his bare feet.

 

And yelped in shock.

 

The floor was eight inches deep in cold water.

 

 

 

EVERYONE HAD WET FEET, tucked into wet boots. One of Doc's worn knee boots had floated into the passage, intent on making its own way toward the main entrance area.

 

Several of the blasters had also gotten soaked. The Steyr rifle and the scattergun had been laid on the floor for the night, and both were covered in the rising flood by dawn.

 

Once everyone was up and dressed, they splashed toward the open area, where the brothers' cooking fire was a mess of drifting gray scum and ashes.

 

"Can't we turn something off, somewhere?" Mildred asked. "There's got to be a danger that the water'll eventually work its way down and down until it reaches the gateway section. Then we'll be in serious trouble."

 

"Main tanks in a place this size could easily hold several thousand gallons," J.B. commented.

 

Ryan sniffed, easing the rifle on his shoulder. "Could be worse than that. We know the water's coming through the broken pipes, out of the reservoir, somewhere locked away in the heart of the complex. Anyone considered whether that reservoir might not be automatically topped up from some external water source?"

 

"By the Three Kennedys!" The ferrule of Doc's swordstick rapped wetly on the concrete floor. "You mean that this flood will simply carry on and on forever? Until the rivers run dry? That is a bad thought, friends."

 

"Where will the water go, Dad?" Dean asked as he looked around. He pointed at the main doors. "Can't we get them open, then it can all run outside?"

 

Ryan smiled at the boy. "Worth a try, I reckon."

 

J.B. shook his bead doubtfully. "Might be pointless, Ryan."

 

"Why?"

 

"We don't know anything about the internal structure of the redoubt. The water might already be flooding down half a dozen levels, toward the gateway."

 

Ryan nodded. "Mebbe. But you can see it's rising up against the sec doors. Let's open them and see what happens. And let's do it now."