Compasses and looked around, obviously annoyed.
'Get down,' she shouted.
The sandrat's brain must have been completely fried by the sun and his liquid diet, because he gave her the British V for Victory sign and raised the bottle to his lips, dislodging the towel around his mouth so he could take a swig. He had the face of the heir to the throne wrapped over his own.
A shell exploded near the sandrat, and his bottle splintered in his hands. Yellow fluid showered around him. He put his fingers up again, but a piece of shrapnel had gone into his forehead. Prince Andrew's face soaked up the blood, and the sandrat went down. The Stoat and Compasses collapsed on top of him.
Chantal jumped off the quay, and landed like a cat. There were still rowing boats hanging from the mooring rings in the quay wall, thirty feet above the dry riverbed. It would be a dash across the open to the next cover, the other bank, and then a scramble up to the walls of the Fort.
The Colorado basin stank, its mudflats streaked with rainbow-coloured pollution traces. Quite apart from the dead Trooper lying out there, the riverbed had become the repository for all manner of garbage.
Explosive rounds slammed into the crumbling stone and earth wall behind her, and she pushed herself away.
She remembered Mother Kazuko, and concentrated her thoughts within her body. It was a dangerous sprint. The mud was soft, still damp in places, and there were too many half-buried bedsteads, bicycles and prams over which she could easily trip…
…and if she tripped, she wouldn't just have a sprained ankle. She would be dead.
She ran like a dancer, on the points of her toes, hurdling the more obvious obstacles.
Her time for the 300 meters wasn't as good as it would have been on a track. But no one was shooting at you at athletics meets.
Her heart hammering, she shot into the loose earth of the riverbank, and pressed herself flat against the gentle slope. She was close to the fort now. None of the major defences were good against her. If they still poured boiling oil or molten lead, she would have a problem.
There was still fire from the battlements, but the angle was too steep. The best the gunners could do was to place their shots twenty yards behind her.
She elbowed herself up the bank, keeping her SIG out of the dirt, pushing with her toes.
She wondered how Stack was doing in the desert.
Finally, she was out of the river, and, after another sprint, had her back to the wall of Fort Apache. She was next to a sign reading PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS that was incongruosly planted in bare sand. The metal was warm, and smooth. She would have to edge her way around until she found a way in.
The cutting lase in Federico would have been useful about now. She would have to prise her way through a batch with her knife. Or hope someone inside wasn't too far gone to give her some assistance.
She trusted that the Lord would see her through. But she was prepared to give the Almighty some help.
Another sign, reading THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING, was burning steadily. The melting plastic gave off noxious fumes.
Twenty yards down the wall, an aperture opened.
Chantal, knowing she should favour caution, ran for it, and slipped herself through, into the darkness.
Inside, strong hands grabbed for her.
IV
Stack had been lucky with his first shots, and put a couple of Oscars in the dirt. He had aimed high, and caught their heads just as their durium visors were raising. Where a human being would have eyes, these things had twin lases. Lauderdale would be looking at his prey through the remote cameras in the Oscars' heads. Stack ran across the soft sand towards Lake Havasu. The heavy androids would have to step carefully or sink. That gave him a chance to get to cover.
A high whine started.
Stack picked up speed.
The noise got louder, painfully so.
One of the Oscars was mounted with maxiscreamers. At close range, within ten seconds, the noise would trigger epileptic fits in those susceptible to them, and make susceptible 7 % of those not previously afflicted. Within twenty seconds, it would cause motor neuron dysfunction, triggering nausea, vomiting, diorrhea, internal and external bleeding, uncontrollable hiccoughs, loss of bladder control. Within thirty seconds, it would crack your skull like a plate and cook your brain like a microwave. By then, Stack would have been dead anyway, because at about twenty-five seconds the pitch would be enough to detonate the slugs in his pumpgun and, more importantly, the ScumStoppers in the rings of his bandolier. Stack beat any and all of his own personal records over the distance.
Behind him, rocks flew apart as the waves of ultrasound vibrations hit them.
Stack grit his teeth as they began to rattle, and resisted the temptation to jam his hands over his ears. That would just slow him down, and his only chance was to get out of the range. The maxiscreamer was a riot control device. It was supposed to put people within a few hundred yards out of commission so the mop-up squads could move in. Its drawback was that you couldn't send anyone or anything into the field while it was turned on. If he could outrace the sound, then he would have a head start on the Oscars.
He felt a trickle of blood come form one of his ears. Later, he would find whether he had a ruptured eardrum. Later…If there was a later.
He was between the half-buried hulks of buildings now. Twenty feet below there would be the street level of old Lake Havasu. The necks of streetlamps stock out from the sand. The business signs were flush with the ground level.
There would be whole buildings down there for future archaeologists to pick through.
Up ahead, looming out of the sand, was a battered hardboard cut-out of John Travolta, greasy pompadour half-broken away, grin still in place, and rhinestoned arm reaching for the sky. Behind him were broken letters. This had been the Rialto, the local movie-theatre. The curtain must have come down on Havasu during the run of the
Stack had heard that John Travolta was out of show business these days. The story was that the star had joined the Josephites and was out there in Salt Lake City. That might have been a smart decision, Stack figured. It didn't look like the gentiles were going to come out of this well.
The dome behind Travolta was cracked like an egg. Stack squeezed through, dropped fifteen feet and found himself crouched between rows of rotting velvet seats. He was up on the balcony. A withered corpse in an usherette's uniform, with a tray of dusty confectionary, lay a few feet away. The carpets were thick with sand, ticket-stubs, cartridge cases and used Trojans.
Incredibly, there were pictures playing in the dark. There was no sound, and the silver screen had three long horizontal rents across its Panavision breadth; but the projector was still working.
It was a bizarre assemblage of spliced-together offcuts from late '70s Hollywood, up-to-date porno, Russian musickie video and newsnet footage. Down there in the stalls, there must be an audience. Stack realized he had stumbled into a sandrat nest.
Clint Eastwood raised his Magnum .44, mouthing 'do you feel lucky, punk?' The German hardcore star Billy Priapus— who had bio-implanted horns and goat's feet—strutted his stuff, slobbering. Petya Tcherkassoff preened to a disco beat. A pair of esperadoes slugged it out mentally in a Puerto Galtieri backstreet, veins popping.
The Oscars would be here soon. He supposed he ought to get out of range before innocent people got killed in the crossfire.
He found the stairs, and barreled down them. People, no more than skeletons in rags, were sleeping in the corridors, huddled against the walls. The foyer was lit by a burning torch. Outside the reinforced glass doors, the sand was a solid wall.
