'I know what you want. I heard tell of it. Ain't here. Ain't never seen it. Don't know anyone who has, but I heard tell of...' The boy stopped as Uchitel waved a warning hand, frantically turned pages of his tattered little book and finally found what he wanted. 'Slowly, if you please, madam. I am a stranger and a visitor to your land.'
'Slowly? Sure. You want the stoppile. Word is it's filled with stuff like you want. But my Dad said it was all bear shit. Doesn't exist. Anyways, folks go there and they die there. That's what they say.'
'Stoppile?' repeated Uchitel. 'Clothes and food?'
'Sure, mister. Stoppile. Near where Ank Ridge used to be.'
Uchitel shook his head. 'Where?' he asked, smiling to himself at the obvious wonderment he could read on the faces of Urach and Pechal.
'Near Ank Ridge. That way,' he said, gesturing with his head to the southeast.
Uchitel tweaked the lad's cheek, much as a kindly uncle would after his favorite nephew had answered some arcane riddle.
'He tells me that there is a place of great wealth southeast of here, called stoppile, near a place called Ank Ridge.' Uchitel consulted the book again to make sure he'd understood the boy. 'Yes, the boy is right. Tell the others we will go at dawn.'
'And what of him?'
'The boy?'
'
'Kill him.' It was a matter of supreme indifference to Uchitel now.
The boy died in appalling agony at the hands of Pyeka, the Baker, their incendiary expert. Pyeka found a novel way of introducing elongated pyro-tabs into the youth's body, then lighting them. Pyeka had always thrived on the laughter and praise of his comrades for his cleverness with fire.
The next morning, having forgotten the threat of the cavalry at his back, Uchitel led his group toward Stoppile near Ank Ridge.
South and east toward the stockpile not far from where Anchorage had once stood.
Chapter Eleven
Lead streamed out of the silenced MP-5 SD-2s held by Quint and Rachel. The silenced Heckler & Koch blasters fired subsonic rounds, with little more noise than a man coughing. But their effect was devastating in the long, forty-bed dormitory.
When Lori made her move, screaming out a warning, the room became a bedlam of noise and movement. For an instant, Ryan was frozen by the cry from a girl everyone had thought totally dumb. Then he dived for cover, hitting the floor and crawling toward his bed and weaponry; knowing, as he did, that he was likely to be too slow.
He glimpsed feet. They were scrabbling and running everywhere. As he rose, squinting around the bottom of his bed, he took in at a glance what was happening.
Quint and Rachel still stood near the doorway, firing their blasters from the hip. Quint was cackling with maniacal laughter, and Rachel's face was frozen in a rictus of savage hatred. Bullets skittered off the wall, striking sparks from the row of lockers.
'Ice 'em!' J.B. Dix shouted from across the room.
'Talk's fuckin' cheap,' muttered Ryan, trying to reach the hem of his long coat; he wanted to drag it from his bed and get at the SIG-Sauer P-226. Another burst of fire exploded along the floor, only inches from his outstretched hand, making him retreat. Then he had the coat and then the pistol, knowing immediately from its weight that it held the full complement of fifteen 9-mm rounds in the mag.
As he maneuvered into position for a clear shot, he heard a piercing scream and saw Lori fall in a tangle of flying red clothes, crimson smearing her face.
'Fireblast!' he cursed, seeing that Quint had moved behind the lockers, only the heavy muzzle of the submachine gun protruding. Rachel had also taken cover behind a bed, cackling her delight at having shot her own great-niece.
He could see only a couple of his own group. Finnegan was crawling toward his bed, after his new model 92 Beretta, hanging in its holster from the bedframe.
And Hunaker.
Her cropped green stubble of hair gleamed in the overhead lights. Hun was marvelously athletic, with exceptional strength and agility. Her own Ingram 9 mm was on the floor, resting against the television. Ryan's eye was caught for a moment by the picture on the screen of a naked couple in bed — a thin-faced man and a beautiful woman with long dark hair.
Making her move, Hun dived into a forward roll, then reached for the blaster. She was straightening when Rachel saw her. The crone hobbled a step sideways, screeched a warning to her husband-brother, then opened up with a burst of continuous fire that ripped into the crouching girl.
Hunaker was hit across the chest, the bullets unzipping her clothes and skin and flesh. She was thrown sideways onto her back. The gun fell from her fingers. She tried to get up again but fell forward in a crouch, her head between her knees, coughing up blood.
'Fuckin' bastard!' screamed Okie, moving toward the dying woman.
'Get back!' ordered Ryan, seeing that Okie would be cold meat for Rachel. But the harridan was too busy laughing at her success. She shouted to Quint, 'Done the green bitch, Keeper! Done the...'
Ryan held the stamped steel pistol in his right hand, steadying his aim with his left. Engraved along the top of the barrel in tiny italic script were the words,
He aligned the leaf front sight with the vee of the back, centering it on the crowing old woman. He squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession.
Blood appeared among the tatters of leather that hung about Rachel's body. Her cap with its tawdry glass beads went flying from her matted gray hair, rattling in a corner of the room. Her arms flung out as though she was trying to stop a runaway horse, and she took three tottering steps backward. She sat on a bed behind her, then rolled onto her side and remained still.
Kicking on the floor, hands to her face, Lori was screaming on a single monotonous note that grated at the nerves. J.B. and Hennings had both got hold of their guns and were opening up on Quint, keeping the malevolent old man cowering behind his makeshift metal barricade. Finnegan had also got hold of his blaster, and Okie had managed to reach her own bed, taking up the M-16A1 carbine.
There was no sign of Doc at all.
Hunaker was moaning only five paces from where Ryan crouched, his warm pistol in his hand, awaiting a chance to waste the Keeper. A lake of blood was spreading slowly from beneath the girl, seeping over the floor.
There was a momentary lull in the fighting. On the television, a kitten appeared for a moment, in a surreal flash from a century back. Hun's headphones still poured out the thin sound of a song about a dock on a bay.
'Ryan.' Her voice was the faintest whisper.
'What is it?'
'I'm done, Ryan.'
At least four bullets had hit her, dead center in her chest, and Ryan knew it. It would be absurd and dishonest to pretend she would be okay.
'Are you in pain?'
'Not bad. Numb. Mebbe I'll be gone 'fore it fuckin' starts.'
'Could be.'
Another burst of fire from the others ripped into the lockers and walls around Quint. There was no reply at all.
'Ryan, think you'll ever get to see Sukie again?' asked Hun.
It was a moment before he figured out who she was talking about. Then he remembered. Sukie was the
