Dwayne’s boot came down painfully on her wrist. She released the pistol, and he reached for her arm to pull her to her feet.
“You feel that?” he shouted with his mouth close to her ear to be heard over the tumult of weapons and voices.
She could see her breath. The chill wasn’t fear, it was in the air. The temperature had dropped suddenly and dramatically. She turned to see a thick white mist spreading out to cover the grass all around them.
“The field!” she called back. “The Tube is operative!”
“Fall back!” Dwayne yelled repeatedly and slapped the shoulders of the other Rangers.
Jimbo was up and helping Hammond stand. Chaz was squatting atop the earthworks and had a cardboard carton of frags open. He pulled the ring on the one packed in the center.
He stood and lifted the box above his head. “Heads down!” he shouted and threw the whole damned thing in an overhead heave toward the skinnies rushing closer over the grass.
The resulting blast lifted him on a concussive wave and threw him back over the earthworks where he lay dazed. Renzi tumbled down by him. The carton of grenades went off in a tight sequence of explosions throwing arcs of shrapnel into the massed skinnies and scything them down like harvest grain.
Dwayne hooked Chaz under the arm and dragged him back into the frigid mist with Caroline’s help. Jimbo and Hammond stood firing their M4s one-handed, Hammond leaning on his brother Ranger for support.
“Fall back, Ricky!” Jimbo called.
“Move it, Renzi!” Dwayne joined in. “Haul your ass!”
Renzi either couldn’t hear them or was ignoring them. He was back up at his post behind the Ma Deuce and pouring tracers downrange at the skinnies trying to regroup there. Empty shell casings tumbled to the ground at his feet with a clatter.
Dwayne took a step to join Renzi, to force him to surrender his position and join them in retreat. Renzi turned his head to look back, an unlit Marlboro clenched in his teeth. A wild berserker look flashed in his eyes. It was exhilaration. It was madness. His breath came in vapor in the chilling air as he barked a laugh. He turned away to swing the big .50 back and forth at the closing pack of naked fiends.
Caroline yanked hard at Dwayne’s arm, and he moved to her to help her pull Chaz into the spreading cold, back to a world they knew. Back to The Now.
20
What Goes Around
Caroline was the first to emerge from the field, and Doc Tauber left the control array to meet her with a crushing embrace. He held her tight to him on the metal walkway until they were separated and shoved clear by the rush of Rangers moving from the Tube.
Staggering, Chaz dropped Hammond to the floor. Dwayne and Jimbo took up positions at the foot of the ramp and trained weapons into the Tube.
“Renzi!” Dwayne called into the mist. “What’s going on?” Tauber said. “You left someone behind?”
“We were on the run, Mo,” Caroline said. “It all went wrong out there.”
A figure was moving swiftly out of the mist in the Tube field. Tauber stood frozen to stare at a squat man who raced from the fog. He was swinging some kind of stone-bladed ax over his head. His body was smeared in red, and his face painted white. A roar rose from his wide-open mouth and filled the Tube chamber. The animal sound was drowned out by rapid explosions from Dwayne’s rifle. Jimbo joined in as three more naked men leaped into view out of nothingness. Their lifeless bodies tumbled to the foot of the walkway, spraying blood.
“Renzi!” Dwayne took a step forward, and Jimbo grabbed his arm to stop him. “We have to go back! We can’t leave him!”
A rock sailed from the mist to bounce down the walkway. More followed it, making a metallic racket on the floor plates and railings. Dwayne and Jimbo fired into the Tube field on full auto. Chaz joined them with the Minimi and the barrage of stones died away.
“They overran him!” Jimbo held Dwayne’s arm and turned him so their eyes met. “We’d walk back into a shitstorm and die back there with him!”
Dwayne stared wild-eyed at Jimbo. His mouth worked, but nothing came out.
“Priority one—hold our ground!” Jimbo shouted and increased the pressure on Dwayne’s arm. “Ricky bought us time! We have to use it!”
Stones and spears began flying from the bone-chilling fog again. More humped figures came into view shrouded in the vapor pouring from the coils, bare feet pounding forward on the plates.
The Rangers opened up, pouring fire into the mist, murdering any shape that made itself visible in the narrow confines of the Tube. A heap of bodies grew within the field. Hot blood struck the ice-rimed coils and boiled away. The men kept up the continuous fire, pausing only to slap in fresh magazines.
The deep hum of machinery died away, and the giant fans in the walls and ceiling activated to pull the cold air from the room. The mist dissipated to reveal a pile of bullet-riddled bodies lying whole and in pieces on the frost-covered walkway. All of them were skinnies. The back wall of the chamber was punched full of holes from the Ranger’s final volleys as the Tube shut down and the gateway to the past vanished.
Dwayne dropped to the floor to sit where he was, the last stores of will and the dregs of the amphetamine rush drained from every muscle. In contrast, Jimbo stood pumping his
