Wretched Earth (22 page)

“Your girls’ll still need to work,” a bystander said helpfully.
“Leastwise, the ones that didn’t go up with that crazy old Grammaw Jacks.
Course, they might wanna take up with somebody who can better keep hold of his
property.”

“Move in with your pal Itomaru,” another said. “Go work for
him. Be plenty call for coffins now.”

“Specially ones with locked lids,” a third man said. The
listeners laughed.

Having watched the whole bizarre show slack-jawed, Colt came
suddenly to life. He began gesticulating and shouting about keeping the fire
from spreading. Perico hustled over and tried to calm him down. Because the
gaudy took up a large area, there were no other structures in the immediate
vicinity, he pointed out. Figures were already visible on the rooftops of the
buildings nearest, poised to douse any wayward sparks with buckets of sand or
dirt in lieu of precious water.

Then from behind Ryan and J.B. came the wild cry, “Rotties!
They’re hittin’ the east gate! Must be a million of ’em!”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“It was a complete exaggeration to say there were ‘a
million’ of them,” Doc declared. “Why, that’s three whole orders of magnitude
off!”

“And what does that mean, exactly, Doc?” Ryan asked.

“Why, plainly, my dear Ryan, there’s only a few hundred of them
advancing on the town.”

The six companions were reunited at the gate that closed the
eastern road into town. A mob of ville residents and sec men gathered around
them, all staring slack-jawed to the east.

A wave of blue-and-gray-faced human figures came shambling
toward them down the long, sloping road.

“Ryan,” Krysty said, “shouldn’t you be doing something?”

“Like blasting some heads with that nice scoped rifle of
yours?” Mildred suggested. “They’re in range, aren’t they?”

“Nearer ones are. For me. But if I start blasting, it’s going
to be hard to keep everybody else from cutting loose and shooting a lot of holes
in the air. We’re going to get tight on ammo here, directly.”

He shook his head. “The few I can take down at long range
aren’t going to be a raindrop in a lake, anyway.”

“Actually, I meant shouldn’t you be setting up the defenses,
lover?” Krysty said.

Again Ryan shook his head. “No. I’m not the man in charge.”

“I am not sure this is the occasion for such niceties,” said
Doc. He held his big LeMat in one hand and his sword-stick, still sheathed, in
the other.

“It’s not that, Doc. We’ve gone to some trouble to get the
ville calmed down to where it’ll stand a chance.”

He nodded to where Colt Sharp stood apart from the crowd, a
little ways north along the perimeter. Some of the older sec men clustered
around, jawing at him, as were Perico and Jacks’s former chief adviser, Coffin.
The black man’s wound had been cleaned and his shin splinted by Mildred. He now
was piled atop some pillows in a handcart.

“If I go giving orders, the new baron might not be happy. All
we need is more wrangling right now.”

People were yammering at one another, scared and uncertain what
to do. Some cried. Some screamed. Others told them harshly to shut their
holes.

“It won’t matter if we don’t do something soon,” Mildred said.
“Ryan.”

He just raised his head and gazed out at the horde. The nearest
were still about five hundred yards away. Too close for comfort.

“Mr. Cawdor,” Colt called. “Uh, Ryan.”

Ryan looked around to see the freshly minted baron approaching,
trailing advisers. A quartet of sec men took it upon themselves to thrust a path
through the unquiet crowd for him. He didn’t even notice.

“What can I do for you, baron?”

Colt came up close. Pitching his voice as low as he could and
still have a hope of being heard above the crowd, he said, “What am I supposed
to do? I mean, there are so many of them. Is there any chance we can hold them
off?”

“Yes. We can, if we do everything right.”

“Tell me,” Colt said.
“Please.”

Ryan looked past him to where Perico stood and Coffin sat
glowering at him. The sec men mostly looked uncomfortable.

“There’s no time to talk things out anymore,” Ryan said. “We
need to just do, and do fast.”

The young baron mulled that over for about five seconds. “Will
you be my sec boss, then, Mr. Cawdor?”

“Yes.”

The youth wavered on his feet. Krysty put up a hand to steady
him. “Thank you,” he breathed.

Then he turned to address the crowd and the ville in general.
“Everyone, listen up! I, Baron Colt Sharp, hereby appoint Ryan Cawdor my head of
sec! And his friends are all appointed as my personal bodyguards.”

Ryan doubted that would settle well in every growling stomach
out there, which didn’t bother him a bit. He wasn’t here to make friends.

“All right, people,” he said, pitching his voice to carry over
the wind without shouting. The crowd clamor died out.

“We need to conserve ammo. Head shots are the only things
that’ll drop these creatures anyway. Most important thing is
do not
get bit. Anybody who does will become the
enemy, in any amount of time from hours to right nuking now.”

“So how do we stop the bastards biting us?” somebody shouted.
He sounded not sarcastic but frantic, his voice throbbing on the verge of
tears.

“Sticks, clubs, long poles, axes. Axe handles. Shovels, hoes,
rakes. Things to push them off you. Anything. Push them away, knock them down,
smash their heads. And stay away from their jaws. If you don’t have something to
poke or hit or cut with, go find it. Now. And get back pronto!”

People scattered in all directions. About half the crowd stayed
put. Some hefted blasters, smokeless or black powder. A few held crossbows or
conventional bows. At least half the remaining defenders were already armed with
melee weapons.

“Will they all come back?” Perico asked sourly.

“If they won’t turn out to defend themselves and their families
from something like that,” J.B. said, nodding toward the slowly advancing swarm,
“do we
want
them fighting next to us?”

“Now, you sec men,” Ryan directed, “start getting people spread
out along the fence. Tell them not to shoot unless they’re sure of a head shot.
Go.”

That was something the sec men from both factions knew how to
do: push ville folk around. Of course, these people were all armed and ready to
fight, but that wasn’t Ryan’s problem. Most would work it out themselves. He and
his friends could pick up the slack.

“What about cover?” Colt asked.

“Don’t sweat it,” Ryan said. “These things don’t use blasters.
Or even throw rocks, as far as we know.”

“If they start using missiles,” Doc said, “may heaven help us
all.”

“What do I do, Ryan?” the young baron said.

“Stay out of the way. Mebbe get on a roof where you can shoot
with less danger of blasting your own side. Matter of fact, why don’t we start
getting shooters up to the roofs right now?”

Colt nodded and went away. Perico and Coffin started shouting
orders, which people mostly followed.

“Ryan, sec boss,” Jak said in a mixture of disbelief and
amusement.

“Not like it’s a job I aim to keep,” he growled.

“What about us?” J.B. asked. “What do you want us to do?”

“You take Mildred and Krysty up on a roof and shoot heads. Jak
and Doc, stay with me. We’ll shoot while we can, then fight them hand-to-hand
when they get inside.”

“When?”
Mildred asked in alarm.

“When. Move.”

Ville folk were already filtering back, armed with a variety of
long-hafted weapons, as per Ryan’s instruction. Some carried bundles of poles,
boards and tools, which they handed out to those who lacked close-combat
weapons.

A few shots went off, then a quick ripple. “Off the triggers!”
Ryan yelled. “Cease firing!”

A rottie went down, still a good two hundred yards off. Too far
for any but the best marksman to hit with a non-scoped rifle except by sheer
luck. The crowd cheered. A few opened fire again in defiance of Ryan’s shouted
command.

The rottie clambered back to his feet and lumbered on again as
if nothing had happened.

“
That’s
what we’re up against,”
Ryan said in the sudden silence. “Just shooting them does jackshit. So hold your
fire until it counts.”

Bracing his legs, taking a quick turn of his sling around his
left forearm, he shouldered the Steyr and sighted on the rottie that had been
shot. Ryan was good at picking up a target in the scope right off—a tougher
trick than most people realized.

He almost wished he hadn’t. The rottie’s face had shrunk, or
been gnawed on, until it was little more than a greasy-looking skull with two
shrunken gray eyes staring out of it. It also lacked a lower jaw. Ryan had no
idea how the bastard ate.

He had already drawn a deep breath. He let part of it out, held
it, and as the field of vision briefly stabilized, squeezed off a shot.

Ryan saw the skull-head snap back before recoil kicked it out
of his view. When he brought the longblaster back down online the rottie lay in
a heap on the short sere grass. A changed woman following behind tripped over
the corpse and fell on her face. When she got up on all fours to crawl, an
eyeball was bouncing around on her bluish cheek by its optic nerve.

With more than a little relief Ryan lowered his blaster. People
stared at him with new respect.

“Pick your shots and aim,” he commanded. “Waste a bullet, you
risk wasting your life. Or your wife’s or your husband’s or your kid’s.”
Unsurprisingly, a number of woman had joined the defenders.

“One thing we can say in our opponents’ favor,” Doc said,
standing at Ryan’s side. “Their deliberate approach gives us ample time to
prepare and even adjust our defenses for the onslaught.”

“Yeah.” The former sec men were doing a pretty good job of
herding the ville folk into a fairly spread-out line. “I admit I’m kinda
surprised by how many ville folk’ve turned out for this,” Ryan said.

“Is it not likely that, after weeks of fear and frustration as
they suffered the effects of the power struggle within Sweetwater Junction, they
are eager for an opportunity to take action—even if it is against their worst
nightmares made of decomposing flesh?” Doc murmured.

“Talk less,” Jak said peevishly from Ryan’s other side. “Not
helping.”

When the rotties had closed to about a hundred yards, an arrow
arced toward them from somewhere to Ryan’s left. He frowned, but by either luck
or amazing skill—likely both—it struck a swag-bellied male rottie in the right
eye. He pitched forward onto his blue face.

A cheer rose from the Sweetwater Junction ranks. Gunshots began
to break out.

There was no point trying to make the crowd hold fire any
longer. Ryan knelt and started aiming shots with his Steyr between the
horizontal panels of the old steel cattle gate that blocked the east road. The
changed made easy targets. They moved slowly, and pretty much straight
ahead.

Then he heard screams of alarm and pulled his head back from
the sight. One rottie, who had been a gaunt young woman in a tattered gingham
dress, suddenly darted forward at sprinter speed. She hit the perimeter fence of
scavvied chain link in a jump like a monkey and started over, oblivious to the
dully gleaming knife-wire spirals that cut her arms bloodlessly to the bone.

So shocking and abrupt was her onslaught that defenders ran in
terror from her.

A single shot broke the brief lull the astonishing charge had
brought to the shooting. The resurrected woman’s head snapped back, and then her
decaying face dropped forward into the wire. She hung on the fence, truly
lifeless, as if she’d been cruelly and crudely crucified.

On the nearest flat rooftop, Colt Sharp stood holding his big
pistol in the isosceles stance Ryan had taught him. His guards and advisers were
slapping him on the back, praising his shot, which for a fact had been pretty
good; a twenty-yard head shot with a handblaster was no downhill slide, even at
a fairly stationary target.

“For a fact the lad has a gift,” said Doc, who was methodically
reloading his LeMat. “Or he’s lucky, which is almost as good.”

“I’d rather be good,” Ryan said. “Skill lasts. Luck
doesn’t.”

Whether lucky or good, the youthful baron’s shot had a tonic
effect on the defenders, who had recoiled from the rottie’s lunge like sheep
from a wolf. They slunk shamefacedly back into position—so close Ryan had to
shout, “Not too near the fence, dammit! Stay out of reaching range!”

The defenders started shooting hard and fast. Ryan’s jaw
muscles knotted at the rate that ammo was being burned, but he remembered
Trader’s wise words: never die with rounds in your mag.

He slung his longblaster. Even though Miranda had replenished
their stocks as part of their contract, the big 7.62 mm rounds were hard to come
by.

Not all the hits were head shots. While mere bullets couldn’t
actually knock a normal human down, they presumably wouldn’t even have the
system-shock effects on the rotties that often resulted in shot humans falling.
Still, Ryan saw good leg or torso hits drop some of the shambling horrors. The
rotties behind tripped over them or trampled them. It made little difference.
Those who could get up did; the rest crawled relentlessly on. As long as a
rottie could move a single limb, it kept dragging itself toward living
flesh.

Bluish bodies pressed against the gate and the wire. Despite
having the breeze at their backs, the defenders began getting the full whiff of
decomposing flesh. Some gagged. Others puked their guts up.

One youth wielding a pocketknife thought it would be fun to
race right up to the wire and stab at the bodies seemingly immobilized against
it. His buddies cheered him on.

Then a blue arm showing yellow bone between wrist and elbow
snaked through and caught his shirt.