Holding the fat sandwich, watching it drip juice in a puddle on the table, Ryan couldn’t help but remember the beefy cheesies from Shadow World’s Gloomtown—a sad, sick, toxic and eventually fatal joke on a starving-mad, expendable populace. Although similar in general shape, what he held in his hand was not powdered rock disguised as animal protein and perfumed with synthetic chemical aromatics. It was the real nukin’ deal.
The fabled double bacon cheese.
Something loudly and endlessly discussed over countless hellscape campfires while skinned Norway rats sizzled with sharp sticks jammed up their butts and skanky root veg roasted on open coals until their skins turned black. The predinner conversations always hit the same central themes, speculation more or less elaborate depending on the amount of joy juice the campers had swallowed.
“I heer’d they was four inches high and eight across’t.”
“I heer’d they weighed two pounds each.”
“I heer’d you could build ’em anyway you wanted, pickles, no pickles, extry grilled onions, fried egg on top.”
“I heer’d they came wrapped in special boxes like old-time birthday presents.”
The double bacon cheese was something Ryan Cawdor never thought he’d live to taste.
The first bite was so astonishing, he had to fight to keep from just wolfing down the whole thing. He chewed that bite slowly, eyes closed, savoring the blend of flavors and textures.
This was what the fuss was all about.
He swallowed, then picked up a strip of golden fried potato and bit it in two. It was hot, crispy on the outside, soft in the middle. A man could cry, it was so good.
On the other side of Vee, Mildred spit out a big mouthful of hamburger.
“Down!” she shouted. Then she rolled off her chair to the right.
There was no mistaking the nature of the situation. The six companions—Ryan, Krysty, Mildred, Doc, J.B. and Jak—had fought together so long, had survived so many surprise attacks that their responses were instinctive and instantaneous.
As Ryan twisted to his left, butt sliding off the chair, the ten-foot-tall, six-foot-wide pane of glass directly across the room from him shattered with a loud, crunching pop. Seemingly in the same instant, a heavy slug slapped the wall above him, and an inch from his right shoulder, the chair back took a center hit and rolled backward on its casters.
At the end of the table, the newest and least seasoned member of the team didn’t instantly react to Mildred’s warning. Jak lunged up from the floor, smashing Ricky with a shoulder, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor.
Ryan glimpsed the window, which was crazed, top to bottom. A single fist-size hole was in the middle of a wide, milk-white circle. One hole, two shots.
Longblaster fire. It was coming from the rooftop across the street, and they were sitting ducks.
To his left as he snatched his Steyr Scout by its sling, a second pane imploded, sending a whoosh of glittering glass shards across the floor. But he and the companions were already moving low and fast for the exit.
A third window collapsed, also to his left. The table shuddered as a bullet carved an ugly furrow across its width, spraying his head with splinters. Realizing the direction the shooters were team-tracking, he turned 180 degrees and grabbed Vee by the collar. As he dragged her the other way, she reached for the tabletop and grabbed her Desert Eagle and holster.
The shots that came after were wild, a big blaster and a smaller one, no longer coordinating fire. Tempered glass deflected the bullets. Working alone, neither shooter could put lead in the bull’s-eye. Mildred ran in front of them for the exit. She slapped the light switch on the way out, plunging the room into darkness.
Pushing Vee ahead of him, Ryan cleared the doorway and put the hallway wall between them and the longblasters.
Down the brightly lit corridor, the other companions leaned against the same wall. None of them appeared to have been hit. Head-size holes had been blown out of the wallboard by the big longblaster. White powder and bits of plaster decorated the magenta carpet.
“Who is shooting at us?” Vee asked. “Is it Magus?”
“Snipering at us is not really Steel Eyes’s style, my dear,” Doc said.
“Certainly not with enforcers playing on the team,” Mildred said. “It’s more likely the NYPD. They probably have been on to us for a while. The security guards downstairs were wearing sidearms. Rent-a-cops don’t usually come strapped like that. I should have put two and two together, but I didn’t think it was possible for them to locate us that fast. Got to figure by now they have the building completely surrounded and an all-out assault on this floor is imminent.”
After a quick breath she said, “Are we really going to kill police?” She seemed disturbed at the prospect.
“They don’t have a chance of getting past this weekend alive,” J.B. said. “But we do, if we can get back to Vee’s apartment in time to jump back to Deathlands.”
“If we let them take us now, we’re as doomed as they are,” Ryan told her. “We’ll be turned to dust along with everyone else, and Magus will win.” As always he was thinking like a natural-born Deathlander: sec men were sec men, no matter the uniform or the flag they fought under. Raise a blaster, pay the price. It was the survivalist code. The companions had every right to live, even if it meant someone else had to die.
The shooting had stopped for more than a minute. It was the lull before the storming.
The attackers didn’t want friendly-fire casualties.
They were coming; Ryan could feel it.
* * *
ESU LEADER Lieutenant Thomas Holmes stood with head lowered, eyes closed and his Glock 19 in his black-gloved fist as he got the report from Team Alpha’s spotter through his earbud. It was not what he wanted to hear. He listened with disbelief, then a flood of anger. “How could you have missed them all?” he said. “Goddammit, I should have taken the shot myself!”
He let his fingertip slide off the com link.
And the cherry on top: Team Bravo had waited on the emergency stairway landing for a couple of minutes to confirm the snipers had stood down.
He keyed his com link again and said, “Go, go! All units go!”
He was first through the fire door onto the floor, pistol supported in both hands. At the opposite end of the hall, the other fire door was just banging back. The elevator doors slid open, and the car disgorged more ESU officers.
Kneeling behind and bracing their riot shields on the floor, they created bulletproof cover for their comrades to leapfrog. Holmes stationed men at the three entry points to keep the perps from doubling back and using them to escape. From either end of the floor, ESU moved from door to door, room to room, closing in on the central point of the conference room. As they conducted their headlong search, there was no clatter of automatic gunfire, only shouts of “Clear! Clear!”
Minutes later the entire force met beside the hallway entrances to the conference room. It was wall-to-wall men in black. Holmes looked at the faces of those closest to him. Their eyes were wide with shock and anger—the trapped perps had seemingly gone up in smoke.
“Check this floor again. Start over,” he said. “Check the heating vents, the ceiling. Every goddamned inch. They’ve got to be here.”
Sweeping off his balaclava, he turned on the light in the conference room.
A cold breeze was flowing through the breached glass panels. There were numerous bullet holes in the wall, overturned chairs; the fast food left behind on the long table was still warm.
No blood.
No sign of them.
“Where the fuck did they go?” he said aloud.