LITMIR.BIZ

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back of his hands, ran down his cheeks and dripped onto the lapels of his long coat. And off to her right stood an old guy, wearing nothing but a grimy loincloth stained with she didn’t even want to imagine what. He held a big battered Ruger Blackhawk in both his pale, liver-spotted hands, and he was trying to crank the single-action hammer back with his thumbs.

      Mildred’s reaction was automatic. Inevitable. She’d taken a half step to turn her right side toward him. She raised her right arm, stiffened. Her ZKR 551 target revolver was held at the end of it. By reflex she thumbed the hammer back as she brought it up.

      The blocky sights aligned on the old man’s stringy-haired head, as if the upper half of it were sitting on top of the front post. At that instant she pressed the trigger.

      She saw blood spray pink out the side of the elder’s head. His skinny legs and grubby fish-white body folded beneath him. She had chilled him and never given it a thought.

      He was just trying to defend his place in the world, she thought, then reality set in. Tough titty. Her survival, and the survival of her companions, was paramount. She had done what needed to be done.

      Now, blaster still in hand, she was moving swiftly toward Doc. He was still on his feet, but barely.

      “No!” Mildred heard Ricky scream from behind her.

      “Come on,” Krysty said firmly.

      From the youth’s protests Mildred guessed the redhead had grabbed his arm and was physically dragging him onward among the now almost-deserted booths and stands.

      Mildred was by Doc’s side. He tried to wave her off with his nonbloody hand.

      “Go ahead, dear lady. I’m fine.”

      “You’re not fine.”

      As if to prove the truth of her words, he reeled and toppled into her arms. Fortunately, she was professional enough a shooter to have her finger outside the trigger guard when she didn’t intend to fire the weapon. His weight was considerable, more than was expected by the look of him. But it wasn’t deadweight. He was still conscious. Just woozy.

      “Jak!” she heard Ryan shout as she staggered back a step. For all his protestations, he hadn’t been too proud to drape his free arm around her neck for support. “Find us cover right now!”

      He and J.B. appeared, flanking Doc simultaneously. The Armorer grabbed his left elbow while Ryan grabbed the right. They hauled him out of Mildred’s arms and kept running.

      They scarcely even slowed.

      Shouts erupted from behind them. The pack was closing in. The Angels were already among the southern booths, though fortuitously none of them had line of sight on their prey. Yet.

      Without looking Ryan stretched his right arm back and cranked off two shots from his SIG. A stout black lady in a red turban scurrying for cover threw up her hands with a wail of despair and fell to the ground.

      Mildred steeled her heart and turned to run after the three men. Ryan didn’t like to chill without need any more than she did. But if random third parties got in the way of shots he fired in defense of himself and his friends—even just popped off to try to spook some caution into whatever happened to be chasing them—he wouldn’t lose a second’s sleep over it.

      She doubted he’d even remember it five minutes from now.

      But she would. And she’d likely lose the sleep for him.

      * * *

      “WHY ISN’T DOC DEAD?” Ricky asked.

      Krysty looked over the bottom of the large, empty front window, her snub-nosed .38 clutched in both hands. A large man, bent over with his big gut hanging out the front of his open vest, approached through the waist-high weeds and brush of the overgrown parking lot. She quickly lined up the sights and fired.

      To her surprise the man dropped straight down out of sight, as if she’d actually hit him from fifty feet away. That was far from a given with her handblaster.

      The overgrowth lit up and began to shake from multiple muzzle blasts as the Angels lying among them returned enthusiastic fire.

      They ran into a former fast-food restaurant—the nearest available cover on the northwest side of a five-way intersection just north of the market. Its roof had been blown off so that its walls stood open to the sky. For what it was worth, it offered a decent field of fire in three directions. The way they had come was mostly clear for about twenty feet before the weeds kicked in. To the southwest a hundred feet of rubble-choked former parking lot—a lot of twisted ankles just waiting to happen—separated them from a stand of chest-high wheat and barley. On the northeast side, a wide, fairly intact street lay between them and a three-story red-brick building.

      Ryan lifted his head cautiously above that wall and peered across the street.

      “I’m not seeing any activity over there,” he reported. “Yet. If they put snipers on the roof, we’re going to have a long afternoon.” He jerked his chin at the structure, whose rooftop gave a commanding view of the far third of the former dining area where they had gone to ground.

      “Doc got shot in the head,” Ricky said. He ignored the storm of bullets cracking over his head and flying over the counter into what had been the kitchen area of a derelict KFC. “Why isn’t he dead?”

      “It wasn’t a fatal shot,” Mildred replied. Doc sat with his back to a side wall near the dark-haired youth while Mildred crouched next to him. She had the lid of one eye skinned wide-open with her thumb. “He isn’t going to die. Of this, anyway. But he is concussed.”

      “So how is he not dead?”

      “A person’s skull is pretty good armor, Ricky,” she said. “It’s possible that a handgun bullet could bounce off, even fired from point-blank range. This was just a graze. Lots of blood, but a small wound.”

      “Probably a .38 slug,” J.B. said. He crouched beside the naked metal frame that had been the front door. “Soft lead, round nose. If the old guy had been cranking full-power .357s through that Ruger cowboy gun, we might be singing a different tune.”

      The Angels hadn’t rushed them yet. Now the defenders were hunkered down just inside the open-to-the-air windows and doors, waiting for the inevitable assault. They had shucked their packs and left them in the back storage area where they wouldn’t be underfoot.

      At least we’re getting a chance to drink some water and catch our breath, Krysty thought.

      Mildred bandaged Doc’s head quickly, using some unbleached linen strips they’d traded for at a post.

      “What’s our prospect of breaking out the back?” J.B. asked.

      A partly collapsed building stood right behind the one they occupied, across a narrow alley. To its southwest was the rubble of a thoroughly destroyed building, a long, low mound coming up as high as Krysty’s breastbone in places. The street on the other side was partially blocked a bit farther down by another tall building that had fallen east.

      “Not like,” Jak called. He was unseen in the back of the store, keeping an eye on the rear entrance. “No way through.”

      “Looked as if there’s mostly more open fields off past it, anyway,” Ryan said. “Be hard to get out unseen.”

      “There sure seems to be a lot of open space around here, for a big city and all,” said Ricky, who was crouched by the southwest wall. Nothing remained of the interior furnishings but the counter. The kitchen stoves and sinks and whatnot had long since been pillaged for scrap.

      “It’s Detroit,” Mildred said, cutting off the end of the last bandage with a pocketknife. “The Motor City. There, old man. You look as if I just treated you for toothache, but at least you won’t bleed out.”

      She glanced over at Ricky to see him giving her a blank look. “They used to make cars here,” she told him. “So they had lots of cars. I reckon a lot of that space they’ve

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