LITMIR.BIZ

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Three

      Thornton and Chambers wasted no time with words. Before the dust settled, Thornton kicked open the door on his side of the wag, which faced away from their now revitalized opponents. He scuttled out onto the dusty, hard-packed earth, scrambling to the front wing of the vehicle. Chambers followed in his wake, opting to cover the rear end. It would leave him a little more exposed when he chose to take a shot, but safer in the meantime. Chambers was a believer in caution.

      Corden, meanwhile, had opened the door against which his bloodied shoulder was wedged and slid out, face-first. He rolled over, grimacing as the dust and grit from the ground bit into the exposed flesh. Tears of pain ran down his face. Eyes up to the sky, he could see that the blue, bending to purple and ochre, remained unchanged. For him, though, things were far from the same. Now, he was driven by more than just greed. The need to take from them what they had taken from him—a life—was a burning desire.

      “Wayne, you with us?” Thornton queried, concerned at Corden’s expression, the like of which he had never seen.

      “Yeah…oh, yeah…” Galvanized into action, Corden pulled himself to his feet and joined Thornton in his long-range recce over the cover of the wag’s hood. “They can’t move, and if we go to them, then we expose ourselves. Right?”

      Thornton agreed. Corden glanced down the length of the wag at Chambers, who nodded.

      “Right. Then we need to take ourselves to them. I’ll replace Jase. Just get as much firepower as you can and start blasting when we get in range.”

      “What if we—”

      Corden’s hard-eyed, ice-cold stare choked Thornton’s query in his throat. Corden’s voice was low, deep in his own throat, and had an edge that would brook no argument. “We chill those fuckers. I don’t care if it’s quick or slow. Slow’s better. But they buy the farm. If we get Hearne’s jack, then even better. But that don’t really matter now. They got one of ours. That’s what matters.”

      With that, Corden pulled open the door of the wag and climbed in, keeping his head low. Thornton looked back at Chambers. The dark coldheart shrugged, gesturing helplessly. There was little they could do except go along with it. Corden was boss, and they were used to following without question.

      Inside the wag, Corden gently closed Demetriou’s eyes. The young coldheart had slumped so that his torso had fallen into the well between the seats. Corden cradled his head.

      “They won’t get away with this,” he whispered to the chilled man. Heaving the deadweight body upright, he reached across the bloodied lap and flicked the catch on the driver’s door. Pushing it open, he heaved the body so that it fell toward the gap, pitching off the seat and into a heap on the ground.

      The engine was still ticking over, the gear preventing it from moving. Corden closed the driver’s door, then called to Chambers and Thornton.

      Chambers entered the rear of the wag once more, while Thornton took Corden’s old post. Now he was riding shotgun, and would have a clear arc of fire through the shattered windshield.

      “You know what we should do,” Corden said in a toneless, dead voice. “I’ll set her rolling, and then we just start blasting. Don’t give them a chance to fire back.”

      “Wait—”

      Corden looked back at Chambers. “Lost your nerve? If you have, then I’ll—”

      “No need for us to do anything, Wayne,” Chambers interrupted him. “Stop a second…Can’t you feel it?”

      Corden frowned. What was Chambers talking about? But wait…His grim visage cracked into a grin wreathed in malice.

      “Yeah, I can, now. Looks like we won’t have to worry about anything. The spirits are gonna take care of ’em, right?”

      Chambers nodded. “Spirits, nuke shit, call it what you want, Wayne. But it’s coming. And they ain’t been around these parts long enough to know anything about it. They won’t survive it.”

      “Neither will we. Not if we don’t get the fuck out of here soon,” Thornton added, looking through the blasted windshield and up at the skies. There was no sign above them, but the air around was charged, like static electricity. The previously airless plains had the slightest of breezes, carrying that charge across the empty expanse.

      Corden looked out of the wag, down at Demetriou’s corpse. Maybe a proper burial would have been good. Stop the mutie critters getting him, using him for carrion. But what the hell. Jase was gone. That piece of chilled flesh wasn’t him. Not anymore.

      Corden smiled as he looked across at the wag that held their erstwhile opponents. “They’ll be expecting us to attack. Won’t know what the fuck to think when we hightail it outta here. Makes it kinda sweeter, doesn’t it?”

      “Guess it does, Wayne,” Chambers agreed. He would have agreed to anything at that moment, as long as it got Corden turning the wag and headed back toward Brisbane.

      Corden put the wag into gear and spun it almost 360, so that they headed away from the stranded wag and back toward the blacktop they had seemingly left so long ago.

      “WHAT—” MILDRED FOLLOWED the progress of their one-time pursuers with a rising sense of bewilderment.

      “That no way attack. Something wrong,” Jak commented tersely.

      “Sure as shit is,” J.B. muttered. “Why come all this way, push it this far, and then…”

      “Unless, my dear John Barrymore, there is a greater danger in the offing than perhaps they would wish to deal with?” Doc mused.

      Krysty scanned the land around. There was nothing visible except the receding dust trail of the retreating wag. “Can’t see a thing. But…” She was aware of how tightly her hair was clinging to her neck, snaking down her back as though searching for cover.

      “But?” Mildred queried.

      “Feel it,” Jak whispered. “Not coldheart trouble. Something worse.”

      A distant hum in the air, like the thrumming of a taut wire, was all the indication they had of anything amiss. There seemed to be no account for the coldhearts’ sudden withdrawal. Yet still that gnawing at the pit of the companions’ stomachs said that there was something very bad on the way.

      Without a word, both Jak and Krysty got out of the wag, stiff, sore limbs protesting at the movement. Krysty winced as she could feel her ribs creak and tighten with every breath. Both she and Jak stood still and silent on the plain, looking slowly around. The air was moving more than previously. There was no reason why there shouldn’t be a breeze, so why did it feel uncomfortable and unnerving? It took both of them only a few minutes to realize that there seemed to be no direction from which the air moved. One second it seemed to be westerly, the next it was from the east. Or else it seemed to come from the north, only to switch south when confirmation was sought. Even more so, there was no pattern to these changes. They seemed to be either random or in such an extended sequence that it was difficult to follow the pattern.

      Jak and Krysty exchanged puzzled looks. The albino teen’s normally impassive face was twisted into a questioning look.

      Before either could say anything, sounds from behind them indicated that the others had come out into the open. Krysty turned to see Doc stretching, black-clad limbs twisted against the empty backdrop of the sky. J.B. stared, puzzled, at the sun as the breezes plucked at the folds of material on the backpack that held his ordnance stash. Mildred was making Ryan lean forward so that she could check his good eye for any signs of concussion.

      “How you feeling, lover?” Krysty asked.

      Ryan grunted. “Like shit.”

      “But not concussed shit,” Mildred added dryly. “You’ll be okay. What’s with the coldhearts?” she added, indicating the direction in which their attackers had fled.

      “That’s

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