LITMIR.BIZ

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steering wheels snapped off and windshields kicked out onto hoods.

      “Is it just me,” Doc said, “or does this all seem a bit chaotic for old Steel Eyes? It hardly reflects the usual high level of advanced planning...” The old man was confused by what he saw outside.

      “The clockwork man likes things to go like clockwork,” Ryan agreed.

      “Mebbe his brain’s stripped a gear?” J.B. said, without tearing his eyes from the escalating destruction below, wondering how all of the wags had survived looting and scavenging, where the gas had come from.

      “Ryan, if we don’t get Magus now...” Krysty said.

      “You’re right,” he agreed. “Keep the incendies ready. We’re going to have to get in close to maximize the effect.”

      As they moved for the door, the woman once more raised her blaster. “Who are you?”

      “No time for introductions,” Ryan told her. “Shoot us in the back if you want, but we’re going after them.”

      Jak led them out the apartment door and down the marble stairs.

      “Toss the grens inside the wags if you can,” Ryan said as they crouched in the foyer. “Locate Magus.”

      They burst through the building’s front door two abreast, but had descended only the first few steps when autofire rattled from the far side of the street. A rain of bullets spanged the concrete treads and wrought-iron railings and crashed through the glass in the entry behind them.

      With hard cover more than thirty feet out of reach, Ryan had no choice. He turned and pushed the others back through the doorway. Otherwise they were going to be cut to pieces.

      Inside the foyer, Mildred said, “Enforcers were doing the shooting, I saw them.”

      “That’s a new wrinkle,” J.B. said. “They never touched blasters on the island.”

      “They were firing AKS-74Us one-handed,” Mildred continued, “waving them around like garden hoses.”

      More high-velocity slugs zipped through the door’s broken glass, cutting tracks down the wall plaster and knocking chips out of the staircase.

      “Why are they using blasters now?” Ricky said. “We can’t chill them with bullets. Why do they need blasters?”

      “To make us keep our distance and hold our fire,” Ryan said. “Magus is part human and can be hurt with bullets. Did anyone see the bastard?”

      Heads shook no.

      Another sustained burst of autofire raked the building’s entrance, forcing them to press their backs against the wall. The opposition’s ammo supply seemed endless.

      “They’re going to get away, Ryan,” Krysty said after the shooting stopped. “Gaia, they’re all going to get away.”

      * * *

      AFTER THE SCRUFFY strangers trooped out, Veronica stood amid the ruins of her living room, unable to take her eyes off the gray cloud and the dark, ovoid shape lurking behind it.

      If it was real, she reasoned, then everything that had just happened was real.

      With the Eagle raised to fire, she looked inside the chamber, saw that it was empty. She gingerly touched the edge of the doorway with a fingertip and got a powerful static shock that made her jerk back her hand. There was actually a little flash and an audible crackle.

      It was not a dream.

      The creatures outside were real. Mr. Crawford’s body in the street was real. Eye-patch man and the others weren’t lifted from some low-budget ’80s John Carpenter film—they were real, too.

      Automatic gunfire clattered in the street. What with that and all the car alarms going off at once, it sounded like video clips of Beirut. Then bullets smashed through her street-facing windows, angling up and digging ugly holes in the plaster overhead. The original 1850s ceiling medallion took the worst of it.

      As if she wasn’t pissed enough.

      “Hosers!” she shouted.

      Avoiding the broken glass underfoot, she ran back into her bedroom. From the closet, she pulled out a pair of running shoes and slipped them on. Then she took the cross-draw, leather chest holster from its hook on the wall behind her clothes, inserted the Desert Eagle and strapped it across her suit jacket. Its twin pouches held 8-round magazines of .44 Magnum bullets.

      The weight of the fully loaded harness felt good.

      A DIY curriculum of advanced combat and weapons training had not only helped her keep her job, it had taught her that, unlike the authors she wet-nursed and contrary to her own expectations—and the expectations of those who thought they knew her—she was absolutely fearless. It turned out danger flipped her secret switch. Where others feared to tread, Veronica Currant jumped in with both feet.

      Born to raise hell and take scalps.

      And now, out of the blue, she had been given the chance to fight monsters. Not monsters in lamentable purple prose. Not in a mindless video game. But in the flesh. It felt as if her whole life had been leading up to this moment.

      The cats were still hiding wide-eyed under the bed and wouldn’t come when she called and made kissing sounds. They weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

      She yanked the Eagle from its sheath. Kicking the debris from her path, she exited the apartment. As she looked over the hallway rail, more bullets crashed through the front door, a story below.

      The strangers were out of the line of fire, squatting along the walls of the foyer, clearly pinned down. Eyepatch, the albino, the black woman, the guy with glasses and fedora, the brown kid, the statuesque redhead, the senior citizen with walking stick—they were variations, permutations of the series’ characters she lived with on a daily basis. Prototypical crusty, hard-bitten badasses, a melange of signature guns and knives in abundance, dressed like homeless people.

      And of course, they had suddenly and remarkably come to life.

      “This way!” she shouted as she rounded the foot of the staircase. She led them down the hallway to the back of the building and out a rear entry. She turned to the left and descended another short set of steps to the backdoor landing of the building’s below-ground apartment. The door looked solid, but for someone who had mastered violent-entry techniques, it wasn’t. Expelling a grunt, she executed a front kick, planting her foot in precisely the right spot. With a crunch, the door splintered away from the deadbolt and lock plate and swung slowly inward.

      “There’s nobody here. Don’t worry,” she said as she stepped through the entrance. “Owner’s still at work. Go on through to the front. We can come up from below street level, get cover from the parked cars.”

      The leggy redhead raised an eyebrow at the word we, her expression undisguisedly suspicious and hostile, but the Latino kid with vomit on his shirt and the old man beamed at her. They all seemed taken aback at the apartment’s furnishings.

      The fedora-and-glasses guy pointed at the calendar on the kitchen wall. “Wow, that’s an old one,” he said.

      Veronica thought the remark was odd since it was the current Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, and the model in question—blonde, tanned, microbikini, zero body fat, draped over the stern of a vintage speedboat—was all of twenty.

      “Don’t put your eyes out staring,” the black woman said, giving him a hard shove from behind.

      Taking them through to the living room, Veronica opened the front door, which led up to the street.

      Eyepatch put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her from taking point. “This is as far as you go, lady,” he said. “Trust me, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

      He held up a red canister. She recognized it at once from her extensive research. Thermite. Four-to five-second delay fuse.

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