Every nerve in his body jangled, his stomach flipping as the first wave of adrenaline began to rush through him.
“J.B.! Look! Incoming—everyone…” he yelled, words coming out in a jumbled bark.
On the far side of the circle cast by the fire’s light, J.B. whirled and was heading toward the albino even before his Uzi had come to hand. He didn’t waste time with words. A quizzical glance, answered by Jak’s own gaze, was enough, directing him to the red dot on the ground.
“Pathfinder,” he whispered to himself, knowing as he did that their only chance was to move quickly out of the immediate area, then try to locate where the attack originated. To do anything else except run would be to ask how much jack the farm cost.
Both men, despite having weapons to hand by reflex, showed no concern with following the direction of the beam. That would have been fruitless, anyway. It was little more than a red dot, with no chance of ascertaining direction by the naked eye. No, the only thing to do that would be of any practical use would be to rouse the others, get them out before whatever was heading their way hit.
Jak’s shouts had already awakened them. Ryan and Krysty were bolt awake, on their way to being on their feet before his words had even died away. Mildred was a little slower, having been asleep longer and much deeper into her rest. She was bleary, but under the fog of sleep her reflexes were forcing her to the surface. She was stumbling to her feet even as she felt J.B.’s hand under her arm, lifting her as if she were no more than a feather, his wiry frame lent strength by urgency. She wasn’t too sure where she was, but every fiber of her being yelled danger, her own adrenaline rush forcing her back to full consciousness.
Doc was the only one who did not respond with the necessary urgency. The shouts, the pounding of feet on the soil and sand around the campfire, all of these served to bring him out of his slumbers. But it was a slack-jawed Doc, eyes open but blank and uncomprehending, who greeted the night. His sleep, as ever, had been disturbed by nightmare visions. Sleep was a necessary evil, where pale demons emerged from the recesses of his mind to torment him, to remind him of that which had tortured him, of that which he had lost. On waking, he was never sure if it was still part of a dream or whether it was little more than an extension of the hellish vagaries of his own mind.
“Doc,” Mildred blurted, sleep clearing from her eyes, mind racing, catching sight of the disoriented man. She stumbled toward him, pulling at his arm to try to lever him up. He yelled incoherently, pulling himself away and stumbling from his half-standing position so that he sprawled back on the ground, raising a cloud of dust.
“Jak—” Ryan barked. The albino knew the one-eyed man’s query before he even voiced it, and pointed to the red dot.
“Coming fast,” he added, indicating to his rear.
With a speed far in excess of the time it would take to voice such thoughts, Ryan realized that whatever it was that was coming for them, it would be locked onto the laser dot, and it would be quick. It had to be from a great distance, otherwise they would have seen their tracker—for he had no doubt that whatever it was, the source was the mystery rider—but it was likely to be traveling at great speed.
So if it was locked onto the dot, then they needed to get as far away from that bastard red mark as possible. He knew that Krysty, Jak, J.B. and himself stood a chance if they set off at a run, but he could also see that Doc was still on the ground, and Mildred was slowed by her efforts to aid him. Run, or go to her assistance. There wasn’t time to think about the choice, just act. He took a step toward Mildred and Doc, could see that J.B. was doing the same.
The gas egg wasn’t visible in the darkness until the last moment. As it entered the ring of light cast by the fire, its dark shape was thrown into relief. Even then, it was hard to track as the speed at which it descended made it little more than a blur. It was audible from farther out, a high, whistling scream in the air as it was propelled at great speed toward its target. In what seemed like time slowed to an almost infinitesimal degree, all who turned their gaze could see the egg fall toward the red dot on the ground, the smart circuit in the gren making it follow the perfect arc to land and impact. It seemed to slow from its great speed until it was almost possible to see the rotation in flight that guided its direction. It fell toward the red dot with an inevitability and slowness that made Ryan feel that he could dive across the sandy soil between his feet and the red dot and pluck the gren out of the air, stopping it from hitting the earth and exploding, letting out whatever lethal load it may carry.
The one-eyed man tried to carry the thought through, forcing his sluggish limbs to move, feeling his muscles tense and wobble as though pushing against quicksand rather than air. In a flash of insight that was faster than real time, he realized that it was only normal air resistance that he felt, that, in truth, his danger-honed mind was trying to make him move faster than was humanly possible.
It had to have been imagination or hallucination, but he was almost sure that he saw the gren take one final wobbling turn in the air before hitting the sand. Felt sure that he saw the puff of dust raised by impact before the gren splintered into a thousand pieces, unleashing the payload. He flinched, squinting his good eye for fear of flying metal.
But it was no frag gren. A puff of smoke—or so it seemed—was all that issued forth, a white that shone incandescent against the red glow of the fire before spreading and dissipating into a mist that seemed to fade and die before it reached Ryan.
He was aware of a numbing that spread from his chest outwards, and a faint smell, sweet but with a bitterness underlying it. The two were connected, he knew, but it was hard to work out how, hard to work out why he should be bothering to ponder this, hard to…
He could breathe still, but everything else was becoming numb. His chest felt empty yet heavy at the same time. His shoulders were reduced to lumps of flesh with no movement, the numbness spread down his arms as though carried in his veins, trickling into his fingers, down to the very tips. He could feel the same happening in his legs, the lack of feeling spreading down to his groin and then down each leg, knees buckling as the muscles supporting them went dead.
Ryan felt himself tumble as his balance was unable to account for the lack of feeling and support from his body. He could not control the fall. He teetered, then pitched forward, landing full-length with a thud on the densely packed, sandy soil with a reverberation that seemed to resonate through his frame. He could sense this, and yet not feel it, almost as though he was detached from himself.
He could see nothing. The light from the fire was too slight, the ground in front of him too close to his face. He could hear little else but the crackle of the fire. Then, in the distance, approaching at speed and growing louder with every breath he took, the sound of a motorcycle engine.
Somewhere, deep in the recesses of a momentarily clouded mind, he knew that the gren had contained some kind of nerve gas. He had heard of such predark relics, had on occasion witnessed examples of them that had chilled on contact.
He hated being at the mercy of whoever—the mystery rider, he guessed—had fired the gren. The coldheart bastard could do anything he wanted to them, and they could not fight back.
Although Ryan could see nothing, falling as he had, there were others who had a better view of what was about to occur. Doc had fallen onto his back, staring up at the night sky, uncomprehending. No sooner had he managed to focus in some manner and realize where he was than the paralysis had hit him. It bewildered him as he had still been too befuddled to notice the gren. He was only aware of the numbness, the inability to raise himself up as he fell backward, and of the fact that he was flat to the ground without feeling it beneath him. As though he were floating above it, just hovering, and yet unable to move through any direction. In this state of disconnection, he heard the engine’s roar as the sound of his own approaching doom. Tears prickled at his eyes.
The vagaries of Doc’s imagination were as far away from what went through the head of Mildred Wyeth as it was possible to get. Caught trying