“Because the walk-in-like-we-own-the-place thing worked so well last time,” Mildred said grumpily.
“Have some faith,” Ricky said earnestly.
“Famous last words,” Mildred replied. But she followed her friends into the relative darkness.
* * *
“COMPANY,” JAK SAID QUIETLY.
Ryan halted a few steps inside the loading bay. As he had ascertained, not much mileage could be gained by skulking. The bay opened into a large open space two stories high, with a gallery running along the far end. The stained concrete floor had been picked bare of everything except scattered trash.
It smelled of concrete and decaying greenery. At least it didn’t smell as if any chills had decomposed in here recently, Ryan thought.
His hands were empty. As risks went, it was carefully calculated. If whoever was in here was hostile and started blasting from ambush, if they did or did not have weapons wouldn’t make much difference. But whether or not they showed blasters might make a major difference as to whether anybody in here started shooting at them.
Ryan’s gamble was based on a simple judgment call. Should they go into a potential hiding place where they might find trouble, or stay outside where they knew trouble was actively hunting them?
As J.B. and Krysty stepped up to flank him, a voice called down to them from the gallery.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?”
It was a man’s voice, sarcastic but nonthreatening.
“Name’s Cawdor,” Ryan called back. “We’re outlanders just looking for a place to lie up a bit.”
A man stepped out of a darkened doorway on the upper level. He was average height, broad across the shoulders but not carrying much extra weight that Ryan could tell by his dark T-shirt and black cargo pants. His mustache and the shock of black hair hanging over his forehead made his face look pale. A handblaster rode in a flapped holster at his left hip. Ryan couldn’t make out the kind.
“Lie up, huh?” the man said. “Sounds to me like you might have something to hide out from.”
Ryan shrugged. “It’s easy finding trouble in a ville this size. We’re not looking for any.”
“I think they’re trying to jump our scavvy, Nikk,” a second voice said.
It belonged to a woman who emerged from the doorway behind him. She was about the same height as her partner and had short brown hair sprouting from a grimy camo headband. She wore a rust-colored halter top with overstuffed cargo shorts, and an MP5-K machine pistol rested in a right-hand cross-draw holster strapped in front of them.
“Always the cynic, Patch,” he said as she took her place at the railing alongside him.
She shrugged. “Realist.” Her manner was as cool as it was skeptical. “Somebody’s gotta be, with a dreamer like you in charge.”
He chuckled indulgently. “At least they were smart enough to come in with their hands empty,” he told her.
Then to Ryan he said, “We’ve got blasters on you.”
“I figured,” Ryan said. “So it doesn’t look as if you’ve got much to fear from us, does it?”
“Could be a trick,” the woman said.
Nikk laughed out loud. “It could always be a trick,” he said. “That’s what makes it a game.”
“Razor Eddie’s reporting from the rooftop, Nikk,” another man’s voice called out the door. The speaker didn’t appear. “Says a gang is heading this way. Well armed. Thinks they’re the Desolation Angels.”
“Oh, shit,” a man said from the blank darkness of a doorway on the ground floor, which dispelled any suspicion Ryan might have had that Nikk was bluffing about them being covered.
Not that he’d had many to begin with.
“Aren’t they outside their usual range?” Patch asked. She wasn’t just skeptical of Ryan and company, it appeared.
Nikk shrugged. “They’ve been expanding lately. Prob’ly looking to keep up with DPD.”
“Who’s DPD?” Ryan asked. “I don’t think we’ve made their acquaintance yet.”
“You should hope that you never do.”
“They bad news?” J.B. asked.
Nikk grinned. “You really must be new in the ville,” he said. “If you haven’t learned yet that, here in D-Town, there are only two kinds of news. Bad news—”
Patch laid her head against his shoulder. “And worse news,” she said.
“Quite the comedic duo,” Doc murmured.
Nikk shook his head. “Sorry. We’ve got no beef with the Angels. We’re not looking to start one, either. You’d best be moving on.”
“And if we don’t?” Ryan asked.
“Well, say what you will about the Angels,” the scavvy boss said, “which is mostly that they’re stoneheart bastards through and through, but they aren’t sadists. So I don’t reckon it makes them much, never mind whether we hand your bodies over to them still breathing or started on your way to room temperature.”
Ryan hit the bay door running. Rather than take the ramp, he hopped down to the driveway.
Immediately he heard shots from the west. He ducked. Unslinging his Steyr, he lay prone on the pavement, then crawled forward. The concrete-lined side of the cut totally covered him from enemy fire and concealed him from their view. He heard some of his companions drop from the opening behind him.
As it sloped down close to sidewalk level, he stopped and raised his head to peer over it. The grass was too tall to allow him to see anything.
Cautiously he raised his body on his left arm, as though he was doing a one-armed pushup. He still couldn’t see anything.
Getting uneasy at not being able to see an enemy who obviously had seen him—or who knew roughly where he was—he pulled his knee forward, got a boot sole on the concrete and came up into a bent-forward kneeling position.
At least he was able to glimpse their enemy over the tufted tops of the grass. The Desolation Angels were about fifty yards off. He saw a dozen or so, spread out into a creditable skirmish line, advancing with longblasters across their chests.
Since they got a notion of what kind of quarry they were dealing with, the Angels had begun displaying a degree of professionalism. Apparently the war for dominance—or just survival—here in the Detroit rubble was a fierce one. Fierce enough to force the players to learn something a little better than the usual bullying and mob tactics used by gangs. Or even a lot of ville sec forces.
Ryan knew there were a lot more Angels after them than the ones he could see. And they had no way to fight them off, especially not from the loading-bay cut. And he didn’t fool himself that he could deal with Nikk and his bunch—by either sweet-talking a way back into the big building, or forcing their way in.
He didn’t hold it against the scavvies that they’d turned his companions out to face the Angels’ wrath. He would have done the same thing.
He raised the Steyr and looked through the scope. It had long eye relief, meaning it was mounted farther forward than most so that there was no danger of the eyepiece kicking back and cutting into the eye socket when it fired. It didn’t