Ben smiled, a tiny thrill of excitement making his blood pound faster. At last! He'd thought the whole place dead.
He stepped out, skirting the makeshift barricade, conscious now of a shuffling in the alleyway he had just come out of. A door creaked close by. Whoever they were, they were close.
The cruiser was a hundred feet away now, resting where he'd parked it five hours back, the hatch sealed. Even from here he could see the dents and scratches around the lock.
Making no sudden movements, he slid his hand down his side and activated the charger on his belt, glad he'd taken care to arm himself. As yet they hadn't shown themselves. But they would. He was almost certain they wouldn't let him get back inside the cruiser - not unless he was their prisoner first.
A step, another step, and then the scuffling behind him materialised into forms. He turned, looking back at them. Three men - or what were once men - their gaunt, skeletal faces grinning at him golden-eyed.
High noon in ghoul town, Ben thought, amused, wondering how he could use this in his tale. They weren't armed. At least, not with anything he should worry about. He turned back, then walked on slowly, but he had barely gone another half dozen paces before a further two of them stepped out from a shadowed doorway just ahead and to his left.
The three behind had blocked off the space between the barricade and the street-front. As Ben watched, another four moved out from behind the cruiser. Taking it all in at a glance, he noted the glint of something metallic in one of their hands. A gun? No. He recognised it now. It was a Security stun-prod. Good. He could handle that.
Ben stopped, looking about him, his smile benevolent now, like a prince among his subjects.
"Gentlemen," he said, imperiously, "what can I do for you?" There was a murmuring between the two nearest him. Ben saw how they glanced to the one with the prod who was clearly their leader, then, at his nod, started toward him.
With a deceptively casual gesture, Ben drew the laser from inside his tunic and pointed it at them. For a moment it was as if they didn't see what he was doing - despite the sudden glare of the tightly-focused beam - for they both kept coming. It was only when one of them screeched and fell to his knees that the other - the one he hadn't yet shot - stumbled to a halt, his ravaged face transformed in an almost comic double-take.
"Dead," Ben said, pointing the gun at him and squeezing the trigger. Light leapt, transfixing the creature. For a moment he seemed to dance on the end of it, his chest on fire, then he too fell. Ben turned, grinning broadly now, raking the laser fire across the wall facing him, across the makeshift barricade and onto the backs of the fleeing men.
He watched them screech and fall, then turned back, walking on as the last of them backed away, their faces frozen in sudden fear, the screams of their fellows still sounding loudly in that narrow, enclosed space, the smell of burned flesh powerful now.
"Dead," Ben repeated, lifting the gun but not using it. "Dead.
All of you."
And now they turned and ran, shrieking, afraid. But Ben was not done. Slipping the gun back into its holster, he plucked one of the tiny, fig-like bombs from his belt and, biting off the top, threw it after them, imagining himself back in the woods on the Domain and hunting squirrels. As it exploded, sending two of the stick figures sprawling, he took a second bomb and, repeating the process, hurled it, the accuracy of his throw the result of forty years' practice.
"Dead," he said, even as the last of them was blown into the air. Chuckling to himself he walked over to the cruiser and, lifting his face to the camera so that it could scan him through the helmet's glass, he uttered the voice command. "Open Sesame!"
As the hatch opened and the ramp unfurled, he turned, looking about him at the devastation. It had been too easy. Much, much too easy.
"Ben nine, Ghouls nil," he said quietly, then nodded to himself, seeing exactly what changes he'd need to make if he were to use this. As it was his own role in events was unheroic, unsympathetic. But he could change that. He could make them more beastly for a start, more gruesome. And he could have them taunt him, threaten him. As for himself, he would need to be unarmed. There would have to be a fight, hand-to-hand stuff, with one moment - one precarious, heart-stopping moment - when it seemed that they'd prevailed.
He grinned, seeing it whole, then turned and climbed the ramp, anxious to get back.
The four creatures emerged from the shadows of the old warehouse in which they'd hid and stepped out into the brilliant sunlight, their smooth, hairless heads looking up as one, following the path of the departing craft. They had seen the fight through their remotes; seen the smile on the suited man's face and found it strange.
As the craft flew out of sight, three of the four looked to their leader.
"Well, Tybor," one of them asked. "What now?" Tybor sighed and looked about him. Bodies. Everywhere bodies. He stretched his long limbs - limbs twice the length of any human - then walked toward the nearest house.
"Let's do something useful," he said. "Lefs burn some of these bodies."
They had heard the cruisers coming from a long way off. Now Kao Chen stood on the low stone wall beside the main pen, shielding his eyes and looking to see where they were headed and how many there were.
"Three," he said, looking to the others who were gathered about him. "And they're heading straight for us."
They broke out the arms then headed across the big field toward the village. If they'd land anywhere, they'd land there. As they jogged along, Chen looked to his eldest son, Jyan and smiled encouragement. "It'll be okay," he called, speaking not only to Jyan but to the others. "When they see how determined we are, they'll go elsewhere."
But secretly he'd begun to have his doubts. They had fought off five raiding parties in the past week and things seemed to be getting no better. Those who fled the plague in the city faced hunger outside it. And hunger made men ruthless.
And if these were Security, as they appeared to be, then who knew what they'd do to get their way. He'd been among them most of his life, after all, and knew well enough what many of his fellow officers thought of the peasants who manned the Plantations. Why, they'd think longer about crushing an insect than they would about killing a Plantation worker.
Yes, but if they try any of that shit here they'll find they've bitten off more than they can chew, he thought, burying his doubts, knowing that if Wang Ti and the children were to survive - yes, and all of his good friends here - he'd have to dispense with such uncertainties.
Coming into the village, he dispersed his men among the big stone houses. By now this was almost routine, yet he could see how the village men derived some comfort from the way he barked his orders at them - as if his long experience as a Security Major were some kind of magic shield behind which they might be safe.
Thinking of it - of the weight of expectation that bore down on his shoulders - he shuddered. But then there was no more time to think of that. The cruisers were upon them, bearing down like giant locusts.
"Hold fire until I say!" he bellowed over the noise of the engines, then ducked beneath a rail, running for the end house in the row.
The cruisers had slowed and were hovering above the field to the west of the village. As he watched, two of the craft took up what was clearly a defensive cover while the central craft slowly set down.
It was a classic manoeuvre, and, watching it, Kao Chen felt old instincts switch in. He had been a good soldier in his time. The best, so some said, Karr aside. But he'd been a Han in a Hung Mao army. Besides which, the job had stunk. Not the technical side, that he'd loved, it was just that serving a bastard like Li Yuan hadn't been easy. The times that he'd done things which had been against his conscience were innumerable.