Hayden swept the desk clear of junk, aiming it straight toward the mercs with a powerful sweep as she drew her own gun. The facility workers froze in place, eyes wide. Hopefully Kinimaka, behind them, would bring the cops running.
She fired instantly, her shot going wide. A merc lunged at her face, grabbing for the gun. Dahl swept another weapon aside, grabbed its owner, and slammed him against the wall. The man battered both his ears with fists the size of soccer balls. A sixth sense warned him of a blade zinging in toward his spine but he knew the stab-vest would deflect it, waited, and used the ricochet to gauge where his cowardly attacker would end up. Dahl’s arm was ready, wrapping around the neck and squeezing. With the other hand he jabbed his first opponent, keeping him against the wall.
Hayden struggled as her merc caught her in a bear hug, their faces pressed together. The gun was trapped between them. His strength crushed the breath from her body. They were too close to enable her to maneuver, but she drew her head back and used her skull. The merc was clever, having dipped his head so she couldn’t reach his nose. The blow still smashed against his temple though, a wallop that he felt all the way down to his knees.
Hayden pivoted and smashed him into the bank of TV screens, then bore down on his spine. With a little room now she brought a hand up, stiffened the fingers, and dug them into his windpipe — harder and harder, each second applying more force until the choking drowned out all else. He was a stubborn son-of-a-bitch, but nobody could resist such pressure forever. At last he pushed her away, staggering. Hayden vented much more than frustration with a sharp kick to the head.
She whirled. Dahl was dealing with two mercs, and that left just one unattended. Yes, they had been outplayed but the odds were certainly changing. The merc waved a gun in her face.
“Step back, ma’am. Sit your pretty little ass down on that chair and put your hands behind your back so I can tie ‘em together.”
Hayden backed away meekly, holding her hands slightly apart. “All right. Just calm down. No one needs to get shot here today.”
“Well that depends how good you are at keeping us happy, ma’am. Now sit the fuck down.”
Hayden bowed her head, still meek and subservient. The man stepped forward menacingly and it all fell into place. Or rather his testicles fell into place. Now at the perfect range she made good on her earlier promise and drop-kicked them from his groin to his throat. The man collapsed with a high-pitched squeak, scrambling about the floor. Hayden collected his gun.
She turned again. Dahl had already choked one merc into unconsciousness. The other batted futilely at him, already knowing he was going to lose. Quickly, Hayden spun toward Kinimaka and the cops.
The day is ours! Even now we’ve thwarted the Pythians…
Kinimaka didn’t look happy, being prodded in the back by four handguns and surrounded by thirty grinning mercenaries dressed as cops. More than twenty weapons were leveled at her and Dahl.
“Now,” grated a swarthy man with a face and arms as dark and wrinkled and hard as a tree-trunk. “Get your ass down on that floor. And you too, big guy. One wrong move an’ you’ll get to see yer fucking brains across them TV screens.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Matt Drake would never admit to it, but as he ventured closer and closer to the eerie ghost town the hairs on the back of his neck bristled more and more. It wasn’t any Scooby-Doo mentality, nor even a boyhood fear, it was the unnerving fact that everything looked like it had been deserted just yesterday. As they approached the main street he saw a children’s swing set moving gently in a garden, creaking and swaying as if a child had run inside just moments earlier. A timber-built store sat dead ahead at the street corner, its colors as bright as any new store shouting “Motherlode Mercantile” and “Tomahawk Tours”. Tree stumps, dusty and gray, sat all around, old signs tacked to them. An overgrown yard lay behind. The main street was nothing but a gravelly dirt track, but smooth and tidy as if had been raked over just this week.
Jenny appeared between the buildings. Having been gone for over an hour she finally returned with a frown. “Nobody living here as I thought. But there has been activity over the last few weeks. Footprints, shuffle-marks and used condoms aplenty out back there. Handprints — female — against the door. Somebody had themselves alotta perpendicular fun.”
“Kids?” Drake wondered.
The redhead grimaced. “Doubtful. Kids woulda left McDonald’s wrappers and more. This was someone trying to be reasonably careful. Probably slipping away from a large camp.”
“Mercs,” Lauren said. “Maybe Alicia got here early.”
Drake grinned. “Nice. But I gotta say — it doesn’t mean it’s our lot.”
“If that means it might not be the people we’re searching for then I agree. But it is someone, and I can follow their trail.” Jenny nodded at the jagged wall of mountains set dark against the blue sky. “That way.”
Drake pursed his lips. “Well, it’s as good a direction as any, I guess. And within the grid we’re searching. Let’s do it.”
“I was going to.”
Jenny hitched her jeans tighter and strode off toward her Jeep. Smyth stared for a moment before Lauren put an arm around his shoulders. “Ready?”
“Oh yeah. Umm, I mean, sure.”
Drake blinked rapidly. “Well, I guess we’re going to have to follow her.”
Yorgi smiled. “Not a problem. I now see what is meant by your phrase — second skin.”
“Quit it.” Drake tried to remain objective about the new arrival, unsure what her motives were beyond getting paid for a good job. The redhead was short-tempered, tetchy and easily able to incite annoyance among other team members to be sure, but she was also proving to be highly capable and surprisingly knowledgeable. The world out here was a land of expiry and sand, a drifting monument to mortality. Jenny knew it well, and guided them without acknowledging their shortcomings. Her ability to track was beyond any that Drake had ever known, to his own great surprise. He wondered how she might handle herself in a crisis.
He took another look around the silent town, still unable to shake a sense of creepiness, of being watched through unwashed windows. If he stood there long enough he might see a curtain twitch, might even see it slide open… and a skeletal head peering out at him with a grinning death-mask smile.
Drake shivered. Karin, at his side, shuffled her feet. “Do you truly believe in ghosts, Matt? That our loved ones are, even now, at our side?”
“I can’t answer that. It’s a bloody loaded question. No more promises, Karin. You were the last. All I know is these ghost towns are very well named.”
“A village of the damned,” she said.
Drake studied a huge, three-pronged cactus that rose up like a unique signpost at a four-way junction ahead. Lush and green, it contradicted all that stood around it. The ramshackle, haphazard clutter of buildings should be occupied, and not only by the undead. A lady should twirl here, a gentleman tip his hat there. An old timer should be lying back in a chair, watching the world go by, not creeping through the netherworld, reaching for all that he had lost with cracking, emaciated fingers of dead bone.
Drake shook himself out of it. Jenny started up the lead Jeep and rolled out, keeping the revs low. Yorgi waited for Drake and Karin, and then followed. Silence hung like an oppressive curtain. Drake wondered how many more of these ghost towns sat out there, soundless grieving tombstones gazing out at the world through hollow eye-sockets, as unnatural as black rain and more peculiar than moonstone. Someone had painted an old brown sign at the edge of town.