“Boy, are you a smart-ass,” Melanie commented, and jumped as high as she could. She caught hold of the Warrior around the waist, locked her legs on his, and clung to him.
“Keep going!” Hickok prompted her gruffly.
Melanie clambered higher, clutching at the sturdy fabric of his buckskin shirt. Her left hand found a purchase on his left shoulder, and she was able to place her right hand on the top of his head, then lunge at the rim. Her fingers slipped and she sagged, perching precariously on his shoulders and upper torso.
His arms feeling as if they were about to be yanked from their sockets, Hickok closed his eyes and focused exclusively on retaining his grip. His arms quivered from the tremendous strain.
Melanie tried again, her left knee inadvertently digging into the gunman’s back. Her right hand grasped the lip, and a moment later she had both her hands on the rim. “I did it!” she cried, elated.
“Let the bugs know, why don’t you?” Hickok growled.
She raised herself onto her elbows, arched her back, and swung her legs up. Once flat on the rim, she rested, grinning and breathing deeply.
“You’re on my hands, you ding-a-ling!” Hickok snapped.
“Oh. Sorry,” Melanie said, and eased down the mound, lying with her head near the lip, to the gunfighter’s left.
Hickok began to pull himself to the rim again, his arms and shoulders aching terribly. His whole body shook with the effort. Sweat had formed on his palms, and he felt his left hand slipping. If he fell back in, he might be trapped until the bugs returned! Desperation seized him when his left hand came loose and he started to drop.
Melanie’s hands abruptly closed on his left wrist and she heaved with all her might.
Using the added impetus she supplied, Hickok hoisted himself over the lip and rolled onto his back, filled with relief. “Thanks,” he said softly. “I reckoned I might’ve been a goner.”
“There you go again.”
Hickok smiled and sat up, scanning their surroundings. He extracted an ammo box from his left front pocket and hastily reloaded the Henry.
“I think the roaches are gone,” Melanie said.
“Let’s hope so,” Hickok responded, replacing the box. He rose and hefted the Carbine. “Ready when you are.”
“I’m right behind you,” Melanie said.
The Warrior advanced down the slope, treading carefully to prevent his feet from slipping out from under him. He gazed at the windows, gauging their height at 20 feet, too high to reach without a ladder.
“How will we get out of here?” Melanie asked. “If we go back into the tunnels, they’re bound to catch us.”
Hickok had to agree. “Let’s look for another way out,” he suggested.
They came to the bottom of the mound and moved cautiously to the right, examining the walls, checking the recesses and the shadows for sign of a door.
The Warrior realized his mouth was dry and his skin prickling. He expected a horde of cockroaches to pour out of the darkness at any moment. There were too many of the creatures for one man to hold them off indefinitely. He wished he had Blade’s M60. At least he’d have a decent chance.
Faint clicking arose from the direction of the tunnel in the far wall.
Melanie grabbed the gunman’s right arm. “They’re coming back,” she declared.
“Keep your voice down,” Hickok said, and hurried around the mound to the side farthest from the tunnel. He crouched down at the base of the nest.
Melanie imitated his example. “They’ll catch us!” she whispered, horrified.
“They’re not takin’ me alive,” Hickok vowed.
“Oh, great!” Melanie said, and snorted. “You can go out in a blaze of glory, but I’d like to live.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Hickok responded.
The clicking grew louder.
Angry at being thwarted when they were on the verge of escaping, Hickok glanced over his right shoulder at the rear wall. He peered intently at a vague outline in the corner, puzzled, his mind taking fully ten seconds to recognize the outline as the shape of stairs.
And where there were stairs, there must be a door at the top!
Overjoyed at his discovery, Hickok was about to grab Melanie and make a break when she unexpectedly took hold of his left shoulder and nodded at the sound. Hickok looked up, his grip on the Henry tightening at the sight of seven or eight cockroaches milling about the top of the nest.
Chapter Thirteen
“We’re cut off.” Marlon cried.
Blade halted and glanced to their rear. Thirty-five Chosen were coming on at a run, now less than 50 yards away. In front of them, at the intersection, were another 21. To their left loomed a ten-story structure, while to their right was an abandoned department store.
Both groups of the Chosen were shouting and waving their weapons in the air as they closed in.
“This way!” Blade declared, and ran to the double glass doors on the larger building. He wrenched the right-hand door open and darted in to a broad lobby. Broken furniture littered the dusty blue carpet. Straight across from the glass doors was a long counter. To the left of the counter were two open, useless elevators, and to the left of the elevators a closed wooden door on which the word STAIRWELL had been stenciled in black letters over a century ago.
The others entered on his heels.
“To the stairs,” Blade ordered, and loped toward the wooden door.
Outside, the increasing volume of pounding feet and aroused exclamations attested to the proximity of the Chosen.
“You go up first,” Blade directed as he came to the door, gesturing for them to proceed.
Marlon and Lieutenant Garber entered the stairwell.
“What about you?” Geronimo asked, pausing in the doorway.
“I’ll buy you time to find a back exit,” Blade said. “Go with them.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Geronimo stated.
“I’ll be okay,” Blade said, patting the M60. “I want you to circle to the alley and wait for Hickok. I’ll rejoin you as soon as I can.”
“We’ll hold them off together,” Geronimo suggested.
“There isn’t time to argue,” Blade responded. “One of us has a better chance of eluding them than if we stick together. Now go! If Hickok reaches the alley before we do, he may tangle with the Chains.”
The thought of the gunman made Geronimo’s lips compress. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t like the idea, but I’ll go. Take care.”
“You’ve got it.”
Geronimo hastened up the stairs.
None too soon.
Blade saw a cluster of people appear beyond the glass entrance, and he ducked into the stairwell and closed the door. Had they seen him? He pressed his right ear to the panel and listened, hearing the drumming of many naked feet in the lobby and upraised voices.
“Where’d they go?”
“Are you sure they came in here?”
“I saw them, I tell you.”
“Somebody check that stairwell!”
Blade smiled, faced forward, and tensed. A rush of air hit him as the door was abruptly pulled wide, and there stood a gawking member of the Chosen with a baseball bat in his right hand. “Hi,” Blade said. “You must be a whiz at hide-and-seek.”
The man started to shout a warning to his companions.
Blade pounced, smashing the stock of his M60 against the man’s left temple and crumpling him on the spot. He pivoted, finding dozens of the Chosen in the lobby, and cut loose with the machine gun, catching most of them unawares. The M60 roared and bucked, slamming the Chosen to the floor in bloody heaps of convulsing forms. Eighteen died before the rest began firing back at the Warrior. An arrow flew past Blade’s head, and he backpedaled into the stairwell and closed the door.