Krysty yanked the mag and it came out, tearing the pocket open at one side. But now she was all fingers and thumbs and the mag would not slot in. The sticky, hooting nasal fury, jumped for her and she felt its wind as she stumbled aside, saw the sucker pads of its right hand lunging at her. She raced away across the room, still trying to shove the mag into the SMG but in her desperation only jamming it. Her heart was pounding like a trip hammer and sweat was coming off her like glistening pearls. Adrenaline boosted her body and desperation boosted her brain.
In a microsecond she took in the fact that one of the pillar supports that held up the upper chamber had heavy nails sticking out of it. Thrusting the mag between her teeth, she grabbed hold of one of the higher nails and thrust a foot at a lower one the H&K stuffed under her left arm and held tight to her body and she began to pull herself upward. The nail heads were sharp; they tore at her flesh. She didn't give a damn, didn't even think about it. The fact that her fingers began to bleed and the nail heads became suddenly slippery merely acted as a further booster. She reached the second floor and rolled over onto what remained of the floor planks just as the kill-crazy creature slammed into the pillar.
She stared down at its fearsome, horrific ugliness as it, too, began to climb, hissing and snorting through its nose. She pushed herself up into a kneeling position and once more endeavored to cram the curved mag up into the SMG, but in her terrified haste she fumbled more than before and the mag suddenly became a living thing in her hand, flying out of her grasp. The sticky's head rose above the floor and blindly she smashed the useless gun into its face, crashing the snub-nosed barrel repeatedly into one of its eyes and transforming it into a crimson jelly before the creature was jolted off its perch, tumbling back to the ground. Panic rose like nausea within her, and without thinking she clutched at one of her grenades, yanking the pin and screaming, "Fuck you!" as the sticky, shrilling its pain and rage, leaped for the pillar again. She dropped the grenade on it and flung herself backward, scrambling as if demented away from the floor edge.
The roar of the detonation nearly deafened her, and all at once the floor was rocking then bursting apart and she was sliding toward the edge and tumbling over. She fell, still clinging to the H&K, and hit the ground, automatically rolling on the trash-choked floor. Beams and planks thudded down and dust rose chokingly. She staggered to her feet, her ears ringing, her eyes prickling and smarting.
Miraculously the whole barn had not collapsed, and after a moment she could see why. The sticky had taken most of the blast. Unaccountably it had fallen across the grenade, hunched over it, acting almost like a sandbag. Except a sandbag would not have hurled gobbets of flesh and bloody entrails all over the place.
The pillar she'd squirreled up had gone and that part of the upper chamber's floor now sagged drunkenly to the floor, unsupported. Other pillars nearby looked about ready to collapse, and she glanced up at the roof fearfully; it seemed safe enough from what she could see through the dust and the gloom. Steel splinters from the blast had flayed the surrounding area, scoring the wooden walls, tearing the table apart. Heads now lay about the floor in macabre confusion. Miraculously, none of the windows had blown.
She thought, I've got to get out, got to get out.
She wondered why no one had burst in on her from outside after the explosion. Where in nukeshit were Scale and the second sticky?
Among the mess she spotted the first mag, the one she'd dropped, and hastily bent to pick it up. As she did so she was dimly aware of sounds from outside: the muffled roar of engines, accelerating; the stammer of automatic fire and the heavier punch of MGs; shrill cries of panic. Suddenly she could smell smoke.
Confused, she stood up and glanced to her right and saw that something was burning under the sagging floor of the upper chamber. Delayed action from the grenade blast. Had to be. Even as she watched, a tongue of flame caught a rotten plank and leaped up it, gathering strength as it gathered height. In two seconds or less, the single flame had become a leaping wash of fire, greedily engulfing the tinder-dry beams, soaring toward the roof. Dense, white smoke, caught by drafts, billowed around, mushrooming upward. Shadows trembled, became distorted by the lurid glare of the flames. The smoke caught her and buried her in a swirling fog, the acrid fumes choking her.
She bent again, groping for the mag, her right hand that held the SMG thrusting outward as she stooped. She grasped the curved shape of the magazine, but the H&K 9 mm was snatched from her hand.
She sprang upright, swung around.
Screamed.
The second sticky was only a rancid breath away from her, starkly outlined against the blaze, its eyes glittering.
She flung the mag at its face, sobbing with terror.
And the door to the barn burst open with a thunderous crash.
Krysty caught sight of a tall man, black garbed, dark haired, an autorifle in his hands. The man had stormed through the doorway and now the sticky turned and moved with astonishing, horrifying speed, dropping the H&K and leaping for the newcomer.
The man fired a 3-round burst, but was off balance from the follow-through jump after kicking in the door. The slugs burned air, hammered the wall opposite. The sticky flew at him, enveloped him, both figures crashing to the floor close to the blaze that had volcanoed monstrously from the open door's in-draft.
Blazing timbers crashed down to the garbage-strewn floor, which caught in seconds, flames leaking everywhere. The heat was corrosive, clawing at exposed skin.
For what seemed long moments Krysty stood like a statue, her green eyes taking in the struggling figures as they rolled and jerked on the floor. The sticky had suckers to the tall man's face, was pulling its arm back, the face seeming almost to expand outward. Hoarse cries mingled with the thunder of the flames as they eagerly devoured the timber beams and tarred roof.
Krysty came out of her trance and grabbed up the fallen mag and the dropped SMG. She felt calm now, completely in control of herself. Perfectly in control of events. She slipped the mag up into the Heckler & Koch and moved across the struggling pair, her hands working the gun.
She went around to one side, deliberately pushed the stubby barrel of the SMG toward the mouthless face of the sticky and squeezed off a controlled 3-round burst. The slugs tore through flesh and bone, smacking the head sideways even as they punched it apart in a greasy explosion of brains and glutinous blood. She fired another burst at the neck, this time uncontrolled, and the bullets tore through ligaments, cartilage and the cervical vertebrae, taking what was left of the head off the trunk in an eruptive, scarlet spray.
The creature slumped off the tall man, the complete disruption of its central nervous system causing it to loosen its gluelike grip. It fell away, sideways, a lump of unmotivated meat.
The man shoved the body away from him, breathing harshly. He got to his feet, Krysty saw by the glaring light of the fire that over his left eye was a black eye patch. A long scar throbbed whitely from the corner of his right eye to his mouth. Two red patches on his cheeks glistened where the mutated being's finger pads had slapped home, exerting their tremendous sucking power. His hair was raven black, thickly curled.
He stared at her, suddenly grinned.
"Timely. Thanks."
She held the SMG limply in her right hand, feeling utterly drained. She couldn't say a word, felt as though anything she did say would come out as an incoherent gabble. Every dull ache in her body became a throb; her limbs, her head, her womb, her chest. The man's face blurred, and it seemed to be falling toward her. Or was she falling toward it?