Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [39]
The Sheldons were still seventy meters out but closing fast. The trade camp’s gates were open, and getting all the people to safety was going to be a near thing.
With the rangefinder locked in, Hella squeezed the trigger at the onrushing armadillo bikers, shifted targets immediately five meters to the left, and fired again without waiting to see what the first round did. She moved to the third target and kept going till she’d launched all six grenades.
Once the laser rangefinder had the distance locked in, the twenty-five-millimeter grenade measured the flight through the number of turns it made then exploded in midair. Judging from the flames that covered the six different groups of Sheldons, the rounds had been thermobaric. The fuel-air mixture had spread more than five meters and dropped a layer of fire onto everything it touched.
Armadillo bikers dumped their rides and screamed in fear and rage as they beat at the flames covering them. Their hides and shells were proof against a lot of bullets and edged weapons, but fire burned them. When they pulled their heads or feet into their shells for additional protection, they only pulled the flames in after them. Several of them stewed inside their shells, and their burned corpses relaxed out of hiding as they hit the ground.
A wave of bullets drove Hella back behind the wall, but by then other guards along the catwalk had regrouped. Heavy sniper rifles cracked all around her; then mortars thumped as they hurled shells into the advancing ranks of bikers.
Crawling on her stomach while dragging the XM25 after her, Hella searched the dead bodies on the catwalk. The second guard had five spare magazines for the grenade launcher in a messenger bag. All of the magazines had colored tape on them, evidently shorthand code for the man using the weapon, but the only one she knew for sure was red because that matched the one inside the weapon.
She dumped the empty magazine and inserted a fresh one, also marked with red, though it was the last one, shoving it home with a click. She scrabbled on hands and knees, got to her feet, and sprinted twenty meters down from where she’d been.
One of the guards flipped around and dropped to grab another magazine from his chest rack. Blood, some his and some from someone else, judging from the amount of it, stained his face and clothing. He nodded at her and smiled. “Great shooting, kid.”
“Thanks.” Hella stood just tall enough to reach over the wall again.
The battlefield had changed drastically. Before it had looked as if nothing could stop the Purple Dragons, but holes had opened up in their lines. The fallen motorcycles became hazards for the motorcycles following too closely, and most of them were.
The motorcycles were within forty meters of the trade camp.
Hella emptied her borrowed weapon into the center mass of the biker gang. Three gas tanks on motorcycles blew up, launching the bikes, riders, and passengers into the air. Only scorched earth, exploded motorcycles, and corpses remained.
Hella dumped the empty magazine and popped in a fresh one, noting the blue tape. At the tents maintained by Pardot’s expedition, two hardshelled security guards held on to Colleen Trammell and tried to get her to safety.
“Stampede! Colleen’s in the open!”
“I see her, Red. Got my hands full.”
At the gate, a small group of Sheldons engaged the security team. Stampede and Faust fought shoulder to shoulder, just as they had in the past. Hella guessed the Purple Dragons had sent a crew in at night and set them up in tents to blend in with the other campers. They’d lain in wait till the gates were open.
An explosion suddenly blew a gap in the security force. From the limited but certain devastation, Hella thought one of the Sheldons had triggered