Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [68]
Off balance, she slid across the deck into a pile of partially functioning ’Chine. Her vision, something she’d always taken for granted, suddenly blurred. One of the ’Chine, Hella thought it was a young girl, which made the whole idea of the mechmen even more morbid, lashed out with a long knife attached to a third arm that sprang from her chest.
Hella blocked her attacker’s wrist with her forearm and felt the blade slice her right jaw. Blood turned her skin warm, and she wondered how many nanobots were lost. Focusing, Hella turned her other hand into a weapon, shoved it into the knife wielder’s pallid face, and fired.
Blood and brain bits blew out the back of the girl’s head. Hella’s next round destroyed the ApZero on her neck for good measure. After spasming for a second, the girl went slack.
Panting for breath, still dazed, Hella forced herself to her feet. “Stampede. Stampede.” She put her hand to her ear then remembered the comm link was in her pocket. Wildly she glanced around and saw Stampede throwing another ’Chine over the side.
The river ran unmercifully with the ferry like a dog with prey in its jaws. Caught in the current, the floating platform slid free of the cables. Hella watched the thick, metal strands whip through the air toward her, and she was barely able to go to ground an instant before one of them sliced the space where she’d been. It caught four of the ’Chine and ripped them into halves.
Panicked, Hella looked over to Stampede, expecting him to have suffered the same fate. Instead he was on his back on the deck and firing up at mechmen on the second deck. His bullets drove them back, and there was little return fire because his adversaries were disoriented from the EMPs and the pitching deck as the ferry rode the furious river.
Stampede rolled to his feet and changed magazines in the rifle. He thrust the muzzle into the passenger compartment and fired an incendiary rocket. A heartbeat later, smoke and flames belched from the interior of the ferry’s lower level.
The ferry yawed again and nearly overturned. Hella barely had time to shift her hands back and grab hold of the railing. For a moment, as she watched a dozen of the ’Chine pour into the river, she thought the ferry would go on over. Miraculously it heeled back over and landed upright again. Hella’s arms felt as though they’d been torn from their sockets.
As she gazed over the top of the railing surrounding the lower deck, she saw the world rushing by her. Trees and brush along the river banks became a blur then became a tangle as the ferry swapped ends again and again.
“Get up.” Stampede growled in her ear and helped her to her feet.
Morphing her hands back into weapons, Hella looked around and saw that they were the only ones left on the lower deck. Fire still burned inside the passenger compartment. Stampede charged up the stairs leading to the second deck. Still feeling nauseated, Hella followed.
Only a few ’Chine remained topside. Evidently most of them had been lost overboard. A few lay inert on the deck, rolling in loose sprawls from one side of the deck to the other as the ferry rocked and rolled on the rushing river.
Hella fired at one of the ’Chine that tried to aim an assault rifle. The large-caliber bullets stitched the creature from the left hip to the right shoulder and blew her over the side into the dark water.
Stampede charged the remaining two ’Chine only to discover his weapon was empty. He swung the rifle like a club, catching one of his adversaries in the face and knocking it out of the ferry then grabbing the other one by its human arm and heaving it over the side.
“Downstairs.”
Hella read Stampede’s lips more than she heard him. The roar of the river drowned out all other sounds. She followed him, a little steadier on her feet but still struggling