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minutes or so later.
"Miserable, rotten ending." Her voice was ragged, close to weeping.
Ryan stopped. "Let's take five."
They both squatted on their heels, Kate avoiding Ryan's eye.
He sighed. "Miserable? He's not in pain. Too cold and numb. Soon be over."
"But I don't believe that the soul "
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"Shit! Listen, I'll tell you something I once saw in some stinking pesthole
frontier ville, not far from Juarez. Ten years ago. Mebbe more. Baron had
died. Big occasion. Lot of jack. Prettiest death wag you ever saw. Glass sides
and lots of polished brass, silver and ebony. Coffin inside was covered in a
mess of flowers.
Four horses. Hooves painted black. All four were colored like a dream of
midnight. Silver harness jingled soft in the dusty stillness. Each horse had a
big plume of black feathers on its head that tossed, rustled and whispered as
they moved. Best damned send-off a man ever had."
"So what? I don't understand."
Ryan looked at her, his face white under the faint light of the lamps.
"On the way out of the ville that evening I saw a pair of fat gaudy sluts
kicking the corpse of a naked man into a sewage ditch. Worst send-off a person
could have."
Kate stood up. "Yeah, I get the parable. They were both dead so it didn't
matter to either of them."
"You're right, Kate," he said, standing and leading the way deeper into the
isolated sections of the mines.
Chapter Thirty-Three
There wasn't a single second of warning. The weight of the man dropping from a
shaft in the ceiling knocked Ryan down to his knees. The coldness of the
attacker's skin and the aura of fishiness told immediately that the trackies
were onto them. He heard Kate yell out, then he was fighting for his life.
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Despite their small stature, the muties were lithe and muscular. The one that
had fallen from the roof had locked an arm around Ryan's neck, while it
attempted to kick its heel into his groin. Instead of trying to get up off the
floor, Ryan rolled himself over, pushing back hard, so that his full weight
was on top of the creature.
Two more of them were on the edge of the fight, both holding tridents, darting
around, waiting for a moment to thrust at him, unable to do so because of the
closeness of their colleague.
Ryan tucked his chin down and loosened the arm around his neck, grabbing it
and biting as hard as he was able. He gagged at the vile taste, his teeth
barely penetrating the tough, scaly skin. But it was still enough to make the
mutie yelp in pain and let go for a moment.
With an effort, Ryan managed to snatch hold of the trackie by its sacking,
heaving it at the nearest of the waiting pair. With a defensive reflex, the
creature tried to fend the flailing body off with its spear, succeeding in
ramming the triple points deep into its fellow's guts.
Ryan didn't even watch, drawing his blaster and pumping five rounds into the
trio of attackers. The spear in the belly had already killed the first of
them, and the other pair went down, shot through chest and head respectively.
"Help me!" The voice, shrill and terrified, would have shattered crystal at a
quarter mile.
Two of the trackies had seized Kate and were trying to hustle her off through
the passage they'd just left. The young woman was taller than the muties and
was kicking and struggling. But with one clinging to each wrist, she was
almost helpless.
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Ryan leveled the SIG-Sauer and shot both of them carefully through the head.
"Oh, Blessed Mary! Ryan they& Look out, behind you!"
He spun, seeing a bunch of trackies stalking toward them from an unseen side
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There were so many of them, so close, that Ryan had no choice. All he could do
was squeeze the trigger and hold on to the bucking automatic. The silencer
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