"Head," Ryan reminded him.

The stickie was up and moving, leaving the ragged body of Priest behind. Its eyes were blinking, hands reaching out.

Only minutes had slipped by since Ryan had ridden into the ambush.

The noise of the handgun was deafening. After the mild popping of the .32 and the muffled sound of Ryan's silenced blaster, the air sang with the violence of its explosion.

The Magnum was so much bigger than Jak that the boy had to clutch it in both hands to fire it.

The white-haired boy was quite brilliant at close combat and knife fighting, but Ryan didn't rate him very highly when it came to blasters.

Jak was aware of his own limitations and cautiously aimed to score a hit, not taking the chance of missing with a more risky head shot. He put the bullet smack through the middle of the stickie's naked chest. The power of the Magnum made the advancing mutie totter on its heels, mouth dropping open in a squeak of shock and pain.

"Again," Ryan shouted. "Come on, Jak, hit it again. Now!"

The boy fired two more rounds, one going clean through the left shoulder, spinning the stickie around. The third one, better aimed, caught it at the angle of the jaw, destroying teeth into splintered fragments of razored bone, shredding the creature's tongue, almost removing the lower jaw. The distorted bullet exited in the center of the right cheek, flaying a hole the size of a baseball.

And it still didn't go down.

It lurched and stumbled, waving its hands with the tiny sucking disks. Blood sprayed down its body, coursing over the rubbery flesh, pattering into the thirsty earth.

"Let me chill the fucker with me ax," Riddler roared. "Or the ten-gauge."

"No. Mine," Jak insisted, steadying the gun and squeezing the trigger a fourth time, the sound booming out across the desert.

The bullet smashed into the side of the head of the staggering, blood-sodden monster, an inch from the corner of its left eye. The slug pulped its diminutive, malevolent brain, turning its lights out forever.

"Ace on the line," Ryan said. "Noise like that could attract every stickie from the Sierras to the Lantic. Let's go."

Something nagged at his memory, something that he'd forgotten in the rush and the excitement of the fight and the chilling.

He turned on his heel to lead the way down the slope to where the four choppers lay abandoned in the sand — and walked straight into the seventh and last of the attacking stickies, the one that had been cowering behind the spilled corpse of Dick the Hat, its mouth crusted with congealing human blood. Overlooked and forgotten.

Ryan's needle reflexes saved his life. Instinctively he punched out at the creature, feeling the impact jar clear to his shoulder. He brushed aside the lunging, clawing hands, hitting the stickie twice more with short stabbing punches to its maniac face and soft belly.

"Roll away!" someone bellowed behind him. Riddler, he realized.

Unhesitatingly Ryan pulled away, hearing the other sleeve of his shirt tear beneath the questing suckers. He rolled on his shoulder and came up in a fighting crouch, wincing at the nearness of the heat and blast from the Last Hero's shotgun.

"Fuck a dead armadillo!" Jak gasped.

It was an amazing sight.

The nervous system of a stickie was sometimes rudimentary. The burst of shot from the shotgun had torn the thing's head clear away from its narrow shoulders, leaving its skull to dangle, held only by frayed strands of ligament and ragged muscle. But it still walked!

The impact sent the creature several drunken steps down the flank of the hill, but it miraculously maintained its balance, wobbling several more uneven strides before it finally tripped and fell, rolling to the bottom of the slope. During the fall its head had become detached and bounced off, coming to a stop against the rear wheel of Priest's Triumph.

"Owe you one, Riddler." Ryan examined himself to make sure none of the suckers had actually broken his skin. Sometimes they carried a virulent infection that could possibly kill.

"Yeah, man. You said something about these ugly mothers liking fire and noise. Seems we've been doing enough blasting to bring 'em running for fucking miles around."

"Right. Don't forget to collect your throwing knives, Jak, and reload that little Magnum of yours."

Riddler's bike was the only machine in working order. It spluttered and protested at having to carry three on the road back to Snakefish. They left the other two-wheel wags and the bodies where they'd fallen.

As they pulled out onto the highway, Ryan glanced behind him and was sure that he saw signs of movement toward Death Valley, as if other had been attracted by the noise and were coming to investigate.

A lot of .

Chapter Twenty-Two

The loss of three sec men brought Norman Mote running to see Ryan. His breath smelled of whisky and his clothing was disheveled. It was late afternoon and Ryan had just finished telling his colleagues about the attack of the stickies. Jak was upstairs in his room washing away the dirt and sweat of the encounter.

Riddler had dropped them off at the Rentaroom and gone to report to Zombie at their headquarters in the old Sierra Sunrise Park.

"What the scale-blasted rad shit is all this, Cawdor?" Mote bellowed.

Ryan didn't move from the chair in the lobby. "What's all what, Reverend?" he asked calmly.

"Coil-bound stickies! Chilling the Last Heroes! What do you know about it?"

Mote's suit was crumpled and there was a stain on the lapel of his jacket. He stood so close to Ryan that spittle was landing unpleasantly near him.

The one-eyed man stood so suddenly that Mote stumbled backward, catching his heel on a worn place in the carpet and nearly falling. Ruby Rainer had been listening in to Ryan's story, and she rushed forward to help him.

"Take care, Reverend Mote. Could have taken a nasty tumble there."

"Hollow tooth, woman! I'm all right. Leave me be!"

"You were asking me what I knew about it," Ryan said quietly. "I'll tell you. Me and Jak were invited to go on a run to one of the drilling rigs, toward Death Valley. We went along. They said they'd heard of stickies. They took us off the highway and we got ambushed. Seven of them. Three of your boys got downed."

"And the stickies?"

"All chilled. But I'd swear I saw more coming out of the hills. Noise and gunfire brings them running, Reverend."

"And that's it?"

"Yeah. Good of you to call by. Jak's fine and so am I. Had my torn shut sewed up by Mrs. Rainer there. That's it."

"This is awful. First Azrael goes missing on us and now this massacre of the innocents."

Ryan considered questioning the use of the word "innocents" to describe the two-wheel wag riders, but thought better of it.

"It's a visitation," Ruby Rainer proclaimed, hands clasped piously together.

"That's just what it is," Norman Mote agreed, nodding furiously. "And we must do something about it. I must speak with Zombie about recruiting some more young men to the colors. And then... perhaps it's time for another feeding. It has been many months since we... Yes, indeed." His whole manner brightened at the thought. "A feeding! I shall go and consult with my consort and with the apostolic apprentice on the matter."

Without even a farewell, he was gone, leaving the front door open so that a gust of warm, dusty air blew into the rooming house.

Ruby rubbed her bony hands together, beaming at her visitors. "A feeding! Well, now, isn't that lucky for you? Outlanders coming into the ville at the time of a feeding. Still, I mustn't stop here chitchattering with you. Got me some supper to go and cook for you."

After she'd gone Rick Ginsberg broke the silence. "You guys can't appreciate how weird this is for me. I'm in a house built around 1890. My head tells me it's around the year 2000. My body tells me that the period of remission of the ALS is perhaps ending. I feel tired and sort of off balance. Then I see Hell's Angels and I meet the biggest snake in the ever-loving world. But I'm still hanging on in there. Then this bullshit — the stickies show up! I don't feel ready to cope with whatever comes next. A feeding! And you figure this is a fancy word to hide a human sacrifice. Hell's bloody bells, Ryan! I'm going to bed. I'll take a rain check on the supper. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and find this is all some twisted nightmare. Good night."