He swung the butt of his shotgun in two clubbing blows, knocking both muties to the crimsoned earth. He thumbed the twin hammers and leveled the twin barrels at the semiconscious females. "Eat lead," he snarled, firing first one round and then the other. Both the heads disappeared in a spray of bone, skin and blood.

Riddler grinned at Ryan. "Best advice anyone ever gave me," he bellowed. "Shoot 'em in the head and they fucking die! Right on, bro!"

The combined firepower of the attackers finally tipped the balance firmly in their favor. The initial charge by the stickies left, at Ryan's swift count, around eight or nine of the norms dead. But the shotguns were taking their toll, aided by the blasters of Ryan, J.B., Doc and Jak. Well over half of the stickies were already dead meat.

The remaining creatures had begun to retreat, heading away in a clumsy run over the ridges, while others backed off into the shallow caves where they were easily trapped and butchered. This part of the day's hunting, Ryan noticed, was particularly relished by Norman Mote and his whooping, jeering son.

J.B. joined Ryan, carefully reloading his blaster. "Looks close to done," he said quietly.

"Yeah. Looks that way. Could have gone worse, I guess."

"Least none of us got caught by any stray lead. There was plenty flying for a while."

"Where's the baron?"

J.B. turned and pointed. "There. Near where his brother bought the farm."

"Best go see to him. Wouldn't want any accidents to happen. Not now."

They were almost too late.

The air was filled with the rumbling explosions of the scatterguns, and the thinner cracks of the small-caliber pistols. The valley was brimming with the stench of powder smoke, hazy and blue.

"There he is," the Armorer said.

Edgar Brennan, a kerchief pressed to his red-rimmed, weeping eyes, was moving unsteadily down the far side of the valley.

"Let's go help him. Looks flattened by his brother's chilling."

He and J.B. walked quickly across, feeling the stickiness of the dirt on the soles and heels of their combat boots. The sounds of gunfire were dying down.

When they were only a few yards from the stumbling little man, he looked up and saw them, still rubbing at his eyes. "Rufus has..." he began. But his feet slipped from under him and he fell, full length, rolling toward them.

Simultaneously the earth behind the baron exploded in great bursts of mud. Both J.B. and Ryan, their ears tuned to the sounds of a firefight, picked out the sharper noise of the shooting. Each man immediately recognized the distinctive sound of the blaster that was being used.

"M-16," J.B. shouted, rolling for cover.

"Yeah. Dern. There he is."

The owner of the gun shop stood on the ridge, about a hundred paces behind them. When he saw them looking his way he hesitated, then stood and waved to them.

"Chill him?" J.B. asked.

"He's one of Mote's boys," Ryan replied. "Could push things over the brim and get the pot boiling on the fire."

Dern began to approach them, rifle at his side. "Hollow tooth, brothers!" he called. "That was close. I was aiming at a stickie behind you, but there's something wrong with the sights on my blaster."

Brennan had stood and brushed himself clean, his hands trembling with shock at the near miss. "He tried to chill me."

"Yeah, Baron, but I'd keep my lips zipped," J.B. suggested. "This isn't the time or place, with all Mote's men round us."

"For sure, John, but..."

Dern reached them. "Never known this blaster to let me down. That was terrible. Could have gunned down the baron."

Ryan looked him in the eye. "You could have, but you didn't. Now, that's either lucky or unlucky. Depends on how you look at it."

"I don't understand, Mr. Cawdor."

"Yeah, you do. If you'd killed the baron, some would say that was lucky. Some might say it wasn't. You missed him. Some'll say the same."

Dern swallowed hard and looked away. "I sure don't know..." he began.

But J.B. interrupted him. "One thing to keep in mind, gunsmith. Anything happens to the baron now, we'll know who to come looking for. Won't we?"

Zombie joined them with six of his chapter. Ryan had seen one of them — Vinny, he thought — go down under an unusually tall stickie, his body a welter of blood.

The gunfire had faded away. The fight was over and won.

"That's it," the Last Hero said. "We got 'em all. Don't think a single one escaped. We found us some tinies in one cave. Blowed them away. Can't let the fuckers breed."

"Sure," Ryan agreed. "We going back to Snakefish now?"

He looked at Baron Brennan, but the little man was still too shaken by his narrow escape and the death of his brother to make any sense. It was Norman Mote, arriving with his arm around his son's shoulders, who answered.

"Surely will. And thanks to everyone here. Y'all played your parts. We'll have a service of thanks this night."

"And you got some burying to do, Reverend," Ryan said.

"And I have to see to the obsequies for poor Azrael Twelve, Brother Cawdor. And pursue the quest to find out who butchered him. Perhaps it could have been the stickies. Then again... perhaps not."

Ryan looked around the place of blood and death, resolving that he and his friends had to leave Snakefish as soon as possible. Before it was too late.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Though Norman Mote tried to make those in the ville believe that the raid on the stickies had been an unqualified success, there were too many corpses from Snakefish to convince everyone.

By the time the excitement and the grief had died away and become more private and seemly, it was early afternoon and the sun rode high in the nuke-polluted sky.

Ryan and his friends dined in their hotel, with three guests. Carla Petersen sat next to J.B. Beside her was Baron Edgar Brennan, stricken by his bereavement, only picking at his plate of stew and rice. His nephew, Layton, sat next to him.

Once Ryan and the others had given an account of the morning's firefight, conversation flagged and faltered. Eventually it faded into an almost complete silence.

Krysty leaned nearer to Ryan, lowering her voice. "Rick's been ill. Couple of times during the morning his mind sort of slipped and he was talking like he was back to being a kid, out on a summer picnic with his folks. Place called Bear Mountain. He was dozing and mumbling to himself, like Doc does every now and then."

"We always knew that these freezies were only frozen 'cause they were close to dying. I'd still like to try to find the other two cryo centers that he mentioned."

Krysty smiled. "I've already asked him about that, while you and the rest of the good old boys were out playing with your blasters."

He ignored the gibe. "And? What'd he say about them?"

"I took notes in case I forgot it. And he also talked about gateways."

Ryan whistled softly. "Been real busy, lover. Tell me more about gateways."

The news wasn't good. Rick had told Krysty, while he lay resting on his bed, that he could recall that his special area of expertise had been the gateway controls. But like many technical specialities his had been contained within a narrow band. All he knew was how to make sure the controls weren't set for a gateway that didn't exist or had suffered a major malfunction. It was an easy number and letter code, which Krysty had written down.

"Better than nothing" was Ryan's comment. "Always been worried that we might materialize inside an earthslide or under five hundred feet of water. Anything else useful?"

Krysty nodded. "One thing. But this time he's not so sure. There might be an automatic reset if you want to come back within thirty minutes to the last redoubt you left from. He thinks it was universal and applies to all gateways. Just use a gateway less than thirty minutes after you've arrived and you'll be sent back to the redoubt where you started from. But remember that Rick wasn't a hundred percent positive."