Zombie and Norman Mote led the other group, with J.B. and Doc there to keep an eye on Edgar's brother, the partially blind Rufus.

"We go left," Ryan said. "You got a chron?"

Riddler shook his head and grinned, showing a mouthful of broken and stained teeth. "Told yer. Don't go for all that figuring shit."

"My timepiece will suffice, will it not, Ryan?" Doc asked, displaying the trim silver watch on his left wrist.

"Sure. Say forty-five minutes from... now. Unless you get attacked. Find a way, close as you can and get ready. I'll lead our squad in. You come in straight after, Zombie."

"Sure. Be there, Ryan."

Ryan glanced around his group, seeing the nerves and ragged tension.

"Most muties run from blaster fire. Stickies run, but they run straight at you. Explosions and fires bring them. We all know that. Just keep in mind that they're triple-stupes. Body wounds hardly slow them at all. Lot of you got pump actions. Best thing for a stickie. Wait for them to get close, then take their heads off. Any questions?"

A skinny, middle-aged man raised a tentative hand.

"Yeah?"

"I have a question, Mr. Cawdor."

"Fire it."

"What do we do if we get grabbed by one of them stickies?"

"Pray. No more questions? Then let's go and do it."

"Ten minutes to go. Could do with Layton and his plane, Baron."

"Might it not warn them?"

Ryan nodded. "Could be. From the note, we should be virtually on top of them by now."

Edgar Brennan looked exhausted. He wasn't dressed for a cross-country trek. His shoes had lost their polish and his pants their crease. The laundered shirt was stained around the back and chest, the collar ragged and limp. He'd torn off the paisley cravat and held it in his hand, using it to mop at his brow.

"Want me to go ahead and scout with one of the brothers?" Riddler asked eagerly.

"Word is there's a lot of stickies there. Couple of scouts'd whet their appetite for the rest of us. No."

The Last Hero didn't argue, grinning cheerfully at Ryan.

John Dern sidled up to the front, clutching his carbine. "Could find a good spot and pick off the evil devils from safety with this?" he suggested. "Be happy to do it."

"Good combat blaster. Not the best for wiping out a triple-dozen stickies. They'd walk over you. We go in together, fast and blasting."

"Looks like it. Sounds like it."

Ryan held up his hand to stop the straggling file of men. He'd heard the familiar, guttural grunting noise that the suckered muties usually made, coming from just over the next ridge. He dropped to hands and knees and crawled swiftly forward, followed by Jak.

Cautiously Ryan eased himself to the crest of the hill. Squinting over the top, he saw a steep-sided valley that was honeycombed with shallow caves. Gathered together in the middle were a group of stickies. It looked as though Layton Brennan's rough count had been about right.

"Thirty-five or so," he whispered.

The boy was licking his pale lips, his scarlet eyes glittering with the anticipation of the firefight to come. "How long?" he asked.

Ryan glanced at his chron. "Three minutes. Wonder if the others got here yet. Can't see any sign of them on the far... Yeah. There."

He spotted the flash of sunlight off metal. A line of heads appeared on the far ridge, all looking down at the stickies. Ryan knew that J.B. wasn't in command of the other raiding party. The Armorer would never have been stupid enough to risk being spotted before the attack began.

"Fireblast! Best go now, or they'll see us and we'll lose the surprise."

He turned and beckoned to Riddler. The fat biker crouched and waddled to join them. "What the fuck's up?"

"We gotta go now. Stupes there are going to blow the whole attack."

He suddenly heard an outburst of shrill squealing from the far side of the ridge.

"Too late." Ryan shouted the command. "Come on! Now! Let's go!"

The stickies had initiated the attack, taking the impetus from the men of Snakefish. Most of the muties rushed toward Zombie's group, ululating and waving their suckered fingers. Some turned back as they saw Ryan leading his twenty or so men over the rim of the hill and down into the valley.

"Let 'em get close!" Ryan yelled.

The muties had a slight numerical disadvantage, but they made up for that by their unbridled ferocity. Other than the night assault at the feeding, few of the men from the ville had ever seen a stickie and many were almost paralyzed with terror at the hideous sight of gibbering death running at them.

Some turned and fled in panic.

Almost all of them died early.

The skinny man who'd asked the question about what to do if he got grabbed by a stickie got his answer with horrific speed.

He stumbled blindly into the embrace of two of the scuttling muties. One was a female, with pendulous breasts, who used her suckered hand to tear away the man's clothes, leaving bleeding weals on his pale flesh. Her other hand clutched at his groin, the tiny disks clamping to his shrunken genitals. With a slobbering whoop of delight, the creature exerted all her power, emasculating the screaming man and flourishing the severed flesh and sinew above her head before lifting them greedily to her mouth. Her companion had already buried its face in the side of the man's neck, near the throbbing temptation of the carotid artery.

Death was mercifully rapid.

Scatterguns boomed all around, interspersed with the lighter, thinner sound of the .32 which were the common handblasters of the ville.

If Ryan's original plan had been followed by the group containing Zombie and Norman Mote, the initial wave of the assault could have hoped to chill sixty to seventy percent of the hostiles. Now it was a bloody battle for the upper hand.

Ryan had his rifle set on triple burst, knocking over any mutie that came within easy range. He made sure that the caseless rounds were head shots, exploding the blank-eyed skulls like eggs under a mallet.

Ryan nearly tripped over a human corpse on the far side of the valley, near the opening of one of the caves, recognizing who it was only from the pair of dark blue spectacles that lay near the headless body. Layton Brennan, in his air wag, would soon learn that his grandfather was dead.

The sand was rapidly becoming a quagmire of trampled mud, with the stench of death hovering above.

The biker called Freewheeler was facing a stickie who'd snatched his scattergun, but couldn't work out how to fire it. The Hero had drawn a long-bladed knife and was cutting away at the mutie's chest and stomach, opening up gaping wounds in the rubbery flesh, but hardly harming the creature.

Ryan was about to blast it when he heard the crack of Doc's Le Mat pistol. A section of the creature's face and jaw became detached, dangling loose like a broken storm shutter. The stickie staggered then reached up and pulled away the chunk of bone and flesh, peering at it bemusedly until Doc shot it once more at close range between the eyes.

"This appears to be easier than stealing candy from a little baby," Doc shouted.

Ryan leveled his G-12 and fired a trio of bullets, missing Doc by less than a yard. The old man stumbled sideways, his jaw dropping in shock. He glanced behind him and saw a stickie falling over backward, half its face blown away by Ryan's shots.

"Some little child!" Ryan yelled. "Watch your bastard back, Doc!"

Riddler was nearly pulled down by two young female stickies as he fumbled in the pockets of his denim vest for more ammunition. They mewed at him as their hands reached out, their bloodied teeth exposed behind leathery lips.