Deathlands 117: Desolation Angels by James Axler Page B

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    Ryan knew there were a lot more Angels after them than the ones he could see. And they had no way to fight them off, especially not from the loading-bay cut. And he didn’t fool himself that he could deal with Nikk and his bunch—by either sweet-talking a way back into the big building, or forcing their way in.
    He didn’t hold it against the scavvies that they’d turned his companions out to face the Angels’ wrath. He would have done the same thing.
    He raised the Steyr and looked through the scope. It had long eye relief, meaning it was mounted farther forward than most so that there was no danger of the eyepiece kicking back and cutting into the eye socket when it fired. It didn’t make it any harder to acquire a target or aim.
    He quickly lined up a face like a sunburned fist in the reticule. Allowing for the up-and-down bob the Angel’s trot imparted, he timed his shot and fired.
    The man had already fallen out of sight beyond the grass when he got the rifle back down and the scope lined up.
    He yelled to his friends to run.
    Ryan fired again. This time the target, an older-looking man with a full beard, turned back to yell something just as Ryan’s trigger broke. The shot hit him in the left shoulder and spun him.
    “Smoke bomb out!” he heard J.B. yell from right beside him. Something arced down into Ryan’s field of vision, trailing brownish-gray smoke.
    “Didn’t think they’d fall for the ‘poison gas’ gag a second time,” J.B. said. “Come on, Ryan. We’ve got to go.”
    Without a second thought Ryan jumped to his feet. He’d had no intention of sacrificing himself to hold the pursuers off while his friends escaped. For one thing, he doubted it would’ve worked. There were just too many of the bastards. He saw no point in risking his ass when there was no need to.
    A huge cloud billowed up between him and the enemy.
    “That’s our last one of those for now,” J.B. said. He ripped off a short burst from his Uzi into the smoke screen, just to make the Angels think twice about barging in blind through the smoke. Then he and Ryan sprinted down the block away from them, after their companions.
    Though another large, cultivated field opened to the north, Jak had led them not toward it but along the street, back toward the jagged but looming ruins of downtown. Ryan understood his reasons—and knew the albino youth was right. Once the Angels had stopped shooting holes in the air in response to Ricky’s makeshift firefight simulator, they almost certainly had fanned out from the fallen-in building Ryan and his team had ducked through. So they probably had men heading for the field and to the building Nikk’s scavvies claimed for their own. Above all, the fugitives needed to put as much distance between them and the Angels as possible and as fast as possible.
    After he’d run a couple hundred yards, Ryan stopped and turned back. Once again he dropped to one knee.
    People were just starting to emerge from the yellowish cloud of smoke. The air was still, so it was still mostly intact, dissipating only slowly in the humid, heavy air. Once more he drew a quick bead on the nearest, a tall black man with the sides of his head shaved. Ryan shot him through the chest and ran after his friends as the other Angels in sight opened fire.
    So far none of them had turned out to be marksmen, which was lucky. But throw enough lead in the air, a person was bound to hit something eventually. This battle could not be allowed to go on.
    At least they still had some air between themselves and the baying, blasting pack. Ryan and his crew needed to find either escape or cover to stand off the Angels until nightfall.
    He ran past the exposed base of a white skyscraper. It appeared to be propped up by the remnants of a building it had crashed into. The bottom floor was an open wound of structural steel and broken concrete.
    Jak had already turned the group north-northeast up the next street to take