Armageddon Crazy

Winters got a good grip of his Mossberg. Thomas had handed out the heaviest weapons in the armory; he seemed to be taking the strange behavior of the electronics and the unusual prowling of the PD very seriously. Winters was not quite as convinced. What could the PD do to them? Without calling out to Gresler, he moved almost cockily toward the door, sure that there could be nothing life-threatening beyond it. It was probably another symptom of the electronic chaos that seemed to be breaking out all over. Raising the Mossberg to the ready position was little more than bravado.

He turned into the open doorway. To his surprise, he saw that there was a woman sitting in the control seat of the room's single terminal. She suddenly turned and faced him, as if she had sensed him standing there. His eyebrows lifted in surprise. It was Cynthia Kline, the whore who had been sleeping with the traitor Carlisle. Something unpleasant uncurled in his mind. He had a fleeting vision of Kline and himself, alone in one of the chambers in the sub-basement. She was naked and strapped down to a vaulting horse frame. Her expression was one of pure, silent-scream terror. As the vision faded, his own face twisted into an unpleasant grin.

"So what do you think you're doing in here?"

Kline

She fired without thinking. The plastic Browning was in front of her on the terminal. She scooped it up in one smooth movement and aimed by instinct. The Browning made a series of quiet pops. The flat, lozenge-shaped slugs were tiny when they left the gun's rectangular barrel, but on impact they sprang open to form ripping, tearing stars of hardened plastic. The first took Winters in the chest. The second hit him in the throat. The third and fourth were close together in his forehead. Her instructors would have been proud of her. For a few seconds Winters stood absolutely still, blood flowing down his face and neck and staining his shirt. He looked surprised. Then his eyes rolled up, and he toppled and fell. His blood spread in a widening pool, across the white tiles of the floor. Cynthia let out a harsh bark of grim laughter.

"That'll teach you to go up against a professional. Think you were taking on a bimbo, did you?"

There was a shout from somewhere nearby.

"Winters? What's happening?"

Cynthia screamed loudly and knelt down by Winters' body. The Browning was concealed in her palm. She heard the sound of ru

"What happened?"

Cynthia had no trouble with sounding choked by terror. "PDs – they shot him."

"Where did they go?"

"Down the corridor."

As he turned his back on her to look out of the door, she calmly shot him. He staggered, and she fired again. Some spasm caused his fingers to close around the trigger of his weapon. The gun went off with a deafening roar, the blast chewing a large bite out of the door frame. Cynthia knew that she had to get out of there right away, before anyone else showed up. She could not turn the same trick twice. She was on her feet and moving. She stepped over the body of the second deacon, ran through the door, and hurried down the corridor, making for the elevators. Just as she turned the corner that led to the elevator banks, the doors were opening. She was in luck. She was about to step into the car when figures suddenly appeared around a corner on the opposite side of the elevator banks. They were ru

"Hold it right there, lady!"

There were too many of them, and they had too much firepower. If she simply jumped into the elevator, they could easily blast through the doors. She let the Browning drop into her shoulder bag, hoping that they were too far away to notice the move. They would not expect a woman to be armed. She raised her hands.

"Don't shoot!"

They were all around her barking questions. There were five of them, young and tightly wrapped.

"We heard shots."

Cynthia nodded. "There are two deacons back in C70. They're dead. They've been shot."

One of the five detached himself; a second followed.

"We'll go take a look."

They hurried back the way Cynthia had come.

"Did you see who shot them?"

"It was me. I shot them."

The remaining three looked at her disbelievingly as she took the Browning from her bag and held it out to them.

"You shot them?"

"What did you do that for?"

Cynthia had always had the gift of instant tears on demand. She began to cry. "They were going to kill me. It was some kind of revenge on Harry."

"Harry?"

One of the others looked at the speaker impatiently. "Don't you recognize her, dummy? It's Kline. It's the lieutenant's girlfriend."

"Of course it is."

The other two were coming back. The one who had recognized her first called out to them. "We got Carlisle's girl, and she says she shot them."

"We definitely got two stiffs back there, with expander slugs in them, bleeding all over the place. One of them is that little prick Winters."

Cynthia made her play before they could ask too many more questions. "Can you take me to Harry? Do you know where he is?"

The PDs looked at each other.

"So what do you think? Do we take her down to the lieutenant or what?"

The agreement was fast.

"Yeah, take her to him. Then it's out of our hands."

Carlisle

The clatter of gunfire was amplified over the communications center audio system. The audio override on their tracys was the only contact they could trust. Everything else was going crazy as the multiple and constantly mutating viruses took over.

"They've got us pi

Carlisle spoke in the bead mike of his headset. "I'll get more people up there."

"We need a grenade launcher or a couple of small AP missiles."

Carlisle looked around. "Can we get anything like that?"

"Not while the deacons are holding the arsenal."

A detective called Murphy spoke up. "There's a Cucaracha locked up in evidence. We took it off those greasers, the ones that were calling themselves the Screaming Fist. It hasn't gone to weapons disposal yet."

"Get it and go."

Another man pushed his way through to the front. "I got a Parsons and a clip of grenades in my locker."

Carlisle looked at him in amazement. "You keep a grenade launcher in your locker?"

The man shrugged. "You never know when it might come in handy. I got it back when – "

Carlisle cut off the explanation. "I don't give a damn right now. Just get it and get up there. I want the helipad secured."

He spoke into the bead mike. "Donahue, did you hear all that?"

"I heard it. Just tell them to hurry."

Taking the communications center had been easy. Ru