Golgotha Run Read Online Free PDF Page B

You
there? I just wanna say that…”
     
    Snapshots.
    Eddie would never have a clear and sequential memory of the adrenalin of panic
kicking in. Just telegraphic snapshots of single, discrete images, like the
output of the random camera of the eye jump-cut together:
    The extensive collection of antique porno (genuine paper magazines) which
Little Deke had preferred to the girls available in Las Vitas—mylar bags
ruptured and their contents shredded by automatic fire.
    The telecommunications unit that plugged into the signals from the parabolic
dishes outside, smashed to pieces by some blunt implement. Maybe the butt of
an automatic rifle.
    The breadboarded-together collection of personal computer circuitry that
served as a maintenance-and-control deck for the compound’s security
devices—like the cameras and the lock on the gate that had so recently let Eddie
inside. The monitor screens had been punched in, but the deck had been left
relatively intact. Someone had placed what looked like a big, black
polypropylene-skinned slug on the keyboard. It rippled, operating the keys,
and thus the compound-security, under remote control.
    The headless body of Little Deke, the 450-pound bulk of it hanging from the
articulated gimbal-harness he used to get around indoors. There was
surprisingly little blood; the neck had either been cauterised by whatever had
decapitated him, or Little Deke’s heart just hadn’t been up to producing a
gusher from his sheer mass.
    In any case, Eddie didn’t think about all this until later. At the time all he
saw were the snapshots, the flash-flash-flash like you get in movies that tell
you what the basic story is—and the story was, at this point, that one
Eddie Kalish was now in the total shit and it was time to get out.
    Forget about learning the details or any happy shit like that; just get
the fuck
out.
    Eddie jackrabbited from the AmTrak and flung himself towards the van—just
as big Kliegs clashed on, slamming the world into a monochromatic state of
dead black and magnesium white. They weren’t the junkyard floods; they were
coming from outside.
    In the shock and dazzle, before his eyes were overwhelmed, Eddie caught sight
of the shapes behind the chain-link and lights. Blocky trucks—not the lashed-together bikes and pods of a jackgang. They were military spec.
    “GRABYA ANKLES, SWEETHEART!” an amplified voice barked, out beyond the wire.
And the thump-thump-thump of an annoying and generic Boystown Disco Beat
started up. Regulation issue psycho-warfare protocol.
    “JUST YOU RELAX AND TAKE IT EAAASY!” the amplified voice came over the mix.
“NEOGEN GONNA TAKE YA, JUST RELAX AND TAKE IT EASY!”
    Detonation cutters sliced the fence on two sides. Through the flare and dazzle
Eddie saw the dark figures hazing in.

4.
    Up on the mesa, out past the burning remains of Las Vitas, a pollutant-mutated scorpion was in the process of laying its eggs in the still barely-living flesh of a hairless dog.
    There was no one to see this, and therefore no one to remark on how the air around scorpion and dog now shimmered, how a sickly light hazed from their forms.
    Instantly, as though some switch of unlife had been thrown, both arachnid and canine flesh crumbled into their component molecular parts, leaving nothing but skeletal remains and a perfectly intact chitionous husk.
     
    “We got troubles,” Eddie said, slamming back into the van. “Looks like
soldiers.”
    “TWO MINUTES TO SURRENDER,” the bullhorn-voice boomed cheerfully, “THEN WE GET
LETHAL. IT’S LIKE TOTALLY YOUR DECISION, GUY.”
    “Mercenaries,” Trix Desoto said. “Delta-trained. NeoGen runs a cadre of them
for hunting parties.”
    Eddie strained his eyes on the dead black shadows outside, imagining the
stealthy figures as they silently and invisibly took up position. He didn’t actually hear and see anything, of course, on
account of the meaning of the words “silent” and “invisible”.
    He wouldn’t hear or