Moonfeast Read Online Free PDF Page B

and lifted the rear shutter, then fired the LeMat twice, the booming reports vomiting forth a dark cloud of gunsmoke. Safely out of sight of the riders for a single instant, J.B. quickly lit the fuse and simply dropped the bomb in their wake. Then both men ducked as a fusillade of blasterfire came from the riders, their assortment of handblasters, predark blasters, longblasters, scatterguns and zip guns making them sound like an army. The lead hit the louvered shutters like a hailstorm, rattling them hard and chewing the green wood into splintering ruination. More than one slat broke apart and simply fell away, leaving a wide gap in the protective shield.
    “Bah, wooden armor,” Jak snorted, swerving around a tree stump and crashing through a bush to just avoid slamming into an oak tree. There was no road, or even a path, in this direction through the forest, which was both good and bad. The companions would have thicker cover faster, but it also meant they would be traveling a lot slower. Jouncing over a hole, Jak heard a headlight shatter, but kept his boot pressed hard against the rubber floormat. Speed was their only hope now.
    “Herd them in!” Ryan yelled, and started shooting from the right side of the bus. Krysty was close behind him doing the same thing, and everybody else went to the left.
    Assailed from the sides, the sec men rode their horses a little closer together, then a sec man shouted a warning and they began separating once more. But it was alreadytoo late. In a thunderous blast, the pipe bomb violently detonated, throwing aside ragged pieces of men and horses in a boiling hellflower of fiery destruction. A dozen sec men were aced in the explosion and several more thrown from their mounts to slam into the nearby trees, their bones breaking.
    Whinnying in terror, the remaining horses reared high, throwing additional sec men to the ground before bolting away, leaving their former masters sprawled unconscious among the dead and the dying. Then the bushes parted as the griz bear arrived, its long teeth shining brightly in the dappled forest.
    As the bus rattled away into the greenery, the screaming began and didn’t stop.
    “Okay, that should do it,” Ryan stated, working the bolt on the Steyr to clear a spent brass from the breech. “But keep a watch for any stragglers. There were too many of the bastards to count. I have no idea if we got them all.”
    “Not catch,” Jak said confidently, turning on the remaining headlight. “They on horseback, we in wag!”
    The blue-white light of the halogen beam stabbed into the murky forest, brightly illuminating the trees and bushes. A score of inhuman eyes blinked in surprise at the intrusion, then quickly disappeared, leaving the wag to rattle through the wild greenery in relative peace.
    “Hatred always makes a man fast,” J.B. countered, pulling an empty clip from the pocket of his leather jacket to start thumbing in live rounds from the loops on his gunbelt. “And these boys have a real hate-on for us.”
    “Then more the fools they,” Doc replied, his hands already busy in the laborious process of reloading his black-powder blaster. A stiff brass brush first purged each chamber in the cylinder, the spent powder sprinkling down like black snow. Next, he began to carefully charge each chamber.
    “We’re probably the first people to ever leave the ville in ages,” Krysty added, leaning back in the seat, her hair moving against the wind blowing in through the louvered shutters. She was still rather tired from the single instant of mentally sensing the unseen danger of the bear. Gaia offered her followers many gifts, but afterward the woman was always exhausted. Krysty really wanted to catch some sleep, but that would have to wait until they were inside the underground redoubt, safe behind the nukeproof blast doors.
    “Yeah, we’re gonna have to do something about Hobart one of these days,” Ryan stated, taking down a canteen and unscrewing the top