She could have taken the three watchtower guards while the horn was still blaring, but something made her wait. A few seconds later, she was glad she had. The rear door of the Queen Anne burst open so violently it tore off its upper hinge. Breakers piled out, clawing at those ahead of them in their panic (these are the would-be destroyers of the universe, she thought, these sheep), and among them she saw half a dozen of the freakboys with animal heads and at least four of those creepy humanoids with the masks on.
Susannah took the guard in the west tower first, and had shifted her aim to the pair in the east tower before the first casualty in the Batde of Algul Siento had fallen over the railing and tumbled to the ground with his brains dribbling out of his hair and down his cheeks. The Coyote machine-pistol, switched to the middle setting, fired in low-pitched bursts of three:
Chow! Chow! Chow!
The taheen and the low man in the east tower spun widdershins to each other, like figures in a dance. The taheen crumpled on the catwalk that skirted the top of the watchtower; the low man was driven into the rail, flipped over it with his bootheels in the sky, then plummeted head-first to the ground. She heard the crack his neck made when it broke.
A couple of the milling Breakers spotted this unfortunate fellow's descent and screamed.
"Put up your hands!" That was Dinky, she recognized his voice. "Put up your hands if you're a Breaker!"
No one questioned the idea; in these circumstances, anyone who sounded like he knew what was going on was in unquestioned charge. Some of the Breakers-but not all, not yet-put their hands up. It made no difference to Susannah.
She didn't need raised hands to tell the difference between the sheep and the goats. A kind of haunted clarity had fallen over her vision.
She flicked the fire-control switch from BURST to SINGLE SHOT and began to pick off the guards who'd come up from The Study with the Breakers. Taheen... can-toi, get him... a hume but don't shoot her, she's a Breaker even though she doesn't have her hands up... don't ask me how I know but I do...
Susannah squeezed the Coyote's trigger and the head of the hume next to the woman in the bright red slacks exploded in a mist of blood and bone. The Breakers screamed like children, staring around with their eyes bulging and their hands up. And now Susannah heard Dinky again, only this time not his physical voice. It was his mental voice she heard, and it was much louder:
(GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP. YOU WON'T BE HURT)
Which was her cue to break cover and start moving. She'd gotten eight of the Crimson King's bad boys, counting the three in the towers-not that it was mvich of an accomplishment, given their panic-and she saw no more, at least for the time being.
Susannah twisted the hand-throttle and scooted the SCT toward one of the other abandoned sheds. The gadget's pickup was so lively that she almost tumbled off the bicycle-style seat.
Trying not to laugh (and laughing anyway), she shouted at the top of her lungs, in her best Detta Walker vulture-screech:
"Git outta here, muthafuckahs! Git south! Hands up so we knoiu youfum the bad boys! Everyone doan have their hands up goan get a bullet in the haid! Y'all trus' me on it!n In through the door of the next shed, scraping a balloon tire of the SCT on the jamb, but not quite hard enough to tip it over. Praise God, for she never would have had enough strength to right it on her own. In here, one of the "lazers" was set on a snap-down tripod. She pushed the toggle-switch marked ON and was wondering if she needed to do something else with the INTERVAL switch when the weapon's muzzle emitted a blinding stream of reddish-purple light that arrowed into the compound above the triple run offence and made a hole in the top story of Damli House. To Susannah it looked as big as a hole made by a point-blank artillery shell.
This is good, she thought. I gotta get the other ones going.
But she wondered if there would be time. Already other Breakers were picking up on Dinky's suggestion, rebroadcasting it and boosting it in the process:
(GO SOUTH! HANDS UP! WON'T BE HURT!)
She flicked the Coyote's fire-switch to FULL AUTO and raked it across the upper level of the nearest dorm to emphasize the point. Bullets whined and ricocheted. Glass broke. Breakers screamed and began to stampede around the side of Damli House with their hands up. Susannah saw Ted come around the same side. He was hard to miss, because he was going against the current. He and Dinky embraced briefly, then raised their hands and joined the southward flow of Breakers, who would soon lose their status as VTPs and become just one more bunch of refugees struggling to survive in a dark and poisoned land.
She'd gotten eight, but it wasn't enough. The hunger was upon her, that dry hunger. Her eyes saw everything. They pulsed and ached in her head, and they saw everything. She hoped that other taheen, low men, or hume guards would come around the side of Damli House.
She wanted more.
THIRTEEN
Sheemie Ruiz lived in Corbett Hall, which happened to be the dormitory Susannah, all unknowing, had raked with at least a hundred bullets. Had he been on his bed, he almost certainly would have been killed. Instead he was on his knees, at the foot of it, praying for the safety of his friends. He didn't even look up when the window blew in but simply redoubled his supplications.
He could hear Dinky's thoughts
(GO SOUTH)