"Kill her!" Sayre screamed, reaching for his own gun. "Kill that bitch!"
Susannah rolled away from the spider crouched on the body of its rapidly deflating mother, raking at the helmet she was wearing even as she tumbled off the side of the bed. There was a moment of excruciating pain when she thought it wasn't going to come away and then she hit the floor, free of it. It hung over the side of the bed, fringed with her hair. The spider-thing, momentarily pulled off its roost when its mother's body jerked, chittered angrily.
Susannah rolled beneath the bed as a series of gunshots went off above her. She heard a loud SPROINK as one of the slugs hit a spring. She saw the rathead nurse's feet and hairy lower legs and put a bullet into one of her knees. The nurse gave a scream, turned, and began to limp away, squalling.
Sayre leaned forward, pointing the gun at the makeshift double bed just beyond Mia's deflating body. There were already three smoking, smoldering holes in the groundsheet. Before he could add a fourth, one of the spider's legs caressed his cheek, tearing open the mask he wore and revealing the hairy cheek beneath. Sayre recoiled, crying out. The spider turned to him and made a mewling noise. The white thing high on its back-a node with a human face-glared, as if to warn Sayre away from its meal. Then it turned back to the woman, who was really not recognizable as a woman any longer; she looked like the ruins of some incredibly ancient mummy which had now turned to rags and powder.
"I say, this is a bit confusing," the robot with the incubator remarked. "Shall I retire? Perhaps I might return when matters have clarified somewhat."
Susannah reversed direction, rolling out from beneath the bed. She saw that two of the low men had taken to their heels.
Jey, the hawkman, didn't seem to be able to make up his mind.
Stay or go? Susannah made it up for him, putting a single shot into the sleek brown head. Blood and feathers flew.
Susannah got up as well as she could, gripping the side of the bed for balance, holding Scowther's gun out in front of her.
khe had gotten four. The rathead nurse and one other had run.
Sayre had dropped his gun and was trying to hide behind the robot with the incubator.
Susannah shot the two remaining vampires and the low man with the bulldog face. That one-Haber-hadn't forgotten Susannah; he'd been holding his ground and waiting for a clear shot. She got hers first and watched him fall backward with deep satisfaction. Haber, she thought, had been the most dangerous.
"Madam, I wonder if you could tell me-" began the robot, and Susannah put two quick shots into its steel face, darkening the blue electric eyes. This trick she had learned from Eddie. A gigantic siren immediately went off. Susannah felt that if she listened to it long, she would be deafened.
"I HAVE BEEN BLINDED BY GUNFIRE!" the robot bellowed, still in its absurd would-you-like-another-cup-of-tea-madam accent. "VISION ZERO, I NEED HELP, CODE 7,1 SAY, HELP!"
Sayre stepped away from it, hands held high. Susannah couldn't hear him over the siren and the robot's blatting, but she could read the words as they came off the bastard's lips: surrender, will you accept my parole?
She smiled at this amusing idea, unaware that she smiled. It was without humor and without mercy and meant only one thing: she wished she could get him to lick her stumps, as he had forced Mia to lick his boots. But there wasn't time enough.
He saw his doom in her grin and turned to run and Susannah shot him twice in the back of the head-once for Mia, once for Pere Callahan. Sayre's skull shattered in a fury of blood and brains. He grabbed the wall, scrabbled at a shelf loaded with equipment and supplies, and then went down dead.
Susannah now took aim at the spider-god. The tiny white human head on its black and bristly back turned to look at her.
The blue eyes, so uncannily like Roland's, blazed.
No, you cannot! You must not! For I am the King's only son!
I can't? she sent back, leveling the automatic. Oh, sugar, you are just... so... WRONG!
But before she could pull the trigger, there was a gunshot from behind her. A slug burned across the side of her neck.
Susannah reacted instantly, turning and throwing herself sideways into the aisle. One of the low men who'd run had had a change of heart and come back. Susannah put two bullets into his chest and made him mortally sorry.
She turned, eager for more-yes, this was what she wanted, what she had been made for, and she'd always revere Roland for showing her-but the others were either dead or fled. The spider raced down the side of its birthbed on its many legs, leaving the papier-mache corpse of its mother behind. It turned its white infant's head briefly toward her.