James Axler Deathlands 060 Destiny's Truth

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hit them quick and hard, getting all the advantage we can out of surprise.
They hold all the cards in there. Look at how they were able to force you out
without even having the guts for a fight. Who's to say that they wouldn't be
able to do that if we didn't have some kind of plan?"
"Who's to say that they won't do that anyway?" Gloria replied.
"Even if we get in, how do we insure that ?"
"We can't," Ryan cut in brusquely. "I know that just like you.
But we have to load the odds on our side as much as possible."
"He's right," Tammy chipped in. "It's like weighted dice, right? And only we
know about it. They don't that means that we can hit them hard and where it
really hurts. Y'know, I fucking hated leaving those poor bastards to die out
there, but Ryan was right. Mebbe those scum fuckers don't know we're here,
mebbe they do. They mebbe think we've moved on. But I tell you what, Glo they
sure as shit don't know that Ryan and his people are here. And that's where
we've got a handful of aces when it comes to a firefight."
The flame-haired Gate queen pursed her lips. She wasn't used to Tammy speaking
to her in such a manner, and the very fact that her second in command was
prepared to sound off in such a fashion made her stop and think.
"Look, mebbe you're right," she said grudgingly, "but if what these bastards
want is to wipe out the whole population and then come up and take over
whatever the fuck is left, then we've got to stamp them out as soon as
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possible. Otherwise it'll be too late."
"It'll be too late if we can't get our hands on an antidote that we can spread
around in the same way."
Ryan pointed out. "Mildred seems to have told you everything else, so surely
she's made that point."
Gloria was silent for a moment, before saying, "Mebbe you're right. I just
hate the fact that you had to let them do that today."
"So did I," Ryan said flatly, trying to keep his own boiling emotions out of
his voice. "But it had to be that way. For the long haul."
THE VERY SAME AFTERNOON gave the one-eyed man, Tammy and the rest of the recon
party a chance to vent their feelings and exorcise their self loathing for the
events of the morning. Knowing that, even though they were still on recon
status, an eventual confrontation with the Illuminated Ones was only a day or
two away, Gloria had told her people that they would concentrate on sharpening
up their hand-to-hand combat skills, as not only could these prove useful but
they would also tighten reflexes for firefighting.
While the usual sec parties patrolled around the camp, everyone else within
split into groups. Jak and Doc found themselves up against a group that
included Cat and Nita, while
Dette found herself with Dean and Mildred. J.B. and Ryan were grouped with
Tammy and Gloria, which Ryan felt was the queen giving herself a chance to
even a score and work out her temper, while Krysty found herself in a group
that included Jon.
The red-haired beauty was first into practice, against Jon, and found herself
momentarily distracted as she realized that he was the only male Gate member
to be taking part in such training.
It was a slip that she regretted when he took advantage of her distraction to
get her in a headlock and then flip her so that she was over his knee in a
back-breaker.
Realizing that such distraction had cost her face and that it proved she was
rusty and needed to get her reflexes back to their usual highly tuned
level she dug into the soft ground with the heels of her silver-tipped Western
boots and flexed her fingers, reaching for a handhold in the earth behind her
head. Her back was now beginning to protest at the strain the hold had put her
under, but she replied to this by tautening and tensing her frame so that her
spine formed an arc that spread the tension throughout her body and used it as
a springboard for her own move.
With a cry that was partly exertion and partly exultation, she tightened her
calf and thigh muscles and flipped herself over, the sheer force and sudden
explosive violence of the move loosening
Jon's grip and throwing him backward. The young man sprawled back on the
earth, and Krysty came out of her back flip to throw herself forward, pinning
him to the earth.
She was breathing hard, and he could feel her breath on his face. In turn, she
could see into his eyes at the fear and wonderment at the strength of the
move.
"That wasn't bad," Krysty said, letting him go slowly. "But I
reckon you've got a lot to learn."
"Too right," Jon agreed. "Men don't usually get a chance at combat, so I'm way
behind& but mebbe you could teach me?"
Krysty smiled at him. "You're not so bad. We can work something out."
In the other groups, Ryan and J.B. were finding Tammy and
Gloria tough going. It was no surprise to them that out of their group, the
Gate queen and her number two had chosen to take on the one-eyed man and the
Armorer, as they represented the resentment that both felt about their lack of
action during the morning.
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J.B. took on Tammy, and it was like wrestling with a greased stickie. Every
time he felt that he had a hold on her, she wriggled out of his grasp, leaving
him clutching at air. Her own attacks were on the counter, when he was just
marginally off balance, and they were swift, jabbing blows that battered his
ribs and kidneys. If he wasn't careful, she would cause him some damage before
they even had a chance to go into battle against the real enemy. So he had to
end it here. As she moved in on the counter for one more jab, the Armorer
allowed himself to receive the blow, moving with it to absorb the pressure,
ignoring the pain.
Instead, it allowed her to overjab, her arm moving across his body and letting
him grab at wrist and elbow. He took hold firmly, his fingers biting so hard
into her sinewy flesh that the blood ceased to flow. Her elbow came down on
his knee, and he pulled the blow at the last moment, so that instead of
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