Part 21 (1/2)
Before they could do so, however, the two players who had been dominating the machine for most of the night came over.
”You guys took our vid game,” Dex accused.
”Not yours.” Jak replied. ”Ours.”
”See, you newbies, you don't understand,” Brack said slowly. ”Certain games are off-limits when the arcade champions are in the house, and guess what, Spooky? I'm here, and that's my vid game you're standing in front of.”
The larger of the two moved to push Jak aside. The albino effortlessly sidestepped the attempt, grabbing on to the outstretched arm and tossing the attacker over his shoulder. The teen who had been thrown flew helplessly into the heavy plastic-and-metal side of another of the game consoles, hitting it a.s.s first. His breath exploded out of him with a grunt of pain.
Dex quickly scrambled to his feet, his cap now off, his hair tumbling into his eyes. In his right had he held a knife, four-inch blade with a short bone handle. It wasn't a predark weapon, but one manufactured from the remains. Black electrical tape was wrapped around the handle to help hold the steel of the cutting edge in place.
”Come on, you creepy little s.h.i.+t! You want a piece of me?”
Jak brightened. ”Knife fight. Okay. Bored comps.”
”Hold up, Jak,” Dean said. ”This is stupid. If he wants the game, let him have it. Dad will be triple p.i.s.sed if we get into trouble.”
”Your dad, not mine. Too late, Dean,” Jak replied. ”Watch back.”
Jak took off his brown-and-green camouflage jacket and pulled his own sharpened blade, switching it swiftly from the right hand to the left. He kept his luminous red orbs focused on his challenger, watching his foe's eyes. Jak had been in enough hand-to-hand brawls to know to never watch the other's man knife, you always watched the other man's eyes.
Unfortunately, before the brawl could really get under way, Brack decided to stack the odds in his buddy's favor by taking out the small .22-caliber handblaster that Jak had spied earlier. The younger boy had slunk to the back of the gathered group watching the fight and was now aiming the pistol at the back of Jak's skull.
Most of the teen onlookers were viewing Jak and Dex warily circle each other, reacting verbally when's Jak's knife bit first, cutting a red slit across his opponent's stomach. The bl.u.s.tering arcade guard was already on the horn, summoning a mall sec team to break up the fight.
The only one keenly watching Brack's progress was Dean. The other member of the arcade-machine-hogging duo was now boldly preparing to shoot the blaster.
Dean was too far away to prevent the chilling without responding with the same kind of force about to be unleashed on his friend, so he pulled his own blaster and shot first.
The first salvo from the Browning went high, racing like a fleeing man into the screen of a colorful vid game. The bullet shattered the exterior protective s.h.i.+eld, going into the true vid screen and entering the very guts of the amus.e.m.e.nt comp's brain. Sparks flew, from both the point of entry and from the jury-rigged wall socket the arcade game was plugged into. Modified to handle four games on a single outlet, the aperture erupted into flames.
For an instant only the four games on the same circuit were affected. Then every piece of electronic gadgetry in the arcade was shorted out one by one, and the room plunged into near darkness.
Brack fired the .22 blindly at the same instant Dean squeezed off a second shot of his own, catching the boy in the throat. A fine red mist sprayed out from the exit wound. The bullet Brack had shot went wild, hitting the disputed Mortal Kombat game in the coin box.
Seeing in the dimness with eyes like a cat, Jak swung out an open palm and caught the second knife-wielding teen in front of him across the face once, twice. The slaps sounded like the cracks of a ringmaster's whip. Immediately the boy's eyes lost their mock killer sheen and started to glaze over in dismay. He started to cry and Jak pressed his attack, back-handing the boy with his knuckles for a third blow to the face.
”Drop knife,” Jak said matter-of-factly. ”Or I'll gut from b.a.l.l.s to nose.”
The boy did so.
”Now, drop your blade, boy, or I drop you,” a new voice said.
Dean was no longer serving as Jak's backup. As the albino turned to slowly face the speaker, he found his friend was standing with his hands in the air. A trio of Freedom Mall sec men with long blasters was waiting for Jak's next move.
Jak opened his hand, and the knife fell to the carpeted floor.
He could see Dean being relieved of his Browning Hi-Power.
”Guess this means we lose our members.h.i.+ps, huh?” Dean said.
”LOOKS LIKE we're working for you now,” Ryan said to Rollins.
All of Ryan's inner circle, except for Dean, were standing before the seated black sec leader.
”Glad to have you on board,” Rollins replied, his face an unreadable mask. ”I got the word from Mr. Morgan. I understand you two worked out a deal.”
”If you want to call it that.”
”You want sec jackets? Armor?” the leader of the security force asked.
”Not really. We're not going to be strolling around busting local problems at gaudies or ha.s.sling cart vendors,” Ryan told him. ”We're here to help you with any stickie attacks and to mebbe a.s.sist in the training of your greener men.”
”Well, that would probably be two-thirds of my current squad.”
”How big a crew are you running, honestly?” the one-eyed man asked.
”That's on a need-to-know basis.”
”Don't give me that c.r.a.p. You want my help, I need to know.” Ryan gestured to the others around him. ”We all do.”
Rollins stood. ”Let's talk while we move. I'll show you the armory and the training areas.”
As the group followed the big sec man, he picked up where he'd left off in the conversation. ”There are twenty full-time sec men and ten reserve. Usually we work active sec details on the exterior of the mall, and the surrounding areas in and around Freedom's perimeter during daylight. Day exterior s.h.i.+fts run twelve hours, from eight in the morning to eight at night.”
”What about inside?” Krysty asked.
”Different kind of sec man. We're more of a presence in here to remind our guests to behave. Day patrols on the mall interior are on a light duty roster. Most of our hard labor comes after dark, both on the inside after people start drinking and the outside when the muties get restless. More often than not, people on the inside of Freedom have no clue there's a problem outdoors, and that's the way we want to keep it.”
”How does the night s.h.i.+ft break down?” J.B. asked as all of them stepped into former mall loading dock that had been taken over with targets, tumbling mats and exercise equipment. A few sealed wooden cases of weapons could be seen in a corner, locked up in a fenced-in area. Some of Rollins's regular sec squad were working out.
”If you work days, the s.h.i.+ft is longer 'cause there's lower stress. Work nights, you can go from eight to four in the morning, or from midnight to eight. There's some overlap. That's on purpose since it falls at the same time we tend to have the most problems. Stickie activity usually hits between midnight and 200 a.m., although they've been known to come earlier and try again later.”
Ryan leaned against a rack of barbells. ”Okay, here's the way we're going to do this,” he said. ”We'll all stay on the night s.h.i.+ft with patrolling and training. I don't give a rip for day duty if the action always comes after sunset. Give us a few days to get acclimated, meet your men and we'll try playing school. J.B. here can talk hardware. I'm on tactics with J.B. Jak over there might not look like much, but he's the finest hand-to-hand fighter I've ever known. All of us have been involved in close-combat fights with stickies before and survived, so it's not impossible. Stickies might be scary to some, but they're also triple stupe. Usually you can outsmart them.”
”What's standard armament for your sec men?” J.B. asked.
”M-16 long blasters. M-16 A-2s to be exact.”
”Chambered to take 5.56 mm rounds?”
”Right.”
The M-16 was the traditional weapon of the smart sec man or hired mercies. The effective range of the now cla.s.sic Army blaster was just under 350 yards. The weapon could be fired in four modes on single shot, semiauto, automatic or full cycle. Capable of firing close to a thousand rounds of ammunition per minute, keeping an M-16 on full cycle would empty a full 30-round magazine in under two seconds.
”Got a few extras of the M-16 if you want them, but there's not much ammo. We're lacking in that department. Haven't gotten a new supply in months.”