Free Plague Lords (Empire of Xibalba, #1) by James Axler Page B

reserve, the albino’s ruby-red eyes seemed to glitter merrily.
    A loud scuffle and angry shouts and screams from deeper in the corridor put an abrupt end to conversation and sent hands grabbing for gun butts. From out of the darkness of the interior spilled a trio of wild-ass, go-for-broke combatants. The companions stepped clear as the herky-jerky, high-speed fist and foot fight tumbled out into the blinding sunlight of the parking lot.
    It wasn’t two against one; it was every man for himself.
    Joltheads, Ryan thought, keeping his hand on his holstered SIG-Sauer.
    The evidence for that conclusion was incontrovertible: the stringy, emaciated arms; the sagging, prematurely wrinkled skin dotted with angry sores; hair missing from the scalp in fist-size patches; the bulging, jaundiced eyes; the rotten, black-edged teeth; the clothes that looked like they’d been salvaged from a garbage dump and put through a shredder.
    And the capper was the insensate violence.
    The trio punched and kicked one another at extreme close range, spitting blood and fragments of teeth, tossing up tufts of ripped-out hair, raising clouds of dust when they fell through the mud crust on their backsides, jumping up again like they were on springs. Even though the battle was powered by a drug, there was no way human bodies could maintain the frenetic pace. After a couple of minutes of all-out combat, gasping for air, the fighters pulled black-powder handblasters out from under their clothing.
    The moment they reached for their battered revolvers, the companions unholstered their own weapons and hastily withdrew to the cover of the hallway entrance.
    Just in time.
    Point-blank, the circling joltheads started jacking back single-action hammers and pulling triggers. The revolvers click, click, clicked like castanets on misfires or unloaded or uncapped chambers—a lucky thing, since the bastards weren’t paying attention to background and potential inadvertent targets. Finally, thunderously, one of the weapons discharged, but an instant too late. Instead of coring the opposing drug fiend’s head, it powder-blackened the left side of his face from chin to receding hairline and blew a .44-caliber chunk out of his dirty earlobe.
    Three empty blasters hit the dirt and the sheathed knives came out.
    When fixed blades were drawn, everyone watching from behind hard cover stepped forward to get a better view of the festivities. Even the gaudy sluts raised themselves from the horizontal. Nobody lifted a finger to intervene in the conflict. Nobody seemed to know or care what the fight was about. Given the fact that the combatants were joltheads, the chances were good they were fighting over something imaginary.
    One of the male bystanders—a solidly built man with slicked-back, dark blond hair and an impressive, drooping-to-the-chest handlebar mustache—whipped out a harmonica. Tapping his foot to keep time, he provided a sprightly and rhythmic musical commentary on the mayhem.
    Ryan had to admit it was a sight to behold: three wild-eyed, beat-to-shit ragbags wheeling around and around, taking turns stabbing each other in the guts, groaning and squealing with every strike, blood and spittle flying in all directions. After dozens of stabs delivered and received, the action suddenly lost its momentum. Gore-drenched arms hanging limply at their sides, one by one the fighters buckled and collapsed into the fine brown dirt.
    A contest to the death had ended in a three-way draw.
    The musician crescendoed with a scale-climbing flourish, and the assembled sluts and scroungers answered with lethargic applause. It was too hot to cheer.
    Nobody moved to check the bodies for signs of life. Not even Mildred, who in a former life had sworn a Hippocratic oath.
    Joltheads were better off dead.
    As Ryan led the others past the rear of the mob of small-timer scroungers still waiting to pass through the gap between the cadaverous, 120-year-old Winnies, he could feel the gunsights