Deathlands 117: Desolation Angels by James Axler Page B

three-story red-stone building across from it.
    “So how come the Angels didn’t climb high up there and shoot us to pieces?” he asked one of the foot patrolmen who’d hemmed them warily in. “I kept thinking they were going to do that. We would have been cold meat.”
    The officer, a slight black man, laughed incredulously. “That’s Rock City turf. Not even the Angels want to mess with them. ”
    They set out along the street to the northwest. Though Mahome claimed not to regard them as either threats or flight risks, he did make sure the seven outlanders were surrounded by his forces. His ten mounted officers, two of whom turned out to be women, rode in the lead. Then Krysty, Ryan and the others followed, with the lieutenant riding alongside and chatting amiably with them. The couple dozen regular patrolmen walked flanking the companions. Twenty sec men in full riot gear followed them, and bringing up the rear rumbled the armored car, its turret turned so that its powerful automatic blaster could cover their back trail.
    “How’d you happen along when you did?” Ryan asked the young officer. “Got to say it was pretty lucky, your turning up right about then. We were in deep rad dust.”
    Krysty walked alongside Ryan, holding his hand. They were passing through the mostly clear area Ryan had spoken of when they were considering their options to escape. To their right were extensive fields, and off to the northeast, a stand of forest, all interspersed with the occasional ruined building. To the left lay industrial-looking buildings, some mostly intact, interspersed with wide, weed-choked rubble fields.
    She reckoned Ryan was right. They never would have reached the more substantial standing structure before the Angels ran them down. Or just ran out of patience and blasted them.
    “We got reports of a big commotion going on south of the Seven-Five,” the young officer said. “The brass thought the Angels might be staging a raid. So they threw together a scratch force to come down and see what was what, and if it turned out the Angels had gotten big ideas, to beat them out of them.”
    “This is a scratch force?” J.B. asked from right behind.
    Mahome laughed. “We have a lot of officers,” he said, “but we also have a triple-big amount of ground to cover. And we still don’t hold much beyond the south end of Midtown. Though Hizzoner hopes to change that soon.”
    “Don’t give ’em all our secrets,” Kurtiz growled.
    The burly sergeant was trudging behind Krysty’s group. He actually had a baton, which he beat disconsolately against his palm. He seemed to be doing a slow burn.
    It seemed insubordinate to Krysty, who admittedly didn’t have a good feel for the ways of authority. But the young officer—who was quite handsome in a juvenile sort of way, she had to admit—just laughed again.
    “Don’t mind the sergeant,” he said. “He’s a good man. Just case-hardened by a long life on the streets.”
    Krysty frowned. To her he was just another sec man, a bully with a bludgeon and a blaster and license to use both liberally. The fact they wore uniforms and called themselves “police” didn’t change what they were.
    As always, there were exceptions. Lieutenant Mahome seemed unusually humane for a sec man. He even laughed a lot.
    They crossed a broad freeway that was surprisingly intact. It looked as if the wreckage of the collapsed overpasses in view to the east and west had been cleared enough to offer passage for two-way wag traffic. No one was moving along it at the moment.
    The area on the far side was also a mix of buildings and open spaces, some cultivated, some riotously overgrown. These buildings were mostly of a more modest scale than skyscraper-heavy downtown, which might have had something to do with the fact that they remained more intact, and only one or two they passed had completely collapsed.
    Then they came upon a structure that was anything but modest: a big tan limestone