The Spirit in St. Louis

by Mark Everett Stone

  “And what has this pain taught you, sir?”

  That one is easy. “Not to be too trusting.”

  The AI doesn’t reply, and that’s okay with me. It’s not like it’s really Ghost, who has a true personality and feeling and such. It’s more like a cool app for your smartphone. Still, it’s nice having someone, something, to talk to at the end.

  “I can understand that, sir.”

  “Can you?” Could the AI really understand anything?

  “Of course. I may be limited, but I do possess an understanding of what is referred to as the ‘human condition.’ ”

  “You have no idea how little that comforts me.”

  “Sarcasm?”

  “Yes.” I shake my head. “No. Partly.”

  “If it is a comfort, you do not need to recite your experiences for posterity. That is one of my functions—to record for the files of the BSI.”

  My chuckle hurts my chest. I check the readout on the HUD. “Only fifteen hours left and you’re out of power. What happens then? Can the BSI recover the file?”

  The AI pauses and I know the answer before he replies, “No.”

  “Okay then. Shut up and let me talk. It’s therapeutic.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Where was I? Oh yeah. I clear my throat and begin again.

  The great thing about wearing high-tech superlight armor is that human teeth are really lousy at cutting through it. Not that the skinned people didn’t try while they beat the hell out of me, but their teeth broke against the NewTanium plates beneath the Kevlar weave, shattering like ice cubes under a boot heel.

  Still, I had a few hundred pounds of human flesh bearing down on me, dripping yellow fat everywhere and aiming for the jugular. Good thing my armor came with the standard gorget—a thin band of Kevlar-coated metal that circles the throat. Also great to have on if a vampire gets the drop on you.

  Someone’s front teeth slid across my cheek, slicing through, and I threw an elbow hard as I could, but in the confined space and on my knees the blow didn’t do more than knock them off. My short sword was yanked from my grip, and hands tried to hold my legs and arms. Any second now I’d be immobilized, easy pickings for the skinless horde.

  That got the juices flowing fast. With strength I didn’t know I had, I pushed hard against the floor with my legs, quads burning, knees groaning, and threw the skinless off my body, knocking them aside.

  Breathing room.

  Training took over, that and the overwhelming need to survive. I broke arms, skulls, and knees, snapping out with furious jabs and blistering kicks. Exposed muscles tore in my gloved hands and blood flowed. But it wasn’t enough. Too many more skinless were joining the mob, trying to take me down, so I did the only thing a sane man could do. I ran.

  Planting a boot on the backside of one of the fallen, I leapt over the crowd, scraping my head against the ceiling even though I tried to hunch as best as I could. I left some skin behind, but I was over, knees and ankles absorbing the shock of my landing. I beat feet down the hallway, the silent skinless close on my heels.

  Down the blue-carpeted hallways I ran, corporate art blurring by at furious speed and my lungs burning. I was almost spent, my strength used up under the pile of skinless and it wouldn’t be long before the tank ran dry. Tears filled my eyes—just the wind irritating them. Yeah, right.

  I needed to do something fast before those things dragged me down again. The next time I went down, there’d be no getting back up. Fervently, as my boots thumped against carpet, I wished for another gun.

  If wishes were fishes ….

  As I took a right, the hallway merged with the outside wall, the tall slabs of glass giving me a view of the city with the sun on the downward side of midpoint. I risked a look back to see a trio of skinless slowly gaining on me. A curse shot from my mouth. If my gran were here, she’d slap me for cussing. Sorry, Gran. I focused my attention to what was in front and almost didn’t stop in time.

  The glass to my left ended and so did the hall. A steel door, painted brown, with a heavy knob. As I careened to a stop, I saw a small sign hung at eye level that read MAINTENANCE.

  Dead end. Possibly for me as well.

  “You got a blueprint for the building?” I panted. “Any way out?” Damn me, why hadn’t I thought of asking it before? Because I was too busy fighting skinless Supernaturals and panicking. If only I’d asked earlier.

  If wishes were fishes ….

  The reply was terse, as if the program was upset. “I know we are on floor twenty-eight, but for some reason the layout does not conform to the blueprints submitted to the city.”

  No more time.

  I whirled, a punch knife in each hand protruding from between my fingers. They’d been carefully hidden to look like the buckle of the Bat Belt. I had a knife strapped to each of my calves, but the punch knives were easier to draw, faster.

  The first skinless met a knife, the blade slicing through an eyeball, and I whirled to the left, throwing the corpse free and sending blood flying through the air. The second skinless had its throat sliced clean and arterial blood sprayed across my armor.

  I continued my dance of death with the third, slipping past outstretched hands to drive a blade between ribs and into a heart. My left hand opened another from crotch to sternum. It died in a mushy heap of its own guts while the stench of blood and feces hit me between the eyes.

  One tried to tackle me, but a knife through the nasal cavity took it down. Another tried to breathe through a second mouth. My mind detached as my consciousness took a back seat to the rhythm of murder. I sliced my way down the hall, meeting each Supernatural with skill and steel, no longer wishing for bullets and guns, no longer wishing for anything. There was no thought in that Zen place, only training, only killing, only blood. As more came, my movements became increasingly precise, each stroke perfectly delivered, each one a killing shot. They couldn’t get ahold of me. I was too fast, too good, and too in the zone to be killed by the likes of them. This was what it meant to be an Agent in the BSI. This was what it meant to be an apex predator.

  It felt good.

  And then it was over. I stood in the hall, surrounded by pale, pink corpses and a whole lot of blood, the sun streaming through the glass wall, quickly drying the fluids on my armor. The janitor’s closet was far behind. Somehow I’d worked my way back down the hallway, killing as I went.

  In front of me were the last two skinless, a man and a woman. They stared with lidless eyes and a total lack of emotion. We regarded each other for a long moment before they turned tail and ran, leaving the bodies of their brethren behind.

  The punch knives fell from nerveless fingers, hitting the floor a moment before my knees as sudden exhaustion gripped me. I knelt there amid the carnage, panting and crying as time ticked away. Tears of frustration and fatigue blurred my sight, but it didn’t stop up my ears any and when they heard the words that floated down the hall, I found myself on my feet in an instant.

  “Good job, Atkins.”

  I looked around, but the speaker must’ve been down the hall around the curve of the outside wall. “Who’s there?” The punch knives where in my fists again and the pain and fatigue were put on the back burner while another rush of adrenaline surged through my body.

  The voice, heavy and rumbly like boulders rolling down a hill, bounced off the walls. “You know me, Atkins. We came to this godforsaken building together.”

  Sudden relief. “Damn me, Billings?”

  His laughter hurt my ears. “Not ‘Damn Me’ Billings. Just Billings.”

  “I’ve never heard you say more than a couple of words before.” I looked around. “Where are you?”

  “Don’t worry none, Atkins. I’m coming to you.”

  How come that promise didn’t fill me with hope? In fact, the relief I felt drained away quickly and I really regretted losing the .50 cal back when the skinless people first jumped me.

  I heard heavy footsteps, the hard tread of a larg
e man, drawing close. “Billings, where’ve you been?”

  “Talking to a new friend.”

  A new friend? “What are you on about? You’re making friends while I’m hip deep in Supernatural corpses?”

  “What corpses?”

  “Wha …?” I looked around and about had a heart attack. The skinless, the heaps of bloodied bodies, were gone. Every last one of them had disappeared as if it had never been. Still, there was plenty of evidence left behind: blood, scraps and rags of skin, yellow, waxy dollops of fat smeared into the carpet. “What happened, Billings? What did you do?”

  “They didn’t belong.”

  “Belong where?”

  “In our world, dummy. They didn’t belong here, so they had to go once they served their purpose.”

  That brought acid to my stomach. I asked, “What purpose?” while fully knowing the answer.

  The reply was quick and carried a hideous mirth. I raised my fists, punch knives gleaming. “The purpose was for you to run out of bullets.”

  Oh, right. Of course.

  Then Billings walked into view. I took an involuntary step backward, the hair on my arms standing straight up.

  He still wore his armor—the lower half, leaving his massive, hairy chest bare. I thought he was big before, but now his muscles bulged with terrible purpose, veins popping in a thick web under his sweat-slick skin. The plates of his abdomen were perfectly defined, looking more … impressive than humanly possible. It was if some all-powerful sculptor had remodeled his body, delineating each muscle, adding to the clay of his flesh and conforming it to some Herculean ideal. Pale and perfect, appalling in its flawlessness. In one massive fist he carried a knife, no, a dagger. Ten inches of brutal, gleaming blade with five in the hilt. Skinny and sharp, it looked just right for either ramming through bone or slicing through soft tissue.

  “Billings,” I whispered just loud enough for him to hear, “what happened to you?”

  The skinny knife rose, pointing at that broad expanse of chest. “Me? I met the man, Atkins.”

  “The what?”

  “The man. The man.” Teeth showed amidst his thicket of whiskers and the grin was more terrifying than that long knife or the new perfection of his body. “The first one ever like me. He’s old, Atkins. I mean old.” Billings took a few steps closer, approaching slowly, and I felt an icicle of fear along my back.

  Whatever Billings had been, he wasn’t a Bureau Agent anymore. His eyes gleamed with madness—a wet, slimy glow that told me no one in that skull was home. Whatever he’d been was gone and what had replaced him was a long ways from sane.

  I took a step back, then another. “Billings, man, who’re you talking about?”

  He paused. “The man, the one who started it all.” That great shaggy head shook and I was reminded of a St. Bernard shrugging off water. “When Cro-Magnons cowered in their caves, fearful of the horrors outside, it was the man they were really afraid of. Does that tell you something, Atkins?”

  “It tells me you haven’t been free with a name.”

  A shrug, a slight lifting of broad shoulders. “What’s in a name? But if it suits you, call him Angel of Mass Murder, the Saint of Slaying, the Shrieking Sphere, or the Blackened Cenotaph. He has so many names, but those are the oldest, most revered names that have been ascribed to him. Be that as it may, he’s the serial killer, the very first to grace mankind with his attention, and he is more powerful than you can imagine.”

  As he spoke, Billings continued to walk toward me, the slim knife raised to waist level. I kept retreating until my back thumped gently against the maintenance door. Nowhere to run and a maniac ahead of me. Things weren’t looking up.

  “Now hold on, man,” I began, raising fists laden with punch knives.

  Billings continued, “He’s teaching me. I’m his apprentice.” The smile on his face became more and more terrifying and I felt the flat plates of my abdomen clench painfully. “I get to be what he is, if I try hard enough, and brother, I can try harder than anyone!”

  Before the last syllable left his mouth, I was in motion, sprinting toward the perfectly muscled madman in an effort to catch him off guard.

  It didn’t work.

  A fist the size of a small ham slammed into my breastplate. The NewTanium creaked alarmingly, and I flew backward, the wind knocked clear out of my lungs, to land on blood-soaked carpeting. It felt like getting hit with a cloth-wrapped bowling ball.

  The ache went from front to back, from crown to balls, and it curled me up like a shrimp on a hot plate.

  I knew what was coming, and even though blinded by tears, I reacted, my boots kicking out at knee height, or so I thought.

  Both heels connected to Kevlar-covered greaves and Billings feet left the floor. Next thing I knew a couple hundred pounds of crazy Agent fell on me like a ton of bricks with a very pointy knife heading toward my kidneys.

  The first thrust skittered off one of the NewTanium side plates, saving my organs, and second thrust was thwarted by the vambrace on my arm. The thrust was wicked. I felt the NewTanium dimple where the tip of the dagger hit, and I knew it had bruised the flesh underneath. It had me wishing for ibuprofen.

  If wishes were fishes ….

  I rolled out from under just as Billings thrust again, but the knife hit carpeting, giving me just enough time to scissor to my feet and back up, shoulders hitting the wall and fists up, ready for action.

  Billings, despite the size of his meticulously sculptured torso, moved quickly, scrambling to his feet and twirling his body my way.

  “Damn, you’re good,” he purred through the tangle of his beard, “but I’m better.”

  My growl matched his bottomless well of a voice. “Shut up and show me, assbag.”

  And the games began.

  The long knife blurred toward my throat, but my throat wasn’t there to meet it. Instead I juked to the side and swiped my fist diagonally down his torso, opening pale skin from collarbone to bellybutton.

  Blood fountained for a fraction of a second before flesh knit and the slash disappeared—the blood coating Billings’ torso the only evidence it’d ever been hurt.

  He laughed low and I knew I was in deep.

  Fear is a good motivator; it pumps adrenaline into your system so your reactions are faster and sharper, but it can also kill. It can cause you to freeze so the killing blow can land. I couldn’t afford to freeze, although I had plenty of fear juicing my body. I had to use what advantages I could to stay alive—stay alive and win.

  Billings was big. He was strong. He could punch a good dent into NewTanium without shattering the bones of his hand, but he lacked the one thing I had in droves, and that was speed. In my line of work, speed is eighty percent of survival. Luck is the other twenty. Somewhere in there, skill plays a part, but I’d rather be fast and lucky than skilled and clever.

  If he got ahold of me, I was toast, but I didn’t let him. Every thrust was met by air. Every swipe of that knife cut only the light from the recessed bulbs.

  I jabbed, driving a knife into a shoulder. The wound closed within seconds, but blood flowed. A fist full of steel came my way, but I blocked, which was a mistake because the force of his blow threw me back against the wall, and the fight nearly ended right then and there. Good thing for me I was fast, fast enough to keep jabbing and jabbing, hoping that blood loss would weaken him.

  I kind of doubted it, though.

  I did have another plan, because this couldn’t go on forever. He was strong, stronger than a man of his size should be—almost silverback-gorilla strong—and that scared the holy heck out of me. Soon he would arrive at a certain conclusion, the only logical one in this fight, because he couldn’t catch me. There was plenty of room in the hallway for me to stick and move, stick and move, peppering him with punch knife jabs that would wear on him. I had to be ready.

  And it happened, almost quicker than I thought it would. The long knife flew from his hand, end over end and straight for my head. I knew
he expected me to dodge or duck out of the way, but I didn’t. Instead, I raised a forearm and let my armor absorb the blow—although it hurt. He was that strong.

  Billings came in, trying for a grapple so he could squeeze the life out of me, using only brute strength. I let him grab hold of my right shoulder with his left hand in preparation for throwing me to the ground and finishing the job.

  I didn’t let him. My left arm blurred, fast and low. One, two, three times, and I finished with a deep jab and a twist while my right hand came up in an uppercut that took him under the chin.

  “Gaaaahhhkkk!” cried Billings as I pulled the punch knives free. His eyes grew wide as blood spilled from the hole I opened behind his chin and intestines spilled through the gaping rents in his torso to land in great purple coils on the floor.

  I knew he’d heal quick, so I lunged, ready to plant a knife through an eye or slice across a throat, but my leg folded under me and I spilled to the floor. Sudden pain brought tears to my eyes and pain to the base of my skull that shot up from my left thigh, white-hot and piercing. My hands encountered the hilt of a knife.

  Big sonofabitch had another knife. A K-bar by the look of the hilt.

  Oh, damn. Blood was gushing from beneath the hilt. Must have hit the artery, the big one, whatchamacallit? Oh yeah, the femoral. Cut it good, judging by the quantity of blood. Hurt like a bitch, too, the pain not letting up at all.

  Had to tie it up, use a ‘turkey neck,’ as my gran used to say.

  Billings moaned, blood drooling from his lips as I slid the Bat Belt free of its pouches and tied it around my thigh. He stumbled down the hall, guts trailing behind, and I wondered if his stomach would heal with his intestines hanging out and all. Hoped so; that would serve him right.

  “Your vitals are rather alarming, Mr. Atkins.”

  I stared at the blood flowing around the hilt of the knife. “You don’t say?”