Slayers (Jake Hawkins Book 1)

by Matt Rogers

  It had been a desperation move, and if it had failed Jake would have blown Wolfe and Thorn’s hands to shreds. But he trusted his instinct, and it paid off. Both bullets hit their respective targets – they shot across the clearing and sliced through the bindings keeping the pair out of action.

  Almost as if he had known what was going to happen, Thorn sprung up off the ground with a speed that did not correlate with his size. The big man threw his nearly one-hundred-and-fifty kilogram bulk at Archfiend and crash-tackled the monster off his feet.

  At the same time, Wolfe came up and looked at Jake for assistance. Jake was already on the move. He dashed forward and wrenched the machete free from the dead slayer’s neck. Then he tossed it through the air. Wolfe caught it one-handed, turned and sprinted at the three slayers on the other side of the clearing.

  Three things happened in unison.

  Archfiend and Thorn were locked in a colossal wrestling match, each vying for the upper hand. Suddenly, Archfiend scrabbled free and sunk all five of his claws deep into Thorn’s thigh. Thorn cried out. Archfiend lashed out with his free hand and hit him so hard in the face that the crack echoed throughout the clearing. It was enough to put him down for the count.

  At the same time, Wolfe fell onto the three slayers by the tree with an animalistic rage.

  One swung at him.

  He ducked under the fist and hacked its head clean off.

  The other two lunged.

  He dropped low and wrapped a thick arm around each slayer’s mid-section and drove them backwards into the tree trunk, winding both of them simultaneously. Then he exploded up and skewered the one on the left straight through the heart with the machete, pinning its dead body to the trunk.

  The other one reached out with its claws.

  He ducked again, came up behind it and snapped its neck with a single tug.

  At the same time, Jake chambered the last magazine in his belt into the pistol. Another six rounds. There were five slayers on the other side of the clearing. The last group.

  He exhaled and imagined he was back at the house. On the shooting range. They were just moving targets, nothing more. He let his mind go blank and squeezed off five shots in the blink of an eye. Time paused.

  All five dropped like dominoes.

  *

  All the slayers had been cleared out in the space of ten seconds. Wolfe and Jake both turned in time to see Archfiend knock Thorn out with a single strike. He would kill him with the next one.

  They both dashed forward, side by side, heading straight for Archfiend. As he picked up speed, Jake saw a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye.

  Someone hit him from the side with a flying spear tackle. He fell sideways and collided with Wolfe. The two went sprawling into the mud, rolling head over heels. They came to a rest on their backs, both stunned by the sudden attack.

  Jake looked up with dirt in his eyes. His attacker hunched over him. Archfiend advanced until the two were standing side by side. They were both roughly the same height. Jake rubbed the dirt off his face. Blinked twice. The man swam into focus.

  Link.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “No,” Jake said.

  Link sneered. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Crank said from behind.

  Felix let out a roar and struggled desperately at his bonds.

  “Link, why?!” he screamed.

  “Shut up,” Link said. “I don’t need a temper tantrum from you.”

  “Why?” Jake repeated. It was all he could think of saying.

  “Because I found out something about my father, Jake.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “At the hive,” Archfiend said. “I confronted him while you gentlemen were taking care of the slayers inside. Like I told Wolfe, this has been one big setup from the get-go.”

  Jake said nothing. Things were beginning to dawn on him that he should have realised days ago. A complex puzzle was piecing itself together inside his head.

  “You were covering us,” Wolfe said. His voice was cold. He was holding back rage.

  Link nodded. “At first. Archfiend came up from behind and pinned me down. He probably knew I would kill him otherwise. But then he started talking. He explained a few things to me that changed my mind about where my loyalties lie.”

  “You coward,” Crank said.

  Link walked over to the helpless man. Crank stared up at him defiantly.

  “Shame what happened to your leg, buddy,” Link said. “Let me finish, boys. Then you’ll get a chance to speak before I kill you all.”

  He turned to Jake.

  “You know, I always wondered why was Dad involved in all this. I remember expressing my feelings to you about this recently, Jake. And finally, at the hive … Archfiend told me why.

  “Dad created them.”

  “No…” Jake whispered.

  “Oh, yes,” Link said. “He was the scientist. He was never an aeronautics engineer. My whole life, he lied to me. Apparently, he was a genius. IQ of 182. This guy” – he jabbed Archfiend – “remembers that much from his human days. After Dad graduated, he was offered a dozen different placements. Genetic modification was his specialty. He took a job at a gene-altering lab, one of the best in Japan. But his ideas were too politically incorrect. They said he couldn’t carry on with the experiments. But he did them anyway. So they fired him. With all of his dreams crushed, he broke into his old lab, stole all his equipment and spent two months experimenting on his friend. A man who wanted power, and would go through anything to have it.”

  “Arch?” Jake said.

  “Bingo. Wolfe probably told you this story already.”

  “No,” Jake said. “He told me Arch was an Alzheimer’s patient. He told me the scientist had found the cure.”

  Link turned to Archfiend. “You used to suffer from Alzheimer’s?”

  Archfiend smiled and shook his head.

  Link laughed. “I wish he did. Truth is, my old man was nothing more than a sick bastard who wanted a pet monster. He never wanted me as his son. I was too weak. He only wanted Archfiend. So much so that he followed him all the way into this place. The Amazon Rainforest. Seventeen years ago. When he rescued your squad, Wolfe, he wasn’t trying to kill it. He certainly didn’t expect you to start hunting them. All he wanted was to talk to Archfiend again.”

  “How do you know all this?” Jake said.

  “Well, because Dad eventually did find Archfiend,” Link said. “After the fiasco in the rainforest. And you know what he did? He offered me as a sacrifice, to demonstrate his loyalty. A nice meal to welcome Archfiend into the family.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “I know it is. And Archfiend sent him away. But then my good friend here thought better of that. He followed Dad back to our house. And killed him right in front of me. He chose not to accept Dad’s offer. He ignored his instincts to save my life. Of course, I had no idea what was happening at the time. I didn’t know Dad was involved. But you did, didn't you, Wolfe?”

  Wolfe said nothing.

  “You all did,” Link said, turning a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. There was venom in his eyes. “You all knew. Dad told you he was the scientist. Maybe not the rest, but at least that. And you kept it from me. You made up some crap about Alzheimer’s, and how you didn’t know why he was involved. You all lied to me.”

  There was silence.

  “Well?” Link yelled. “Are you going to deny it?”

  “We knew,” Wolfe said. “As soon as you told us who your dad was, we knew right then and there that he was the one who started all this. But we couldn’t tell you your own father was a psychopath. You wouldn’t have been able to handle it.”

  “Maybe I would have,” Link said. “Back then, maybe I wouldn’t have cared. I could have moved on. But not now. Not sixteen years later, when I finally find out that my father was a monster, and my half-brothe
r is a monster. I guess it runs in the family. So I figured, why should I hide who I really am?”

  Link rubbed vigorously at his face with both his palms. He reached up and fingered a pair of contacts out of his eyes. Jake sat in silence, baffled by the action. Then he saw what lay underneath.

  Link was already halfway along the transformation process. He had been wearing simple concealer makeup. Now, he wiped it away to reveal stark white skin, nearly the same colour as Archfiend’s. Underneath the contacts, bloody streaks of red zigzagged across his pupils. Lastly, he reached up and plucked a pair of dentures from his gums. His teeth underneath were rotting and yellow. He was turning.

  Half man, half slayer.

  “No,” Jake whispered again. Wolfe groaned and bowed his head.

  “Archfiend bit me,” Link boasted, grinning, exposing sharp teeth. “Back at the hive. I asked for it. Because I knew whose side I wanted to be on. And that was the only way to convert.”

  “You’re a complete psychopath,” Crank said. “I feel sick knowing that I was your friend.”

  Link laughed cruelly. “It’s not too bad. I’m starting to feel powerful. I can jump further. Sure, I’ll lose my intelligence in a couple of days. Who cares? I’d rather be a slayer than on the same side as a bunch of lying traitors.”

  “That’s not a good enough reason to turn,” Wolfe said. He looked up. “You could have put it all in the past, Link. You could have moved on. There has to be something else.”

  Link shrugged. “It was half that. And you know the other half. You know what Archfiend’s been planning. He told me too. Just face it, Wolfe. You’ve lost. You, and your petty group of slayer hunters. We were never anything. Archfiend has grander plans than any of you could ever imagine, and they’ve already been set in motion. Pity you won’t be alive to see the end result.”

  Memories were flashing through Jake’s mind, faster than he could comprehend.

  “When you ran into the warehouse,” he said. “After Wolfe had been taken. You looked horrible. Like you’d seen a ghost.”

  “I’d just been bitten,” Link said. “I must say, I felt like throwing up those first few hours. Took some effort to hold it in.”

  “You … you came back after those four slayers. When we set up camp.”

  Link smiled. “You’re getting the picture, I like it. Of course I wasn’t going to the toilet. I led them straight to you. And if you can recall, I wasn’t too happy about Crank and Thorn taking a different route. Archfiend wanted you all in one big group. Easy targets.”

  “Enough talking,” Archfiend hissed. “It starts soon.”

  Link raised his Snowdog up and aimed the barrels at Jake. “You know, kid, you’re the only decent one here. So I’ll kill you first. Spare you the wait.”

  “I never did anything to you,” Jake said. “None of us did. These other five guys here … they were trying to protect you by keeping the truth about your dad a secret. You can’t justify switching sides with that story. It’s just an excuse. Truth is, Link … you’re a traitor, through and through. And you’ll always be a coward.”

  Jake was surprised at his eloquence in the face of danger, suddenly calm as he saw what was unfolding before him.

  Link snarled and his face twisted grotesquely, momentarily morphing into that of a slayer. Then he returned to normal, breathing hard. “Yeah, well, at least I’m not about to die. Remember what I told you during training, Jake? Pay attention to your surroundings. Maybe, you could have avoided this, if you were concentrating.”

  Jake smiled. “I guess I could say exactly the same to you.”

  Link paused for a moment, confused.

  Then Sam came up from behind and drove his fist down, knuckles out, into the back of Link’s neck. He was possessed with rage. The fist came down with such force that Jake heard the audible crack of breaking bone. Link’s head snapped backwards as he fell.

  Wolfe sprung up off his back, but Archfiend was faster.

  Archfiend twisted around and lashed out, as Jake watched on, horrified. Time seemed to slow down.

  His claws slashed Sam’s throat to pieces. They ran five straight lines across his skin. Blood fountained from Sam’s neck. An artery had been severed. He dropped to his knees beside Link and keeled over onto the clearing floor, with blood pulsing from his wounds.

  Sam!

  Jake moved faster than he ever had before. He got his feet underneath himself in one swift motion and catapulted through the air toward Archfiend with a primal roar. His vision was clouded with red. He had never been this angry in his life. Every fibre of his being was intent on killing Archfiend.

  Archfiend saw him coming. He turned to run away. Jake picked up speed, but suddenly Archfiend twisted back and rammed him in the gut with a bony fist. The retreat had been nothing more than a feint.

  Jake crumpled into a heap on the ground. He had never been hit like that before. It was such a monumental blow, with so much force behind it, that for a second he thought his stomach had been split in half. His torso seemed to crack. All the energy sapped from his bones. Archfiend was something else entirely. A mass of unrestrained power. Jake crumpled like a rag doll with a moan of agony.

  Above, there was a flurry of movement. He couldn’t see. His face was buried in the earth and his eyes were squeezed tight shut; there was so much pain coursing through his stomach that it was near impossible to do anything else. After the initial wave subsided, he opened his eyes and looked up.

  He was lying in the middle of a standoff, albeit one in disarray. Felix and Wolfe stood shoulder to shoulder, chests heaving with anger. Crank was helpless, Sam was motionless on the ground and Thorn was in a state of semi-consciousness. But the two men left standing were still a brick wall of muscle. Archfiend stood on the other side of Jake, watching them.

  “I’d love to stay and chat,” he said, “but there’s somewhere I need to be. Good luck getting out of the jungle, boys.”

  Archfiend spun and took off into the trees. Felix and Wolfe broke into a collective sprint after him. They disappeared from sight, and then there was silence.

  A gasp of air sounded from across the clearing. Jake looked up and saw Sam writhing back and forth. Ignoring a wave of crippling stomach pain, he crawled over. He started breathing hard to keep himself from throwing up.

  Sam had already lost several pints of blood. His throat was an open mess that Jake couldn’t bear to look at. There wasn’t much light left in his eyes. He was looking around, wide-eyed, searching frantically for someone, anyone. Jake crouched over him and took his hand. He visibly relaxed.

  “Wanted someone with me,” he whispered. His voice box was failing. “Didn’t … want to go alone.”

  Jake squeezed his eyes open and shut to keep the tears at bay. He wanted to look brave.

  “You’re going to be fine, Sam,” he said.

  “Nah. Not … not this time, brother.”

  Blood kept pouring. It soaked into the dirt, and when the earth had absorbed its capacity, ran into pools around his head. Jake tried to remember first aid. Sam’s jugular was cut. What am I supposed to do? He pressed his sleeve over the wound in an attempt to restrict the blood flow.

  “We’ll get you out of here, Sam,” Jake said. “We’ll get you out of here. We will.”

  “Nah,” Sam whispered again. His eyes were half-closed.

  “Sam, buddy, come on. Stay with me. Don’t die.”

  Jake grabbed hold of his shoulders and gave them a light shake. Sam opened his eyes, just a little.

  “Promise me you’ll kill him,” Sam coughed.

  “I promise.” The thin veil of confidence finally gave way. Jake’s voice was wavering.

  “Good man.”

  “Sam, no.”

  “It’s time, brother.”

  Sam sighed and closed his eyes for the last time.

  “No,” Crank whispered from behind.

  Jake rocked back in the dirt, away from the corpse. He tried to close his eyes but they didn’
t respond to his command. They were locked on Sam’s lifeless body, which grew blurry as the tears came out. Finally, he broke out of it.

  He wrapped his sleeve over his eyes and began to cry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Felix and Wolfe returned twenty minutes later. They both looked flat and beaten. Jake didn’t have to ask. He knew Archfiend had escaped just from the looks on their faces.

  By then, he had run out of tears, and was sitting with his hands wrapped around his knees, staring into space. Sam lay next to him.

  Wolfe was the first over. When he saw Sam’s empty gaze, transfixed on the sky above, he fell to his knees in silence. Felix swore viciously and ran his hands through his hair in distress. Neither of them said a word.

  Thorn was coming to slowly, but he knew what had happened. It looked like he couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing.

  The five men still breathing were still as statues. No-one spoke for a long, long time.

  Then Thorn picked up the machete and stabbed it into the dirt. He ran a straight line through the earth, roughly the length of a man, and then began to dig the earth out with his massive hands. Ten minutes passed. He worked fast. A man-sized hole began to form in the ground. Felix and Wolfe took Sam’s body and gently lowered it in. As they placed him to rest, Wolfe kissed him on the forehead.

  “So long, brother,” he said.

  The three men worked to cover the grave. When it was done, they moved off, leaving Link in a limp pile on the ground. The man was dead. Sam’s blow had been so powerful it had killed him instantly. As they moved past, Thorn spat on Link’s dead body. The three of them sat themselves down underneath the palm tree and went silent.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Wolfe spoke.

  “We can deal with this later,” he said. His voice was shaking. He reached up and slicked his hair down with two sweaty palms. “Right now, though, we have a lot bigger problems on our hands.”

  Crank looked over. “This huge plan that Archfiend has. Link said that you know what it is, Wolfe.”