And what about the little creatures pulling the young man? he thought. Yes, what about that young man?
He was halfway down the hallway when he spotted the aberration. The man with his skin sloughing off of him, all of his flesh slowly pooling around his ankles like the slow crawl of lava down a mountainside. He had a shotgun in his hands, and he was aiming it at…
The jackalope. Pelletier! And there was a girl in his arms, and another one standing in front of him. The aberration losing its flesh raised its shotgun. Without thinking, he’d adopted a Weaver stance just like he was trained at the academy, and raised his Glock. He took a breath, let it out slowly as he squeezed the trigger, and all at once the aberration’s head popped and the body pitched forward. He stood there for a moment, just staring at the Spencer Pelletier and the two girls. For a second, David was caught between commanding Pelletier to freeze and asking the girls if they were okay. And that’s when the hands seized him.
“David!” one of them hissed at him. He thought he knew that voice. Dad? The thought was too brief to sit with, as the hands yanked at his head, snapping it back against the meaty wall. “David! C’mere to me, boy!” He struggled in vain. He knew it was vain because his father was there. There was no other way around it.
The hands burned and dug into him. He felt something crawl up his spine, and then burrowed into his spine. He fought against screaming, he wanted to accept his death like a man. Just like his father had always told him to. “Be a man, David! Be a man!”
Then, something changed inside of him. David suddenly fought against the hands, tearing and scrambling. He then recalled that he still had his Glock in his hand. He fired backwards into the wall. On the floor in front of him, he spotted the young man crawling. The little creatures were pulling around and around the house, it seemed, taking him on a parade that never ended.
David had no time to really think on this. He twisted around and faced the hands pulling at him. He fired three more shots, and to his surprise one of the hands actually released him. But two more popped out in its place, snatching at his clothing, ripping it free and digging into his flesh. He fired five more shots, then one of the hands seized his gun and wrenched it free. Then the wall opened up. A gaping maw awaited him. Inside he saw the faces that he imagined were shown to all of the damned before they were absorbed, the faces of the ones you’d judged, the faces of the ones you’d turned your back on when you could’ve helped.
Now, those pitiless faces stood judgment on him as he was swallowed into the great, enveloping maw. He now accepted that this was hell, or at least as close as was ever constructed.
“But…I saved her! I didn’t do anything wrong! I did what was right!”
Hell didn’t care. It had him in its clutches and it intended to enjoy every savory morsel. After all, how often did they get to dine on the genuinely good? After eons of eating only the wicked, he must’ve been a tender treat.
David screamed.
“Pelletier!” Leon screamed. “Freeze!”
The rain was coming down so hard it was difficult to see much, but the brief sweep of a chopper’s searchlight showed him the pale skin and the black hoodie. It was him all right. And he carried a black bundle, while another, shorter shadow followed him into the small patch of trees butting up against the property.
Leon took aim, but dared not shoot for fear of hitting the two girls.
“You saw him?” Porter asked, coming up behind him.
“Yeah. There. He went into those trees.” He pointed, and the agent just nodded and waved for Leon to take the lead.
Behind them, all gunfire had ceased. The two SWAT teams had secured Avery Street, and ambulances and fire trucks were now permitted to come down to start collecting the wounded and dead. Their sirens were visible even through the rain, and the fire truck’s horn was extremely loud.
A scream. This one from the back door where Leon had first spied Pelletier vacating. Leon wouldn’t go in there alone, not before the SWAT team had fully swept and secured it.
He and Porter dashed across the back yard, their feet splashing through puddles now gathering in the dips in the earth…and, strangely, forming small rivers. Leon was only partially aware of this as he made away for the neighborhood and gave chase, but the rain was coming towards him, not from above. It poured towards the house, and what water was on the ground did the same.
A gunshot rang out, and Porter screamed behind him, landing on the sodden earth and sliding. Leon dropped to one knee and fired in the direction the shot had come from. The enemy was taking cover behind a black sedan. Holding the gun in one hand and canting it slightly sideways in order to absorb the recoil, Leon dashed over to Agent Porter and offered him a hand. The agent took it and pulled himself up, holding his side. Leon fired two more shots at the sedan just to keep the gunman’s head down.
They moved back around the corner of the house, from whence they came. Agent Porter dropped to the ground, moaning “Fuck!” again and again while clutching his side. Blood pooled in his hands.
Leon peeked around the corner, just in time for the enemy to pop his head up and fire a shot over the top of the sedan. The bullet smacked the side of the house, and when it did, Leon was almost certain he heard a grumbling. And his imagination must have been in overdrive for all the adrenaline, because he could’ve swore he felt the house shutter.
He fired to more shots at the sedan, and then turned back to Agent Porter. “How bad?”
“Bad,” he said at once, pulling his hand away to look at the blood. “Stomach.”
“Shit!” Leon shouted. He couldn’t just leave the man there to die. If the stomach had been penetrated, then it was only adrenaline that was keeping Porter from writhing in agony. Very soon, though, his gut would be burning with a fire few human beings ever had the misfortune to feel. He peeked around the corner once more. The neighborhood had now gone eerily quiet. He imagined his enemy behind the sedan had made a run for it into the trees.
Leon was torn as to what to do. On the one hand the two girls were in the hands of a monster, and Agent Porter, a brother in the law enforcement field, was on his ass, dying and—
“What’re you waiting for?” Porter growled. “Go fucking get those fuckers!”
He looked at the agent, who nodded his understanding. Perhaps he’d seen the struggle written on Leon’s face, or perhaps he was just that committed to getting Pelletier. Whatever the case, he did not blink, and obviously meant every word. “You got rounds left?”
“Yeah,” Porter growled through clenched teeth. “Now…go!”
Leon wasted no more time. He took one more peek around the corner and came around with his gun aimed and ready.
At first it seemed like the trees would never end. Indeed, Spencer even sensed they were being followed by them. As they moved through the wood, the trees seemed to bend and creak and lean in their direction. The girl knew it too. The girl running at his side, that is. The girl in his arms was still mostly unconscious, though her eyes did open and shut intermittently. “It’s raining, Kaley,” she muttered once, and went back to sleep.
Then, a bullet whispered through the trees, and smacked against one of them. All at once, he dropped the girl from his arms and leapt for the cover of the nearest tree. The taller girl screamed, “Wait! You can’t leave her!” Spencer paid her no mind. When the second bullet rang out he shot to the ground and started crawling. “Wait! Don’t leave us!” Spencer crawled around to the side of a fallen tree, his fingers feeling through the sodden earth for any sort of weapon. A rock, a sharp stick, a discarded bottle, anything.
Another shot rang out. Then another. Then another. Spencer then realized what he was hearing. It wasn’t just one gun firing, it was two. A gunfight had kicked off out here.
Kaley ran to her sister and tried to lift her. It was a bit difficult, they were both so weak, and Shannon was heavier than she looked. She managed to half carry, half drag her sister over to a collection of bushes. That’s when the
next gunshots rang out, and the rain intensified, if that was possible. This allowed her to move as loudly as she wanted, because no movement could be discerned in this din.
Thunder rolled overhead, but without lightning it was only a dark promise from an unseen beast.
More gunshots. At least that much was audible above the rain. There was a scream. And in an instant, Kaley felt the same, sinking, grotesque feeling that she’d felt at the house where Dmitry had killed his cohorts. It was the feeling of someone not dead, but dying. It swirled around her, a cold blanket that she did not want.
Kaley grabbed Shannon’s hand to feel the Anchor one last time.
Leon slowed down as he came into the thick of the trees. It was surprising how dense the trees were considering this was the middle of Atlanta. An old, muddy sign he passed read FUTURE SIGHT OF ADELL PARK. He faintly recalled the plans for Adell Park, and how quickly they had been cancelled. Along with the rest of Avery Street, this area of the city had grown wild, and was destined to become exactly like Townsley Drive: forgotten, but never quite gone.
The first gunshot caught his attention. As the first of the thunder rolled he ran ahead. It was nearly pitch black, only some distant streetlights and the occasional sweep of a chopper’s searchlight granted him any visibility.
The rain became thick. It continued coming in towards him, directly into his face, into his eyes and mouth, and even the drops that hit him seemed to crawl around his body, as if looking for a way around, and dripped horizontally away into the darkness behind him.
The searchlights caused the shadow of every tree to grow and elongate and move. For a moment, he caught snatches of movement—perhaps wind in the rushes, perhaps an arm, perhaps nothing more than a trick of light. Leon kept his gun up and scanned slowly. The water was like needles in his eyes, necessitating far more blinking than usual. The shadows elongated again and again as the choppers moved overhead.
A loud pop, and then a brief incandescent muzzle flash. Something bit his right arm. Leon’s massive body absorbed the shock and he turned, firing at the space in the darkness where he’d seen the flash. Three more shots came right at him, one of them hitting him in the left leg. He screamed and went to one knee, still firing at where he’d last seen the flashes. He fired until he was out, and then scrambled to the nearest tree.
The helicopters overhead swooped around, still searching, still finding nothing for the tree canopy. He heard something crash behind him, the crunching of twigs and branches. Leon knew he was about to die. The searchlight from above briefly illuminated the long silhouette from the other side of the tree. He braced himself, and turned to meet the man.
Leon collided with a man equal to him in size, but with considerably more fat. They smacked into one another and fell to one side, two ogres wallowing in mud. A searchlight flashed over the man’s body. He was bald and pale white, and his swollen belly had a tattoo written in another language: Мир ненавидит нас.
Leon’s enemy screamed something in Russian, and battered him with punches and elbows, one of which slammed into his face and shattered his nose. Blood filled Leon’s nose and mouth and he tasted copper and silver. The fat man raised something in one meaty hand, a stone or something, and an instant before the blow came down a dark panther leapt out and tackled Leon’s murderer to the forest floor.
“Remember me, fucker?” Spencer screamed. Of course he didn’t. He didn’t remember Spencer any more than he remembered the Spanish Inquisition, because the fat man hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been there to abduct the two girls, and he hadn’t been the one looking out at him from the Expedition. But it didn’t matter. For the moment, Spencer needed the fat fuck to be Dmitry again. He hadn’t been sated. Probably never would be sated. Every sleight lived inside of him for the rest of his life. He still despised the very thought of Miles Hoover, Jr., and yet savored every morsel of that hatred.
The fat man felt the brunt of that savoring as Spencer mounted him and pinned his arms against his chest. “Remember me?!” he screamed, and then grabbed the fat man’s ears and used them as handles to slam his head repeatedly against the forest floor. “Remember me?!” His voice was now like a woman’s shriek. Tears fell from his eyes as he quivered and came. He eventually wrenched the rock clean of the fat man’s hands and started bashing his skull.
Spencer drove the rock against his skull until he heard the first crunch. Invigorated by the sound, he went further, hammering again and again until the top of the skull started to split. He then wedged the end of the rock between the gap in the fat man’s skull and pried it open, left and then right, then left again, until the brain was laid open in front of him.
He reached inside to get a handful of the brain. It had the consistency of fresh tofu, and when he squeezed it between his hands, he knew he was squeezing the very thing that had been his enemy. This was the man’s hopes and fears in his hands. This was his knowledge of vocabulary, soccer, TV shows, space, electronics, food, animals, paint, China, sex, as well as all his theories of who he was, what he was meant to do, and why he was here. Spencer crushed all of that. The brain gushed out each end of his fist, and he stared at it. “I did this to you,” he told it. If only he’d been able to get Dmitry like this. If only…
“Spencer!” It was the first time she’d ever used his name. He turned and looked at her. For a moment, the searchlights touched her and she was wreathed in that light that came from backlighting falling rain. And she was beautiful, the most radiant thing he’d ever seen despite her disheveled state. “It’s over!” she cried. “I need your help now! Just one more time! Please!”
The rain no longer poured against him, but directly down as it should.
There was thunder. Spencer heard moaning. He glanced behind him, at the big black man in the trench coat, who was no doubt a police officer. He wiped his mouth. A bit of brains fell from his lips. Had he taken a bite out of it? When had that happened?
He looked around, his eyes finally resting on the girl, and he said, “Kaley, right?”
She looked a little leery of answering, but finally nodded.
“Nice to meet ya. Heh!” He stood, feeling sapped, tired. “There’s gotta be a street up ahead,” he said, walking over to her. Her little sister was still unconscious on the ground. He knelt to lift her. “There oughtta be a car around. I’m drivin’. Called it. Heh!”
The three of them hustled on into the night, disappearing from the woods, leaving it quiet and sullen. The searchlights swept the area ceaselessly. The rain covered their tracks, and soon it was as though they never were.
Leon stared up at the needles of rain falling on his face. The light of the choppers shone directly on him once, blinding him, then moved on.
His leg throbbed. So did his arm. So did his broken nose and his head.
Raised voices. Shouts. Calls for anyone. Leon tried to roll over. He tried to respond in some way. Nothing worked.
He closed his eyes because that felt best.
Lieutenant William Hennessey’s men had found Agent Mortimer and had secured the area enough to bring in the medics. The house he was lying against was empty. Flash-bangs were tossed in just to be sure, but as they swept inside the house and cleared it, all they found was a smoking ruin that looked weeks burned and smelled of barbecued hair. The basement, where it appeared most of the Rainbow Room’s filthy acts were conducted and recorded, was mostly left intact. There were a few scorch marks here and there, but nothing else. Nothing besides the fresh blood beside the horse saddle.
The utter lack of bodies was perhaps the most unsettling thing to Hennessey and his team. Something serious had happened here, something more than just accelerant tossed onto a stove fire.
And then there was the thing in the basement. “What…the…fuck?” Lawrence Klein breathed. The flashlight at the end of his assault rifle was aimed at a mound of still-sizzling meat left at the center of the basement, the beam from the flashlight catching wisps of smoke dancing off of it.
>
Screams suddenly filled the basement. A recording device had been left on, its blinking light showing that its battery was low. The lens cap was still on, but it appeared Heinrich had wanted to listen to what audio it might’ve recorded. They were screams, but not of any child. They were a woman’s. They begged something in Russian.
14
CNN picked it up first, of course, because its headquarters was in Atlanta and it had a powerful presence in the streets of the city. At first, the story didn’t appear that surprising. Another gunfight in or around the Bluff, no biggie. However, some were interested to hear that it was not only the work of the vory v zakone, but that it involved a child sex ring the likes of which no one had ever seen before. The gunfight on Avery Street was just the icing on the cake, a final showdown between the good guys and people who were obviously the scum of the earth.
Seven law enforcement officers shot, three killed, including two FBI agents, Nicholas Mortimer and Derek Stone. And one of them, Officer David Emerson, was strangely missing. All in all, twenty-two vory, including three women, were injured, while twelve of those died of their wounds.
Witnesses and officers willing to make statements had been rounded up for the early morning news. Once seven o’clock was upon the state, all Georgians would come to hear the details, but that was still an hour and a half away.
After the gunfight had ended, six officers were tasked with the duty of organizing the incoming fire trucks and ambulances. Fire marshals and inspectors were rushed to the house at the end of the cul-de-sac to determine whether or not the house was in danger of catching flame again. Strangely enough, the inspectors couldn’t even determine whether a fire actually had occurred at all. While it certainly looked like a flashover, key clues would be found missing in the weeks ahead, most notably that the charred marks did not indicate that the fire had moved towards ventilation, which was a typical post-flashover pattern.
Psycho Save Us Page 37