Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted

by Robert J. Crane

  Hendricks just smiled. “One at a time.”

  ***

  Arch’s Explorer gunned past the town car on Alison’s side. Arch glanced over at her only briefly as he shot past on a short straightaway. She could see Hendricks already out of his seat, sword out of its scabbard. He was leaning out the window.

  “Shit,” she whispered, and unfastened her seatbelt so she could get to the rifle in the backseat. “Looks like we’re really gonna do this.”

  Arch tried to keep the car somewhat steady as they came up on the pack. There could be fifty, a hundred of them in there; it was hard to tell. It wasn’t that they weren’t wearing helmets and bicycle shirts and pants, because they were. It was just that every single one of them was black as the night itself. The bikes were all painted black too, save for a couple. Arch caught a glimpse of a couple reflectors still wired to the spokes of one bike, spinning a circle as the light caught it; pretty much all the rest lacked them.

  “Well, this looks like a safety hazard,” Hendricks said, mirroring Arch’s own thoughts. “Don’t they know you’re supposed to wear bright clothing when you’re cycling at night?”

  “Apparently not,” Arch said as he slowed to cope with a steep, hard right S-curve. “Which is too bad, because if you do that, it’s nobody’s fault but yours when you get hit by a car.”

  He gunned the engine and closed the last ten feet between him and the back of pack. He edged up enough to let Hendricks hang out the window, and watched as the cowboy extended his sword to poke—just poke—the last guy in line. With a blast of black flames that consumed the demon’s dark clothing, the bike fell to the ground and filled the air with the sound of screeching metal.

  ***

  “I think they’ve noticed us now,” Duncan said as he swerved to avoid the bicycle clattering on the road. Alison braced herself as the car shook, veering right as Hendricks killed another demon ahead. The others were looking back, and the buzzing was somehow louder now.

  “What is that?” Alison asked.

  “Looks like a bunch of vembra’nonn on bicycles,” Duncan said. “Light-shelled demons, like speed. Usually they’re drawn to doing stuff like hanging on the bottom of airplanes or riding in the back of pickup trucks going at high velocity. I did catch a rumor about a group into extreme sports a couple years back; hang-gliding, base-jumping, skydiving, that sort of thing. Can’t say I’ve heard of bicycling ones before, but …” He shrugged as Alison flipped the latches to the gun case.

  “Can you keep us steady?” she asked as she pulled the ear protection out of the case first and draped the muffs over the sides of her neck. She grabbed the glasses, too. Safety first, especially when it came to dodging a .50 cal shell hitting you in the eye. That would probably cause blindness.

  “I can try,” Duncan said, and she could hear the strain in the demon’s voice.

  Alison stuck the magazine in the Barrett rifle, then turned awkwardly, trying to bring the oversized thing around without smacking the barrel into the windshield. It wasn’t easy; the rifle was awfully big.

  “That thing is like a cannon,” Duncan said matter-of-factly. “You might be able to kill a vembra’nonn with one of those.”

  “I thought guns didn’t kill demons?” Alison asked. She was distracted for only a second then chambered a round. Focus.

  “Not most of them, no,” Duncan said. “But these are light shells. Most demons have hard shells. Kinda like bone density in people, I guess. It’s rare, but sometimes you get these guys with a big essence and in order to fit it all in, they have to shrink the amount of shell—”

  “Huh,” Alison said, and hit the automatic window. She swung the rifle barrel out as the wind whipped her in the face. She draped the heavy shoulder pad against her and stuck the butt of the gun hard against it. “Let’s see what we can do, then.”

  “You might want to—” Duncan started to say something, but Alison slipped the ear protection on and focused on her target. There was a demon at the far back right that fell into her sights. She led him a little bit and fired.

  “There’s your wife!” Hendricks called as a deafening rifle blast echoed down the mountain. He was hanging out the window, probably in one of the less safe moments of his life, even compared to Iraq—this one was going to stick out in his memory—and the wind was blowing at him. He took off the cowboy hat and tossed it back through the window into the floorboard. No point losing it, after all. It had sentimental value.

  “I believe she just killed one of them!” Arch shouted back at him. Hendricks could barely hear him over the rush of the wind blowing his hair. Hendricks looked over and saw a bike rattling and skating down the road, no sign of a demon on or near it.

  “What the fuck?” Hendricks muttered. “With a gun?” Arch had steered him closer to the peloton of these bicycling demons, and they were all looking back at him now. They had the whole inhuman eyes thing going too, their demon faces out on display. It was not pretty, either. They were a wave of black, a nasty little pack of demons rolling on along. “Hey there, hell on wheels!” He jabbed his sword into another one that tried to swerve to avoid him.

  “Get in here for a second!” Arch called at him. Hendricks slipped back inside as Arch eased off the speed and they drifted back as the road turned right in a lazy curve.

  Hendricks sat there, waiting expectantly, watching the peloton ahead, the bicyclists’ black helms bobbing up and down as they sped up their pedaling. A few of them were still looking back, hissing at the Explorer. “What now?” he asked finally.

  “This.” Arch gunned the engine as the road straightened. Hendricks could hear the whine as he accelerated down the slope. The speedometer rushed from fifty to eighty in about two seconds, and Hendricks felt a compelling need to reach for the oh-shit bar as the Explorer shot down the hill.

  Arch steered them straight as Hendricks fumbled for his seat belt. He clicked it in place just as Arch ran them into the rear wheels of six bikes at the back of the group. The impact was immediate, black suited freaks falling sideways, flying over handlebars. He watched black flames crawl over the skin of at least two of them from their impact against the hard asphalt. One of them in the center was launched up and onto the hood of the Explorer.

  Hendricks reacted before he even realized what he was doing, leaning hard against his seatbelt to snake out the window with his sword. He saw the tip pierce the cheek of the demon and appear within the gaping mouth. A black flame welled up inside and swallowed the thing whole in a matter of seconds. “Fucking A!” Hendricks said, grinning at Arch. “That’s how we do this shit.”

  ***

  “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” Duncan was shouting over the muffles on her ears, “and demons without hard shells shouldn’t be riding bicycles at high speed!”

  Alison just ignored him and led another demon. The crack of the rifle was followed by the sight of her target dissolving into black flames straight from the bowels of hell. She drew a bead on another.

  ***

  “What the fuck is this?” Lerner asked from the passenger seat. Erin felt she agreed with his sentiment, bicycles and a few bicyclists littering the road in front of them. “Seriously? Demons on bikes? Have they no brains?” He paused. “No, scratch that, they definitely don’t have brains. Have they no sense?”

  “Of style, you mean?” Erin asked, steering around a black-clad bicyclist who was recovering from a wreck in the middle of the road. She wanted to put a dent in the fender of the sheriff’s cruiser like she wanted a firm kick to the square center of her ass. She caught Lerner looking at her out of the corner of her eye. “Bicycle pants look dumb.”

  “Bet they’re comfortable, though,” Lerner muttered. She ignored him and swerved around a demon, who shook his fist angrily at them.

  “Should we stop and deal with these?” Erin asked.

  “Better keep on,” Lerner said. “I’m guessing there’s a whole lot more ahead. Probably better to focus on the core rath
er than the dregs.”

  ***

  Hendricks unfastened his seat belt again. Arch had played bold at first, but after that last bicyclist he’d run over had left the handlebars scraping under the car with a gawdawful clunk, he’d gotten a little less bold. Hendricks couldn’t blame him; it wasn’t like it was even his car. He’d have to explain the damage to the sheriff. Hendricks got the feeling he was kind of a ball buster.

  “We’re steamrolling them,” Arch said.

  “More like Cleveland Steamer-ing them,” Hendricks said as he started to lean out the window again.

  “What’s—?” Arch asked, but Hendricks lost it in the roar of the wind as he stuck his upper body out.

  There had to be at least thirty more of them, and they were starting to scatter again. Their first response to the shit rolling down the mountain with them had been to pedal faster, but they were more prepared for a city where they could outrun foot pursuit rather than being stuck on a mountain road with cars bearing down on them.

  That cannon blast fired again, Alison Stan lighting up another rider. Hendricks watched a bicycle drop to the road on the far side of the peloton, the rider already evaporated like water on a hot day. They may have done some damage, but there were still a shitload of bicyclists.

  He leaned a little further out the window, ready to deliver a love tap to the nearest. He did it, the bike dropped, the rider fell, already covered over in the flames of hell, but he only saw the motion in his peripheral vision at the last second.

  The demon slammed into him from his right. He realized too late that the bastard must have been hiding in the shadow of the car’s bumper, just waiting for a chance to do something.

  And he’d done something all right. Judging by the fire in Hendricks’s side, he’d broken at least one rib. Maybe more.

  Worse than that, he still had a grip on Hendricks, and Hendricks could see the dark malice in the bastard’s eyes as he prepared to hit him again.

  ***

  “Uh oh!” Duncan yelled, but it sounded like a whisper to Alison under the muffs. She hadn’t been paying attention to Arch’s side of the peloton, instead trying to deal with thinning the herd on the other side. She saw the demon riding in the wake of the police cruiser just before he made his move. Black spandex thundered up the side as Arch put the brakes on for a turn. Hendricks was hanging out the window and the demon hit him hard. Duncan blanched in the driver’s seat from the impact.

  It didn’t look pretty, that was for sure. Worse than that, the demon had positioned himself perfectly—lined up just between her and Hendricks. She didn’t even bother to try; even if she could have shot him, she’d at least clip Hendricks in the process.

  ***

  “Well, well, look at this here clusterfuck,” Lerner drawled as Erin got them on a straightaway and hit the accelerator. She could see the next turn ahead, but for now she had the Crown Vic up above one hundred miles per hour, and she was screaming down the mountain. She figured she had about another ten seconds tops before she’d have to apply the brakes with everything she had, but that would buy a little time for them to catch up to the battle unfolding down the mountain.

  “There sure are a lot of them,” Erin said as she started to hit the brakes. “How the hell are we supposed to kill them all?”

  “I’m surprised you’re worried about that right now,” Lerner said coolly. “I figured you’d be concerned about your boyfriend.”

  Erin glanced at him, then looked ahead. Sure enough, Arch’s car had a black-coated figure hanging out the window, and one of the bicycling demons was—

  —was—

  —was on him.

  Hanging on to him. Dragging him out of the car? Eating him right there? Erin couldn’t see.

  She stomped the accelerator into the turn and took it fast. When the tires started to skid, she saw Lerner clutch his oh-shit bar, which concerned her. But not enough to hit the brakes.

  ***

  Arch saw the thing hit Hendricks just a little too late. He hadn’t been watching his rearview, which hadn’t seemed like a mistake until that demon came out of nowhere behind him and showed him how wrong he was. Now the cowboy was out there at its mercy, feet still hanging in, sword pointing the wrong way, and getting manhandled in a close encounter by something that was a lot stronger than him.

  Arch had a sense of where Hendricks’s balance was, and it was failing fast. He did have his legs locked in good, could probably hang them up under the dash if need be—

  Arch jerked the wheel to the right and heard the resounding thunk of the bicycle’s frame hitting his passenger door. He heard it skid after that, screaming metal meeting the pavement, and almost took a breath until he saw the demon still hanging onto Hendricks, dragging him out the window as he clutched on to the cowboy.

  ***

  Erin roared past Duncan’s black town car like it was out for a Sunday drive. She didn’t know if he was going slow because they were afraid to get in there and mix it up or if it was because Alison was a better shot at a distance, but she didn’t care. She cut them off like a Nascar pro and slipped in behind Arch’s Explorer like she was about to start drafting.

  “Take the wheel!” she said to Lerner. He didn’t need to be told twice.

  She hit the window control and had her pistol drawn as she leaned out. This was going to be a motherfucker of a shot, and she was still leaning hard on the accelerator. She had always hated math, but she figured just by judgment she had about five seconds to pull this off before she was going to have to hit the brakes for the next corner, and the curve would screw up what she had in mind.

  She drew down, staring over the white sights of her Glock, holding it out one-handed. She didn’t get to the range as much as she would have liked, which would have worried her if she had more time to think about it. She didn’t, though, and so instead she pushed hard on the accelerator to bring her closer. Less distance made it harder to miss.

  She drew a bead on the demon holding Hendricks. She aimed for middle back, because he had Hendricks good above the waist, and looked like he was sinking his teeth into—

  She fired, the obnoxiously loud burst of the gun muted amid the squeal of tires and roar of engines. It was like the time she’d gotten tickets to sit in the sixth row at Talladega, the roar of the race loud enough to drown out the end of the world if it came.

  She watched the demon fall, dissolving in black flame as he disappeared under her front end. The bump of the body under the Crown Vic was horrendous, like she’d run over a cinder block. She would have sworn the entire suspension went with him as he blew out under the right rear tire, and the shock knocked her pistol out of her hand. The impact jarred her, and she hit her armpit on the door, then bounced back and caught her left shoulder against the back of the window’s frame.

  It hurt; like fire, like hell. It took her a second to recover from it to realize that Lerner was screaming at her, but by then it was too late. They were going eighty when she stomped the brakes, but there was a hairpin turn up ahead.

  The tires were still screaming when they went into the flip off the side of the road.

  8.

  Alison saw the sheriff’s car squeal into the turn. Duncan had already backed them off and slowed them down for the curve. Arch had done the same but pulled hard right to take the Explorer into a near ninety-degree turn. He’d made it, just barely, and the smell of burned rubber and clouds of black smoke from tires were everywhere in the air. Alison couldn’t see very well, but she knew the trajectory that the sheriff’s car had been on, and knew that things had gone very, very wrong when it didn’t emerge from the cloud of tire smoke on the other side.

  ***

  Lerner had a bird’s-eye view for the car going over the edge of the cliff. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d been looking forward to when the day began, but it was the sort of shit one had to deal with when engaged in the high-stakes thrill ride that was demon hunting. He was holding that oh-so-helpfully-named oh-shit bar
as the car rolled the first time. He kept his grip as they went into the second, and third, and fourth.

  Not having bones to break or skin to lacerate certainly helped. The lack of nerves to send screaming signals to the brain he didn’t have was also a plus. The airbag managed to hit him squarely in the nose, but it was fairly useless at stopping his movement because it deployed forward and they were not moving forward at all.

  He watched the whole thing with a sense of interest that he normally reserved for PBS documentaries. The windshield shattered on the second roll, breaking into tiny pebbles of glass. Lerner had seen glass break before, and it came out in long, sharp shards that would make a fine weapon to cut a human being if need be. Not that he’d thought about it.

  These were pebbles, though, safety glass broken into tiny pieces that wouldn’t do much of anything unless they hit you full in the eyes. There was some bouncing around in the cabin, but most of it fell out on the third roll. He realized—a little surprised—that the passenger window next to him had exploded at some point, and he hadn’t even noticed it.

  The roof caved on the fifth roll, sinking down a good three inches and turning the cloth-lined ceiling of the cabin into a crinkled mess. He could see the bare metal peeking through next to the shattered windshield, and the sun visors had completely broken free of their harnesses and were whipping about.

  After the sixth roll there was a moment of peace. If he’d been human, Lerner would have take a breath. Actually, if he’d been human, he’d probably have been properly fucked, being good and dead from the impacts of the damned car rolling down the hill.

  The moment of peace didn’t last, though. There was a feeling of weightlessness that accompanied it as the car turned once more in the air. Slowly. Painfully slowly.