Madness (Asher Benson #2)

by Jason Brant

  Hitting anything from that distance with a pistol would take incredible luck.

  And Adams’ hands were shaking too badly.

  The rifle barked beside the van.

  Fire belched from the barrel.

  Blood burst from Professor Jury’s back. Scarlet blossomed across his white shirt.

  He staggered forward, knees buckling.

  His hand grabbed for the door handle of his truck, but came up a foot short.

  The rifle cracked again, and the top of the professor’s head popped.

  Adams shouted incoherently and shot at the man kneeling in the road. He ran for his cruiser, firing blindly, hoping to suppress the shooter enough for him to climb into the car.

  His shots didn’t come close, but made the man with the rifle duck behind his door.

  Allison dove back into the cruiser and slammed her door shut just as Adams’ reached the driver’s side. His old age and protruding belly didn’t allow him to lunge in with as much grace as the younger woman, but he managed to squeeze himself behind the wheel.

  The rear window exploded behind them.

  “Get us out of here!” Allison ducked down just as the windshield spiderwebbed in front of her.

  Adams hunched over as he yanked the cruiser into gear and slammed the accelerator down. The car lurched forward, tires screaming on the pavement.

  “Not that way!” Allison grabbed his arm. “The spikes are up there.”

  “Damn.” The sheriff shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. His heart thundered wildly, ears thrumming. The adrenaline spike of the sudden firefight had his head reeling, and he’d forgotten all about the reason they’d driven down there.

  The cruiser drove past the oozing body of Professor Jury. It was only visible for an agonizing moment before they sped by.

  Adams slammed the brake and yanked on the wheel, hoping to pull a 180 in the middle of the road.

  The tires screeched, but only slid a few inches.

  They jerked to a stop, still facing forward.

  “What the hell was that?” Allison chanced a peek over the top of her seat just as a bullet whizzed between them.

  “I thought we would spin around.”

  “Well, we didn’t!”

  “No shit.” Adams put the car into reverse and mashed the gas pedal again. “Keep your head down.”

  “What are you doing?” Allison slid down the seat, her panicked eyes staring at him. “We have to turn around.”

  “No time.” The sheriff hunched as low as he could and grabbed the rearview mirror, angling it enough for him to see through the empty space where the back windshield had been.

  The mirror hanging off his door exploded in a shower of glass and metal.

  Adams saw the shooter in the rearview. The man had resumed kneeling in the road. He worked the bolt action on his rifle and took aim again.

  A hole punched into the dash between George and Allison.

  She let out a small scream and slid further down. The lower half of her body was scrunched under the glove compartment.

  The steering wheel wobbled in Adams’ grip as he kept the accelerator floored. The engine whined as they pushed thirty miles an hour.

  He kept it as straight as possible, knowing that one little slip would send them careening off the road. Driving backwards was hard enough for him, let alone doing it at such a high speed.

  The shooter yanked the bolt back and forward again.

  But the next shot never came.

  The man in the overalls scowled down at his weapon. He dropped the rifle and stood, reaching behind him. Pulling a pistol from an unseen pocket or holster, he took aim again.

  “Christ, these guys have a lot of firepower.” Adams felt a flutter in his chest and a twinge of pain in his arm.

  Not now, he thought. I can’t have a damned heart attack now.

  A flurry of bullets punched into the trunk of the cruiser.

  The fabric in the chair above Allison’s head puffed out and tore.

  The rearview mirror shattered, cutting Adams’ visibility behind them.

  But he didn’t dare take his foot off the gas.

  He sat up and looked back over his shoulder.

  The shooter popped the magazine out of his pistol and jammed a fresh one in. He moved with a practiced grace. His face never betrayed any emotion save a cool determination.

  He might have been discussing the weather, rather than killing a professor and shooting at the sheriff.

  The cruiser pulled even with the van as the man raised his gun again.

  Adams locked his gaze on the shooter’s for a split second that seemed to stretch for an eternity. He saw a driver sitting behind the wheel, watching the events play out

  And then they were past the van and the man intent on murdering them.

  The shooter unloaded on the front of the car, punching holes in the hood and grill.

  Steam burst from the radiator.

  Adams kept going, gritting his teeth. Allison shouted something at him that he couldn’t make out. The drum solo going on in his ears blotted out everything else.

  The drainage ditch ended another thirty yards behind them, the shoulder expanding out almost ten feet.

  When they got within a dozen yards, Adams took his foot off the gas and slammed the brake down. The car jerked, but the tires didn’t lock. He spun the wheel and guided them toward the shoulder.

  Bullets smashed the window out beside him as they turned, the cruiser now perpendicular with the road. Glass fell into his lap and stabbed at his cheek and neck.

  They hadn’t come to a stop before Adams yanked the transmission into drive. The cruiser bucked, a heavy thunk slamming under the hood. Warmth seeped into the car by the floor from the overheating engine.

  As he got them turned around, the dying car picking up speed again, Adams looked back at the van. The shooter had stopped firing, his pistol held down by his hip. The driver had climbed out and was walking around the back.

  They weren’t even paying attention to the fleeing cruiser.

  The driver opened the rear door of the van, and Adams caught a glimpse of something that made his stomach flip.

  They had a rocket launcher. The man reached for something else though, apparently intent on letting the sheriff get away.

  “George!” Allison shouted. She scooted back into her seat. Her eyes looked sunken, her cheeks an ashy gray.

  “What?”

  “They got you.”

  “What?”

  Allison leaned closer. “You’re bleeding!”

  Adams looked over at her, his forehead scrunching in confusion. Then he peered down at his left leg and saw that his pants were red and wet.

  The pain came a few seconds later.

  7 – I’m a Breast Man

  Sammy’s boobs came through the door first.

  It must have been almost ten minutes before the rest of her followed.

  Maybe I was exaggerating that part a bit.

  But they were damn nice.

  Despite the fact that they’d left Baltimore extremely early, Sammy’s hair was straight and she had on just a hint of makeup. She wore a snug t-shirt and tan shorts that only went a few inches down her thighs.

  I really, really hoped she’d done that for me.

  Then I looked down at my bare, filthy chest and wanted to step in front of traffic.

  Sammy stopped beside the door and gave me a small, sheepish smile.

  Butterflies flitted in my stomach.

  Manly, roided-up butterflies, mind you.

  “Hi, Ash.” Sammy looked at my ridiculous outfit, or lack thereof. Her smile faltered a few millimeters. “You look... good.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. “It’s Hugo Boss.”

  Nami snorted. “What an ass.”

  Sammy saw the Mount Everest of beer cans, and her smile fell a little more.

  I wanted to give myself a swirly in a dirty toilet.

  “I wasn’t expecting company,” I sputter
ed.

  That woman had a power over me that went beyond just my insane attraction to her. We barely knew each other, but she exhibited a kindness to me and my fucked-up existence that no one else did.

  She didn’t judge or pity me, but she genuinely seemed to want to help.

  I supposed in a way, that she was like Drew.

  Minus the baldness, penis, and other gross guy things.

  Sammy turned her attention back to me. “How are you feeling?”

  The question struck me as odd, but then I remembered how horrible I must have looked. “Fine.” I gestured to my chest. “Can’t you tell?”

  “You avoided me in Baltimore and then you left without saying anything,” she said.

  Sammy had tried to visit me in the hospital after our encounter with Murdock and Smith’s Merry Band of Assholes. The agents standing watch by my room wouldn’t let her in.

  Then she’d tried to come by my apartment, and there was no chance in hell I was going to let her in there. In hindsight, I should have because that dump was a damn sight better than the hellhole I was living in now.

  But that wasn’t the only reason I wouldn’t see her.

  Bad things happened to people when I was around.

  They got killed.

  I’d spent a lot of alone time lately, and I’d concluded that everyone was better off with me far away. Not just Sammy either. Drew, Nami, and even the people who lived in my building were safer if I put some distance between us.

  So, I did.

  “You didn’t even say goodbye.”

  Damn, she was laying it on thick.

  “You never let me say thank you for saving my life.” Sammy took another step closer.

  Then her nose wrinkled when she caught a whiff of me.

  Fuck my life.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t make me seem like an even bigger idiot. What could be said to someone after they realized you smelled like fresh turds?

  Turns out, nothing.

  Drew’s cell phone rang.

  Nami’s followed right behind it. She held it out in front of her face. “Private call? This is a brand-new number—no one even knows I have it yet.”

  “Same here,” Drew said. “Don’t answer it. We need to talk Stinky into coming back with us before we do anything else.”

  “Shut up.” In my annoyance and self-pity, I lowered my mental guard so I could hear what Sammy was thinking of me in that moment. Typically, I did my best not to listen into people’s thoughts. Everyone deserved his or her privacy. But I was being weak, just then.

  And when I did, I felt something other than Sammy around us.

  The thoughts of most of the agents outside were panicked and confused.

  Three of the others had qualities that were both utterly foreign and strangely intimate.

  I’d only encountered something similar once before—when I’d been close to Murdock. As I’d learned through a trial of fire and pain, when two telepaths get close to each other, their minds form a sort of mental bridge.

  We could share thoughts and emotions in a frequency that no one else could hear.

  It was an odd sensation that was hard to explain to someone who hadn’t ever felt it before, but it did have a kind of intimacy to it because of the closeness formed between us.

  Not that I had wanted to make out with Murdock or anything.

  What I felt from the agents had just a tinge of that. The bridge hadn’t formed. This was something different.

  There were hints of something else working in their minds.

  Something that shouldn’t have been there.

  Rage and madness.

  They were thinking, yes, but their thoughts seemed guided, as if they were following some kind of vague directive. And all they wanted to do was kill everyone around them.

  All of this hit me in the blink of an eye. One second, I was trying my damnedest not to stare at Sammy’s chest, and the next, I was leaning against the kitchen counter, almost unconscious.

  The madness, the absolute insanity, emanating from the minds of those agents threatened to unravel my own thoughts. It felt as if the fabric of my mind was being ripped apart when I tapped into their heads.

  I put my mental shields up as fast as I could, but the blunt trauma of the connection had me reeling both physically and mentally.

  Drew reached for me. “Ashley? What happened?”

  Two gunshots echoed through the woods in front of the cabin.

  “What in the blue hell?” Nami ran to the door and squinted into the early morning light.

  Sammy spun around, looking out over the top of Nami’s head.

  Even in my moment of pain and confusion, I couldn’t help but notice the striking dichotomy of a nearly six foot tall, blonde goddess and the impossibly small, black geek.

  “Get away from the door,” I whispered. I shook my head like a dog, as if that could somehow force the maddening thoughts of the agents out of my mind. “Now!”

  “What’s going on?” Drew asked me.

  “Get them inside and close the door.” My legs regained some of their strength, and I managed to stand back up. “Something happened to some of the agents out there and—”

  Another dozen gunshots rang out.

  Someone screamed in agony.

  Drew didn’t hesitate again. He jumped across the room, grabbed Sammy by the elbow, and pulled her out of the door. Their feet tangled, and they toppled into the mountain of beer cans.

  The cabin filled with the din of crushing aluminum.

  “What the fuck, man?” Nami asked. “You grab the woman with the big titties, but not me?”

  Drew grunted as he tried to extricate himself from the remnants of my alcoholism, “I would have grabbed you too, but I tripped.”

  “It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?”

  Sammy climbed out of the cans first. I reached down and took her hand, helping to pull her away from them. “That was so gross.”

  Stale, flat beer soaked through her shirt in a few small spots.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I muttered. “I’m disgusting.”

  “What’s happening out there?” Drew asked. “What are they shooting at? Is someone attacking them or us?”

  I shook my head again. “I can’t tell. Some of the agents are going nuts, but I don’t understand why.”

  “Can you hear what they’re thinking?”

  “I tried, but it really kicked my ass.”

  “That’s why you fell over?”

  “Yeah. It’s like—” I fumbled for a description. “Their minds have been infected with something.”

  A bullet zipped past my ear so close that I could hear it zing by. Drew and I had been in the shit more than once, so we both ducked down, instinct and past training kicking in. I had to pull Sammy down. Nami stepped to the side, hiding behind the door.

  We hunched by the sink as another volley of bullets splintered the doorway and the outside of the cabin.

  Drew skinned the pistol from the holster on his hip. “Can you at least tell where they are? Are they coming at us?”

  I took a deep breath. “Let’s find out.”

  My mental barriers retreated just enough for me to feel the presence of the agents outside, but not enough to hear the thoughts of those who were going nuts. It took an immense amount of concentration and energy.

  It was a form of mental gymnastics I was only capable of early in the day, before fatigue took over.

  At any given time, there were ten to fifteen agents outside of my cabin and untold amounts of drones and satellites snapping pictures overhead. They hid behind trees and sat in cars. Some waited at the end of the road, ensuring that no one came up to visit me with ill intent.

  Now, I could only feel six out there.

  The rest were already dead.

  Four unaffected agents were hunkered down in the woods, struggling with confusion and panic. I focused on the mind of one of them, lett
ing his thoughts fill my own.

  Where is Mills? Is she down? Who is hitting us? I can’t—

  His thought stream cut off like someone had thrown a switch. The pain of death wrapped itself around me before I could release his mind. A smothering, crushing agony caused my vision to blur.

  Blood trickled from my nose.

  I quickly shifted to the next agent.

  Holy shit! He’s down! He’s fucking down!

  The female agent, Mills, watched as one of her detail toppled over, the back of his head showering the forest floor behind him. She spun around, pistol raised, eyes scanning the tree line.

  Twenty feet in front of her, partially hidden behind a fallen log, knelt yet another agent. She recognized him as a man named Patterson who had joined the detail three weeks earlier.

  Mills raised her hand and waved him over.

  He shot her in the chest instead.

  —can’t breathe. Can’t—

  I released her mind and squeezed my eyes shut, fighting against a wave of nausea that washed over me. Being in someone’s head as they were dying really kicked the shit out of you. Sometimes, the line between them and me could get blurry.

  And I’d just gone through that experience twice inside of ten seconds.

  “They’re killing each other.” I pressed my index fingers against my temples. “There are only four of them left, and two are—”

  Another pulse of pain-ridden emotion hit me.

  I hadn’t been prepared to fight off this kind of mental onslaught.

  “Two more down,” I whispered.

  More blood ran from my nose. I wiped at it absentmindedly.

  Sammy moaned when she saw the crimson streak on the back of my hand.

  Drew slid next to the door again, glancing out. “Two left then, right? And they aren’t on our side?”

  I nodded and straightened my back. My senses slowly returned. “They’re fifty yards out and moving along either side of the driveway. Everyone behind the cabin is down.” I focused on walling my mind off again. “You have another piece?”

  Drew gestured at Nami. “Where’s your gun?”

  “In the car.”

  “It does us a lot of good in there.”

  “I’m a computer nerd, not a goddamn gunslinger.” Nami stood on the opposite side of the door, glaring up at Drew. “And I assumed we would be safe since we’re surrounded by more federal agents than the president.”