Slash and burn jh-3

by Matt Hilton

  In his peripheral vision, he saw the black man leap over Rourke's corpse and bring up the rifle, but there was no way he could shoot without cutting Rink to pieces as well. Larry ignored the black man, swinging a fist into Rink's face.

  Rink ducked and Larry's pile-driving punch missed him. Rink swung an elbow that cracked against Larry's ribs. Some of that sneaky Jap karate stuff, Larry thought. Luckily the elbow had struck his uninjured side or Rink could have pushed his broken rib into a lung. As it was, the blow barely registered. Larry hammered downwards, slamming his forearm on Rink's skull. Rink grunted, but his arms grappled Larry's waist.

  The black man rushed in, gun lifted club-like.

  Larry leaned over and wrapped both arms round Rink's back, clasping his hands under the man's chest. Then he heaved Rink off his feet. He swung at the black man, even as the assault rifle slammed against his shoulder. Rink's legs knocked the black man away. Then Larry hauled Rink high in the air and slung him down at the floor. Larry wanted to shatter the man's skull, drive the fragments into his neck, but Rink wasn't totally unfamiliar with the move and rounded his shoulders at the last instant to take the brunt of the force. A normal man would have still been shattered, but Rink was more powerfully muscled than the norm. Even so, he was a child in Larry's hands.

  Without loosening his grip, Larry dragged Rink up with sheer brute force, intent on repeating the pile-driving move. Rink was limp now. There'd be no avoiding a crushed skull this time.

  The black man was fast. Rink's legs had knocked him away, but he came back almost as quickly. He dropped the rifle which was proving an encumbrance this close in, and he hit Larry a flurry of blows directly in the face. Left-right-left: a blur that would put a pro-boxer to shame. Larry's bottom lip split at the third punch. He cursed, his eyes becoming slits as he turned to the black man. The guy got his hands on Rink and held on to him, stopping Larry from slamming him a second time. Upside down, Rink dug his hand between Larry's legs, grabbing for his testicles.

  Larry didn't care. He released his grip, thrust out with his chest and powered Rink into his friend. Both men crashed to the floor, Rink now on top of the black man. They spilled apart, and Rink swung over on to his back, so that both men lay side by side in the dirt.

  Larry stood over them, feeling the raging fire behind him.

  'Welcome to hell, boys.'

  Chapter 50

  Huffman seemed to have a destination in mind. He ran adjacent to the buildings and didn't look back. I could have shot him and had done, but I wanted him to hurt more than that. I ran after him.

  He charged past the outbuildings, past the animal pens, and then swung to the right towards the large tin shed. I was fleeter than he was and had gained on him when I saw him duck into a doorway in the side of the building.

  I didn't want to shoot him dead, but I was otherwise unarmed and there was no way I was entering that building with my gun in my waistband. I drew my SIG, racked the slide, but kept my finger alongside the trigger guard so there was no accidental discharge.

  Huffman's right arm was severely wounded, but he could still use that damn razor. Even so, I went after him without concern for the blade. Immediately inside the building, I put my back to the wall and swept the open space with my gun.

  It was dim inside the building. The stench was the first thing that hit me, then my gaze registered the swinging chains and steel stockades, and lastly my ears picked out the rattle of metal and the scuff of feet. I couldn't see Huffman, but he couldn't have got too far ahead of me. To my right some of the chains swayed as though pushed aside in his flight. I went after him and the odour of rotting flesh washed over me like a wave.

  I'd smelled this charnel house stink before. It was the kind of stench that hung over the village of slaughtered peasants I'd come across in the Indian Ocean or the mass grave I'd discovered in the Balkans. Blood and innards had been spilled here. I was in a goddamn slaughterhouse.

  More chains swung slowly on my right, and I veered that way. High up in the walls, just below the corrugated steel roof, were narrow windows. They weren't there to let in light but to ventilate the building. Instead, I saw creeping tendrils of smoke drifting in. The smoke twisted and coiled like serpents and shafts of dim light were all that illuminated the building, ever-changing strobes between the patterns of smoke.

  A clink of metal sounded from somewhere ahead of me, like a door latch lifting and falling. Huffman, the son of a bitch, was trying to give me the slip out of another exit. I rushed in that direction and saw a large silver oblong structure barring my way which I knew instinctively was some sort of industrial-sized cold room. Had Huffman gone in there, hoping to hide from me?

  Gun in hand I stepped up to the door. The latch was half open. Cocking an ear to the door, I listened, even though it was a fruitless exercise. The structure by its very nature was surrounded by a soundproofed vacuum. There was nothing for it: the only way of clearing the room was to go inside.

  Ordinarily the door would emit a sucking noise as the rubber seal was broken and pressure was displaced in the room, but the door opened without sound. It told me the door had been opened recently, or there was no power to the refrigerated room. I decided I was right on both counts. I peeled the door wide and stared into darkness, my gun poised to shoot. The stench wafting over me was rich with fresh blood.

  Something rushed me from the darkness.

  Despite my desire to make Huffman suffer, I fired a quick volley of shots into the figure coming at me like a phantom out of its tomb.

  Even as I fired, I knew that it wasn't Huffman. This body had no arms or legs and was swinging from a large hook jammed through its ribs. It looked like Huffman had been there, though, because there was a huge bloodless gash in its throat.

  Though I was only a split second in understanding, that was long enough for Huffman to leap out of the shadows at me. He held the razor loosely in his right hand, but that wasn't my major concern. In his left was a large butcher's hook. He grasped a wooden handle crossways in his palm, while the gleaming steel hook jutted from between his two middle fingers. It was easily a foot long, giving him a far greater reach than I had. I back-pedalled into the open room.

  ' Gonna kill you!? '

  He slashed at my head and only the barrel of my SIG halted the hook from holing me like a bowling ball.

  There was no time for shouting challenges or curses of my own. Huffman was a man possessed by a demon. He rained blows on me with the hook, then slashed at my body with the razor. My gun halted the hook, but there was only a jacket and shirt between me and the razor blade. There was a stinging pain across my abdomen.

  I scrambled away, dimly aware that he'd only nicked me. I knew that because my intestines weren't pooling around my feet.

  Chains bounced off my shoulders as I dodged, then my lower spine banged up against one of the steel stock-pens. The bars formed a right angle a yard to my left, blocking my way out. Huffman thought he had me penned in like the animals that once died here, but I just flipped over the bars and landed ankle-deep in cow dung. Huffman's hook struck sparks from the metal bar. I lifted my gun, but I was still reluctant to shoot. I powered backwards and Huffman followed me, vaulting the stock-pen bars and landing where I'd just been.

  His razor was a silver crescent cutting the air in front of my face. Swerving round it, I slashed the barrel of my gun at his head, but missed. My heel skidded in the crap, and I heard Huffman's exultant shout. He came after me, ripped upwards with the hook and the point caught in the trigger guard of my gun and snatched it out of my hand.

  Should have shot the bastard, I told myself. Then it was too late for self-admonishment: I had to stop him or die.

  His arm went up, the wicked point of the hook poised to slam into my skull. I snatched at the dung on the floor and threw a handful of it into his face. He cried out, blinking to clear his eyes, and I rammed a foot into his stomach, throwing him back against the bars.

  Huffman shouted wordlessly, jus
t a ragged scream of fury. He slashed the hook one way, the razor the other, arms like a windmill. Blood from his punctured bicep spattered on my face. He swung again, and this time I dodged inside the hook and jammed the sole of my boot into his extended knee. The patella popped and Huffman staggered in pain. Then I drove my stiffened palm into his nose, smashing the cartilage. In the dim light I caught a flash of white and knew that his eyes were rolling up into his skull. But though semi-conscious he wasn't finished. Instinct made him slash at me again with the hook and I'd no recourse but throw out my right arm to avoid disembowelment. The metal bar of the hook slammed against my arm, but luckily it was below the curve. I pushed my numb arm against the bar, jamming it inside the inner curve of the hook, and rammed the hook tight up against Huffman's chest. My headbutt caught him directly in his already smashed nose even as I grappled with him for the razor. I wrapped my hand round his right fist.

  Finally I found voice.

  'This is for both sisters,' I said. 'You'll hurt neither of them again.'

  'I'm… better… than… you…'

  'No. You're not.'

  There was little strength in his damaged arm.

  It was easy enough to wrench his hand up and swipe it across his own throat.

  I slashed him so deeply that his throat opened like a second mouth. His trachea was exposed and gaping, his veins and arteries pulsed and jetted blood all over me. His eyes finished their roll upwards into his skull. Then he collapsed. My arm was still entangled in the hook and I felt it wrench away from me. I got a new hole in my jacket and a small nick in the meat of my forearm but I was happy enough at that.

  Huffman kicked and shuddered a few times, but I paid him no heed. He was dead, just residual shock animating him. I found my gun ten feet away, but it was clogged with animal dung from where it had slid across the floor. I wiped the gun on Huffman's shoulder, but I couldn't trust it to fire without jamming. I stuffed it in my waistband at the small of my back then bent for another weapon.

  Just as I did so, an almighty explosion rocked the slaughterhouse on its foundations. All around me the hanging chains rattled like a thousand snare drums.

  Larry Bolan was still out there and this wouldn't be finished until he was dead too.

  Chapter 51

  The ranch house and the building next to it were engulfed in flames. The third building along was smouldering. Inside was the wreckage of a helicopter and vehicles and there was fuel everywhere. Just as Larry Bolan reached for the dropped M16 the building went nuclear.

  Super-heated air blasted him, snatching at his clothing and spiky hair. He felt like he was on fire. But then the initial blast passed and he found that he was still standing: a little singed, but still alive. Smoke boiled all around him, invading his nostrils and lungs and making him cough. Then chunks of wood rained down, thumping to the earth like gargantuan hailstones. He avoided being smashed to pulp by some of the heavy beams that crashed down right beside him. Larry thought he could be blessed. Someone up there's watching over me, he thought. It couldn't be Trent: Trent had gone somewhere much lower down the celestial ladder.

  Blinded by the smoke, it didn't stop him reaching for the assault rifle a second time. He found the stock just where he remembered, then hefted it up into his hands. He'd never fired an assault rifle before, but how difficult could it be? Point and shoot, right?

  He also remembered where Rink and the black guy had been lying and he pulled on the trigger, spraying rounds at them. The gun bucked in his hands, rattling out rounds until the magazine was spent.

  Some explosions erupt outwards, causing a vacuum of displaced air. After the initial blast, the heat and smoke rush back in to fill the void, before mushrooming up into the sky. Larry felt the wind racing back towards the new implosion, the smoke following it like a thousand tattered banners caught in a slipstream. The air cleared surprisingly quickly, and showed him where he was shooting. It was where both men had been lying, but they weren't there.

  'Shit,' Larry growled.

  Rink was ten feet to his right, the black guy the same distance to his left. Both men had pulled out sidearms and were aiming directly at his head.

  'Fucking pussies,' Larry said to them. 'You're going to shoot me after all this, you fucking cowards?'

  'No,' Rink said. He nodded over Larry's shoulder. 'We're just keeping you busy till our buddy gets here.'

  Larry Bolan turned.

  Out of the smoke, covered almost head to foot in blood, walked Joe Hunter. His face was set in stone and his eyes were like slivers of ice. In his hand he held a huge butcher's hook.

  Some people would be terrified by the image but Larry only smiled.

  Chapter 52

  'You OK, Hunter?'

  'I'm fine, Rink.'

  'Whose is all the blood?' Harvey asked.

  'Huffman's.'

  'Hope he didn't have AIDS,' Rink said.

  I frowned.

  'You want me to drop this piece of shit now?' Rink asked, his gun on Larry Bolan.

  'No. We have something to settle.'

  'He killed my brother.' Larry dropped his assault rifle on the ground. He looked at Rink and Harvey, challenging them to disagree with him. 'I owe him.'

  'Looks like you just tried to kill my brothers. I owe you, too.'

  Larry lifted his hands to me, wiggled his fingers.

  I'd promised Larry Bolan his one on one with me, but I never promised Queensberry Rules. I lifted the hook and ran at him; it kind of evened up our reach. But I wasn't going to use it on him, not how Huffman had with me. I threw it at his head.

  Larry ducked and the hook sailed over the top of him. But that was all I needed.

  Before he'd straightened up again, I launched myself in the air and drove my knee directly into his face. Usually it would be insane sacrificing my stability to such a move, but when you're fighting a giant what else is there for it? My knee, with the full weight of my body behind it, slammed his jaws shut and rocked him back on his heels. I followed him, punching him in the throat and then whipping an instep into his crotch.

  Larry swung blindly at me and I dodged out then came back with another punch to his throat. It was like punching a leather drum. His backhand caught me across the chest and it was like I'd been swatted by King Kong. I staggered back, trying to catch my breath. Larry followed, hands reaching for me. He was limping slightly from the kick in the balls, but he was too full of fury to slow down.

  He threw a right at my chest, and I slipped it and drove my fist into his ribs. They felt mushy. Larry grunted in agony. Old wound, I guessed, but then he was coming at me with his own kick. His leg was as powerful as a bull's and if he got a good kick in my guts he'd probably have killed me. I avoided his boot by a fraction of a hair, then, while it was still sweeping upwards, I dropped the point of my elbow into the jumble of nerves on his outer thigh. The force of his kick almost parted my shoulder, but my elbow dug deep, and when he staggered away he was limping even more.

  'Son of a bitch,' he snarled, slapping at his thigh to get some life back in it.

  While he was still numb and ungainly I swarmed him. I threw a right hook into his middle, a left into his softened ribs. Then I trapped an elbow, striking with the other fist at the side of his neck. Lesser men could be dropped by a shot to the carotid sinus, but Larry was a solid wedge of meat. He threw a hand at me and entangled his fingers in my jacket, hauled me towards him. He was frothing at the mouth and I thought he was going to chew off my face. I headbutted him. Not once but three times in quick succession. With each whack of my forehead I saw stars, but it was much worse for him.

  But then Larry's strength became a factor. He got his arms round my back and lifted me in a bear hug. He squeezed, and though I tried not to I roared in agony. My ribs felt like they were in a car crusher, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before they'd cave in and lacerate my internal organs.

  'Hunter…'

  Rink's concerned shout came distantly to my ears and I kne
w my friend would be running in to help.

  'No, Rink,' I shouted. ' This asshole is mine! '

  Anything goes on a battlefield and this was about one of the most brutal I'd ever found myself on. I leaned in and clamped my teeth on to Larry Bolan's eyebrow. I bit down with all my might.

  Larry roared, throwing me away from him.

  I landed on my back in the dirt, feeling like I'd just been in a train wreck. Like last time we'd met. I could barely breathe, but then I spat out the chunk of Larry's brow and things got a little easier.

  'You dirty…' Larry had his right hand clamped over the gushing wound in his face.

  What did he expect? Did he want to shame me into defeat?

  I struggled on to my knees. Larry was coming again. He launched a kick into my guts and I rolled with it. It still felt like I'd been hit by a runaway train but I gained space from him. There was a smouldering beam of wood thrown here by the exploding shed and I flung myself over it. Larry stooped and grabbed it. It probably weighed more than I did, but he lifted it, heedless of the embers, and hurled it at me. I staggered backwards, followed by a billowing shower of sparks as it crashed down at my feet.

  Rink and Harvey were both shouting but their actual words were lost on me.

  'Do not shoot him!'

  But that wasn't what they were getting at. Our fight had taken us dangerously close to the roaring flames of the ranch and I was too caught up in the adrenalin rush to notice. By the looks of Larry Bolan he didn't care either. Blood poured from the wound in his eyebrow, but his eyes seethed beneath it. His mouth was clamped in a rictus. He charged me, his hands going for my throat.

  I ducked beneath his outstretched arms, sweeping them over my head with my forearms, gave him an elbow into his damaged ribs. He bent in pain and I clambered up and on to his back. I clamped my legs round his waist and one hand in his hair and struck repeatedly with the knife-edge of my free hand in the side of his neck. He began to weaken.