by Kevin Wright
Attached to that little silver billy goat head was a truck, a large one, moving quite rapidly. It jumped the curb at about fifty miles an hour and slammed into Beefrick. It nearly took his head off.
* * * *
Rolling once on the pavement, then springing to his feet and running, was Elliot. SWAT guys scrambled ahead of him, coursing down the street after the killer.
Sword in hand, Elliot blazed down the street, meters behind.
The thin man was fast, though, faster than Elliot, faster than the SWAT team chasing him, jockeying for shots.
As the man ran, he turned, and he fired. There were many targets. He couldn’t miss. He didn’t.
Rapid fire, men died on the street chasing that man.
Elliot gained.
* * * *
The Gurkha lay trapped. The front end of his Dodge Ram looked like Jaws had taken a huge crescent bite out of it. His windshield was one giant twisted mass of spider-webbed glass. He shoved it off him. The dashboard and steering column had wrapped around him nicely. Cars that hit moose have sustained less damage. Something warm trickled down his face.
He wasn’t sure if he was hurt. He wasn’t really sure where he was. His gun was gone. His kukri, mercifully, was at hand; he cut his seatbelt, took a deep breath. It hurt, and his legs, he found, were twisted in the wreck.
Goggle-eyed, head lolling back and forth, he noticed two ghouls sprawled on the ground next to an overturned baby carriage. They’d been hiding behind the fat one. Ghouls. If they had been human, they’d be dead, crushed by their titanic comrade as he rolled over them.
Though they would never be teen models, the two ghouls were very much alive, in an undead sense of the word. Then they, one a man, the other a woman, and the accident could only have improved her looks, made for his truck. The Gurkha squirmed.
Within his leg, bone grated on bone.
* * * *
Peter, huddled in the store, ducked as bullets shattered the window and ricocheted past. What the fuck do I do? Jesus Christ. I have a fucking steak knife! Twice he nearly stood and bolted out the alley door. Bullets ricocheted down the alley, too. There was nothing he could do. Nothing. The Padre told me to stay here. I should listen to him.
A SWAT guy bolted past the storefront and was thrown back in a torrent of bullets. Upon the ground the man lay, still moving, still awake, “Help, Medic!”
“Jesus Christ,” Peter said. I have to. He grabbed a package of tee-shirts from off a shelf and, one, two, three! He bolted out.
Ducking, running, Peter flung himself onto the yellow line dotting the middle of the street, next to the wounded man. “Where you hit?!”
Gunfire neared. He tore the man’s Kevlar vest open. His stomach was bleeding. He tore open the tee-shirt package and pressed down on the man’s stomach with it.
He didn’t notice the mass of men running towards him.
* * * *
Beefrick sat up, shook his head. It didn’t help. A few shots had penetrated his armor, silver. They burned inside, like Mexicans. Grimacing, he ripped a steaming chunk of metal from his skull and looked at it, the silver billy goat head! “Neat.” He smiled, stuffing it into his pocket, then looked at the steaming truck. It had knocked him far.
“Wow!”
A large portion of his face was torn off. He tried to stand, but his leg hurt, and it felt as though someone was stabbing him in the back.
“OOOF!”
There it went again.
Someone was stabbing him.
Beefrick rolled over and, “UHHNNF!” got to his feet. Like a baseball player dusts himself off after sliding into third base, Beefrick brushed away truck shrapnel that had lodged in his stomach and chest and damaged armor. Pieces were missing on his front and backside, as well as his helmet. “It’s ruined,” he pouted. “Mary’s gonna be mad.”
In one meaty lump of a hand still was one of his machine guns. He raised it.
“Uhhn!” The sharp pain in his back reminded him that someone was stabbing him, and so he turned and bared his crooked-rusted teeth. His eyes exploded with surprise.
“Winters.”
He lowered the machine gun at the meat in the neat gray suit. Beefrick throttled the trigger—
Detective Winters dove.
* * * *
Drool coursed down Slack-Jaw Mary’s chin as she scuttled like a cockroach onto the hood of the gray Dodge Ram. Pinprick pupils mad with hate and hunger locked on the meat entombed in metal. “Ith like thhhpam.” Her left arm and leg had been pulverized when Beefrick rolled over her. They hung limp like uncooked bacon and slapped on the hood of the truck as she pulled herself up. She grinned at the meat as she crawled near.
Frantic, it swung a knife at her as she tore the smashed windshield from her path and hurled it aside. Then she dislocated her lower jaw.
“Get off my hood, crazy bitch!” the meat shouted, swinging its knife around. “I just had it painted!”
Mary glanced back at Slazenger, who was grinning like the devil. “Out of the way, Mary.” He launched onto the hood. “Me first!”
“Go check Biwy,” Mary slurped. “Thith meat ith mine.” She turned back to the meat, and her jaw hung low, quivering with strands of drool. Her teeth were orange. Her nails were black and long. Sharp. Close.
* * * *
“Never shares.” Slazenger hopped off the steaming, buckled hood. There was still meat around, dangerous meat.
The carriage lay on its side by the building, still intact. “Built you well.” He was protected, right now. Between the building, the car Beefrick had flipped over, and the one that had run him down, Slazenger had cover on nearly all sides.
He slid over to the carriage.
A white shadow caught Slazenger’s eye an instant before an arc of white steel schluck!
* * * *
Direct pressure. That’s all Peter could do. With both hands, he pressed down on the man’s stomach.
“Ahhhhh!” the man screamed. He was bleeding, not profusely, but the bullet holes were in important places. The man closed his eyes.
“Hey! Dude! You awake? Wake Up!” Peter’s ears rang from the gunfire. The man didn’t respond. Peter checked for a carotid pulse, very weak, very fast.
Footsteps stomped close as Peter turned and was bowled over.
Stars exploded.
Rubbing an eye, Peter cleared his vision, looked up, and stared down the black barrel of a gun. Peter saw the man draw back the hammer. It was an old gun.
Antique?
The hammer dropped—
* * * *
Beefrick pulled the trigger and the night exploded. Chunga, chunga, chunga! Then it stopped. Stupidly, he looked down and shook the machine gun. “Huh?”
Detective Winters rolled to his feet again and unloaded twin FoeHammers directly into Beefrick’s fat frame. The titanic ghoul stumbled back as Detective Winters advanced, unloading point blank until both clicked empty.
Beefrick slammed back into the building.
Detective Winters pulled the second triggers on his guns; the 12-gauge shotgun shells below the main barrel discharged, exploding, tearing the fat ghoul’s face apart.
Smoke dissipated. Twin guns clattered to the ground as Detective Winters cast them aside and yanked a three-foot-long steel cord from inside his coat.
Beefrick sat up, gobs of face falling from his masticated skull.
“Out of bullets, little man?” sneered the fleshless skull, leaning forward to stand up. “UHHHNF!”
“No.” Detective Winters whipped the cord out and around the ghoul’s thick neck. He caught the other end.
Beefrick lurched up, the steel cord biting tight, Detective Winters sling-shotting into the air.
Like some mountain rappeler, Detective Winters hung for a moment in mid-air; then gravity and momentum took over, and he twisted around, falling, his knees slamming into the ghoul’s shoulders. His hat went flying.
He wrenched back, tearing on the pegs, kicking one foot int
o the back of the ghoul’s head, driving it down into his chest. Simultaneously he ripped the cord deep into the ghoul’s neck.
Back and forth he ripped on the pegs.
Beefrick’s head came off screaming.
* * * *
“Back!” The Gurkha stabbed and hacked with his kukris. “Off my hood! OFF!”
The she-ghoul lay sprawled over him, her jelly-like flesh and broken arm whipping like overcooked spaghetti.
Hunkering down, the Gurkha used the steering wheel and kukri for whatever pitiful cover they could afford. Orange teeth loomed over him, and black nails groped for his throat, grasped, and pulled, AND PULLED!
All of a sudden, the she-ghoul was ripped away down the hood from the Gurkha.
“Father, cut the arm!”
Behind, wrenching on the leech’s legs were Jethro, Mainlo, and the Padre. Her claw still wouldn’t open on his throat, though, and she stretched! Like a convict drawn but not yet quartered, she hung in the air, her black nails sunk into the Gurkha’s jugular, then—
The Gurkha swung his kukri. Shluck!
The she-ghoul was suddenly gone, dragged away down the hood.
The Gurkha pried the severed hand off his throat as his sons hacked and stabbed the she-ghoul, dismembering her.
Red lights in the distance flickered weakly, and sirens sounded from afar.
“You don’t appear comfortable, father.” Mainlo grinned, holding one arm across his chest at a hideous angle.
Jethro pulled a crowbar from the bed of his father’s truck and staggered over. He and his brother started tearing their father loose from the twisted steel, using their kukris as saws and pry bars.
The Padre’s attentions were drawn away, to an overturned baby carriage.
* * * *
Raymond Gurlek squeezed the trigger, and the gun discharged, boom, like it always did, but the boy did not die. A whisk of white steel flashed before him, and the bullet died with a ricochet.
In longer than he could remember, Raymond Gurlek had pulled the trigger, and someone had not died. Eyes opened wide with fear at the old man before him who could do with a sword what no man should be capable of.
He had deflected the bullet.
On purpose.
Again, it was slow motion, everything except Raymond and the old man. The boy scrambled out of the way, moving as though through jelly as the old man whipped his sword out in an arc-blur; then Raymond’s hand and gun were gone, and then his—
* * * *
The gun clattered on the wet street.
Peter peeped open an eye.
“Are you, are you okay, Peter?” Elliot was huffing hard. Mist poured from his nose and mouth as he leaned forward on his sword. The point sank into the stone curb. Steam evaporated from his glistening bald head as though on fire. “Peter?”
In the cold November night, red lights bounced off the brick walls of the dark buildings. Only dead echoes sounded. Peter reached out, and his fingers slid around the grip of the gun. It was cool.
* * * *
The Padre strained, “Uhhhg, must be steel, bullet-proof,” lifting the carriage back up onto its wheels. It was barely damaged. He doffed his hat and looked inside the carriage. “Mother of God, Peter. PETER!”
Within the black carriage lay a young babe, his skin the color of a dead azure moon. He was not breathing. Limp as a doll he lay, eyes glued shut, his tiny body lost within a diaper which seemed far too large. His translucent blue skin was a roadmap of vein and artery.
“PETER!” The Padre cast aside his sword. He grasped the child gently and supported his head in one hand, lifting him free.
The ambulances, sirens wailing, seemed leagues away.
* * * *
Running, Peter was running again, sprinting down Marsh street. He could see the Padre ahead, hollering. He was holding something. By the Padre’s side slumped the Gurkha, supported on either side by his sons.
Through the obstacle corpse of twisted black arms and legs and bodies Peter ran. It was not far.
The Padre turned. In his arms was a baby.
* * * *
The baby started to move, slowly. Its arms and legs, before limp, lifeless, now twitched. Crescent shines appeared between its eyelids. Its arms started to gather strength. Tiny hands, miniscule nails, began to flex and grasp. The baby wriggled its arms, reaching down into his diaper with both hands. He yawned a great big yawn.
“He must be cold.” Jethro tore off his flannel shirt and handed it to the Padre.
The Padre took the flannel shirt and turned back to the baby in his arms. “Good Lord—” His eyes burst as two little guns went off in his face.
“Eat that, ya pedophile!” Billy Rubin screamed, his little guns blazing.
The priest fell back, and Billy Rubin, a miniature gun in each hand, fell with him, slapping on the cold pavement.
He was on his feet quick, though, and shooting.
The other men dove behind their truck wreck as tiny bullets sprayed.
“Die motherfuckers!” the baby screamed.
* * * *
Peter didn’t stop. He didn’t take cover. He just ran.
The baby, intent as it was upon its miniature massacre, did not see him. Like some tiny Doc Holliday, it took tentative steps forward, guns blazing until, whump, Peter kicked it at a full out sprint.
It soared in the air.
End over end.
And crunched into the building.
The baby’s guns clattered to the sidewalk an instant before it did.
Chapter 21.
EVERYTHING WAS GRAY. The drizzle was gray. The beat-up, shot-up, run-down buildings rising up all around were gray, as was the smoke that poured from them. The bodies of the men, cool and lifeless, were gray. Detective Winters’s suit, torn up, rumpled, and stained, was gray. Detective Winters’s soul was gray, too, though it was in worse condition than his suit.
He surveyed the carnage as EMT’s and paramedics hustled to and fro, triaging dead men, searching for viable patients, in vain.
Eight men only had been taken by ambulance to Colton Falls General Hospital. Detective Winters glanced at his watch; three were dead by now. Picking amongst the fallen, he had done what he could for the few living he could find, directing the EMT’s and paramedics to them.
“Sir? Sir? Detective Winters, the Chief would like to have a word with you,” an officer said. “He’s in car eighteen. Over there.”
“No, thank you … so many?”
“Excuse me, Detective?” the officer said. “I couldn’t hear you, sir. Detective, what’d you say?”
“I said twenty-five men had their brains blown out the back of their skulls, sergeant. The charnel god feasts well tonight.” Detective Winters stared off into the gray rain. “One might survive, thanks to a bystander. Twenty-five men dead.”
“Good men,” the sergeant added, looking down.
“Good men, you say?” Detective Winters fixed him with blue eyes.
“Well, yes, Detective, of course they were.”
“They were psychopaths.” Detective Winters frowned. “Psychopaths who reveled in death and destruction. Men who fed off carnage. Begged, no, wished, yearned for awful things to happen. Crossed their fingers each night they punched in, praying to Ares. Praying to use their guns. So they could fight. So they could blow things up. Turn their destructive urges to something sanctioned. To something good. So they could invite harm upon others. Their prayers were answered tonight, sergeant.”
The sergeant shifted.
Detective Winters just stared as the EMT’s covered the bodies with white sheets, and detectives began scuttling about, circling shell casings and body parts and bodies. “They fought, though.” Detective Winters nodded. “They chose a side, and they fought for it. The same side I chose. And I am not a good man. I have never been a good man, sergeant. After tonight, I have no hopes ever of being a good man.”
The sergeant just stood there listening, silent, melting away in the
rain.
“Winters!” a voice screamed. It was the Chief, and he hustled over, a cup of coffee in one hand and umbrella in the other.
Detective Winters didn’t blink.
“I want a fucking word with you, mister.” The Chief jabbed a finger into Detective Winters’s chest. “What the fuck happened?! How many? How many dead? You’re fired! Pack your shit. And what’s this I hear about the Padre and these other people involved? Civilians?”
Detective Winters still did not blink. “The Padre is dead. My report will be on your desk in the morning.” He glared down at the Chief’s finger still in his chest.
The Chief pulled it away.
“I want it now,” the Chief said. “You catch the guy?”
Detective Winters withdrew a wallet from his pocket and flipped it open. “Gurlek, Raymond. White. Male. Age, undetermined, around twenty to forty-five by the looks of him. All he had on him was a library card and a few bills. Forensics is on it. They’ll have a report in a few hours.”
“Well, is it him? You’re a fucking sniffer, right?” the Chief whispered. “Is it him?”
Detective Winters nodded, water spilling from the brim of his hat. “Yes.”
“Well, where is the son of a bitch?” the Chief asked. “I want to see him with my own fucking eyes.” His eyes lit up for a second, and he flipped open a cell phone and pressed a button. “Ronnie!” he yelled into the phone, “grab a reporter from behind the lines and have him meet me by the body. The serial killer’s! No, wait! Scratch that. No one gets through. No one! Press conference at the station in twenty minutes, tell them. And get me Alagiery!” He flipped his phone shut. “Now where the hell is this guy, Winters?”
Detective Winters pointed down the street. “Over there, and over there, and a little over there, too.”
Chapter 22.
ELLIOT SPEARS TOOK A DEEP, dark pull off the cigarette. Eyes closed, he held it for a second and then exhaled slowly. The smoke twisted and turned like a dragon clawing its way up into the night sky. They stood atop the Immortal Jade Palace, and it was still late night. So late it was practically morning. Elliot took another pull from the cigarette, held it, and let it go, too. He flicked the cigarette off the roof, watching as the red ember tumbled to the ground below, sizzling in a puddle.