Hellifax (40 page)

Then the other windshield crinkled as two rounds went through it, puncturing the glass in lacy white blooms. Fist looked beyond the range of the headlights to the dark buildings farther down the street.

A fifth shot made him duck. The other men dropped into crouches, trying to bunch themselves up into as small a target as possible. Zombies still advanced on the line, and some of the men swung their weapons at the dead things’ legs, chopping them down to the ground.

Someone’s trying to get their buddies back
, Fist realized. He stormed to the nearest van and slapped the door, making it shudder.

“Get out of here!” he roared.

One of his men, a large grunt actually wearing Viking horns, emerged from the back and jumped into the driver’s seat. He started the engine and stomped on the gas. The van’s wheels spun on the icy roads for a few seconds, and the engine bloomed before the tires finally caught traction. The vehicle blasted away, speeding from the gunfire. Fist marched toward the second van and yanked open the door. The driver was there, staring at the ceiling with a spurting hole in his hockey vest. A second shredded wound in his neck dribbled blood over his clothes and seat.

Fist ducked and turned, just in time to hear the shot and see another of his men go down, his head sheared from his shoulders. The body landed at an angle from the head, the limbs shivering as if electrified.

A zombie loomed over the crouching Pell, but the big Albertan gripped the thing’s knees and manhandled it into the street. Two brutal elbow strikes broke open its skull, spilling a rotten cauliflower pulp. There were no more zombies seeking to make meals of the Norsemen.

There was only the shooter.

“Sniper!” Fist roared, scanning the nearby buildings. “Pell!”

A head jerked up.

“Stay with the van, Herman!”

A riot helmet came into sight.

“With him! Everyone else, with me. Zigzag!”

Fist sprang forward, carrying a heavy maul and making himself as difficult a target as possible. Three other men got to their feet and followed. Their howls were low at first, gradually becoming undulating shrieks of glee.

A zombie wearing the body armor of a soldier appeared out of the gloom and confronted Fist. He swung his maul and half-tore off the head, killing it with one blow. Fist barrelled over it, whooping war cries meant to petrify the shooter, cause him to make mistakes—or make him run.

Either way, Fist and his boys would catch up with the one who had fired upon them. They’d hunt the shooter down until they caught him. Fist knew from past victims how long they could keep a person alive, and they’d gotten exceptionally well-versed in making those final moments as mind-blowingly torturous as possible.

When the four shadows charged down the street, punctuating their displeasure with a graphic beheading of one of the Philistines, Tenner drew back from the scope and chewed thoughtfully on his inner cheek. He watched the four men race down the icy roadway, pounding their way toward the building he was in, screaming as if their asses were on fire. That was a good guess on their part. Perhaps it was the angle of the shot that gave his position away? In any case, they were coming, and they sounded pissed, if not a little ridiculous.

The shouting was intended to frighten him, to get him off his game. It reminded him of a playground story he’d once heard, of a spider who had spun a web large enough to catch a cow. When the animal stepped into the sticky strands, the spider stuck its head out of its hiding hole, blinked, and instead of staying away from the larger animal, exclaimed “Fuck
yeah!
”

Tenner leisurely withdrew the rifle from the window. He reached to his death vest and ripped open one of the Velcro strips holding a grenade in place. With a spider’s grace, his fingers wrapped around the egg-shaped explosive. There were only four men charging. He watched as, halfway to the building, their screams died away to loud huffing.

Just like dogs.

Dogs
, Tenner thought, tugging on the grenade. It came free and left its pin and ring rattling against his vest.

Fuck yeah,
he thought and tossed the live grenade out the window.

Two seconds later, the resulting explosion lit up the night and rocked the building’s foundation.

The blast screwed up Scott’s vision and prompted both him and Amy to drop to the floor. He took great gulping breaths, trying to calm his shaken nerves. Only seconds before, four howlers had been storming down the street, their vicious wailing petering out into the occasional grunt, becoming quiet and serious as they reached the parking lot of the dormitory.

Then…
boom
.

Scott thought he saw a fragment of something being flung backward into the night, lit up against something as fiery as the sun. A split second later, Amy was pulling him down.

“What the fuck was that?” she hissed in his ear.

“I think…” Scott shook his head to clear it. “I think it was a mine or some shit.”

“Couldn’t have been a mine,” Amy retorted, getting to her hands and knees and pushing her back against a wall. “More like a rocket or something.”

“A rocket? Where the hell he get something like that?”

“Same place he got the gun to snipe those guys out there.” Amy made a distasteful face. “Bastard must’ve found some weapons somewhere.”

“I think so,” Scott agreed. He crawled toward the open door and looked out as Amy peered out a window. Smoke wafted from the direction of the building, but all else was quiet.

“Can’t see shit,” Amy said. “But the residence is still standing.”

Screams split the night, causing Scott to tense up. Tenner hadn’t gotten all of his attackers. The smoke began clearing, and the base of the building materialized out of the gloom. Scott couldn’t see anyone over there.

“Van’s still there,” Amy informed him.

She was right. One of the vehicles was right in the middle of the street, its headlights still blazing. That didn’t seem particularly smart to Scott. Running into a bomb wasn’t especially bright either, but who could’ve known that Tenner had gotten his hands on explosives?

“We should take the van,” Amy said, meeting his eyes.

“And leave?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t leave, Amy. Not with him still out there.”

“Vick and Buckle are in trouble.”

“Do you know where they’ve gone with them?”

“No, but I saw two of those bastards out there getting into the van. You’ve got the gun. We can make them talk.”

“And then?”

“We go,” Amy said simply.

Scott exhaled. “I’m right with you until that last part. We can meet up at the house, if anything.”

Amy hesitated for a moment, thinking things over, her face dark. “All right. We go now.”

She got to her feet and readied her tonfas. Scott climbed to his and readied his gun.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Amy went to the door, stayed low, and slipped outside. Scott followed her, crouching and staying in the shadows of the apartments as they crept toward the van.

The sensation of swaying coaxed Buckle back to consciousness. He’d been in a few good fistfights in his career as a cop, but never had he been sucker punched. There was always the courtship, when the guys who wanted to fight would wave their fists in his face seconds before actually committing to a swing—a swing with a lot of pent-up, nervous energy behind it. That first punch was usually a dandy. There had been no pent-up nervousness with the guy that had bopped him, however. No, sir. There was only long experience there. Buckle wanted another shot at the fucker.

But first…

His shoulders and wrists ached. They had stripped him of his helmet, mask, and cloth bandage. He cracked open an eye and slowly gazed upward. His hands were handcuffed, and he appeared to be hanging from a meat hook fastened to a thick metal strut. His legs dragged below and bent behind him, grazing the wall, as if he were in a painful prayer. Darkness bathed the interior of the van. There were two men up front, both concentrating on driving. One of them wore a helmet with thick horns; the other had removed his, revealing a dark bulb of semi-spiked hair. A third man sat on a sofa seat parked against the opposite wall, his helmet turned, peering at the drivers. Things shook and jangled, chains and meat hooks. The smell of rancid blood and burnt flesh forced Buckle to wrinkle his face, and his broken nose reminded him
not
to do that again.

He moaned before he could stop himself, wincing immediately after.

“He’s awake,” the guy sitting on the sofa declared. One of the drivers said something in a language that reminded Buckle of Klingons, but that couldn’t be right––it wasn’t even a real language, for Christ’s sake.

Laughter from the front. Buckle couldn’t see anything beyond the drivers, but he could see Vick’s dark form sprawled out near the back door.

The guy on the sofa stood, placed a hand on pipes that ran the length of the van’s ceiling, and peered into Buckle’s battered face. He wore a face mask, the visor blackened with paint; he had etched a smile with serrated teeth on the surface. The man’s eyes were visible, although Buckle wished he couldn’t see them. They scrunched up at the corners in evil mirth, as if the brute was grinning behind the visor. Buckle didn’t like that idea. He and other cops would talk about human nature at down times, and they agreed that if there were no laws, no consequences, and no peace officers, some individuals would run rampant through the streets and do things purely on whim—until someone with balls stopped them. The
thing
before him appeared tickled to have a live subject, and it didn’t seem inhibited by morals. Dread coursed through Buckle. This brute was exactly what he and his cop buddies had imagined so very long ago. A prime specimen of chaos, to be avoided and feared, and here he was, standing right in front of Buckle, who was in no condition to do anything about it.

Things, the Newfoundlander suspected, were about to get very bad.

“Gonna tenderize ya,” a voice hissed eagerly from the grinning maw. Much to Buckle’s dismay, the grinner held up a fist wearing metal knuckles. They weren’t spiked, which made him thankful for all of a second. Almost carefully, the man undid the clasps fastening Buckle’s body armor to his body. Grinner couldn’t remove it entirely, as that would require unhooking him, but he loosened the armor enough so he could peel the plates back to expose his stomach and ribs.

“This,” the happy face declared, “is gonna hurt. Might even kill you. Not that I give a shit.”

The first punch crushed a rib and robbed Buckle of breath. Pain made him squeeze his eyes shut and he gasped, each expansion of his ribs lighting up his nerve endings as if they were being held to a flame. He swung from the hook and got his feet underneath him.

Grinner saw the attempt to stand and didn’t like it.

He held on to the pipes overhead and stomped on Buckle’s left ankle, shattering the joint. Buckle shrieked, swayed from the hooks, and blacked out.

The punches brought him back.

The punisher took his time while the van moved, regaining his balance just before unleashing blows that snapped out from the shoulder and pistoned into Buckle’s body, the pain increased tenfold by the metal knuckles. One punch to the face and Buckle forgot about the screaming sirens in his mashed ankle. A flurry of strikes, some catching on Kevlar, ripped into his hanging mass and rocked him like a slab of beef, bouncing him off the wall and placing even more tension on his wrists. A hand gripped the Newfoundlander’s chin, squeezed, and crunched an elbow into it. Teeth flew. Another elbow, and Buckle’s jaw snapped with a crack. Grinner studied him for a moment, eyes narrowed above the cannibalistic smile. He rammed an open palm into Buckle’s nose. Not happy with the lack of sound, Grinner squished Buckle’s nose to the left and right, as if working a knob on an old radio, before pushing his head back until he was looking at the ceiling.

Buckle swooned on the edge of consciousness when a hard hand gripped his chin. The contact made him burp out a little cry of agony.

“Don’t you pass out on me, you little shit,” Grinner warned. “You pass out on me and I’ll hurt you
bad
. You
understand?
I’ll fuck you up so bad not even God above will want to lay on hands. And the Devil himself will send you back here. So don’t pass out, hear me?”

Buckle felt the fat pad of a finger on his right eye.

“You ever have a thumb in your eye?” Grinner asked softly. “Ever have one just go right on in there? Huh? Oh, you can scrunch up your face and all, but if…”

Oh, Jesus.
Buckle could feel the thumb start to press.

“If I push hard enough,” Grinner went on, “it’s… going…
in
.”

The pressure increased. Motes of light penetrated his personal darkness, and Buckle squealed. The van bumped over something, jostling Grinner for a moment and causing him to remove his thumb, come back, and adjust his grip.

“I had this one guy,” Grinner continued on conversationally, “hanging from a post. Got mouthy with me. After I stuck one thumb in his head, well, that
really
got him going. Wouldn’t shut up. Not even after I shook his head around like a bowling ball. That was something to see. I’m not good at much…”

That statement was emphasized by more pressure on Buckle’s eye. He tried to twist away, but another hand clamped on his face, holding him in a vise, and a second thumb wormed its way around his other eye, probing.

“Not good at much at all, really,” the voice went on.

Buckle tried to turn his head, to hide it in his arms overhead, but the hands held him fast.

“But if there’s
one
thing I’m getting a reputation for, it’s putting a hurt on people. Just… fucking them up. Y’know what I mean? Don’t care what it is, really. Blinding them, cutting them, mashing their balls. S’all fun.”

Grinner’s breath expelled as if a real smile matched the mirth projected on his visor.

Then the thumbs dug in.

“You feel that?” the voice asked. Buckle did. His torturer was in position and had a good grip. Playtime was coming to an end. He felt the jagged ends of chewed nails grind into his scrunched up eyes, causing him to mew involuntarily, a sound he’d never made in his life.