Hellifax (43 page)

“Missed, you little prick,” a voice called.

Tenner smiled wanly. “I’d say you were just lucky.”

“Lucky?” A pause. “I’ll show you lucky, when I’m ripping your balls out instead of your throat.”

Tenner’s expression slackened at that.

“Gonna cut you up. Eat your heart.”

Another interesting threat. “Really? Well, I’ll give you five seconds to make your move.”

Through the scope, Tenner watched as an arm reached out and grabbed the leg of his first victim. It violently hauled the dead body into the nearby room, disappearing before Tenner could draw a bead on it.

Then he heard laughter. The man was laughing?

That made Tenner smile. He liked a victim with a sense of humor.

The noise of wood being shattered made him cock his brow.

Fist hauled Shipp’s bleeding carcass into the room and grunted as he inspected the weapon’s handiwork—an automatic of some sort, and a prize if he could get his hands on it. That was something he was going to work on, and his old buddy Shipp was going to help him. Fist stood, flung his maul to the floor, and inspected the room. There was a closet with open doors and these he attacked savagely, slamming them shut and putting a boot through one. He kicked one door down, ripped at the shards, and pulled them from the frame with furious energy. There was one man at the end of the hall, one very confident man, but he was about to find out what it was like to fuck around with Fist. He got his hands on Shipp’s sawed-off shotgun, so common amongst the Norsemen, and rooted through the dead man’s pockets, searching for extra shells.

Shoot at me
, Fist fumed, baring his teeth.
No one shoots at me.

He manhandled Shipp’s corpse to its feet and pushed him against the wall, smelling his blood. Ol’ Shipp was going to help him out once more. Ol’ Shipp was going to help him get his paws on Confident Man with the gun and wring his goddamn neck.

“You ready, man?” Fist bellowed, struggling with Shipp’s body.

“Ready, fucktard,” the voice floated back.

Fucktard.
Fist fumed and snarled. He was going to enjoy flaying this man.

He lifted Shipp so that his still-armored corpse faced away from him, the side with the bleeding holes facing out. He noted the plates on Shipp’s back were fine. Fist counted on his own body armor to stop anything getting by the fleshy barrier. It seemed like a good idea––it worked in the movies.

Whirling around the corner, Fist and his human shield emerged into the corridor and thundered down its length.

A howl of fury and murderous intent accompanied by the pounding of heavy boots and a flopping shape charged Tenner’s position. The rushing apparition startled him for all of two seconds, before he shook his head and fired. Tracers lashed into the thing coming at him, some audibly pinging off armor plates, but still it charged. Tenner kept firing, his forehead knotting in concerned concentration, hitting the torso dead center. The roar grew louder. The heavy stomping made the floor tremble. Tenner shifted targets and shot at the thing’s legs, sending tracers into shins and hearing the crack of hard plastic. The mass faltered, stumbling, but still it came.

Tenner rose to one knee and unleashed the full fury of the weapon into the multi-limbed berserker barreling down on him. The tracers blasted into the mass until the magazine clicked dry.

Then it was on him.

Fist felt the bullets rip into his lower legs. One or two might’ve shattered a few ribs as well. Whatever the bastard was firing pelted him good and lit him up like a night of fireworks. He felt stings on his forearms where bullets blew through the twisted wreck of Shipp’s body and grazed him. Fist went down. Before Shipp’s legs struck the floor, Fist heaved him ahead and yelled. The body fell on what looked to be a soldier, who struggled to his knees in the doorway, but Shipp landed heavily and tangled up his assault rifle. Fist fell forward, the pain of his lower legs momentarily overridden by the furious eagerness of finally getting his hands on his foe.

The soldier tried to aim the rifle, but Fist slammed his mallet of a hand into the man’s face, knocking him backward. The Norseman yanked his foe’s helmet down, blinding him. The soldier punched, hitting Fist’s cheek with substantial force, but rage diluted the blow. Fist clawed his way over Shipp’s frame and jabbed an elbow into his foe’s head, then another, which heralded a relentless flurry of heavy strikes. Fist snarled as he drummed punishing elbows into his target. Some shots hit flesh and bone; some connected with the helmet. The soldier released the rifle and a hand snaked to his side. Fist paid it no heed, quite happy to pummel the man’s head, seeking to break it open.

Then something plunged into his guts twice, fast and hard. It retracted and went into him again, this time sawing upward. Fist felt his guts sizzle in agony. He slammed his elbow into the helmet again, bouncing the head off the floor,
but the knife was still in his midsection
. His strength waned. Fist felt that hot lick of steel disemboweling him, and he pushed the soldier away in reflex as he tried to back off the man like a fat crab.

But the soldier reached out and held on to him.

“Oh, no,” seethed a hard voice. “You said you were gonna cut me up. Said you were gonna eat my heart.”

The knife punched into Fist again, and the room spun. He needed to get off the soldier, but his armored foe reached out with his arms, one of which ended in a knife, and embraced him.

“Gonna eat my heart, huh? Gonna eat
my
heart?” Fist glimpsed a white smile, then cruel eyes that flashed red. The knife plunged into him once more, a length of searing light that cut into his arms to the bone.

Fist’s breath left him.

The soldier punched his face cage and, with a mighty effort, heaved him off and got out from under the Norseman. Fist flailed an arm at his opponent’s head, but it was caught and bent backward. It snapped with a crack, like hard candy.

More cuts with the knife, taking more of Fist’s strength. Hands pulled off his armor plating. The soldier on him was no longer a man, but a spider. Fist bucked one last time and threw it off balance, sat up, and threw a punch to the creature’s midsection. His knuckles slammed into armor plates. He twisted, throwing the other off-balance. Fist got to his knees, bleeding, adrenaline surging. The spider screamed. Fist roared back and cracked a knee into its head, whipping the skull back and flinging the body against a wall. Fist thundered forward, bloody spittle spewing from his lips. He stomped, laying a boot into the wood where the spider’s face had been only a split second earlier.

Then it was on him again in a scurry, punching and slicing into his guts and Fist didn’t have the energy to fight it. It bore him backward, and they both fell to the floor. A quick scramble, then a pair of knees pinned the Norseman’s shoulders. Fingers ripped away his face cage. A long knife appeared above him and descended slowly. The meager light in the room made the steel appear very cold.

“Gonna cut me, hm?” the spider croaked. Its eyes, like that of man, looked crazier than Fist’s .

The Norseman felt the knife prick the soft part of his throat, right underneath his chin.

Then the heavy thrust, straight to the brain, and the sound of his own dying gurgle echoing in his ears.

Scott headed for the door in the parking lot underneath the dormitory building and stopped in his tracks. Memories of that ghost thing went through his head. He decided to enter the building through the hole in the foundation he’d seen seconds earlier. He started climbing the mass of debris and brick toward the gap.

A blinding wash of headlights made him lift a hand to shield his eyes. Amy drove up in the van. She stopped the machine and jumped out, a shotgun in her hand.

“You forgot this,” she said and held out the weapon. It was his own.

“I had this,” he said, indicating the bat. “But I’ll take that. You heading out, then?”

“No. I’ll hold off on searching for the boys a few minutes more. Bringing you along would be smarter. Extra manpower.”

“Oh. Well.” Scott looked at the jagged hole granting access to the lower room. “Better get going, then. Here, put this in my backpack,” he said, handing her the bat.

When he turned, rats flooded the road beyond, still flowing toward the smell of blood and sending shivers through him. If Tenner was in there, they’d have to be fast.

He got moving over the crinkling pile of bricks and wood. Amy followed him, bumping into more debris and causing it to tumble.

“I heard gunfire earlier,” Scott said, lifting the shotgun to his shoulder and peering ahead. “Inside.”

Amy said nothing, so he continued on, glancing back at times to see if she was still behind him. She had her tonfas out and crouched, waiting for him to keep walking. Having her there was a huge relief. Time and time again she had proved herself to be an unflinching rock.

They shuffled over the debris and found a hallway and nearby stairwell. Scott started up the stairs, holding his shotgun before him even though he couldn’t see a thing. He kept his shoulder to the wall, and his Nomex rasped as he rounded corners and proceeded up the stairs. Amy placed her hand on his back and followed. They went up three floors, passing two closed doors and coming to one that was wide open. It wasn’t the door that caught his attention at first, although he saw the lump of something wedged underneath it to keep it in place. Pale light illuminated white and black tiling.

It also revealed a head. And boots.

Then the smell hit him.

Sticking out of the room were two bodies. Scott placed his back to the wall and took a breath. He whirled into the opening and discovered the dead men stretched far into the room. Suddenly fearful of his back, he turned around and looked down the hallway. Sensing the coast was clear and not hearing or seeing anything, he turned back to the corpse. Amy knelt beside them both, studying in silence. She looked at him in the limited light and held a spiked tonfa near her throat. She swished the weapon grimly underneath it, and Scott got the meaning. One man had been cut up and left with a knife in his head. A pool of blood as black as tar surrounded him, while the other was shredded by gunfire. Both were van warriors.

“Christ almighty,” Scott muttered. The black tiling was really blood, and he realized he’d been stepping in it. He didn’t like the idea of leaving bloody tracks. Memories of Teddy and Lea flashed through his head, and he knew then that if he ever had to kill a person, it was going to be the psycho he was after.

He eased around Amy and studied the floor, and his heart raced.

There, heading into the stairwell, were a set of boot tracks.

“Amy,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Look.”

They studied the blood, seeing where it hit the stairs and went up, fading into black. Scott took the lead, shotgun first, and Amy followed. They kept in contact with the wall as they climbed the stairs. At the top, a wide ray of moonlight split the darkness like a silver beacon. They paused at a wide landing. Scott pointed to the heavy metal door, which stood wide open.

“Pedway,” Scott whispered, gesturing ahead with his shotgun. Fresh air hit their faces. A long stretch of tiling, concrete, and steel beams connected the dormitory with another building almost thirty meters away. Amy stepped onto the pedway, tonfas at her side, and stared up at the moon sitting low in the night sky. The glass had been smashed out in places, leaving shards of broken panes or entire sections missing, from the base of the pedway all the way to its roof. Vertical bars ran the length of the crossing, like a ladder whose rungs were spaced too far apart. Amy walked forward, gazing at a closed door, and Scott moved behind her. It was a four-story drop, but what really caught his attention were the rats milling about below, a thick knobby carpet surging through the buildings.

“Shit,” Amy whispered, studying the mass.

“We can still get back. Or even wait them out. That door is metal.”

“I’m not thinking about that,” Amy informed him. “I’m thinking about Vick and Donny.”

That made Scott peer at the shifting surface below with growing worry. A second later, he studied the floor and moved toward the other building.

“Where are you going?” Amy asked.

“Tracks go that way,” Scott answered and started following them.

Wrestling with the dead bastard underneath him had been like wrangling with an angry elephant, but Tenner gutted him all the same. He got up from the wreck of a man at his feet and gazed around the room. He couldn’t see his rifle. The van man had slapped it from his grip. A quick search revealed nothing and, with amazed horror, Tenner looked at the window. It couldn’t have gone out there, could it? Tenner leaned out studied the ground. The rats were massed below, and the rifle was nowhere to be seen. Worse, the van was also missing. With a groan, Tenner pulled the helmet from his head, as well as the mask underneath, and tossed both onto the floor. There was no way he was going to try and get them back on. With his good hand, he felt the rubble of his broken nose and grimaced. His cheeks blared out in pain as well, shifting like shattered clay. Every breath felt like red embers flaring in his chest. Feeling the inside of his mouth with his tongue, he realized the savage had destroyed his teeth. His front ones were broken, leaving only shards of enamel. Others were gone completely, and more shifted loosely in his gums. That was on top of what felt like most of his facial bones being smashed. Blood seeped into his right eye, blinding him until he wiped it away.

He knew he looked like shit.

“But I look better than you, shit-fucker,” Tenner whispered to the dead man at his feet, and even
that
hurt.

He growled in pain and frustration. He had to get out of here, but where? The screams from below suggested the Philistines were nearby. Tenner looked at the door and stepped into the corridor. The stairwell on the left beckoned, and he felt pulled in that direction for reasons unknown. Cradling his broken wrist, he allowed it to simply drop and hang at his side. For a moment, dizziness gripped his senses, as well as an overbearing feeling of unwellness. He leaned against the wall, breathing deeply, suffering, then grinning.