Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Monkey balls,” he said over and over again.

  There was nowhere for him to go. If he stayed where he was, the Fixers would find him in seconds. If he ran, he’d be exposed, because the next good cover was at least thirty yards away across the firing range. The irony of that was not lost on him.

  His only option, then, was to wait and, in the last second before they cut him down, try to use the EMP bomb to stop the fighting machine.

  “Hairy monkey balls,” he muttered and touched his chest over his heart, seeing the face of his husband and their little girl. Aching that he would never see them again. Then he set his jaw, took the Lightning Bug in his hand, put his thumb on the switch, and waited for the end.

  “Vaffanculo!” he yelled as he began to rise up.

  But then the wall of trees to the left of the approaching K-110 burst apart as another fighting machine slammed its way onto the road, firing grenade after grenade into the Fixers. The men in body armor were hurled through the air like straw in a stiff breeze, and the K-110 staggered and crashed onto its side.

  Andrea stared in shock, and then he saw the words Hot Mama painted in big red letters on the side of the cowling.

  Top Sims had joined the fight.

  CHAPTER 169

  EAST TEXAS CONVENTION CENTER

  LABORDE, TEXAS

  Violin crushed me with a quick, fierce hug.

  “Thank the goddess you’re alive, Joseph.”

  “Working on it,” I said. “Thank whoever that you’re all here. This is a shit storm.”

  “How can we help?” asked Toys.

  I quickly explained the situation. Toys and Violin nodded; Harry looked confused and a bit scared, but he gave a nod, too. They all had standard handguns as well as Snelligs.

  “I need a dart gun,” I said, and Violin gave me hers. “Thanks. Look, you three do what you can out here.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Violin.

  “After Santoro.”

  Toys caught my eye for a moment, perhaps searching to see if I was alone inside my head. And although there was no warmth or kindness there, he gave me a nod. One fighter to another.

  “Try not to kill anyone who’s not a Fixer,” I said.

  “What about the militiamen?” asked Toys.

  “Feel free to dent them, but the courts can sort them out. The Fixers are the true threat. You can kill every last one of those pricks.”

  “Count on it,” said Toys.

  “As for you, Joseph,” said Violin, “feel free to kill that evil little man.”

  I stole Toys’s line. “Oh, you can definitely count on that.”

  We split up, and I ran for the dais once more. Some of the Fixers who’d chased me back came at me, but I put them down. When I reached the doors to the back, I had the dart gun in one hand and my knife in the other. The Darkness was welling up inside me, and I wondered if it wasn’t time to let it hold sway over everything else that happened.

  CHAPTER 170

  THE PLAYROOM

  UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

  NEAR VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

  Kuga was at his desk with three laptops open, a cell phone tucked between shoulder and ear, and several maps laid out on the top of his desk. Things were happening, but the timetable was screwed up. The driver of one of the transport trucks was jabbering about a hit at the Pavilion. HK reported in that the venue for Going Viral was being emptied and her team of K-110s were not in position for the hit. She said that she thought someone was ghosting through her computer. Halfway through that call, her line went dead.

  But according to the breaking news on TV, the G-55 thing was exploding exactly as planned. And that was the big get. No matter how many of the governors they killed, racial and political tensions in the States were going to skyrocket, taking sales with them. The loss of the Pavilion—if it indeed fell—and the failure at the concert venue were nothing compared to that. Not merely because he’d sell a lot of guns in America for the next dozen years but because it was a model for domestic strikes with limited boots on the ground and limited liability. There were at least thirty-seven client countries whose political leaders would be watching the same news.

  He looked up in surprise as the door to his study opened and Mr. Sunday walked in.

  “What are you doing here?” said Kuga. “We didn’t have a meeting scheduled.”

  “No,” said Sunday, closing the door behind him. “This is a bit of a surprise call.”

  “Yeah, well, go make yourself a drink or something. I’m kind of in the middle of this right now.”

  Sunday walked over to the desk and, smiling like a crocodile, reached out and plucked the phone from Kuga’s hand.

  Kuga blinked in frank astonishment. “Hey!”

  Sunday dropped the phone to the floor and stepped on it.

  “What the hell are you doing?” demanded Kuga.

  “Oh, just making sure you’re paying attention, Harcourt.”

  “I told you before, don’t ever call me that. Harcourt Bolton is dead.”

  “No,” said Sunday, “not yet.”

  That froze the moment.

  “What … the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Sunday used his forefinger to close the lids of the laptops—one, two, three.

  If it had been anyone else, Kuga would have gotten up and comprehensively kicked their ass. Maybe to the point of needing someone to dispose of a body. But this was Sunday.

  This was him.

  And so, he sat very still.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Oh,” said Sunday, “everything.”

  “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’m delighted that you followed my advice about delegating so much of the organization to talented department heads. That’s wise of you, but really, it’s very convenient for me. After all, most of our customers—and really the world at large—see you not as a person but a brand. Kind of like Colonel Sanders. At the end of the day, does it really matter who wears the white suit and string necktie?”

  Kuga slipped his foot over to the alert button on the floor and pressed it. He said, “You may be scary as hell, Sunday, but you’d better not be saying what it sounds like you’re saying.”

  “I’m delighted that you’re clever enough to understand the inference. Bully for you.” Then he cupped a hand around one ear. “Oh, wait, is that the sound of no one coming to answer your call?”

  Kuga’s eyes shifted to the door, which remained stubbornly shut.

  “It’s just you and me, Harcourt,” said Sunday. He reached into a pocket and drew out a glittering filleting knife. “And look … I brought something for us to play with.”

  CHAPTER 171

  THE PAVILION

  BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER

  STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON

  The semi began to roll.

  On the flatbed, three of the fighting machines were still firing, and now the Fixers were all armed and adding to the barrage. The whole thing was a rolling engine of destruction.

  Mia turned and ran farther up the road, cut through a switchback, and headed toward the guard shack at full speed. Her plan needed cover and it needed height, and she wanted to get to the shack, climb atop it, and then use that as a platform to jump onto the roof of the truck. If she could empty a magazine or two down through the roof and kill the driver, then maybe the truck would crash.

  And so, she ran like hell.

  * * *

  Bunny saw Mia running from the truck and tried to figure out what she was doing.

  But then he realized there was no time for that. Or for anything else. The Fixers were going to get away. And even if they weren’t likely to make it down to Fort Lauderdale in time to add to that attack, they would be free to do more damage. He had no doubt Kuga and Santoro could find other dreadful uses for those machines and all the highly trained and enhanced Fixers.

  “No damned way,” he snarled as he l
aunched himself down the road. He had nearly a full drum of the high explosives left. They may not pack enough punch to stop the fighting machines, but those grenades would do a lot of damage to that truck. He was even grinning as he ran.

  He was grinning when a Fixer rose up from the shrubs right in his path. It wasn’t an ambush, just bad luck. Bunny slammed into him at full speed, and the two of them fell and began rolling down the slope. Bunny’s shotgun flew straight up into the air and vanished inside a holly bush.

  * * *

  Top used Hot Mama to stomp on the other K-110. The titanium alloy feet of the fighting machine, backed by the entire weight of the device and every ounce of cybernetically enhanced technology, did what grenades couldn’t do. It smashed the cowling in, crushing it, flattening it, and turning the driver within into a red horror.

  “Yeah, and fuck you, too!” Top yelled.

  Then he turned as bullets pinged off his own cowling. Two of the Fixers were on their feet, eyes blazing red as the Relentless chemicals flooded through their systems. One kept firing with his rifle while the other grabbed a six-foot length of broken tree branch and swung it like a baseball bat at the machine. The blow was massive, and it staggered Top, making Hot Mama backpedal for balance.

  Top opened up with the minigun, driving the armed Fixer back and down, but the one with the club kept swinging, going mad with it, laughing maniacally. Top tried to swat him away with the mechanical arm, but the Fixer was fast and ducked under. The killer rose up before Top could check his swing and cracked the branch across the cowling again. The wood shattered, but a small crack appeared in the reinforced glass.

  The Fixer dodged another swing, dived, and came up with a rock the size of a grapefruit. He dodged in again, smashing the stone with raw power, but also with precision, attacking the K-110’s few weak spots. It was the kind of assault only someone who really understood the fighting machine would know to do.

  Out of his peripheral vision, Top saw Andrea kneeling behind the pump house, engaging the last two remaining Fixers in a gun battle. One of them edged around to get a better angle, but three fast shots from the trees sent him sprawling backward, blood jetting from his throat. Belle, by intention or—likelier an accident—had found the vulnerable sweet spot.

  “Jackpot! Fixer down, Fixer down! Get out of the—”

  It was all he got out before the Fixer’s body armor exploded.

  CHAPTER 172

  THE PLAYROOM

  UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

  NEAR VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

  There was no Mr. Sunday in the room anymore. That person had served his purpose and was gone. The skin that had made up the face of the salesman lay on the floor, still clutched in the bloody hand of what had been Harcourt Bolton Sr.

  There was no Harcourt Bolton anymore, either. Not in any substantial way.

  All there was in the room now was Nicodemus.

  His filleting knife rested on one thigh of his crossed legs.

  The face that no longer belonged to Bolton lay wetly on his other thigh. Nicodemus tugged at it to make sure it lay flat, inspecting it for tears. There were none. No bruises, either. He’d been very careful not to damage the face.

  As for the rest of that man’s body … it was sprawled nearby. Open. Ruined. No longer beautiful.

  “Kuga,” said Nicodemus, trying the name with a pleasurable sense of ownership. “Kuga. Yes.”

  His eyes were a swirling mix of awful greens and sickly yellows and reptile browns.

  His smile, although streaked with red, was so wide and bright and happy.

  CHAPTER 173

  EAST TEXAS CONVENTION CENTER

  LABORDE, TEXAS

  The Fixers who chased me off were now spread through the crowd and causing all sorts of problems. There were a lot of bodies on the floor, and there was an atmosphere of mingled pain, confusion, and terror permeating the room. However this ended, this would be the news story for days.

  Which, I supposed, was another goddamned victory for Kuga. More proof that he could sell mayhem to his clients. As with terrorist groups, multinational corporations, and organized crime, there was no way to get a completely clean win. The world has never been that tidy. There was always a cost, and I could see that coin being paid all around me.

  Which made me all the more determined to stop Santoro. He enabled so much of this; his fingerprints were all over it. That had to stop.

  And he had to pay for what he did to my family.

  To so many families.

  I reached the door through which he’d gone and saw only one Fixer guarding it, his eyes still normal, but sweat pouring down his face. I wondered if the enhancer aspects of Relentless were just hitting his bloodstream. How long before the Rage kicked in?

  I didn’t know and didn’t care. He turned toward me, and I shot him in the face. The Sandman dart caught him beside the nose, and he staggered. Like the Fixers at the processing plant, it affected him but didn’t knock him out. So, as he reeled against the door, I used the knife. Yeah, that did the trick.

  I leaped over his body and crashed through the doorway.

  The hall was empty except for a dead security guard. Poor bastard.

  I slowed from a fast run to a cautious walk as I approached the corner, then ducked low to take a quick look around the edge.

  Had I done that while standing, I would have died right there. A meat cleaver chunked into the wall at the level of where my throat had been, and I looked up into the sparkling blue and thoroughly insane eyes of Eve.

  She simultaneously tried to tear the cleaver free and kick me in the face. Bad moves, both of them. What she should have done was not be between me and Rafael Santoro. And I had no damned time to waste on junior-grade psychopaths. As I shot to my feet, I gutted her from navel to breastbone, gave the knife a big push and twist at the top, and sent the tip of the blade into her black heart.

  Eve looked at me with such profound confusion that it was as if she were trying to understand how this—her life, her ambitions, her goals—could simply end this quickly. Maybe she’d planned a drama for us, a big battle in which she would emerge victorious. Or perhaps she thought her mentor—her daddy—would step in to save her.

  I tore my knife free and let her fall.

  Maybe I should have pity for the damage that drove her to become what she was. That’s something for philosophers, and I’m not one of that brotherhood. I doubted I’d even mention her to Rudy. Why give her even that much? There was too much innocent blood on her hands for me to care.

  Santoro was twenty feet away, and he was grinning at me.

  I grinned, too.

  And I think my smile was a great deal darker than his.

  CHAPTER 174

  THE PAVILION

  BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER

  STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON

  Mia saw the blast through a gap in the trees. She heard Top’s warning, and then a fireball enveloped his fighting machine. Then she was too busy to keep watching because the semi rounded the curve. It was packed with the remaining Fixers and the K-110s.

  She crouched atop the guard shack, which had been abandoned by the soldiers who’d run down to join the fight. Sadly, there were no weapons there, and she still only had her pistol. It felt bizarrely inadequate against what was rolling toward her. And if she couldn’t stop the driver, then this whole fight was for nothing. The help that was on the way—Bedlam Team and the National Guard—were still at least thirty minutes out. If the truck got away, it could vanish into the massive surrounding forests.

  “Come on, boys,” she said under her breath. “Come and dance with the Magpie.”

  She could see the driver, a burly man in the dark Fixer’s body armor, his head turned to one side as he watched the last of the fight through the sideview mirror. On the flatbed, the Fixers were still firing, but randomly now. No one was looking at her.

  The semi was going about thirty miles an hour and accelerating when she flung
herself from her perch and onto the roof of the cab.

  * * *

  Bunny and the Fixer got to their feet. Neither had a gun anymore, having lost them in the collision.

  In his body armor, the Fixer was broader and blockier than Bunny, but the big young man was taller and at the peak of his physical strength. His six-and-a-half-foot-tall body was packed with corded muscle. Not the top-heavy bodybuilder muscles but the springy and toned muscles of the professional athlete. A long time ago, he’d played volleyball in the Pan American Games, and, had it not been for joining the Marines, he might have gone on to the Olympics. And during the years since both Top and Colonel Ledger had taught him a lot about how fast a big man can be.

  He went right at the Fixer and landed a massive overhand blow that drove the killer to one knee. Bunny immediately shifted weight and brought his knee up sharply to smash the Fixer’s nose. Then he boxed his ears with cupped hands.

  The Fixer screamed but did not fall.

  Instead, in the space of a fractured second, his eyes went a burning red, and his face became a mask of pure rage. Actual Rage, as the bioweapon, mixed with the Relentless stamina enhancer, turned man into monster.

  Bunny threw another punch, an overhand right that would have broken the man’s neck … had it landed. But the Fixer moved fast. So fast. He blocked the punch and hit Bunny in the center of the chest with such appalling force that Bunny felt something break inside. His heart seemed to lurch, and suddenly there was not enough air left in the whole world.

  CHAPTER 175