“C’mon you bastards!” he yelled. The defiance was still intact at least. Nick smiled, showing a row of teeth that were drenched in blood. One eye was half-closed.
He fired again and a bullet went through one of the ragtags’ skull.
The last two rushed at Nick.
Crazy Diamond shot at them, forcing them back a few steps. But seconds later she was out of bullets again and she screamed out of pure frustration and at her inability to stop the inevitable. Cody’s fingers grasped at the snow, trying yet again to grab the Glock but the ragtags were quick and as he wriggled along the ground, reaching for the pistol, Mackenzie’s men put two more bullets in Nick, who dropped onto his knees in silence.
The rifle slid out of his hands.
“Nick!” Crazy Diamond screamed.
The ragtags hurried forward, buoyed by this success. They’d put the big man down. One more bullet and they’d finish Nick Norton off. They moved fast, like young men in their prime, like hunters sure of the kill.
“Waste him,” one of them shouted.
The ragtag with his pistol pointing at Nick took aim. Cody couldn’t see his lips but he knew just by looking at the man’s eyes that there was a cruel smile on his face.
But there was no shot fired. The ragtag lowered his pistol and spun around, as if he’d heard something.
“What the hell…?”
A pair of bright headlights charged towards them out of the darkness. The school bus was racing down the road, driving at high speed on the slippery surface.
The two ragtags screamed. So did the bus as it accelerated harder, leaving the gunmen no time to get out of the way. It went through the two bodies like a battering ram and sent them hurtling through the air. There would be no getting up after that. The driver then took a sharp right to avoid running over Nick, who’d fallen onto his back.
The bus went over the curb and skidded to a stop.
Crazy Diamond stood up and dragged Cody to his feet. Cody groaned in agony. The pain was starting to come through but worse than that, his heart sank when he saw Nick lying flat out on the snow. He wasn’t moving.
To Cody’s surprise, an old woman stepped slowly off the bus. She walked over to Nick and signaled Cody and Crazy Diamond to hurry over.
“Come,” she said. “Let’s get you people onto the bus.”
Crazy Diamond and Cody reached Nick and grabbed an arm each. It didn’t look good. Nick’s face was buried under a mask of blood. Before they climbed onto the bus with him, Cody looked towards North Flores Street, where the battle between Mackenzie and Rachel was still in full swing.
“You can’t help her,” the old woman said, putting a hand on Cody’s arm.
“I have to do something,” Cody said. “She’s my little girl.”
The woman shook her head.
“It’s up to the little girl to save us.”
Rachel was vaguely aware that something was going on beside the car park. She’d heard the constant gunfire. But it was a minor background noise that she couldn’t let interfere with what she was doing.
The children were inside her head and she was inside theirs. Rachel had access to everything; she could see their stories if she wanted to – terrible stories about the horrors of the Black Storm and the happy memories that had come before. Happy memories, always fading. But those thoughts, like the gunshots, couldn’t interfere either. She was drawing on their strength, the natural immunity that Grandma Anna had told her about. It took a special kind of focus to hold it.
She saw Mackenzie step forward. He was starting to close the ground on her. Both his arms were stretched outwards, reaching for the children like he wanted to throttle their necks. He was barely recognizable as human but he was human. Mackenzie was still in there underneath that white glowing shield.
Rachel felt an increase in power as he came closer. For the first time since the duel began, a hint of doubt crept into her mind.
Could she keep this up?
With a grimace, Rachel sent the latest barrage of missiles back up the street, hurling them at Mackenzie with all the strength she could muster.
Mackenzie lifted a finger and stopped it dead.
One finger. It looked so easy.
Was he getting stronger?
This neverending rally of cars and other weapons that was being flung at her – the Exterminators were playing the long game. They couldn’t destroy her mind but they could exhaust her body, especially now that they had one of their own to wear her down with. If Rachel’s body broke, everything inside would break too. And what about the children? What would happen to them if she fell?
Rachel watched as Mackenzie took another step closer. His hands were upturned, palms facing the sky. He raised his arms slowly over his head like he was transitioning into a yoga pose. As he did so, everything on the street – three cars, a mass of dismembered tree parts, a wooden bench, and a multitude of rocks and bricks, were lifted off the ground.
Mackenzie leaned back. His body jerked forwards, both arms snapping forward in a whip-like throwing motion.
The barrage of missiles came at the children in a blur. The cars rolled over, the tree stumps flew like fat spears, and the stones and bricks were like bullets.
Rachel’s mind sprang into action. Her body stiffened and the tendons and veins on her arms and legs stood up. She didn’t stop the assault cleanly. All she could do was strike it away clumsily, like her mind was a bat reaching for a hundred baseballs at the same time. Rachel staggered backwards and lost her balance. She dropped onto her knees and her body trembled under the pressure of this latest assault. She heard the children fall onto their knees behind her.
“Rachel!” somebody yelled in the distance.
Was it her dad? It didn’t matter, not now.
She climbed back to her feet.
Rachel stared at Mackenzie, who was still wrapped in a shield of white light. He was inching towards her slowly, daring her to try and stop him. But how could she? It was like she’d run into a dead-end. The Exterminators were too strong for her in mind. Mackenzie was stronger than her in matter. Together they had her beat. She had the children on her side of course, but still it wasn’t enough.
Don’t panic.
That’s when Rachel heard Grandma Anna’s voice in her head.
Whatever they can do you can do.
She looked at Mackenzie. He continued to approach the children at a casual pace. Even though his features were buried, she could sense he was smiling.
“Whatever they can do you can do,” Rachel said.
The idea came to her so suddenly, so easily that she was convinced it wasn’t a good one and that it couldn’t possibly work. But could it? She realized there was only one thing left for her to target – Mackenzie’s mind. If anything was going to be the Achilles’ heel of the Exterminator-Mackenzie alliance it was that. And his mind had to be in there, somewhere.
What if she could reach it? Like she had with Grandma Anna and the children. Could she pull the switch once she was in there?
Now it was her turn to take a step forward.
The children walked behind, matching her stride for stride.
Rachel reached an arm towards Mackenzie. Her fingers stiffened and stretched as far as they could go.
She closed her eyes and searched for him. Her mind grasped furiously at the darkness, like fingers looking for a light switch. In that moment, Rachel was an explorer traveling through a dark underground cave alone and although it was crazy and undeniably dangerous, there was treasure nearby.
She could feel it.
The familiar sliding sensation – she felt it. It was the same thing she’d experienced back at the basilica with Grandma Anna – a sensation of sliding down a black chute and falling into somebody’s private abyss.
Yes.
She’d found him.
It was dark and cold. Mackenzie’s mind was a twisted labyrinth that didn’t want her there. Rachel, the unwelcome guest, felt a mob of unseen force
s pushing her back and she had to bully her way through the thick, jagged tangle of thorns that led to the center. She could smell something rancid – a lingering odor of rot hanging in the air.
Rachel pushed forwards, ignoring the animal cries of the Exterminators that she could hear in the background. They knew she was in there but they couldn’t stop her. She continued forwards, slowing down only when she saw a bright light in the distance beckoning her down the corridors of Mackenzie’s mind.
It was an image. A moving picture.
Rachel went in closer.
A woman’s face was looking back at her. The woman, who was probably in her late thirties, was beautiful, but her facial expression was one of pure terror. Her hair was blonde, hanging loose down her back. The hair bounced up and down as the woman ran as fast as she could, occasionally looking back over her shoulder at Rachel – or rather at Mackenzie, because this was his memory that Rachel was revisiting.
There was a child running beside the woman – a little girl who was probably about Rachel’s age. She looked like a miniature version of the woman, who Rachel assumed was her mother. The woman’s hand was locked around the little girl’s hand, holding on for dear life as they ran together.
They went as fast as they could. The child was screaming while the mother was in tears.
Birdsong.
They were in a large park. Rachel looked straight ahead and saw what they were running towards – it was a silver car parked on a looping concrete path that wound its way through the heart of the park. Rachel saw other people running back and forth too. There were loud screams everywhere. Hideous, high-pitched screams. People chasing other people with weapons in their hands – their eyes as black as the sky above.
The woman looked over her shoulder. Rachel – Mackenzie – did the same and now at last Rachel could see what the family was running from. A gang of six men was chasing them down, black-eyed and armed with metal bars, which they were wielding over their heads in a frothing rage. Rachel felt a surge of fear just looking at them – or was that Mackenzie’s second-hand emotion she was experiencing?
Mackenzie was yelling at the woman and child. Telling them to get to the car. Begging them to run faster.
They were almost there. Then Mackenzie tripped and fell. He dropped onto the grass, spun around and Rachel felt a sense of terrible anticipation as she waited for the metal bars to land on Mackenzie’s head. She was aware of Mackenzie’s strange relief at this outcome – if the men concentrated on him it would at least buy his wife and daughter time to get to the car. There was a spare key in the glove compartment.
They’d be fine.
But nothing happened.
Mackenzie looked on in horror as the men with the metal bars raced past him and continued to chase after his wife and daughter.
He jumped back to his feet to go after them and that’s when he felt a sharp crack on the back of the head. Everything went hazy after that. His legs went out from underneath him. Somebody else ran past him and Mackenzie watched as the pack closed in on the only two people he gave a damn about in the world. He tried to get up several times but his body wouldn’t or couldn’t obey the command. When he screamed, his voice wasn’t there.
And yet he didn’t black out.
He could see everything.
Rachel turned away quickly. This was the memory that had come to her first. That told her that it was foremost in Mackenzie’s mind – that it was always there, eating away at him.
She focused on the woman and child’s face. She built a picture of them and recalled their voices as they ran. The girl yelled at Mackenzie. She called him dad. The woman called him by his name – John.
John Mackenzie.
Rachel envisioned the hallucination she was trying to create. It was a terrible thing. When it was intact, she planted the seed in Mackenzie’s mind.
They would appear to him, like Rachel’s mom had appeared to her dad in the Dodge Challenger. They would talk to him.
Traitor.
That’s what his wife and daughter, bloody and battered to a pulp, would call Mackenzie for turning his back on his people. For working with the same enemy who was responsible for their deaths that day in the park.
How could you?
The hallucination began to grow like a black flower with sharp thorns running along the stem. Rachel saw it floating away like a piece of driftwood and then suddenly it was pulled down, dragged deep into the darkness of Mackenzie’s mind.
It was done.
Rachel slipped out of the black hole. In truth, she was glad to be out of there – Mackenzie’s mind was like a dark, haunted forest with only rotten trees and stagnant water pools for company. She opened her eyes and her legs wobbled underneath her. The children were standing behind her. The giant shield had dropped and their eyes had reverted back to their natural colors. Rachel must have lost contact with them while she’d been in Mackenzie’s mind. It was lucky for them that they hadn’t seen the things she had in there.
The children were looking at her with a mix of puzzled and hopeful expressions.
“Is it over?” Tegan asked Rachel.
Rachel shook her head. “Not yet.”
She turned around and looked at Mackenzie, who was standing in the middle of the road. How long would it take? Was it even going to work at all?
Rachel began to get nervous when nothing happened.
A few seconds passed. Then Mackenzie jolted backwards all of a sudden like he’d been electrocuted. His feet were lifted about four feet off the ground and Rachel saw the white shield around him tremble and dim.
As the shield thinned further, Rachel saw Mackenzie’s horrified expression appear through the fading light. His one good eye bulged in horror. Rachel knew exactly what he was looking at in that moment. She could almost hear their angry voices in his head – screaming at him, accusing him of treachery towards his family.
The shield powered up again, covering his tormented features.
But Mackenzie resisted. He shook his head and scraped at the light, like he was trying to claw it off. Like it was smothering him or burning his skin.
The shield disappeared for a second time. Now Mackenzie stood naked and scarred in the street – a man, just a normal man. His black eye was gone. The look of horror on his face returned and he reached for something. For someone who wasn’t there.
“No,” he said, his hand grasping in front of him. “It’s not like that. I did it for…”
The shield came back and Mackenzie shook it off again. Now he was at war with the Exterminators, battling for control of body and mind. And no matter how strong the Exterminators were they couldn’t hope to understand the powerful feelings that stirred in Mackenzie now.
But Rachel knew there wasn’t much time. Either the Exterminators would reclaim Mackenzie’s mind and body or they would leave it altogether and the fight would continue elsewhere. It was inevitable – the only question was how long did they have?
Rachel looked through the fallen tree foliage, over at the school bus parked in the distance. She closed her eyes again.
Quickly.
She opened her eyes.
Crazy Diamond was hurrying towards her, carrying Nick’s rifle in hand. She walked through a gap in the fallen debris and stepped cautiously onto the road. She looked at Rachel and gave her a brief nod. Then Crazy Diamond walked over to where Mackenzie was standing in the middle of the street, still darting back and forth in between human and Exterminator mode.
“I’m sorry,” Mackenzie said, after shaking the white shield off him yet again. He was breathing heavily, still reaching a hand to no one, trying to cup the faces of his wife and child.
The white shield smothered him. Mackenzie fought it off like someone was trying to put a plastic bag over his head and suffocate him. He was oblivious to Crazy Diamond standing beside him, pointing the AR-15 at his head.
The shield dropped.
Crazy Diamond’s finger was sitting on the trigger.
>
“I told you,” she said. “I told you what I’d do.”
Mackenzie turned his head towards her. He looked at Crazy Diamond with a strange bug-eyed recognition. He opened his mouth to say something but Crazy Diamond didn’t give him the chance. She squeezed the trigger. There was a loud bang before the bullet ripped through Mackenzie’s skull, taking a large chunk of the man’s head with it. He dropped like a stone onto his back, his arms spread out wide.
“Dead,” Crazy Diamond said.
Rachel took a step forward. She was about to call over to Crazy Diamond when the ground shook violently under her feet. A loud, unbearable cracking noise forced her hands over her ears. Some of the children screamed behind her, calling out to one another in frightened voices that were drowned out by the noise.
The Earth shook back and forth like it was having a seizure. The children were flung off their feet and rolled around the ground in a chaotic horizontal dance. Rachel went down too and as she tried to scramble back to her feet, she saw the black snow melting all around them. Her eyes lit up. There was a dull sizzling sound that accompanied the snow’s rapid demise.
The black sky made a crackling noise like a broken television.
Then everything stopped.
Silence.
A flood of light and heat shot down from the heavens like an avalanche. It happened so fast, like somebody had turned on a switch.
Rachel dropped to the ground and covered her eyes.
She heard footsteps running over beside her.
Rachel looked up, wincing at the fierce light behind Crazy Diamond who was standing beside her. She tilted her head in confusion and glanced briefly at a beautiful clear blue sky. But as beautiful as it was, it was hurting her eyes. She shrank from the sunlight like a vampire.
Crazy Diamond helped Rachel back to her feet. Rachel peered through her fingers and saw a flood of tears in the woman’s eyes. She didn’t know if they were happy tears or sad ones.
The other children, like Rachel, were trying to adapt to the sudden reappearance of sunlight. They stood there for a few moments, in muted celebration. Tears and laughter came a few moments later. The children looked to the sky, marveling at the sunlight on their skin.
The Exterminators Trilogy: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Box Set Page 43
