Madness (Asher Benson #2)

by Jason Brant

  “Why?” Melody asked. “Because you didn’t hear it.”

  “Hear what?”

  “The call. The signal. Our rebirth.”

  “What call?” Jim wanted to keep them talking, hoping he could slink closer to the door. He paused again when Melody took another step forward. His eyes darted around as he looked for something he could throw at her.

  He saw Bob’s cell phone resting on the counter and what she said finally clicked home.

  Whatever they’d all heard on that call had changed them.

  Only Bob and Jim hadn’t answered a phone.

  And they were the only ones who hadn’t been turned into psychos.

  He remembered then that the men out by the pumps had also listened to the call. Did he dare turn to look through the front windows? Could he chance taking his eyes away from Melody?

  Even a big, strong son of a bitch like Jim couldn’t take a shot from that baseball bat to the noggin without going down for the count.

  Melody made the decision for him. She let out a battle cry that would have been hilarious coming from a woman of her age and physical disposition, if not for the bloody weapon in her hands and the madness in her eyes.

  She raised the bat over her head and charged at him.

  It had been decades since Jim’s glory days on the gridiron, but his football instincts were still strong. Rather than make a break for the door, he barreled forward, bending over at the waist.

  Chest out, head up, lead with the shoulder.

  Just as his coach had taught him all those years ago.

  Jim folded Mel over at the waist as he speared her.

  Her feet lifted from the ground, a woof exploding from her lips.

  The bat clattered to the floor.

  Jim kept his feet pumping, driving them into the counter.

  Mel’s back hit the wood with a sickening crack. She cried out as her body went limp in his arms. He released her and stepped back.

  She slid down the counter to a seated position on the floor, her face contorted in misery.

  Guilt flashed over Jim as he stared down at her. He’d just attacked, and seriously wounded, a woman who was known for her kindness and patience. Of course, she’d been crazed.

  Had just killed.

  But now, as he watched her slither along the floor, her hands exploring the damage to her spine, Jim feared that he might have a jail sentence in his future.

  He knew that he’d defended himself, but would a jury buy that? Would his peers believe that a man of his size and stature had been scared to death of a much smaller and older woman?

  His panic was sliced away in a flash as pain cut into his arm. Jim hissed and yanked his right arm tight to his body. Blood oozed from a long cut just above his elbow.

  The woman who had been behind Mel now stood beside him, a jagged shard from a broken coffee pot held in one of her hands. “You like that?”

  “Bitch!” Jim reacted without thinking, his wounded arm lashing out.

  He punched her just above the belly button with his lacerated knuckles. The air whooshed from her lungs as she bent over.

  The makeshift blade fell from her hands, shattering on the floor beside Melody.

  Jim grabbed the back of the woman’s shirt and yanked her forward. Her wide, pale back was exposed as the clothing ripped.

  He slammed her headfirst into the counter.

  She collapsed on top of Melody, groans escaping both of them.

  The bell above the door behind Jim dinged.

  He wheeled around, saw the final woman fleeing from the convenience store. She waddled across the pavement, heading toward the gas pumps.

  The two men who had been filling their vehicles stood a dozen feet in front of the door, staring in at Jim.

  Each held a nozzle in their hands, the gas lines hanging behind them, attached to the pumps. Fuel poured onto the concrete.

  That was when Jim noticed the unmistakable stink of gasoline.

  The entire placed reeked of it.

  A puddle pooled under the door, seeping across the bloody laminate.

  Both of the men dropped the gas nozzles to the ground and ran past the pumps, joining the woman. One of them stopped at the rear of his pickup and reached into the bed.

  Jim’s mouth fell open when he saw the man pull a flare from the truck.

  “Holy shit!” He spun on his heel and started for the rear of the store.

  Melody reached out and looped an arm around his ankle.

  He stumbled forward, dragging her away from the counter.

  She grinned up at him. “Where are you going?”

  Jim regained his balance and cocked his fist back, ready to land one final bow.

  And then he saw the man outside strike the flare and throw it at the pool of gasoline.

  Jim didn’t hear the explosion as a wave of hot air and flame consumed him.

  9 – Need a Beer

  I found a half-empty water bottle on the floor in the back of the SUV.

  Finished it off in two gulps. Didn’t give a damn who it had belonged to.

  Nami was about to climb, and I mean that literally, into the front seat when Drew told her to stop. “Why?”

  “Because one of the tires has been shot out, and she put at least five rounds into the engine. We aren’t driving this thing anywhere.”

  “Goddamn it.” Nami grabbed a small backpack from the floor and slammed the door shut. A bizarre looking Asian cartoon adorned the bag. “So what are we going to do now?”

  I pointed down the driveway. “The agents keep their cars down there. We’ll take one of those.”

  “Why do they park so far away? Why not keep them up here?” Sammy asked.

  I inspected the gravel between my feet. “There might have been an incident involving some urine and one of their radiators.”

  “Christ, Ashley.” Drew shook his head as he looked at me. “You need to get your shit together.”

  “OK, guys, let’s get something clear.” I looked from Drew to Nami and Sammy. “I came up here to be left alone. I appreciate that all of you want to help me, but I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it. Let me live my life.”

  Sammy frowned and opened her mouth to say something.

  I raised one of my hands up, cutting her off. “You don’t understand what it’s like for me and you’ll never be able to. All three of you need to stay as far away from me as possible.” I pointed at the cooling body of the female agent. “You’ve been around me for twenty minutes and the bodies are already piling up.”

  Drew walked over to the dead woman, his jaw muscles flaring. Kneeling down by her, he pulled a set of keys from her pocket. He closed her eyes with the index and middle fingers of his free hand. “Let’s get on the horn and report this clusterfuck, then we’ll talk about what we’re going to do.”

  They just didn’t get it.

  As frustrating as that was for me, it also made me realize how lucky I was to have a friend who was as dogged as Drew. My life had become a series of embarrassments and alcohol-induced douchery for the past half a decade, yet the man simply refused to give up on me.

  But no matter how much I appreciated what he was trying to do, I wouldn’t continue to put his life in danger on my account.

  That went double and triple for Nami and Sammy. They didn’t have a dog in this fight. Hell, I shouldn’t have been in the fight, except for that little booboo I suffered in Iraq.

  Rather than argue more, I tossed the water bottle onto the floor of the SUV and spotted Nami’s pistol sitting on the seat in a holster. I grabbed it, checked the chamber, then stuffed it into the waistband of my shorts.

  Feeling a bit more confident with a piece in hand, I walked around to the back of the SUV and made my way down the driveway. The others hesitated for a moment and then followed.

  Nami waved her hand in front of her nose. “It smells like pure beer is coming out of your pores.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  A thunderous ex
plosion boomed from the north. We all stopped in our tracks, gazes watching the tops of the trees.

  “Do I even want to ask what that was?” Sammy asked.

  “Something big. Really big.” I’d heard my fair share of IEDs, bombs, and heavy ordinance during my time in the sandbox. Whatever had just gone sky high had been monstrous. Once I’d seen a bunker buster take out an abandoned office building in Fallujah, and the hidden terrorist cell underneath it, that had produced a similar kind of chest-thumping explosion.

  If someone had access to that kind of weaponry out there in Middle-of-Nowhere, West Virginia, then we were all screwed.

  The look Drew gave me validated everything I was feeling. He’d been overseas alongside me and knew that we were even deeper in the shit than we’d expected.

  Another series of gunshots followed the explosion, though they were much closer. Without thinking, I grabbed Nami by the elbow and pulled her into the brush lining the driveway. Sammy and Drew hunched down beside us.

  “Now what?” Sammy whispered. Her voice tremored. “This is crazy.”

  The gunfight raged on.

  I let my mind wander out, but there wasn’t anyone within the range of my telepathy. “I don’t know.”

  Drew ground his teeth. “It can’t be a coincidence that this happened the day we came to see you.”

  “Thanks for the observation, Captain Obvious.” Further down the driveway, I spotted three government-issue sedans parked close to the road. “Let’s hop in one of those and get the hell out of here.”

  Drew said, “That gunfight sounds like it’s coming from the direction we drove in from.”

  “It is. There is another way out of here, but we need to drive through town to get there.”

  “Great.”

  A shout echoed through the trees, only to be quickly drowned out by the boom of a high-powered rifle.

  Drew tossed me the keys. “You know your way around here, so you drive.” He looked at Sammy and Nami. “You fall in behind him and stay low. Get in the backseat. I’ll pull up the rear and cover you.”

  “Putting the women in the backseat, eh?” Nami whispered. “That’s not—”

  “Not now, Short Round. We can talk shit to each other when we’re out of here.” I pulled the pistol from my waistband and clicked off the safety.

  “But you just called him Captain Obvious. How is that not shit talking?”

  “It is.” I smirked at her. “I’m just cooler than you are.”

  Before she could send another verbal volley my way, I jogged down the driveway. Hearing the firefight a few hundred yards away had me wanting to sprint to the car, but I forced myself to slow down. There was no way that Nami could keep up with her short stride.

  The women came up behind me, Nami cursing at me under her breath, Sammy hunching down and eyeing the trees. Drew kept his piece down as he followed, both hands palming the grip.

  Unlike me, it didn’t look like he was out of practice.

  Still jogging, I thumbed the unlock button on the key fob. The rear lights on the second car blinked twice.

  The vehicles were parked end to end, all facing the road.

  As I passed the first car, the crunching of metal and the shattering of glass came from off to the left. An engine whined, though the RPMs maxed out much too quickly. Either the driver was in a car with a standard transmission and they weren’t shifting gears, or the car was hauling ass in reverse.

  A pistol fired a dozen rounds in a rapid burst.

  Tires squealed.

  The engine’s RPMs plummeted, then soared again.

  Someone shouted.

  I opened the driver’s side door and stood behind it, aiming over the top.

  Sammy and Nami climbed into the backseat as Drew followed my lead with the passenger door. We held our pistols steady toward the road, waiting for the car to break even with the mouth of the driveway.

  I’d been coming down off the adrenaline high of the last firefight, but my pulse had quickened again.

  Senses sharpened.

  Breathing hushed.

  A police cruiser rolled by the opening of the driveway. Sheriff George Adams was painted on the side, To Protect and Serve under it.

  Steam plumed from the front of the car, flowing back into the space where the windshield should have been.

  Bullet holes dotted the hood and doors.

  I tracked the car with my pistol, unsure of what to expect. Was the driver a victim or an aggressor? The lines between those two seemed blurred now more than ever. The agents assigned to protect and babysit me had just tried to give me a lead injection.

  Through the broken-out windows, a white-haired man sat behind the wheel, both hands gripping it in a death clutch. A woman leaned over to him from the passenger seat, her face turned away from us.

  “I think the sheriff is having a worse day than we are.” Drew lowered his weapon and looked over at me. “Could be Smith’s men. If he did something to the agents back there, then maybe he’s sending in some guys to finish the job.”

  “That or whatever Smith did to the agents has happened to other people too.” I tried again to feel for the presence of whoever was trigger happy down the road, but couldn’t get a grip on any thoughts. “Even more reason to head in the opposite direction.”

  Nami chittered in the back as I put the car in gear and let it coast down to the road. I ignored her for the most part, focusing my attention in the direction of the shooters. Some people freaked out when violence erupted. Others clammed up, much in the way Sammy was doing just then.

  Nami talked.

  Incessantly.

  As the front end of the sedan crossed the threshold of the road, I slowed us down to a crawl. Drew leaned forward, following my gaze through the window.

  Down the road a few hundred feet, a white van was parked in the left lane, the rear visible to us. Two men stood beside it, working on something that I couldn’t quite make out because one of them blocked my view. They were standing dead center in the road.

  The pneumatic thump of an air gun echoed four times in quick succession as one of the men made his way around the other in a tight circle.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Nami asked.

  Drew grunted. “Why don’t you get out and ask?”

  “Why don’t you kiss my ass?”

  The man blocking my view stepped over to the van, revealing their project to us.

  My eyes widened. “That’s a minigun.” I gaped over at Drew. “They just mounted a goddamn minigun to the road.”

  “What’s a minigun?” Sammy asked.

  “An ass kicker.” I looked back through the window. “It shoots three, maybe four thousand rounds a minute. They could use that thing to cut down Godzilla.”

  Drew said, “They’re usually attached to helicopters.”

  Sammy shrank against her seat. “Oh.”

  “They’d turn us to bloody giblets before we even got close.”

  “Giblets? Good word,” I mumbled.

  “Can we get the hell out of here, please?” Nami asked.

  I kept us there for a few more seconds as I took in their operation.

  The gun faced the opposite direction. If I had to guess, they were worried about keeping people from going into town. But why? The men grabbed crates of what I could only assume to be ammunition from the back of the van.

  There was other stuff in there that I couldn’t quite make out because of the distance.

  With the way my morning had gone, I figured they probably had a few cluster bombs in there. Maybe a thermonuclear device.

  Just as I was about to pull the car onto the road, I noticed that I could finally feel the minds of the men in the distance. Or, I should say, the lack of their thoughts. Their minds were walled off to me, black voids in the middle of the forest.

  I’d experienced something similar before.

  “They’re Smith’s men.” I ground my frustration into the steering wheel. My forearms burned.

>   “I don’t need to be a telepath to know that,” Drew said. “They just mounted a minigun onto Hillbilly Avenue.”

  “Move it, Ashley,” Nami said. She kicked my seat. “I’d rather not have my ass filled with holes.”

  “That’s what she said.” I released the brake and steered us to the east, heading in the opposite direction of the men who were working on assembling the Avengers’ Helicarrier in the middle of the road.

  10 – Blood Everywhere

  The further they drove, the more Adams’ leg throbbed. He’d spent the last several decades in law enforcement and had never once pulled his gun on a suspect, let alone been involved in a shootout. He’d taken a bullet to the leg and was still trying to wrap his head around it.

  The image of Professor Jury’s brain matter splattering the road kept popping in his mind. As much as the pain bothered him, he couldn’t keep the guilt of abandoning the professor out of his thoughts. Adams was the law in Arthur’s Creek.

  If he wouldn’t stand up to those men, then who would?

  Of course, there wasn’t much he could do if he was suffering from a heart attack and his leg was threatening to bleed him dry.

  He pried his eyes from the road for a moment and glanced down.

  The fabric of his pants had turned a dark crimson atop his thigh. Rivulets of blood ran down his hamstring and stained the seat underneath him. The seat of his pants had grown warm and sticky.

  “What are we going to do?” Allison asked. She sat ramrod straight in the seat, her eyes glued to the road in front of them.

  “We’re going back to the station to get the medkit before I lose too much blood.” Adams gritted his teeth against the pain. “Then we’re going to call in the cavalry.”

  “Your deputies?”

  “Hell no. They couldn’t protect a warm cup o’ piss. We’re going to call the Staties, the FBI, hell, the National Guard. Those guys had a rocket launcher in that van.”

  “They what?” Allison spun around and looked through the shattered windshield behind them, even though they were far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to see them anymore.

  “I don’t know what’s going on around here, but it’s way beyond my call of duty. I’m too old to be getting shot.”