Waiting for Mister Cool Read online

  The fire in the church steeple went out, like an eye that had gone to sleep.

  Cal shouted, running to them from the row of parked vehicles, but Max couldn’t understand him.

  Something hard smashed into his chest, carried him backwards off his feet through the air, as if he’s been swept up by a sailing ship’s loose yardarm. Max tried grabbing hold of whatever had hit him. His hands slid over a wet, ice cold, roughly textured surface that didn’t feel like plastic or metal, or anything natural.

  Whatever carried him suddenly flexed, its skin scratching his hands and tearing holes in his shirt. He rose into the sky.

  The shock left him breathless, the Beast silent.

  He blinked, searching for a landmark to get his bearings by, looked down at Morris, Lee and Cal frozen a dozen feet below him, turning their heads to the left or right, but not up at him. As he reached the height of his arc, lightning cracked nearby and a tree branch shattered. In the explosion’s electric aftershock, Max caught a glimpse of something long whipping back and forth as it vanished among the clouds. He thought a length of wide pipe, the kind used to transport water or oil from reservoirs or drilling fields, had been sucked up by a tornado, or a spool of thick communication cable, unwinding in mid-air.

  Maybe Morris had his recruits working for a construction company for cover, laying down a gas pipeline or new telecom fiber cables through the area, and the storm had just torn through their supplies.

  As he flew through the air, the theory made perfect sense to Max. It was reasonable, logical, and helped explain a sight he couldn’t otherwise absorb.

  But then the ground came at him, fast as a truck, big as a skyscraper, and half-naked figures darted through the trees as flares shot into the air and more lightning split the sky, and someone yelled and someone else gurgled, and what Max had seen, and what he’d felt against his chest, didn’t make much sense anymore.

  A second later, everything else stopped making sense, too.

  Chapter 3

  Max woke up, certain that he was drowning.

  Wet clothes pinned to his skin. Water, in his mouth, throat and nose. A roaring in his ears that was real and not the Beast’s phantom voice in his head. A nauseating sensation of rising and sinking while floating in a medium that refused to support him.

  He’d been tossed off a freighter in the Red Sea, or his speedboat had been shot out from under him off the coast of South Africa, or he’d bumped his head against the hull of a dhow on whose hull he’d been setting charges while it was tied up at a mainland Chinese port.

  Fingers dug into slippery but solid ground. Max gasped for air, took a huge gulp, tasting water but breathing. The dirt told him said he wasn’t in any of the situations he’d imagined, and then his brain caught up and filed his assumptions under memories, and finally the realization that it was raining set him back into the world he’d left for only a few moments.

  Just in time to catch the wrist of an open hand bearing down on his throat.

  He hadn’t seen the blow coming. But the Beast had. It hadn’t gone under, hadn’t been confused by sights and sounds and memories. It had remained alert, straining at the limits of Max’s unconscious senses to detect the approach of prey stupid enough to think it was helpless.

  Flares shot up from the perimeter. Morris’s guards, or what was left of them, trying to find out what was going on. Automatic weapons fire crackled in too-long bursts, emptying clips quickly. Single handgun shots popped with the pathetic frequency of gum bubbles in a schoolyard. The eerie, flickering flares made the rain look like falling razor blades.

  The teenager scrambling over Max, trying to pull his trapped hand free while searching for Max’s eyes with the fingers of his other hand, was thin but wiry. Crazed. Drugged, by the acrid bite of his scent. He wheezed as he fought, and foam dribbled from his open mouth, while his bare chest and thin arms bore more scars than even Max carried. The youth’s legs worked incessantly, kneeing Max while at the same time trying to trip his legs. He smelled of earth, as if he’d been buried and only just come out of a grave.

  The youth was already bloody, with dozens of cuts and scratches across his arms, head and torso. The blood made Max and the Beast hungry.

  Though he was on top, the teenager displayed no real training in how to keep an opponent under his control. Max reached for the mini-Uzi, but it was gone.

  Max recalled flying through the air, quickly pushing the image aside.

  He braced himself, knocked the youth off, rolled, snapping the wrist he’d trapped and coming back with an elbow across the chin before landing on top. After a quick glance to make sure no one was closing for an attack, Max gouged one eye out.

  The teenager’s convulsions made the Beast squeal with surprise and delight. The frantic motion caught the attention of several other youths cutting through the camp. The nearest one took a few loping steps to close the distance, but Max allowed his attacker close in, leaned back as they made contact, then forward, grabbing the back of his assailant’s knee and pulling. As the would-be rescuer flipped backwards, Max shoved a knife hand into his groin, snagged a flailing arm, flipped him over the shoulder. Before the youth had bounced twice on the ground, Max had snapped his neck.

  The move, intended to intimidate, did nothing to slow down other bare-chested, scarred and cut-up teenage boys coming to him.

  The Beast reveled in their promise, even as it demanded more blood in the killing, but Max fought down both of their appetites. There was something wrong with what was happening, and the threat of the unknown momentarily overpowered the pleasure of inflicting pain.

  He met the charge of his next assailant with a quick slide to the side and hip throw. Once on the ground, he pinched the youth’s throat, and once he was sure he had his captive’s air-starved attention, he scooped an eye out, popping the organ into his mouth and squeezing to make its fluid squirt back in the boy’s face, before using his teeth to snap the bundle of nerves connecting the eye to the boy’s brain.

  The teenager moaned, but didn’t scream, then sagged in surrender. No panic. No horror. No overwhelming struggle for survival. Max sniffed the boy’s hair and skin, picking out odd, chemical smells and earth. Dried urine. Sperm.

  Some other kind of Beast had gutted the boy’s mind. He was less human than Max, without appetite or fear, not even rage, to carry him through a crisis. He was nothing more than a shell, a missile loaded with amphetamine fuel, following a simple, deadly command drummed into his brain. When the fuel ran out or the directive was challenged, there were no depths of will, desire, rage, not even a rudimentary flicker of desire to call upon these basic components of humanity.

  Footfalls closed in. Max snapped the neck, again. The Beast wanted other eye, but instead, Max made an offering of a gut cut. But he had no knife, and his teeth would take too long in combat.

  He ran, not even bothering to see how many were chasing him. One of Morris’s men had fallen nearby, his face a bloody, beaten mess, more red than human blood in the light of flares. His hunting rifle was broken, but he had a long, single-edge knife sheathed on his belt. Max grabbed the handle, turned, sliced up and through the first incoming assailant, letting entrails spill hot and sticky over his body, as if a tureen of soup had been overturned on him. The Beast leapt like an eager cub at his mother’s offering of the fresh meat.

  Max met the next attacker by trapping his extended arm, then quickly spinning, and tripping stumbling feet. The youth was down on his back before he’d drawn another breath, and Max drove the knife down into his chest, through his heart, before primal wisdom told the teenager it was past time to breathe ever again.

  One of Morris’s guards appeared and shot the third, though Max had to lay down flat on the ground to avoid the undisciplined spray of fire. When he looked up, the youth was stretched out beside him, eyes open but not seeing, alive but still. The guard went down under two more attackers who had come out from between the pines. Max turned his back on him.

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p; And faced the gang, perhaps skinheads, juiced on methamphetamine, that was coming down the surrounding hills and hacking their way through the thick brush between the cottages. Lightning flashed, thunder cracked the earth. Max fumbled with pieces of the puzzle whose completion he’d glimpsed, but these new parts didn’t fit. Unarmed and disorganized teenagers throwing themselves at Morris’s men made no sense. Neither did their appearance, or their silence. In stark contrast to their unrestrained attack, they weren’t yelling or screaming. And they were dying far too quietly.

  But they were also young and fast, and there were enough of them to overrun the camp even if all of Morris’s men had been around to defend it. Half-naked in their beltless trousers, some bare-footed, others wearing sneakers, all the teenagers were white, with heads and bodies shaved bare and their skin free of any tattoos, though heavily scarred. The youths coming out of the brush barricade bore bleeding cuts that blazed like fiery tribal markings in the flickering flare light. Lean, stringy muscles hugging bone, they seemed mildly emaciated and might have just escaped from a juvenile correctional facility. Or a month-long special forces training exercise. They had surprise on their side, and a fearless, single-minded purpose: killing. Even armed, the main body of Morris’s men might have been broken.

  But most of them were gone. Morris’s enemies had timed their attack perfectly, apparently surprising him with their boldness and numbers. There was only Max and Lee to make up the difference, and Max wasn’t sure if, even with the Beast, they would be enough.

  The Beast tore at his gut in outrage, and Max grinned. He needed all of the Beast tonight.

  He looked back the way he’d run for his gun in the fading phosphor glare while tracking the attackers streaming through the hedge and the brush surrounding the camp.

  A gust of wind kicked up, and a long shadow swooped out of the sky. A flare shell bounced off of the shadow, and its sudden detonation momentarily illuminated a solid, roughly-textured tube undulating in the air, slick with the rain pouring down from the low clouds. Max froze. Watched the shadow of a snake knock down several teenagers jumping out from behind the nearest cottage.

  The shadow was gone before Max could understand what he’d just seen.

  He gave up on the gun. The Beast was grateful.

  The tents and mess were all down as teenagers rampaged through the camp. Fire blazed inside all the vehicles. Just as he thought of the Bronco and his armory, the vehicle exploded, tearing apart the nearby fire starters. The Beast didn’t share Max’s regret, anticipating the more satisfying necessity of working with Max’s hands.

  Gunshots crackled with diminishing intensity, and Max found their most consistent source by the door to the nearby cottage. Cal, Lee and Morris were making a stand by the door, which remained shut. Max headed for their position.

  Morris was quick and efficient, firing an AK-47 in controlled bursts, constantly checking the building’s corner nearest to him. Cal had a heavier trigger finger and emptied his M16 as Max watched, then frantically searched through nearby bags of ammunition for another clip. Lee, stringy, wet hair stuck streaming down his forehead like a nest of snakes, was his usual disciplined self, holding his mini-Uzi in reserve until Cal ran out. He immediately covered the other corner, and shot down the first teen who came charging around it. But it took several rounds to finish the job, and Max knew he’d also run out of clips when Lee threw his weapon away. Lee fired another flare as he picked up an M16, glanced at Cal hoarding clips, then picked up a Mossberg shotgun and checked it for shells. When he looked up he spotted Max in the light, shouted, waved him in to their position. But Max didn’t respond. He followed the shotgun’s line of sight to the corner of the cottage, where darkness teemed.

  As the flare sputtered out, Max let the Beast run.

  Riding Max’s body, the Beast charged into the teens surging around the cottage corner, and Max was in the center of the mob before they saw him. A heel to the side of the knee just as the foot was planted broke one limb at the joint, another kick lifted a body into the air from the impact at the groin. He thrust his knife hands into throats, fingers into eyes. He tore an ear loose, crushed a nose with his elbow, swiveled, spun, shuffled, danced his way through their midst, a lion feasting on the heart of a herd, bringing down one after another. Lee cursed and screamed at him to get out of the line of fire.

  But his prey never screamed.

  When there were nine bodies on the ground, he started stalking the sound of others approaching, but stopped. The silence had fooled him, even the Beast. He was only hearing everyone he’d brought down, still alive.

  The Beast finished the job, stabbing, biting, tearing, ripping. His hands became slick with sweat and rain, blood and gore. Weapons-fire close by didn’t distract him. He tore through skin and dug down through flesh until he could snap a rib, and used the primitive tool to help his knife hand rip bellies and drill into throats.

  Thunder rumbled. Water pooled in the cavities he’d carved. Blood ran into the mud.

  He found a heart and ate it. The Beast wanted more, but Lee and the others were also fighting hand to hand. More teenagers had attacked from the other flank, overrunning their position.

  Max pulled himself away from the slaughter, promising the Beast more. And there were more to be killed at the cottage entry. Max waded in, slipping and sliding in the muck, half-blinded by the rain coming down so hard it stung his eyes. There was an instant when he wanted to yell at Lee to retreat into the cottage, shut the windows, make a stand at the doorway so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the sheer number of attackers coming at them from all sides.

  But then something moved through the night, whipping down from above, drawing lightning arcs.

  The Beast hesitated, uncertain whether to attack or run. Max fell flat on the ground before he knew what he was doing, face in the mud. The crunch of a heavy impact, like a speeding tractor trailer meeting frail meat, cut through the night. Fresh, warm blood spurted across the back of his head and neck, a pleasant counterpoint to the colder rain soaking through his torn clothes, sending a pleasurable chill down his spine.

  When whatever had come from the sky had passed, Max picked his head up from the mud. There was no one left standing, except for Morris, who had grabbed Cal’s and Lee’s arms and pulled them back against the cottage wall. Morris was laughing, Cal smiling, and Lee was rubbing his eyes with his fist. The rain couldn’t wash away the stench of broken entrails and ruptured organs that hung thick in the air like a perfume designed to entice worms. The Beast had him inhale deeply, and he knew it could live forever in that rich stew of smells.

  The pack of teens resumed the attack, rushing in again from the hedge, but their numbers no longer seemed endless. Their shapes were vague in the glow from the cottage windows as they focused on Morris and the others. Max came at them from behind.

  He broke a neck, pulling an anonymous head back and twisting it to the side, and the Beast wailed over the quickness of the kill. Lee shouted for him to hurry, but Max let the Beast propel him to his next victim, who he swept off his feet. Before the teen was down, Max had already leapt at his crotch, and by the time they were both on the ground he’d ripped out the pack member’s genitalia from between his legs with his teeth. The Beast gorged on the blood pumping out, and Max had a hard time turning away from the wound. The absence of screams of agony helped Max gain a measure of control – he didn’t think he could have stopped himself if he’d had the voice of pain urging him to greater heights of outrage.

  The next he tackled from behind, cracking the spine, and then he pounded the back again until he was sure there would be no rising for his fallen enemy. By now, the teenagers recognized the threat from the rear. Two turned to face him. In the confusion, more youths fell.

  Suddenly, it was Max, Cal, Lee, and Morris who had their attackers surrounded.

  Four against the last six perhaps should have lasted longer. The Beast took its three, one with a bite to the neck, the other with a rip and
a tear that broke bone, punctured skin and exposed muscle. Taking time to probe the wound and touch a still-beating heart, then puncturing lungs with twisted bone, the Beast still had time to pounce on the last of their enemies, pin him to the ground, and, tossing away his bone implement, slowly strangle him with steel fingers.

  Max stared into the youth’s eyes, waiting for their tell-tale widening signaling a terrible recognition of death, but all he got was the slightest flicker of resignation. Perhaps, a tremor of relief.

  The Beast found the last death unsatisfying, and urged Max on to attack Morris, Cal and Lee. Max had to go down on one knee and press fist to forehead, concentrating on the rain pounding his back, to refrain from any more murder.

  In the quiet heart of the storm, thunder and lightning no longer at play, the rain drenching them with an unending sigh, washing them with gentle fingers, perhaps even absolving them like a waterfall from Heaven, it was Cal who spoke first.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “Guess that Mister Cool shit is supposed to be funny,” Morris added.

  Max looked up at the three, who were all breathing hard. Lee had lost his shirt and shoes, but didn’t look like he’d suffered any cuts or broken bones. Part of Cal’s beard had been ripped away, an ear was bloody and ragged as if it had been chewed, and he favored one leg as he stood, hunched over as if expecting another blow any second. Morris still had his Kevlar vest, pants and boots, though his clothes were torn and his face bruised. He studied Max with an expression that was both quizzical and amused.

  “Did I earn my keep?” Max asked, not caring about the answer. He just wanted to take charge of the inevitable aftermath discussion. He dropped the knife to make sure he didn’t scare anyone.

  “Yeah,” Morris said. “Yeah, you and your pal sure did. Might have been overrun if you hadn’t been here. Didn’t think they had the balls to jump us like that. Or the manpower.” He kicked over one of the dead youths, shook his head. “Where the hell did they get these speed freaks? And how did they get them here?” He looked back to Max and said, “Hey, can you put your pants back on? And do something about that boner.”