Max Collins - After the Dark

That would leave a mark.

Spinning back the other way, Mole unleashed a vicious side kick that knocked the machine gun out of the leader’s hand. From the corner of his eye, Mole saw Alec leap, kicking out in opposite directions, each foot connecting with the face of a guard.

Three down, two to go.

The leader stepped in and delivered a quick left jab, followed by an overhand right, rocking Mole. As the lizard man staggered back, the leader kicked him in the solar plexus, driving the air out of him, knocking him off a tree, and leaving him dazed in a pile on the ground at the base of the trunk.

Struggling to stay conscious, Mole got to his knees, expecting the leader to be on him at any second...

... but no attack came.

His vision cleared and he looked up to see that Alec — who had dispatched the fourth guard — now had the leader in a full nelson. Before Mole could get to his feet, though, the leader dropped to his knees, pulling Alec over the top and rolling toward Mole, who grunted as Alec struck him and knocked them both to the ground.

The transgenics rose as one and saw the leader scrambling for the machine gun Mole had knocked away. Both of them took off as if fired from cannons, coming up behind the leader, each grabbing an arm and using the man’s own momentum against him as they sprinted toward a huge oak.

They passed on either side of the tree, the leader meeting the trunk face first with a sickening crunch, his arms slipping from their hands as his momentum abruptly stopped.

The leader stood facing the tree for a moment, as if it were a door that had been slammed in his face; then, with no more consciousness than the tree, he flopped back on the ground, his face a mask of blood, his mouth hanging open, several of his teeth broken. Guy probably wasn’t dead, Mole thought, but definitely out of the game.

Alec asked, “You all right?”

Mole looked down at his left side, stained dark in the half-light of dawn. “Never better,” he said, not wanting to tell his friend that it hurt like hell.

“Like Max says,” Alec said, “let’s blaze.”

And they were running.

A pang of worry shook Max when she heard the shots from the other side of the island.

She hoped the others were safe, but — soldier that she was — she couldn’t afford to fret about it long. Off to their right she saw a five-man patrol just as they saw her. The guards were only about thirty yards away and their guns came up instantly.

“Guns!” she shouted. “Run!”

She’d already taken off.

Zigzagging, she could hear Joshua crashing through the woods behind her as bullets whizzed past, snapping branches, thunk ing into trees, the five automatic weapons sounding more like a hundred.

Max and Joshua sprinted on, running for all they were worth, ducking, weaving, dodging, the guards giving chase now but keeping up the barrage. Only the transgenics’ special gifts kept them from being gunned down, and Max wondered how long their luck and skill would hold.

Then, suddenly, Joshua went down!

Max heard it and sensed it and turned to see, but she’d lost sight of him as she skirted the bullets still flying at her. Rolling to her right, she popped up to see Joshua throw one of the guards like a football, the man splatting into a tree and sagging to the earth.

Springing to her feet, Max rushed one who was so stunned he didn’t even fire as she ran toward him, leaped and kicked, her boot connecting solidly with his face. Blood spewed from his broken nose as he went down, unconscious.

She got a glimpse of Joshua throwing another one into a tree, and that made three down...

Another one shot at her, but the bullets went wide right, as she instinctively dodged left. Jumping high, she somersaulted and came down at the feet of guard number four, who flinched just before she decked him with a right cross that knocked him cold.

She looked around for Joshua, found him, then her heart lurched as she realized the last guard had avoided hand-to-hand combat as he tracked his shot and the man now had Joshua zeroed in...

Max yelled a warning, but it came too late: the guard squeezed the trigger and fired a single round. Joshua’s eyes met hers for the briefest fraction of an instant, still long enough to share love, surprise, forgiveness, thankfulness, everything in that one bit of a second...

... then the bullet thwack ed into the gentle giant’s chest, and Joshua hurtled backward, his arms flying out, his eyes going wide, his mouth dropping open, but no sound came out and he disappeared into the brush.

In the next instant the shooter was turning toward where he’d heard Max yell.

She dove for cover, rolled, and — possessed by a burning rage... no soldier ever forgave another soldier for doing his duty — she blasted forward, blurring into a zigzagging ghost, the shooter always just missing her as he fired off the whole clip. When he went empty, she swept his legs and dumped him on his ass. As he tried to kick his way back to his feet, Max caught him with a straight right that slowed the guard, but didn’t hurt him.

A Familiar.

“Good,” Max said, and smiled a terrible smile. “Time we found out just where your pain threshold begins...”

He was a good six inches taller than her, and a good fifty pounds heavier, and if the muscles bulging through the fatigues were any indication, he was probably a good deal stronger than her, too.

The man growled, but it got cut off by the boot she planted in his chest. He backed up, then came forward trying to get in close, where his size would give him an advantage. Max sidestepped him, back-elbowed him in the head as he went by, then — as he turned — she leapt and broke his nose with her boot.

Incensed now, he charged again.

This time she held her ground and — when he hurled himself at her — Max simply went limp and dropped.

As the guard flew over her, she caught him in the throat with an uppercut. The guard sprawled onto the forest floor. He rolled and tried to rise, but it was clear he was losing momentum, his breathing ragged through the blood-filled broken nose, even as he choked from the last punch.

As he sat up, Max was on him again. Three quick rights sent him back down, groggy. When he lifted his head again, Max — tired of her new game, deciding this snake-cult son of a bitch didn’t need to suffer, just die — took his skull in both hands and gave it a violent twist, breaking the man’s neck like a celery stalk.

She let go of the head, and the limp dead form slumped to the ground.

She went off to look for Joshua and spotted him, spread-eagled about ten yards away, his eyes closed, his chest barely moving. She went to his side, knelt next to him and finally forced herself to look at the wound in his chest. To her surprise, she saw no blood on his coat.

Max steeled herself to lift it back, but then Joshua moaned, opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and in a strangled voice barely above a whisper, asked, “What happened, Little Fella?”

“You were shot, Big Fella.”

“Took one for the team?”

“... Afraid so.”

Joshua swallowed thickly. “C–Cold.”

She stripped off her leather vest and covered him with it as best she could.

He moaned, and it almost sounded like a death howl.

“Does it hurt?”

“Hurt,” he repeated. “Like I got punched — hard.”

His hand went to his chest and she tried to pull it away, but he was stronger. Reaching under the vest and inside his coat, he drew out something red, and for the briefest moment Max had a vision of him pulling out his own heart.

But what he had in his pawlike hand was a book...

... the hard-back copy of Gulliver’s Travels she had used to find Ray White in Appleton.