A Perfect Machine(69)

Nearly every shot bounced off, but on two occasions Palermo’s scrambling, terrified mind subconsciously picked up that two or three of their shots seemed to drive home. But where? At what point on her body?

Then it came to him. As their guns clicked empty, Palermo muttered, “Joints.” He turned his head toward Kendul. “Aim for the joints. They must not be fully formed or something.”

Kendul nodded. “Ammo?”

“Downstairs, follow me.”

Since Adelina was now blocking most of the upstairs landing, both men vaulted over the banister, dropped onto the staircase, ran to the basement.

“Shotguns will do more damage. Got a few down here,” Palermo said. He moved quickly to the gun cabinet while Kendul kept watch on the stairs – not that Adelina could fit down the staircase, obviously, but she could come tumbling down it, he supposed, and just roll over them like the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

“Come on, man, come on,” Kendul said.

Palermo smashed the glass with the butt of his gun, dropped the gun on the floor, reached inside, grabbed two shotguns, scrambled around for ammo, chucked a shotgun and some shells in Kendul’s general direction, then started loading his own weapon.

There was a deep moan from upstairs, thumping, then an otherworldly scream that filled their ears, drove deep into their brains.

“Christ!” Palermo said, shaking his head from side to side, as if the noise were a tangible thing and he was trying to dislodge it from his head.

A loud crash, wood splintering. It sounded like she’d fallen through – or consciously driven herself through – the second-floor ceiling.

“Load up, man. She’s coming,” Kendul said. “She’s fucking coming.”

More thumping – metal on wood, metal on tile – as she clomped around the main floor, probably searching room to room, her body busting through the walls, shredding the house, gutting it like a demolition ball.

She stopped at the top of the stairs, moved her head down to see.

Palermo’s base instinct was to hide. His primary thought being if she can’t see us, she can’t hurt us. But he knew they needed to try to stop her, couldn’t let her just go rampaging around, destroying the street, the whole fucking city.

They had to try to be seen.

Going against every natural instinct in his body – every fiber of his being shouting at him to get the fuck away! – Palermo moved to the bottom of the stairs where he and Adelina locked eyes. Her head was enormous, eyes big metal balls set into a face composed of shards of what looked like jagged rock and steel.

She snorted once, pulled her head out of sight. Then, a second before her foot came down, Palermo knew what she was going to do, and he leaped backward out of the way.

Her right leg crashed through the basement ceiling, and she toppled down into the far side of the room, one leg very nearly touching the basement floor, the other caught on the opposite side of a steel support beam. Her bulk tilted to one side and she fell onto her back, cracking the concrete floor, sending up chunks of it to either side of her.

Palermo and Kendul knew that the moment she got to her feet, they’d be dead – knew that this was their one and only shot. There was nowhere left to go.

They opened fire.

At this range, most of the shot found its mark. Palermo concentrated on the right leg joint; Kendul fired on the right arm joint. Adelina wailed in pain. They fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded as fast as their shaking fingers would allow.

The first limb to come off was the right arm. It dropped to the basement floor with a thud, blood and some other fluid leaking out. Kendul moved on to the left arm.

The right leg was next to go. Then both men were firing into the joint of her left arm.

Adelina thrashed around on her back, reaching her remaining hand out, madly waving it back and forth blindly. Kendul was standing too close, and one of her fingers caught his right leg, shattered the bone there. He dropped, kept firing.

The left arm finally came free, more blood pumping out. Thick and dark.

With three limbs separated from her body, Adelina went from bellowing to moaning, then whimpering. Then silence.

Kendul was leaning on his right side on the ground, shaking shells free from another box of ammo, when Palermo put a hand on his shoulder, said, “It’s done, James. No more.”

Kendul blinked, closed his eyes tight against the pain in his leg. He nodded, rolled onto his back, dropped the shotgun, breathing heavily.

Palermo stood back up, looked at the remains of what used to be his daughter.

Arms and legs the width of telephone poles.

Torso the size of a small car.

Head the size of a truck engine, tilted to one side, eyes dead.

Nothing on the body moved.



* * *



Later, when they dug out the basement and buried her there, as far as he knew, only Kendul felt the ever so faint thrum of machinery in his bones.

He didn’t know what to make of it at the time, but the feeling had stayed with him through the years. Subconscious at first, the feeling grew until it become unquestionable knowledge:

Adelina Palermo was still alive.

And the same part of him that had insisted Adelina not be stopped moments before she’d killed Sandra Beiko tore into the forefront of his mind, telling him to keep this quiet. Some diseased part of his soul that revered this abomination as a god.