A Perfect Machine(75)

Adelina just kept stomping toward the cop cars, unfazed.

The cops spun their wheels, found purchase after fishtailing, headed straight toward Adelina. The cops riding shotgun leaned out their windows, began firing their guns at her. The bullets pinged off. Zero effect. The first car rammed into Adelina’s left leg just after she brought it down to street level. The hood crumpled. The driver’s head drove into the windshield, cracked it, creating a star-shaped burst of blood and glass. The passenger was thrown free, but was already dead as he flew through the air. He landed in a nearby snowbank, a discarded rag doll. His face a mask of blood. Eyes glazed over, seeing nothing.

The second car came in just under Adelina’s right foot. She stomped its engine block into the ground. She fell forward on her right knee, off balance, crushed the driver to a pulp in an instant. The passenger fired his revolver at her until she moved her enormous left hand down and pushed hard toward the ground on that side of the car. Everything beneath her hand crumpled in on itself. Her hand came away streaked with blood.

Fucking kamikaze, Bill thought, true fear threading its way through his guts for the first time in as long as he could remember. How do you fight this?

Adelina regained her balance, looked down at herself, then up at the choppers moving in. She raised both arms, then, as if to say, Come on. Here I am. What are you waiting for?

She lowered her arms, kept walking toward the subway entrance.

Two blocks. One block. More sirens all around them, and the choppers closing in.

Marcton pulled the Hummer over to the side of the road, hopped out, motioned for the others to follow, yelled, “Let’s go! Move!”

The four men ran single file through the snow, nearly on Adelina’s heels now.

That’s when one of the choppers’ searchlights found Adelina and opened fire. The bullets just ricocheted off her, but the double-line of heavy bullets caught Cleve and Bill in mid-stride, sent them both sprawling.

They sat up in the snow as the helicopter came around for another run.

Marcton ran back, grabbed them each by one arm, hoisted them back onto their feet, barked, “Go! Get underground now!”

Kendul had already gone under, and Adelina was squeezing herself into the entrance now, too. She hacked at the edges to make it wider, concrete falling away to either side – she was a bit smaller than Henry, but also in one hell of a rush.

She crawled in, moved deeper inside until she was able to stand somewhat comfortably.

Marcton, Bill, and Cleve scrambled down the destroyed entrance, picking their way over the rubble as they went in. Bill had the most trouble negotiating the loose chunks of concrete, his foot twice getting stuck under it.

One of the helicopters opened fire, just as a cop car came careening into view. The bullets riddled the car, killing both occupants. The cop car hopped the curb, slammed into Bill where he clambered over a small hill of rubble.

Crushed him against a wall to the left of the entrance.

He was pinned between the car and wall, the hood of the vehicle mashing his waist and part of his chest, his legs twisted and caught under the engine.

He screamed. Cleve moved toward him from the subway entrance, but Marcton pulled him back, said, “He’s done, Cleve. We have to go. Come on.” Pulled on Cleve’s collar, spun him around roughly, pushed his back.

They ran deeper into the tunnel, caught up to Kendul and Adelina, turned back to look as the whine of a descending chopper got closer and closer. Bill screamed again, then the chopper slammed full force into the cop car, obliterating Bill in a ball of fire that rose up into the night, belching black smoke.

If everyone didn’t know where all the action was before, they do now, Kendul thought.

Tears glistened on Cleve’s eyelids – from smoke or grief or both, Marcton didn’t know. “What the fuck, Marcton!? What the fuck was that? What’s wrong with them? They’re just fucking divebombing us!”

Marcton didn’t respond.

“Just keep running, Cleve. Keep running,” Kendul said. He turned and headed into the blackness of the tunnel, Adelina leading the way like she was a bloodhound, like she knew which way and how far Henry and the others had gone – which she did. Henry’s location was like a bright red dot in the black of her mind’s eye. She instinctively knew him like twins know each other, like a mother knows her own child.

Aboveground, they heard more choppers, more sirens.

Marcton clapped Cleve on the back, gently nudged him forward. Cleve took one last look at the mouth of the tunnel entrance – entirely engulfed now in fire, rubble, and black smoke.

Marcton wondered what was next. Drones? Full missile airstrikes? Christ.

They ran hard beneath the skin of the city then, no longer looking back for anything.





T W E N T Y - O N E





Moments before the subway train slammed into Henry Kyllo, these were his thoughts:

I have killed, and I will kill again.

I do not want this. I do not deserve this.

More death as a result, but at least it will be over. I will be stopped. Whatever’s inside me is eating its way out. Devouring me as it goes. Who I am. Who I was. Only a hint of a shadow of me remains.

This will end it. For me, for Faye, Milo, everyone.

I need to die. I need to die.

When the train hit Henry, it drove him back a hundred yards, brakes screeching the entire way. It caved in his chest, crumpled parts of his face, severed one finger from his right hand, two from his left.