Rage

TWENTY-SEVEN

Raine got to the doorway to see exactly what was coming.

At both ends of the corridor was a line of shadowy figures, outlined enough so Raine could see the way they walked.

The stumbling gait.

He thought he even saw a few down on all fours. Crawling?

Haven’t seen that before…

A result of the Authority’s work here?

As soon as he stepped into the hallway, the mutants started making their barking noises, some sending out high-pitched screeches.

He wasted no time taking both guns in one hand and reaching into his pack for one of the grenades. Antiques. Handmade grenades. Would they even work?

He pulled a clip on one, tossed it to the line of mutants to his left, and then quickly grabbed another. After wedging the second grenade under his arm to get the pin out, he sent that one down to the right end of the corridor.

The blasts went off within seconds of each other, cacophonous in the closed hallway.

The mutants responded with screams and shrieks. If this place had been bedlam when the Authority was doing its experiments, well… bedlam had returned.

Now what? he wondered.

He had three more grenades.

It took seconds for him to see that they had done little damage. A scattering of dead and mutilated muties at either end, while a seemingly endless supply of mutants crawled over the bodies.

Raine started to think of other possibilities. One thing was clear: standing here was pointless.

He started moving left, since ultimately that was the direction of the hospital exit and his buggy.

Light-years away.

As he did, the smoke from the explosion faded, and now the horde of mutants, their heads tilted like a line of attacking bears, all holding things to smash, cut, or chop him up… kept coming.

He grabbed another grenade and sent it flying ahead, then tossed another back behind him as far as it could go.

One grenade left…

He passed a room on the left. No windows. A box to die in.

Move on.

He was getting closer to the mutants at that end, an insane move, he knew, but he had no other choice.

He now started firing his rifles, holding both at his sides. The automatic rifle sent out a spray of bullets. Moving, shooting, but without taking the time to aim at the dozens of them… his shots didn’t do much.

The damned mutants could take hits.

The shotgun was a bit better, hard for even them to move with a basketball-sized crater in their torsos. But after two shots it was useless. No time to reload it. He stuck the shotgun through the strap of his backpack, barrel down.

He passed another room on the right.

He stopped. A patients’ room. It had a barred window.

Third floor.

What was the building’s facade like? he wondered.

If he went in there, he knew one thing-he wouldn’t ever come out the way he went in.

Not in one piece.

He raised his automatic and started taking aim. He brought down a few of the mutants in front.

Give the others something to climb over.

He spun around to the other end. They were getting close, too, racing their monster brothers to see which would get to him first.

Raine could feel his own heart racing, adrenaline pumping, but also fighting an insane anxiety that screamed at him:

It’s all over. This is how it fucking ends.

He was out of options. He ducked into the room and moved quickly over to the glassless window. He pushed against the bars, still firmly in place. He looked down.

The window below had a ledge, and if he could lower himself to it, he might be able to get to the ground safely. If he missed…

Anything like a jump from this height would leave his legs broken.

Again, though-no options. He pushed against the bars again. The mutants had to be only steps away.

He aimed the rifle at the window ledge and fired. The shot made the stone around the bar blast away. A quick kick and the bar went flying. He shot out another, but it was still not enough room for him to get out.

The mutant shrieks were now just behind him, tempting him to turn and fire at them.

But his training kicked in, and all that experience that made him able to lead men into the hell of battle-the ability to stay cool under so much goddamn pressure, to stay on task-took over. He fired another quick blast, and he kicked a third bar away.

He had room now.

He lowered his rifles out the window and let them fall. Then he quickly climbed out, turned around, and-fingers holding onto the lip of the windowpane-slowly lowered himself out of the window, legs dangling.

His upper body strength… not what it was. Not after a hundred years, no matter how good the cryo program.

The pull of hanging made his clawlike fingers ache.

He looked up.

The first mutant face peered into his, eyes wide at the dangling prize before it.

His feet had to land on the ledge below, on the second floor.

And he had to do that now.

The fall was only a few feet. But doing it blindly, knowing what he was in for if he missed-it wasn’t a good feeling. He struggled to slide straight down, feet flat, knowing he’d have only a few inches of purchase to catch his fall.

He landed… but the weight of the pack and the way his feet hit gave him just enough of an angle so he tilted away from the face of the building.

And suddenly, after that moment of arrested fall, he was sliding down again, the bars of a second-floor window passing him.

He had one chance to stop this too-fast descent-and he made a quick grab at the bars of that window.

One hand missed completely, grabbing air.

But the other locked onto a metal bar. And after that hand slid down to the window base-despite aching fingers-it held.

Raine quickly brought his other hand around and grabbed a second bar.

He had stopped his race to the ground. But he knew he couldn’t risk moving his hands, one at a time, to the ledge.

No, he’d have to fall from this height, and hope he could land well enough so he didn’t break bones… and more important, not fall backward and smash the hard drive.

He counted down… three… two… one…

And then he let go, mentally willing his legs to be as flexible as possible.

He hit the ground, a good landing, the shock to his knees and upper legs not mind-numbingly painful; but he did stagger backward, about to roll onto his back. He quickly moved his legs-not the most graceful move, but it prevented the backward roll.

The judge from Romania gave it a 6.7…

He hurried over to his guns. He picked up the pump-action shotgun and quickly reloaded it. He slid it back into its makeshift holster across his back.

Time to get the hell out of here.

It was quiet on the street-probably since it appeared that most of the Dead City’s good citizens were in the hospital trying to get to him.

He took a step.

And that step was matched.

By a vibration.

The ground shook. Then again. Until standing there, his eyes wide as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on, he realized that the thundering noise, this shaking… were steps.

He broke out into a run toward his buggy. At the same time, something came from behind a nearby building, right near his buggy, stepping over the neat barrier of destroyed vehicles that Raine had scrambled over to reach the hospital.

Stepping over it all so easily.

A mutant. Thirty feet tall. Holding a sharpened piece of metal girder in its hands.

Raine went to his knees.

He took aim at the thing as it came stomping and roaring toward him, so fast for something so big. He fired at its head, its eyes. But he could see that this thing-this monster that outdid all the other mutated monsters-bore the results of a lot of wounds.

Others had tried to stop it-and failed. Burnt, blistered areas of skin. Additional holes near its eye sockets and skull.

None of it seemed to matter.

It was doing just fine.

Raine sent one bullet into an eye socket. But the giant bobbed and weaved as it moved, maybe a strategy learned… or simply its natural style. If he had damaged the thing’s sight, there was no sign of it.

He kept firing the shotgun, the blasts echoing, even as he looked… seeing what was behind the creature.

A few “normal” mutants trailed it, like lampreys sticking close to a shark.

The creature brushed at its eye where he had hit it. Then it bellowed.

Raine could swear the nearby buildings vibrated from the horrific sound.

The creature picked up one of the smaller mutants at its feet.

And threw it Like a toy. A doll. The crazed mutant kicking and flailing as it flew toward him.

Bad aim, though-as the mutant went harmlessly splat behind him.

He fired his shotgun at the giant’s head. The blast left its cheek with a blackish hole.

Did it do anything other than change the cratered landscape of that thing’s face? Because, Raine thought, if it did nothing… then he was truly fucked.

He stood up. This taking time to stand and deliver, taking aim at the thing… didn’t seem to do any good.

Options. He imagined the other mutants streaming down. Soon they’d join this party.

Raine pumped the shotgun, aimed and fired again… and again, feeling more and more that the shells were mere pinpricks to the monster.

When now, the giant only meters away, he noticed something in the creature’s repetitive bobbing and weaving.

At the tip of its skull-an opening.

Something had wounded it there, and blew off a piece of skull.

And, glistening on the top of its domelike head, what sufficed for its brain.

Raine turned away and dug out the last grenade, ignoring the hissing, howling shrieks behind him.

The thing had started swinging its girder at him. It wasn’t close enough to hit him-not yet-but he could feel the force of the wind as the steel flew in front of his face.

Raine pulled the pin.

His fingers shook, whether from sheer fear or the residual ache of getting out of the hospital.

Twenty-second timer. Could be an eternity.

He attempted to count. Another thumping step from the thing, and it reared its head back as it roared.

A totally unpredictable move.

Counting…

Had to be time, he thought. Now.

And he lobbed the grenade upward. Thinking he had not gotten it high enough.

He had always been a football guy. Needed better skills on the basketball court. Never could sink the big ones. The grunts from East New York and Bed-Stuy always whipped his ass.

But then the thing lowered its head as if curious what this small thing flying toward it could be.

The open pit on the skull a good-sized target. But now-it was all a matter of luck.

And then Raine-thanking a God he didn’t believe in-watched the grenade bounce into the open pit, hit the thing’s brain material, start to roll out of the pit-when it exploded.

Stuff went flying from the thing’s head.

It dropped its girder, pinning a group of mutants at its feet.

The thing’s hands went to its head, thoughts of a human lunch replaced with a message of pain, and probably a loss of functioning as its brain material flew into the sky, spraying this closed-off street.

Raine didn’t waste any time watching the thing tumbling to the street. He raced past it, taking care to watch which way the tree-sized monster would fall. He ran fast, knowing that the mutant horde couldn’t be far behind. He reached the piles of cars and scurried over.

He heard the crash of the mutant falling behind him but didn’t stop to look back.

Jack had his beanstalk… I have a pile of burnt-out cars.

As he came down the other side, he half expected his buggy to be smashed. But when he reached the ground, it sat there.

Looking perfectly fine.

One of the best damn things he had ever seen in his life.

Raine jumped in, taking care to stow the backpack securely in the rear.

He started it up and then hit the accelerator with a near maniacal fury as he raced away from the hospital. The buggy barreled down streets, past the eerie remnants of this place, this now dead city.

And when he was finally out of the city, he thought…

Dead City.

Yes… but I’m still alive.