Psycho Save Us (50 page)

“You see
something
,”
Dmitry accused, raising a cigarette to his lips.  In his other hand, he held a
.44 Magnum snub-nose.  “I’m just wondering if you see the same thing as me.  Or
are we both seeing different things?  They say heaven is what you make it.  I
always thought that was strange, you know?  If that’s so, then everybody’s just
walking around heaven really confused.”  He took a toke, blew out smoke, which
the imp quickly crawled to the edge of his face and inhaled, lapping up the
smoke like sweet juices from a watermelon.  “So, is it the same with hell?”

“There is no
hell,” Spencer said.  “Just earth.  Good ol’
terra firma
an’ a house
with a little girl’s nightmare occupyin’ it.” 
He’s lost it
, Spencer
thought. 
An’ he’s accepted it
. 
He’s accepted the reality around him
. 
The others fight it, that’s why they suffer
.  As he considered that, he
also felt the presence from
her
.  She was around him, with him, to the
point that, from one second to the next, he wasn’t sure where she ended and he
began.

“This thing in
my hand,” Dmitry said.  “
It’s
not imaginary.”

“Neither are
these,” Spencer said, and raised his weapons.  He fired.

Several things
happened at once.  The slithering thing in the hallway churned, perhaps alarmed
by the sudden burst of gunfire.  As it did, it absorbed most, if not all, of
Spencer’s bullets.  When this happened, the flames diminished—they didn’t
vanish, they just lessened in intensity—and Dmitry fired back.  He unloaded the
snub-nose, but none of the bullets hit Spencer. 
Real enough
, he
thought, and tossed down his Glock when it was empty.  He fired the Uzi in
short, controlled bursts until it too was empty.  The writhing tentacle slammed
against the wall, and where it did, flames bloomed in a way that would’ve been
gorgeous under any other circumstances.

Dmitry flung his
Magnum to the ground, and ran out from the bedroom and directly at Spencer, who
did the same.  The tentacle surged, and amid the cramped hallway, flames, and
men choking on the briars pouring from their own bodies, they collided.

DAVID WAS GLAD
to see the SWAT
van pulling up, and the other three patrol cars and the FBI’s SUV right behind
them, with the three agents hopping out with Leon Hulsey diving for cover
behind the rear wheel of David’s car as soon as he exited.  He moved fast for
such a big guy, and joined the firefight before asking any questions.  Leon
shouted, “
Where?!
”

David pointed up
the street, to the open windows from the houses on the left.  Leon poked his
head out from cover and fired five rapid shots from his Glock, a suppressive
fire accompanied by SWAT when they came spewing out the back of the van.  They
took up cover at the rear of their van, two men peeking around the sides of the
open bulletproof doors and firing in controlled bursts at the houses the helicopters
(there were two of them now) had highlighted with their searchlights.

The street was
alive with echoing gunfire, and very little verbal communication passed between
any officers, especially SWAT, who did almost everything with hand signals. 
Two of them came out the back with Remington 700 sniper rifles and dived for
cover behind the other squad cars, and popped up to start setting up their
shots.

Shots were
rained down from the helicopters, the sharpshooters getting an angle on some of
the gunmen in the top floor windows.

This whole
thing’s a clusterfuck!
he thought, and knew that he was partially to
blame.  Instead of backing out of Avery Street and waiting for backup, he’d
stayed and started firing back.  He couldn’t escape for the hail of gunfire, and
this required more officers to put themselves in the line of fire to back him
up.  This put even more officers in jeopardy, but now their vehicles had formed
a wall, and there would be no escaping the cul-de-sac—

One of the SWAT
members went down.  A bullet had clipped Warwick, who went spinning to the
pavement.  Within the span of a second, one of his teammates reached down
without thought and grabbed the handlebar at the back of his armor, which
allowed for easy dragging of a wounded man.

Then, automatic
gunfire poured out of two more windows.  David spent time enough at the gun
range to know the sound of high-powered rifles.  Leon and the other agents
dropped back behind his car when the glass of the windows exploded all around
and the rest of the squad car’s tires were finally blown.

“
Officers
down!
” he heard over his radio in between salvos from their enemies.

David watched as
Hennessey quickly issued orders to his teams.  The SWAT team started moving
cover-to-cover up the yard of the house on the right.  A pair would lay down
suppressing fire while four others moved up, and then the two at the front
would lay down more suppressing fire, allowing the guys at the rear to catch
up.  They took cover behind a van parked in the driveway and made their way to
the side of the house.  The two snipers fired from where they’d set their
rifles up on tripods on the hoods of the squad cars.  David, the other officers
and the sharpshooters in the choppers also gave SWAT suppressing fire while
they moved to the back yard, where they would be in shadows and away from the
windows with all the gunmen.

Then, all at
once, bullets danced on the pavement on
this
side of David’s car.

“Behind us!”
Leon shouted.

He turned and
saw two men running for cover behind a mailbox, firing not-so-wildly, in a
crouch and their weapons held tight to their shoulders.  One had a shotgun of
some kind, the other something along the lines of an M16.  Agents Stone and
Mortimer were taking cover behind their SUV, which was the direction the
newcomers had come from, and were already gunned down by the time David caught
sight of them.

God damn
jackalope!

Keitrich was
down, and McDevitt had been seeing to him when the gunfire erupted from
behind.  Keitrich was still conscious, though, and fired his gun one-handed
from where he lay half in his partner’s lap, bleeding out and possibly dying.

Fucking Jack
Ching Bada-Bing!
 
David briefly thought of Beatrice, her marred hand, and how it meant she would
work a desk job for the rest of her career, if she was lucky, and she had
always despised desk jockeys.

His eye still
hurt.  And though he would later regret it, that was actually the straw that
broke the camel’s back.

David stood and
ran around his patrol car.  He heard Leon shout something at him, but it never
fully made it to his ear for all the gunfire.  A bullet zipped so close past
his head that he felt the wind breaking.  He ran for cover behind the same van
SWAT had taken cover behind, then darted around and leapt across a short picket
fence into the next yard.  He took cover around the side of the house, amid
shots that tore across the front lawn and drew a line towards him. 
You’re
mine, Jack Ching
. 
Nobody else gets to have you
.

David pressed
his back against the wall and peeked around the corner.  When he saw that
gunfire had been drawn elsewhere, he dipped around to the front porch and crept
along in a low crouch.

THEY WERE TWO
of a kind, both
constructed with the same wrongness at their foundation, yet everything they’d
experienced since birth had helped to shape them into different kinds of
monsters.

Kaley stood at
the center of the basement, standing over Olga, watching as great grasping hands
pulled her deeper into the flames, boiling her skin.  She’d started to sizzle. 
She got up to run but was flung against the wall, and then slid along it as
though Earth’s gravitational pull had decided to go another way.  Olga was
finally flattened against the ceiling.

Kaley looked
around, saw Bonetta lying on the ground, clawing at her own face, bringing
blood.  Maggots had started pouring from her skin and eye sockets.  As much as
Kaley wanted to dispel this, she couldn’t.  Discounting Shan, there were only
two other people utterly untouched by what she’d unleashed, but whereas Shan
had the charm to protect her, both Oni and the monster had acceptance.  They had
accepted what they were. 
Cut from the same cloth
, Nan would’ve said. 
They
be cut from the same cloth, chil’
.

While Olga
struggled against hands that stretched out from the ceiling—children’s hands,
trembling with fear, and rage—Kaley slowly turned back to the door where
Shannon was being held.  It was wreathed in flame.  Inside, there was a dark
void, a blind spot to Kaley’s telempathy.  Shan, the girl who earlier tonight
had told Big Sister to watch out for the tiny beetle, had warded herself
against the Ocean of Sorrow currently flooding the house.

A hideous
creaking noise went throughout the basement.  Then, there was a sharp snap. 
Kaley turned to find the walls breaking apart.  One piece came away, and
crumbled to the floor.  And whereas there ought to have been sheetrock and
insulation, there were instead rippling, pulsating slabs of pink, slimy meat
that looked like tonsils the size of engine blocks, one piled on top of the
other.  The walls were filled with them.  Green and blue veins climbed up through
this meat, and blood coursed through them.  The house breathed, and the flames
were ventilated in and out through the slight gaps between each tonsil.

A red, viscous
liquid poured from the ceiling, and then collected around her feet in great
pools.  Kaley knew that this was both real and unreal, both shadow and
substance.

“What…”  It was
Olga, up on the ceiling.  “What…are…you…doing…to…us?”  Then, just as stupidly,
“Why?  Oh, God,
whyyyyyyyy
?!”

“If you don’t
know now,” Kaley said, “you never will.  For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.  I
truly,
truly
am.  I…I don’t know how to stop it…”  But neither one of
those things was entirely true.  Kaley wasn’t
entirely
sorry, nor was
she
entirely
ignorant of how to stop it.  Part of her—the part shared
and enlightened by contact with the monster’s heart—relished the Rapture.  And,
she was ashamed to say, she couldn’t stop herself, no more than Olga cold stop
her loins from going wet at the sight of a new child to torture and film, nor
more than Mikhael and Dmitry could stop themselves once they felt their loins
filling and going hard at the same thought.  It was compulsive, it felt
right
,
it felt
good
, and, in many ways, she would hate herself for the rest of
her life, much the way the Oni family hated themselves when they went to sleep
at night.

All except for
Dmitry.  He was no one special.  He wasn’t the patriarch of the family—she now
sensed that that dubious honor belonged to the tattooed man upstairs.  Dmitry
was only unique in that, whereas the rest of the family had a semblance
of
family unity amongst their own, he had none.  He was a loner, a divergent
creature, one that had learned to operate within a certain set of parameters in
order to survive, but was still a man apart.

Just like the
monster
,
she thought. 
He doesn’t want to admit it, but they’re the same, and there
can be only one
. 
Just like that movie
Highlander
that Ricky used
to like so much
. 
There can be only one
.  It was insane to think,
but there it was.

“I’m s-s-s-
sorryyyyyyyy
,”
Olga whimpered from above.  The hands had now reached out and grabbed hold of
her breasts, had pried them apart to get at her sternum, which they also pried
part with slow care, and now reached inside to prod playfully at her innards. 
“Please…please…”

“I’m sorry,
too,” Kaley said.  “You couldn’t stop, and now I can’t.  I understand you now. 
I empathize.  It just…it just feels
too good
, doesn’t it?”

FIRE BLOOMED FROM
their hands as
they grabbed hold of one another, their arms crisscrossing and their hands
grabbing fistfuls of one another’s clothing.  The fire swirled beneath their
feet, as did the tentacle, or the serpent, or whatever it was.  It didn’t seem
to want to interfere in this, it only swirled and climbed and caught fire
randomly.  Behind them, the three tortured men had started to move.  The briars
had started to break free, and just as they were climbing to their feet, more
briars shot out of their mouths, choking them and attaching to the ceilings and
lifting them into the air by their own tongues.

Spencer saw only
part of this.  He and Dmitry pushed one another around and around the room of
fire until Spencer wound up with his back against a dresser, and Dmitry
hammered at his face with his fists.  Spencer took them all smiling, the
masochistic part of him savoring the pain, his mind diving headlong into the
absurdity of everything around him.  He caught Dmitry’s arm on his fifth punch
and then grabbed him about the neck in a clinch.  “This is some fucked up shit,
ain’t it?” Spencer howled.