Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (30 page)

The enemy host, surprised by my attack on Nevsky and my charge on Modi, would only stay out of it for so long. They opened up on me, with a dozen energy projectors and firearms specialists firing at my and Modi’s bodies with plasma bolts, flame spouts, and high-impact shells. Another super grabbed me from behind, but he got caught in the indiscriminate hail of fire, peppering me with his blood. The fusillade was brutal and mindless, catching friend and foe alike, and I noticed that Modi flinched in pain with every flame and plasma bolts that raked his huge body. Yet, he was more concerned with his agonizing demolished knee, thrashing about like a soccer player on the pitch. I reached over and grabbed the leather-corded boot of his good leg and pulled back against his straining muscles, trying to spin him around me.

It was like moving a mountain by grabbing its peak, all the while being blasted to hell by the combined wrath of all the ranged villains. I dragged him along the sand in a half-circle before my circular motion lifted him off the ground. Once off the ground, his momentum increased dramatically as I spun around. Some of the flyers held their fire, finding higher ground to avoid my next hurled victim, but as I oscillated, I noticed one figure moving toward me.

Dreadlord had nothing to fear from the bullets and plasma beams that peppered the area around me, as he was already dead. Will, the desire to consume and destroy, kept his desiccated body animated, and as he advanced on me, I could tell he was hungry. His lips and eyelids long gone, he glared at me malevolently with milky yellow eyes, and his face was ripped apart into a permanent rictus grin, as if he knew his powers were the antithesis to mine: my strength would only feed him and make him more powerful.

As I rotated, I spun Modi in my grasp as I brought him behind me; pivoting my arms and hips, I drew the huge man over my right shoulder and down onto Dreadlord, obliterating him in a thunderous crash that shattered the hard earth and formed a crater as wide as a football field.

Modi still breathed once the dust began to settle, but beneath him there was no sign of Dreadlord, save for a disembodied arm that had flown off with the impact.

This changed the whole setting, as the earthquake-like devastation left an impact crater almost ten feet deep and tossed about everyone to the ground. I was one of the first to get to my feet, but it was only because I was helped by a few villains who had recovered faster than I. Two guys I couldn’t recognize held my arms and others jostled in front of me, hurling blow after blow at my head and face. Each punch reverberated through my skull, like the sound of hammer crashing on my cranium. I looked over and saw Slipshod, laying into me every chance he could, despite being much smaller than some of the bruisers who held me. I couldn’t take much more ducking my head from each punishing blow, and I saw the feet of one of the guys grabbing my right arm. I raised my foot and stamped down, burying my heel into the man’s foot, and heard the crackling of bones and a painful cry. They were all pressed against me now, pushing and shoving, but when he released my right arm, I got enough momentum to stem the tide. I ripped my arm free from the grasping paws of a couple of bastards and swung a hard right at Slipshod, catching him in a brutal downward blow that he was too penned in to avoid. He tried slipping back, but the bodies didn’t let him move more than a few inches, and my powerful punch caught him in the chest, caving in every bone. In his death shriek, a gallon of blood exploded out of his mouth, raining on me and the others.

I reached over and grabbed at the hand of one of the guys holding my left arm as one heavy blow after another slammed at me from my right. I clasped a finger and bent it back, but the man wouldn’t let me go, even when the bone snapped, so I lunged in and clenched the broken finger in my teeth and severed the whole thing. He finally screamed and let go; I spun, throwing a crushing blow into his face, driving a fist through his skull. The man next to him, also holding my left arm, released me, so I reached over and grabbed broken-finger-guy’s corpse by one of the legs. Jumping up in the air, I slammed the body down to give me a few feet of room.

“I want him,” yelled Slicer, moving through the throng as they formed a small circle around us both. “I’m going to cut you, motherfucker,” he said, motioning to his blades.

I smiled, knowing what I looked like, feeling a welling of blood – my own and others’ –swirling among my teeth, dribbling down my face, spattered across my chest.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said, intending to say more mean villain shit, except I charged him.

Slicer flashed his blades, whirling them in front of him like a shield I had to overcome, and as I came closer he dipped under a planet-killing haymaker and stabbed me under the ribcage. His daggers pierced my skin, but I’ve been stabbed before. The pain may have been agonizing but was a distant whisper against my burgeoning rage. I roared, more in anger than affliction. Standing straighter and opening my arms wide, he did as I expected, digging the dagger deeper, not realizing what I was about to do until the last second. I swung my arms back, channeling all my teeth-clenching rage into the twin blows. My fists hammered into the sides of his head. His final facial expression was an equal mixture of impending anguish and supplication for mercy, but there wasn’t an ounce of mercy in my soul, and a split second later his head exploded, raining blood, brain and bone.

Something kept his headless body standing – maybe it was how he clenched in the last instant’s realization – but I put my foot on his ooze-dripped chest and thrust him back into Scout, Trooper, and Heavy, who were moving closer with their weapons leveled at me. Heavy was too slow and I took him out with the human missile.

For a moment there, the enemy paused. Some of the weaker villains stood around, probably wondering what they could individually do to me, when their strongest had already fallen. They still had more than enough fire power and raw force to finish me, but they couldn’t reasonably channel that force in my direction without getting in each other’s way. In that one respect, their overwhelming numbers worked in my favor. I waited for one of them to try to rally the others, to make an effort to coordinate them. But there was only fear, a palpable feeling that if I got my hands on one of them, they would end up like Nevsky, Modi, or Slicer.

There were a few big ones still standing, like Odyssey and Jigoku, and the great beast Fenris was circling around, someone’s blood dripping from his massive jaws. I guess I didn’t have to wonder what was happening to the people I was putting down.

“Run if you want to live,” I said, knowing that I had one moment of advantage and that if I could get a few to run, I might have a chance. “But if you stay, you die.”

“Motherfucker,” someone shouted from behind me, and I turned to catch Powerstaff mid-air, his namesake weapon raised and ready to bring down on me. I waited until the last moment before he landed and then side-stepped, avoiding his blow by a miracle. Around me, others were charging in, so I moved into Powerstaff and threw a full-force uppercut into his chest, sending him flying high into the air and out of the scrum. I don’t know why, but at that moment, I remembered a similar fight from Shard World, when Apogee and I had fought an overpowering horde like this one. She would hit one enemy and spin, ready for an attacker from her rear, and there someone would be. I matched her moves, staying behind her in a half-assed ballet of death. Her strategy had been to strike and turn, and strike and turn, always spinning, never letting anyone behind her, and with me covering her back, we soon left a field of bodies surrounding us.

So I turned, just in time for a big fellow to almost reach me, his arms back in a Jim Kirk downward double powerfist. I lashed out with my boot and kicked him in the chest, stopping all his momentum and doubling him over to land at my feet. I left him there, turning again with a ready haymaker at a target I didn’t yet see. As if on command, two guys were charging me and I released the punch with all my strength. It caught the first guy in the temple, cracking his head aside into the second. Their forward motion carried them into me, but I pushed their slack bodies down to join their buddies.

I spun again, my fist leading the way, and caught another jaw, the head spinning to a bone-cracking halt. He crashed into my chest and I grabbed him, hurling him at several others behind me. The crowd was pressing harder as the next throng of villains had decided to work in concert. I pulped one’s face, kicked another guy in the chest, collapsing the ribcage, and elbowed a third across the face, sending his eye flying out of the socket, but by then, I was overpowered by the sheer humanity. Men grabbed at me, at every possible inch, at my hair, at my balls and pecker, but I didn’t stop fighting.

In such close quarters, I could only slip an occasional elbow, butt my head, spit at someone’s eye. I powered a knee into a villain’s midsection, hearing a cracking of bones in his torso and getting a spray of blood in my face.

“Die!” I screamed, heaving the scrum back enough to release my left arm. Hurling back, I caught one of the guys holding me, the ferocity of the blow tearing his head from his body. The guy next to him vomited, the warm fluid running down my back, and that grossed out another villain who was holding my midsection. As they both eased back, the front bunch of the mass pressed back at me. I rode the wave, opening my arms and grabbing vomit-boy in a bear hug. He was an ugly guy, rough and tough, with a severe scar that dominated the right side of his face.

“Die,” I said, inches from his face, squeezing his upper body in my arms. His eyes blanched with distress, and he let out a little cough that spittled a dot of vomit onto my face; I flexed my arms tight against my chest. Others punched me from behind and grabbed at me, trying to split me from my target, but no one was going to take him from me. He clawed at my arms as I denied him any air, and just as he was fading out, I heaved with all my might, destroying his chest cavity. His ribs snapped and crackled, now jagged spears impaling his torso. He tried to scream, arching his body back, but managed only to let out a slight whistle as a fine mist of vaporized blood steamed from his mouth.

Someone grabbed my face, pulling me back, and adjusted his grip into a chokehold. He was strong, but I was stronger. I let go of the dead guy, pushing him out against the flock of bodies in front of me and pressing my attacker and me backward. As I had expected, the bunch thrust against me, pushing me forward again. I grabbed the guy’s arm just above the elbow, digging my fingers into his flesh and hearing him scream. I rose for a second, taller than the man who held me, making him lose his footing, and used the momentum to bend over hard. He flew over my head but kept a tight hold on my neck as he landed on some of the men in front of me. His guys held him in the air, so he was aloft, upside down, still grabbing my neck. I had to stay bent over, and began to worry about my predicament. Maybe this guy’s super power was that once he held something, he never let go? More reason to worry was that I was bent over, and villains from behind me were punching me, stabbing me; though their weapons weren’t piercing my skin, the blows were accentuated by it being stretched out.

But then I felt something at my ribcage. His head.

He had held on as I had spun him off my back, and he had landed on his mates, who now kept him in the air, his back perpendicular to the ground. But his head was right at my midsection. I reached over and grabbed it, wrapping my left arm around the back and pressing his face into my armpit. He let out a muffled scream and let go of me, but I straightened my back out, exerting all my strength against his neck.

Suddenly there was a pop with a splash of blood across my chest. I flew back into several villains, knocking them on the ground. I landed on my ass, and the guy’s severed head plopped on my lap, facing me. His face moved, lips and tongue trying to speak in vain. Blood pooled at the base of the neck, and I grabbed the head by a scruff of hair and raised it high as I stood on my feet.

“Who’s next?” I screamed, letting the villains pull back so that they formed a circle around me again. I noticed several moving through to the back, having enough of me, and waved the disembodied head around at the others, letting them know what was going to happen to them.

Littering the floor around me were a dozen bodies, many unidentifiable and in various styles of dismemberment. Some I knew I was directly responsible for, but many others were just dead from being near a guy that took a hard blow, or from catching a flying body part, and some had asphyxiated in the scrum. Many more were dead by the indiscriminate fire of their companions who sat back and fired away from range. In all, I could estimate about two dozen bodies lying at my feet.

The third wave was now forming up, and I saw Gris-gris standing right in front of me, unimpressed with my bloody handiwork. He was bouncing a small bag of powder in his hands and a sly grin played on his face. Beside him were Senka and Bioshock, summoning the courage to rush me.

Far behind them there was another fight with a few dozen villains jumping the mind-controlled Rikishi. He defended himself as best he could against a posse of enemies; many were lifelong nemeses who were using this opportunity to defeat the hero. I wish I could have gone to help the little guy, but there was nothing I could do help him. He was swarmed and someone had taken his microphone away. In moments, they’d take him apart.

A few flyers were inching back, knowing they could easily escape, but no one left, not a single person, until Charisma and her host of butterflies took to the sky and soared away. Another flyer or two took off, and I imagine a few of the fellows ringing the back of the throng were also making a quick escape.