Out of the Black (39 page)

Gunfire fills the air as she pivots slightly, sliding her elbow backwards under the other demon's still-extending punch. At least three ribs shatter and the heart collapses behind them. The demon with the dislocated hip and hyperextended knee has just begun to fall as her right hand returns to shatter his skull.

The sound of screaming is punctuated by the frequent sounds of violent impact, but never interrupted. The hospital staff may be screaming behind her. She hopes not, but can't really tell. The only scream that she hears is her own. This may prove she's weak, but she can't contain her revulsion. Like a catheterized drunk after a big night out, the horror just flows out of its own shrill volition.

The world is now coming as a series of flash photos that break over her like the waves of violence she now slogs through. Each flash is worse than the last. Here's Anne in mid headbutt with a bloody halo spreading away, here's Anne getting kicked in the face, here's Anne tearing off someone's arm... NO!

The screaming goes on until she doesn't have any more air for it, then there is a pause where only gunfire and the harsh clash of fists compete with the sound of her ragged inhalation. She wants this to stop, wants to run away... can run away. But she knows she won't run. She is the only hope for Hawthorne, poor unconscious Mendez, poor wet Jeremy, and the surgeons. She's done with fear, and now she's done with failure. With a shock that is eighty percent guilt, twenty percent enlightenment, she realizes that she would rather be here than sitting at home with a good book.

Here she matters. Here she can help.

Her scream rips out again amid the melee, fractionally harder this time.

Hawthorne stumbled partially as she pulled the trigger and her shot went wild. The three round burst tore into the wall and ceiling above the observation window. She didn't hit either of the gunmen that had appeared there, but the burst was enough to make them duck back out of view. She stumbled again and went down on her knees painfully behind a waist-high rack of monitoring equipment. Ignoring her bruised knees, she steadied her arms on the rack and continued to cover the window.

Another killer popped up, already firing. Hawthorne sent another burst through the window, but she couldn't tell if she had hit him. She snapped a quick look over her shoulder, to where Anne was screaming like she was being torn apart. She fired a few more shots through the window and tried to decipher what she'd seen behind her. First, her eye had settled on Anne's face amidst a whirling sea of violence, covered in blood, screaming desperately. She'd looked horrified, lost- angry. The monsters were all around her, moving so fast- at least one of them had been in the air- others were laid out on the ground.

Two assault guns poked over the lower lip of the window and began firing. This wasn't the random noise of suppressing fire. Bullets rained down around Hawthorne, striking the equipment rack in front of her, tearing through her left arm and chest. There was a flash of light inside her head, heat from her damaged body. Then she was on the floor with her eyes fluttering open.

She knew this would happen. She'd never had any hope of winning a gun battle with multiple opponents firing assault guns from cover. It had only been a matter of seconds before they'd realized she was shooting back and used their integrated gun cameras to fire from complete cover.

So, time did seem to dilate when you were dying. This was a bar-bet that Mendez would never get a chance to collect on.

Around her on the white floor was a deep red pattern of her blood. Closer in was the slick of blood oozing from her chest and back. Farther out was the spatter from the initial impacts. Perhaps a meter away, her gun lay on the floor. Looking down, she saw the ragged hole in her upper chest, white broken collarbone protruding through the hole. This sight almost drove the light from her eyes, but through will alone, she held on to her last moments of life like... well, like they were all she had left.

The corners of her mouth twitched with an abortive smile. She was really glad that the shock kept her from feeling much... spoke too soon. Her moan came out through gritted teeth.

Above her, she could see the guns pointed toward where she'd last seen Anne by the doorway. They had not yet fired. Perhaps they were waiting for the fight to end before deciding if they would shoot the victor. Perhaps they were waiting for a clear shot.

Anne's screaming continued, but Hawthorne now realized that all other sounds had stopped. No gunfire, no sounds of hand-to-hand combat, no demonic laughter. She really didn't want to look to see what was happening to Anne. The end of her own life was depressing enough without being exposed to someone else's. Yet in the end, curiosity won out and she craned her head back to see whatever terrible fate had led to those forlorn wails.

It seemed to take forever to bring her head into the correct position. She used the seconds to steel herself for whatever tragedy she would see. But when the vista finally crept into view, she was still shocked.

It looked like a bomb had exploded where Anne was standing- but this bomb only affected flesh and bone. The floor was not cratered, the surrounding walls were intact except for one roughly torso-sized impact crater about two meters up. Yet littered around her were the bodies of her previous enemies, some thrown completely across the room. All were dead, many horribly broken, several in pieces. And at the center of the departed blast Anne stood, covered in blood, holding the disembodied arm of one of the demons before her. She was trembling, she was screaming.

Her eyes were darting about looking for help. They first settled on the other members of the hospital staff cowering together against the far wall of the OR. Presumably, they knew Anne from their time shared at work, but the stare that they returned was horror well beyond the panic end of the scale. Anne's eyes darted to the window with it's waiting guns, then quickly away, finally settling on Hawthorne.

Despite the pain and the hopeless situation, Hawthorne knew what was necessary. With great effort, she flashed Anne a smile, and gave her a thumbs-up sign with the hand that still responded to her will. She was tired, but this was almost over.

Across the room, the screaming stopped.

At the end of an oddly placed instant of harmony and mutual empathy, someone yelled "Freeze!" from above, but there was no pause before gunfire erupted.

***

As they passed the sixth floor, gunfire punctuated an all banjo and tambourine rendition of Metallica's classic
One
... what was it with modern elevator music? Screams and more gunfire greeted them as the elevator doors opened. Without an instant of uncertainty, Ping bolted into the hall. Rae ran after him, and Alex stumbled out last. It was going to take him a while to work the stiffness out of his muscles. Ironically, this was a much harder problem to solve with the Loom than a sucking chest wound. Not exactly an intuitive distinction.

Ping sprinted down the hallway with reckless speed. Rae was torn between trying to keep up with him and trying to avoid being ambushed. She hissed at him to slow down, but he wasn't listening, frustrating man that he was.

Ping was being driven forward by perhaps the most desperate series of shrieks he'd ever heard. He'd heard desperate before, even hopeless, but this screaming was bottom-of-the-eternal-lake-of-fire bad. It was the wail of the hopeless damned. Only feelings and other pre-thoughts filled his mind and heart... empathy for the screamer, rage for the cause, memories and the supposition of a little girl's scream- he had to get there... Right Now.

He approached the door of an operating theatre, with steps near the door leading up to an observation room. The sounds of gunfire came from the observation room above. He vaulted the railing and took the steps two at a time, but by the time he was halfway up, the gunfire stopped. The screaming continued, and new sounds emerged, the sounds of an intense physical conflict. Twice, the walls rattled with heavy impacts.

He continued his ascent. He reached the door, and paused to check his assault gun: Unlocked, safety off, plenty of rounds left... the shrieking came to an abrupt halt. Too late!

Empathy evaporated, leaving only fury behind. He kicked the already broken door inward. "Freze!" he shouted.

The room was small, perhaps four meters on a side, there were some chairs and a coffee table filled with quite a few empty drink containers and a lot of empty snack packages. Three people crouched near the shattered window into the operating room below. Two were wearing link goggles and holding their weapons over the lip of the window, using their gun cameras to target while remaining under full cover. The thought flitted through his head that this would have been a better strategy for him as well, but hey, he'd been in a hurry.

The third person in the room was dropping his hand from a communicator at his throat and using the other hand to bring an assault gun to bear on Ping. All three wore no uniform, preferring instead dark, sturdy-looking street clothes. They wore no badges, they didn't seem like cops or SWAT. Their overall impression was military, perhaps mercenaries. They looked a lot like the nice folks from the library archive.

One of the two at the window batted his goggles off his face and dropped into a roll trying to bring his gun to bear on Ping. No one had paid the slightest attention to Ping's 'Freeze', except the woman who kept her weapon covering the OR below, though Ping was pretty sure she was covering, not complying.

Oh well.

Ping fired a five round burst into the one on his feet, four toward the roller, four more, then three more after he stopped moving just to be sure. The one by the window was definitely not complying now. Merciless face set like stone, her rifle left the lip of the window and tracked toward him, already firing. A line of holes appeared in the wall to his right, tearing toward him. Ping jumped left and fired another burst. The last attacker was knocked into the wall. She slumped to the floor.

"Share how
that
makes you feel." He said, disgust in his voice. Internally, revulsion and the warm feeling of a job well done warred for possession of his heart. He tossed both feelings aside... work to do.

He might not have been the most effective counselor, but he was smoking good at this. Maybe his dad was right... stay close to your talents.

***

Hawthorne's eyes spasmed shut at the sound of what she was sure was that "final gunfire" everyone in law enforcement fears. She was marginally surprised that she heard more than the first burst, but it did make sense that they would go for Anne first. There were six overlapping bursts, then silence.

After another few seconds, she opened her eyes again. The world had stayed essentially the same as when she'd closed them. The hospital staff still huddled, Anne still looked dazed, Hawthorne's own blood continued to pool around her. There was one difference though- the assault guns that had been covering them from the window above were gone.

Then two things happened essentially at once. A little Asian guy in a biker jacket appeared in the window above with an assault gun at the ready, and the OR doors burst open to reveal a very appealing uniformed cop. What were the chances that this was an actual cop? Not the pawn-in-a-vast-conspiracy-type, but just someone here to serve and/or protect them like real cops would. Looking at the cop's non-issue fletcher, Hawthorne didn't feel hopeful.

Anne's head snapped back and forth from the window to the door with the speed of a parakeet on amphetamines, but then she made no further moves. She had a look somewhere between expectation and resignation.

"Everyone okay here?" The man from above shouted down in a friendly but uncertain voice.

Hawthorne wasn't sure she hadn't imagined that last part. The world went black.

The perky little cop with the fletcher eyed Anne with clear uncertainty. Her gaze started out hard, like shoot-you-or-not hard, eyes moving from Anne's face to the severed arm she carried and back. Finally, the cop's eyes lapsed back into caution tempered by empathy. At this point, Anne realized that she was still crying. No more screaming, but the water works had not disengaged.

"You okay, Ma'am?" Rae asked without lowering the fletcher. She was really hoping she didn't have to put this woman down... she just looked so sad. She wondered if she was the source of the terrible screaming she'd heard from the hall. She didn't dare take her eyes off the big woman with the hard eyes and sad face, but her peripheral vision slowly began to process the rest of the scene. Radiating away from the woman was a blast pattern of corpses. It looked like an explosion had gone off right where she stood. Behind her about four meters away on a monitor table lay an unconscious patient in post-operative isolation wrap. Behind him, against the far wall, four hospital staffers huddled behind equipment that wasn't large enough to cover them all.

"Do I look okay to you?" The woman said shakily, exasperation breaking through her misery. She gave what may have started as a bitter laugh, but terminated in sobs. Her left hand went to her face. Her right hand held a severed arm like a club.

Rae shook her head. "But I don't need to shoot you though, right?"

"You think it would do you any good?" As she spoke, the big woman waved the disembodied arm she held for emphasis, "Besides, you'd probably need a wooden stake or silver bullets."

As Anne gave the severed arm a final shake for emphasis, a little skinny guy with shiny chrome hair limped around the corner behind the cop. His eyes flashed around the room, taking in the scene. "Wow." He said.

"Just a sec." Anne said, not breaking eye contact with the cop. Still giving her the 'don't shoot me' look, she turned her head extra slowly to one side so she could speak over her shoulder. "Hey Sean!" she shouted.

Behind her, one of the huddling hospital workers poked his head up from behind the operating bed on the other side of the room.

"You are a trauma doc, right?"

"Ah... sure... yeah." he said, not knowing where she was going with this line of questions.