Bishop's Song (24 page)

“I’ll say it again,” stated a nervous
-sounding Grim. “You guys are fucking wacko.”

Deke, trying desperately to keep command in his voice, instructed, “Grim, scout the area. Bishop and I will set up here.”

“Thanks,” came the mumbled response.

As soon as the operator begrudgingly moved off into the night, Deke elbowed Bishop and whispered, “I know we’ve got more important shit to do, but I can’t help myself. I never thought I’d see the day when Grim was put off by anything, so I can’t pass this up.”

Bishop watched as Deke dug around in his chest-rig, eventually producing a small
, black device that resembled a flashlight. He set the unit on the bed of the truck, carefully aiming at a distant tombstone of particularly dubious outline.

“Now watch this,” Deke announced, the glee obvious in his voice. He flicked a switch on the box, and the small green dot of an aiming laser appeared on the monument. He then raised his rifle and turned on a similar piece of equipment that emitted its own green
circle.

Carefully aiming his rifle, Deke lined
up the two projections and Bishop broke out chuckling. There, on the distant stone, shown two ghostly green eyes shimmered in night.

“He’ll start shooting,” predicted Bishop. “He’s on edge
so much that he’ll raise his blaster and saw that stone in half.”

“That’s
where you come in. You’ve got to stop him right before he pulls the trigger and alerts the authorities,” Deke explained.

“Oh, yeah, right! What do you want me to do?
Strip the rifle from his hands?”

“Think of something…
Here he comes.”

Grim whistled twice, the given signal the team had agreed upon some days ago. As he walked around the side of the truck, Deke hissed, “What the fuck is that
?” and shouldered his rifle to make the pair of eyes.

Grim’s
head snapped up, his lips parting as if to shout something, his rifle flying to his shoulder. Bishop grabbed the barrel and pulled it down, the effort taking a considerable amount of strength. “You can’t shoot, dude. Besides, bullets don’t bother ghosts.”

“But… but… but what the hell is that?”
Grim’s voice stuttered with genuine fright.

Deke couldn’t hold it any longer and started laughing, slowly lowering his weapon to
betray the laser’s source.

“Oh, very fucking funny, Deke. What
a couple of ass-clowns. Besides, I wasn’t scared.”

“You should be,” a very close, strange voice sounded.

And then
complete bedlam exploded around the truck.

They appeared out of nowhere, wisps of brushing cloth,
the random sound of a footstep nearby. How they had managed to get so close was beyond Bishop, but he really didn’t have a lot of time to ponder the issue. Almost instantly, they were among the rescuers. 

An outline appeared in front of Bishop, just enough light for him to see a movement that reminded of a baseball player swinging
a bat. Instinct saved his life as he barely ducked under an axe blade whizzing so close it brushed his hat.

There is nothing worse in a fight than being surprised, and the team from Texas had been taken completely cold and unaware.

Bishop moved right half a step and then at his foe, using the gap created as the momentum of the attacker’s weapon twisted his body at the waist with the follow-through of his homerun swing. Now inside the fellow’s wheelhouse, the Texan raised his left leg high and kicked down with all his strength. The blow landed with a sickening crunch, just above the axe-wielder’s kneecap. A howl of pain filled the air.

They
were so close and it was so dark - an all-out fur ball of hand-to-hand combat erupted.

The grip of his fighting knife filled
Bishop’s hand, the blade clearing the sheath as brief memories of another time in South America filled his mind. His thrust came up and into the center mass of the opponent, every cord and muscle of the Texan’s arm straining with the force behind the blow. The point of the weapon found flesh and then bone, the forward motion stopped only by the knife’s guard.

Bishop
’s entire focus was on bringing the threat down – taking the man impaled on the end of his knife out of the fight. Making sure. Lifting with the significant strength of his right arm, he attempted to carve flesh inside his foe’s torso. The blade moved very little, no doubt hindered by ribs. He pulled back, readying to thrust again, but never managed the strike.

A
nother attacker lunged at him, stepping in from his left, grunting and swinging. The air hissed as the Texan sidestepped, this time the rear fender of the pickup reverberating with a loud thud from the impact of a blunt instrument. Before he could counter, a third man attacked, light reflecting from a machete as it sliced through the air. The long-blade slammed into Bishop’s armored midsection, the force of the blow painful but unable to reach his flesh due to the Kevlar plates.

Bishop’s knife
found work, first dispatching the machete-wielding attacker with a brutal blow to the face with the hilt, then addressing others as they leapt into the fray. The sheer number of adversaries, when combined with the darkness, resulted in a blur of absolute chaos.

Bishop’s right arm was a
frantic piston of killing steel, stabbing and slashing like a boxer working a speed bag. The torsos, necks and limbs of his antagonists suffered badly.

Sounds of desperate combat filled the graveyard, grunts
, moans and the gasping for breath competing with the grotesque reports of breaking bones and blows crushing human flesh.

The bodies
piling up at Bishop’s feet began to impede the assailants, the barrier of dead and dying men slowing their advance. As the fight continued, the pavement became like an ice rink, coated with a slick layer of blood, entrails, urine, and sweat – the lack of sure footing adding to the mayhem.

During one brief
reprise, Bishop saw Grim go down, a dog pile of entangled arms and legs, bowled over and withering on the ground. Checking on Deke, he looked back just as the operator delivered a savage butt-stroke, the stock of his rifle nearly splitting the victim’s skull. Deke was holding his own; Grim was in trouble.

Bishop tried to move
toward Grim, but his foot slipped on the blood-slick pavement, and he went down. The loss of balance actually saved his life, a crowbar impacting right where his head had been.

While Bishop tried to regain his feet, another
aggressor managed to step in close. The Texan slashed from the ground at the unfortunate fellow’s leg, his blade slicing into the Achilles tendon. The man fell in a heap, landing on top of Bishop and immediately grappling for the Texan’s throat. Bishop let him.

He knew a man didn’t choke to death in mere seconds, didn’t think the
guy on top of him was strong enough to crush his windpipe. Bishop tucked his chin to his chest, feeling the pair of hands struggle to tighten their grip around his neck.

Bishop’s hand, in the meantime, was tightening around the grip of his pistol.
Fuck it! I don’t care if the army hears gunshots. We’re dying
, Bishop thought as the .45 cleared the holster. And then its barrel was pointing up, into the center mass of his foe. Bishop’s thumb found the safety, his finger on the trigger. He pulled… and then pulled again.

The man on top of him shuddered, bolts of pain and surprise racking his frame. To Bishop, i
t seemed like an eternity before the pressure on his throat began to lapse.

Pushing off the
limp corpse, Bishop struggled to regain his feet. He rose, gasping for breath and using the truck for balance. Finally standing, his attention was drawn to a man on the opposite side of the bed, cutting through the cords that secured the tarp. The grave robbers were moments away from having access to their supplies.

Enough!
We are going to lose everything - even if we do survive,
raced through his mind. The thought was accented by a numbing blow to his left arm.

Firing from the hip,
Bishop put two rounds into the closest shadow. Another two hollow points struck the next man as the attacker charged, a shovel wielded high above his head, ready to cleave downward.

Three steps to the front of the truck revealed a
mound of struggling flesh, one man raining down blows with his fist as Grim held the attacker’s knife at bay. Two others were trying to pin the struggling operator so their friend could deliver a deadly strike with the blade.

Bishop’s kick would have made a football punter proud, landing square in the midsection of the man
straddling his partner. Another shot rang out, quickly followed by a pistol whip to the back of a neck. Bishop’s sidearm was empty.

The
handgun’s roar signaled an escalation, a new level of violence now declared by the defenders. The occupants of the cemetery paused, their aggression and determination wavering.

Bishop managed to help
Grim climb over the edge of the bed, the effort handicapped by the unsure footing and the Texan’s numb left side. After making sure Grim was safe, Bishop spun towards the rear of the truck as he reloaded the pistol. Rounding the bumper, he found a heap of bodies lying on the ground. There was no sign of Deke.

It took him a moment to scan the casualties
, five bodies haphazardly strewn on the pavement. None of them were his partner. When he was satisfied Deke hadn’t fallen there, Bishop determined that more light might help his search. Besides, he wanted his rifle out of the cab of the truck.

Words heard long ago echoed through his mind, “A pistol is what you use to fight your way back to the rifle you should have never set down in the first place.” Bishop now had a full appreciation of that wisdom.

He fired three more random shots at dark images as he moved to the door, the effort
intended to keep the hoodlums at bay rather than reduce their number.

The headlights illuminated a gory scene.
Fighting with edged weapons and blunt instruments always resulting in horrendous injuries. The men engaged with the rescuers had suffered badly at the danger-close combat. Blood ran in rivulets towards the low side of the pavement, the butchery of raw flesh and exposed fractures all contributing to the nightmarish scene capped by the background of the gravestones.

Taking his eyes away from the
horror, Bishop spun and moved again for the back of the truck, thinking that he had mistakenly missed Deke’s body amongst those scattered at the rear of the vehicle. There was just enough light from the red lenses for Bishop to determine the outline of two men dragging away another body. It took a moment for his mind to absorb the image, to realize that it was Deke being towed off by two thugs.

As he pivoted back to
enter the truck, three dark outlines rose up and charged from a nearby row of headstones. The 230-grain hollow point slugs slammed into the line of men. Again and again, the pistol barked, the range too close to miss. His last target fell, dropping to his knees while grasping his throat where a bullet had ripped a significant portion of his windpipe to shreds. His head landed on Bishop’s boot with a foul thud. Another magazine of pain pills filled the empty pistol.

And then he was
in the driver’s seat. The reverse lights and rearview mirror confirmed that Deke was being dragged by two assailants. Bishop immediately gave the truck gas, backing it quickly towards the two ghouls making off with his friend’s body, their progress burdened by the weight of the unconscious man and his load gear.

A series of thumps and bumps signaled the truck’s
rolling over the bodies lying on the pavement, Bishop in such a rage that he didn’t even care if they were already dead or not.

T
he two body snatchers glanced up as the reverse lights grew closer, a look of fear filling their faces. They dropped Deke, scampering off to disappear into the pools of shadow created by the monuments. Bishop slammed the truck into park, flinging open the door and racing back to retrieve his injured comrade, this time carrying his rifle.

Deke was unresponsive.

Despite the adrenaline racing through his veins, Bishop struggled for a moment, having difficulty lifting his buddy onto a shoulder, the throbbing pain in his arm hindering the effort.

It was without remorse that Bishop unceremoniously dumped his friend into the bed of the truck
, hardly noticing Grim’s growl as most of Deke’s weight landed on the injured man. There just wasn’t the time to be gentle.

Whoever
the assailants were, they possessed large numbers and were willing to assume extreme causalities. Bishop had little doubt they were probably regrouping - only temporarily halted by the usage of firearms. He managed the driver’s seat, his numb arm causing a fumble as he reached to close the door. He was just clutching the gearshift when the passenger side window exploded inward, the dark head of a spade in the opening. Shards of glass sprayed across the interior of the cab, the blizzard of crystalline splinters only serving to accelerate Bishop’s movements.