Psycho Save Us (54 page)

David screamed.

“Pelletier!”
Leon screamed.  “Freeze!”

The rain was
coming down so hard it was difficult to see much, but the brief sweep of a
chopper’s searchlight showed him the pale skin and the black hoodie.  It was
him all right.  And he carried a black bundle, while another, shorter shadow
followed him into the small patch of trees butting up against the property.

Leon took aim,
but dared not shoot for fear of hitting the two girls.

“You saw him?”
Porter asked, coming up behind him.

“Yeah.  There. 
He went into those trees.”  He pointed, and the agent just nodded and waved for
Leon to take the lead.

Behind them, all
gunfire had ceased.  The two SWAT teams had secured Avery Street, and
ambulances and fire trucks were now permitted to come down to start collecting the
wounded and dead.  Their sirens were visible even through the rain, and the
fire truck’s horn was extremely loud.

A scream.  This
one from the back door where Leon had first spied Pelletier vacating.  Leon
wouldn’t go in there alone, not before the SWAT team had fully swept and
secured it.

He and Porter
dashed across the back yard, their feet splashing through puddles now gathering
in the dips in the earth…and, strangely, forming small rivers.  Leon was only
partially aware of this as he made away for the neighborhood and gave chase,
but the rain was coming
towards
him, not from above.  It poured towards
the house, and what water was on the ground did the same.

A gunshot rang
out, and Porter screamed behind him, landing on the sodden earth and sliding.  Leon
dropped to one knee and fired in the direction the shot had come from.  The
enemy was taking cover behind a black sedan.  Holding the gun in one hand and
canting it slightly sideways in order to absorb the recoil, Leon dashed over to
Agent Porter and offered him a hand.  The agent took it and pulled himself up,
holding his side.  Leon fired two more shots at the sedan just to keep the
gunman’s head down.

They moved back
around the corner of the house, from whence they came.  Agent Porter dropped to
the ground, moaning “Fuck!” again and again while clutching his side.  Blood
pooled in his hands.

Leon peeked
around the corner, just in time for the enemy to pop his head up and fire a
shot over the top of the sedan.  The bullet smacked the side of the house, and
when it did, Leon was almost certain he heard a grumbling.  And his imagination
must have been in overdrive for all the adrenaline, because he could’ve swore
he felt the house shutter.

He fired to more
shots at the sedan, and then turned back to Agent Porter.  “How bad?”

“Bad,” he said
at once, pulling his hand away to look at the blood.  “Stomach.”

“Shit!” Leon
shouted.  He couldn’t just leave the man there to die.  If the stomach had been
penetrated, then it was only adrenaline that was keeping Porter from writhing
in agony.  Very soon, though, his gut would be burning with a fire few human
beings ever had the misfortune to feel.  He peeked around the corner once
more.  The neighborhood had now gone eerily quiet.  He imagined his enemy
behind the sedan had made a run for it into the trees.

Leon was torn as
to what to do.  On the one hand the two girls were in the hands of a monster,
and Agent Porter, a brother in the law enforcement field, was on his ass, dying
and—

“What’re you
waiting for?” Porter growled.  “Go fucking get those fuckers!”

He looked at the
agent, who nodded his understanding.  Perhaps he’d seen the struggle written on
Leon’s face, or perhaps he was just that committed to getting Pelletier. 
Whatever the case, he did not blink, and obviously meant every word.  “You got
rounds left?”

“Yeah,” Porter
growled through clenched teeth.  “Now…
go
!”

Leon wasted no
more time.  He took one more peek around the corner and came around with his
gun aimed and ready.

At first it
seemed like the trees would never end.  Indeed, Spencer even sensed they were
being followed by them.  As they moved through the wood, the trees seemed to
bend and creak and
lean
in their direction.  The girl knew it too.  The
girl running at his side, that is.  The girl in his arms was still mostly
unconscious, though her eyes did open and shut intermittently.  “It’s raining,
Kaley,” she muttered once, and went back to sleep.

Then, a bullet
whispered through the trees, and smacked against one of them.  All at once, he
dropped the girl from his arms and leapt for the cover of the nearest tree. 
The taller girl screamed, “Wait!  You can’t leave her!”  Spencer paid her no
mind.  When the second bullet rang out he shot to the ground and started
crawling.  “Wait!  Don’t leave us!”  Spencer crawled around to the side of a
fallen tree, his fingers feeling through the sodden earth for any sort of weapon. 
A rock, a sharp stick, a discarded bottle, anything.

Another shot
rang out.  Then another.  Then another.  Spencer then realized what he was
hearing.  It wasn’t just one gun firing, it was
two
.  A gunfight had
kicked off out here.

Kaley ran to her
sister and tried to lift her.  It was a bit difficult, they were both so weak,
and Shannon was heavier than she looked.  She managed to half carry, half drag
her sister over to a collection of bushes.  That’s when the next gunshots rang
out, and the rain intensified, if that was possible.  This allowed her to move
as loudly as she wanted, because no movement could be discerned in this din.

Thunder rolled
overhead, but without lightning it was only a dark promise from an unseen
beast.

More gunshots. 
At least that much was audible above the rain.  There was a scream.  And in an
instant, Kaley felt the same, sinking, grotesque feeling that she’d felt at the
house where Dmitry had killed his cohorts.  It was the feeling of someone not
dead, but dying.  It swirled around her, a cold blanket that she did not want.

Kaley grabbed
Shannon’s hand to feel the Anchor one last time.

Leon slowed down
as he came into the thick of the trees.  It was surprising how dense the trees
were considering this was the middle of Atlanta.  An old, muddy sign he passed
read
FUTURE
SIGHT OF ADELL PARK
. 
He faintly recalled the plans for Adell Park, and how quickly they had been
cancelled.  Along with the rest of Avery Street, this area of the city had
grown wild, and was destined to become exactly like Townsley Drive: forgotten,
but never quite gone.

The first
gunshot caught his attention.  As the first of the thunder rolled he ran
ahead.  It was nearly pitch black, only some distant streetlights and the
occasional sweep of a chopper’s searchlight granted him any visibility.

The rain became
thick.  It continued coming in towards him, directly into his face, into his
eyes and mouth, and even the drops that hit him seemed to crawl around his
body, as if looking for a way around, and dripped
horizontally
away into
the darkness behind him.

The searchlights
caused the shadow of every tree to grow and elongate and move.  For a moment,
he caught snatches of movement—perhaps wind in the rushes, perhaps an arm,
perhaps nothing more than a trick of light.  Leon kept his gun up and scanned
slowly.  The water was like needles in his eyes, necessitating far more
blinking than usual.  The shadows elongated again and again as the choppers
moved overhead.

A loud pop, and
then a brief incandescent muzzle flash.  Something bit his right arm.  Leon’s
massive body absorbed the shock and he turned, firing at the space in the
darkness where he’d seen the flash.  Three more shots came right at him, one of
them hitting him in the left leg.  He screamed and went to one knee, still
firing at where he’d last seen the flashes.  He fired until he was out, and
then scrambled to the nearest tree.

The helicopters
overhead swooped around, still searching, still finding nothing for the tree
canopy.  He heard something crash behind him, the crunching of twigs and
branches.  Leon knew he was about to die.  The searchlight from above briefly
illuminated the long silhouette from the other side of the tree.  He braced
himself, and turned to meet the man.

Leon collided
with a man equal to him in size, but with considerably more fat.  They smacked
into one another and fell to one side, two ogres wallowing in mud.  A
searchlight flashed over the man’s body.  He was bald and pale white, and his
swollen belly had a tattoo written in another language:
Мир
ненавидит
нас
.

Leon’s enemy
screamed something in Russian, and battered him with punches and elbows, one of
which slammed into his face and shattered his nose.  Blood filled Leon’s nose
and mouth and he tasted copper and silver.  The fat man raised something in one
meaty hand, a stone or something, and an instant before the blow came down a
dark panther leapt out and tackled Leon’s murderer to the forest floor.

“Remember me,
fucker?” Spencer screamed.  Of course he didn’t.  He didn’t remember Spencer
any more than he remembered the Spanish Inquisition, because the fat man hadn’t
been there.  He hadn’t been there to abduct the two girls, and he hadn’t been
the one looking out at him from the Expedition.  But it didn’t matter.  For the
moment, Spencer needed the fat fuck to be Dmitry again.  He hadn’t been sated. 
Probably never would be sated.  Every sleight lived inside of him for the rest
of his life.  He still despised the very thought of Miles Hoover, Jr., and yet
savored every morsel of that hatred.

The fat man felt
the brunt of that savoring as Spencer mounted him and pinned his arms against
his chest.  “
Remember me?!
” he screamed, and then grabbed the fat man’s
ears and used them as handles to slam his head repeatedly against the forest
floor.  “
Remember me?!
”  His voice was now like a woman’s shriek.  Tears
fell from his eyes as he quivered and came.  He eventually wrenched the rock
clean of the fat man’s hands and started bashing his skull. 

Spencer drove
the rock against his skull until he heard the first crunch.  Invigorated by the
sound, he went further, hammering again and again until the top of the skull
started to split.  He then wedged the end of the rock between the gap in the
fat man’s skull and pried it open, left and then right, then left again, until
the brain was laid open in front of him.

He reached
inside to get a handful of the brain.  It had the consistency of fresh tofu,
and when he squeezed it between his hands, he knew he was squeezing the very
thing
that had been his enemy.  This was the man’s hopes and fears in his hands. 
This was his knowledge of vocabulary, soccer, TV shows, space, electronics,
food, animals, paint, China, sex, as well as all his theories of who he was,
what he was meant to do, and why he was here.  Spencer crushed all of that.  The
brain gushed out each end of his fist, and he stared at it.  “I did this to
you,” he told it.  If only he’d been able to get Dmitry like this.  If only…

“
Spencer!
” 
It was the first time she’d ever used his name.  He turned and looked at her. 
For a moment, the searchlights touched her and she was wreathed in that light
that came from backlighting falling rain.  And she was beautiful, the most
radiant thing he’d ever seen despite her disheveled state.  “It’s over!” she
cried.  “I need your help now!  Just one more time! 
Please!
”

The rain no
longer poured against him, but directly down as it should.

There was
thunder.  Spencer heard moaning.  He glanced behind him, at the big black man
in the trench coat, who was no doubt a police officer.  He wiped his mouth.  A
bit of brains fell from his lips.  Had he taken a bite out of it?  When had
that happened?

He looked
around, his eyes finally resting on the girl, and he said, “Kaley, right?”

She looked a
little leery of answering, but finally nodded.

“Nice to meet
ya.  Heh!”  He stood, feeling sapped, tired.  “There’s gotta be a street up
ahead,” he said, walking over to her.  Her little sister was still unconscious
on the ground.  He knelt to lift her.  “There oughtta be a car around.  I’m
drivin’.  Called it.  Heh!”

The three of
them hustled on into the night, disappearing from the woods, leaving it quiet
and sullen.  The searchlights swept the area ceaselessly.  The rain covered
their tracks, and soon it was as though they never were.

Leon stared up
at the needles of rain falling on his face.  The light of the choppers shone
directly on him once, blinding him, then moved on.

His leg
throbbed.  So did his arm.  So did his broken nose and his head.

Raised voices.  Shouts. 
Calls for anyone.  Leon tried to roll over.  He tried to respond in some way. 
Nothing worked.