Carter heard the Nex run outside. Slowly, he eased up the grid and peered into the stable. It was gloomy after the bright sunlight outside, but Carter had had time for his eyes to adjust. He was positioned in the far corner of the barn, by the workshop—which was divided from the main compartment of the stable by a low, three-foot-high wall made of wooden beams and rough-cut timber panelling—a waist-high divide. The stable stalls were to his right, set against the back wall of the barn and leading across dusty concrete to large double doors whose buckled antique timbers allowed streamers of sunlight to illuminate dancing motes of dust. Beside the end stall by the doors stood a single Nex guarding the woman and girls. The Nex was staring towards the door, presumably sniffing after its comrades who had gone to investigate the explosion.
Carter rose to a crouch, using the wall of the horse’s stall beside him as cover, and crept forward towards the sparkling shafts of sunlight illuminating the matted straw and dung-covered floor. His Browning was pressed against his cheek. His breathing had descended into a spiral of concentration as—
The Nex whirled towards him, copper eyes wide, focusing, its Steyr TMP smashing up as Carter’s Browning bucked in his fist and three bullets sped towards the Nex’s face; the first bullet skimmed its ear as it started to turn, the second one missed and embedded itself in a wooden beam with a loud
thunk
—but the third hit the Nex’s lower jaw side on, ripping it—and the bottom part of the Nex’s face—completely free.
The TMP in the Nex’s gloved hands was yammering, bullets cutting a furrow across the floor towards Carter. He rolled to the left, then leapt for the workshop and the low wall and a promise of sanctuary beyond.
He dived over, bullets slamming into the wood behind him, and collided hard with a wide wooden bench. Footsteps slapped concrete, sprinting towards his cover, and shots continued to blast from the Steyr TMP’s smoking barrel—punching holes through the wooden panel to explode around Carter in a sudden hail of metal death. Carter hissed, rolling around as several flattened bullets skimmed his face and shoulders, and he started to fire back through the panel, allowing even more tiny dancing shafts of sunlight to spill through. Beyond, booted feet left the ground and settled lightly on the rail. Carter found himself looking up into a face dragged kicking and screaming from the depths of a horror movie. The Nex, its entire lower jaw missing, tongue lolling for five flapping inches from its root and dangling against torn streamers of skin and muscle, glared down at Carter in a copper-glowing insanity of pain and hatred. Its visage was a platter of destruction, a gaping maw of ruin. Carter, stunned for a moment by this apparition, stared up into the face.
The Nex could not speak. It had no lips or mouth. Only the tongue remained, dangling, smeared with blood and tiny, embedded shards of shattered bone.
The Nex leapt as three more of Carter’s bullets whirred past it. A fist cannoned into Carter’s face, a second blow crunched against his nose and his Browning skittered across the floor. Carter aimed a powerful punch of his own but his fist whirred through the air where the Nex’s lower face had been; a right hook connecting with nothing but the swaying and now useless tongue.
Carter’s knee came up and the Nex grunted from deep in its belly. Then Carter rolled and hammered a blow to the Nex’s head; they spun apart, leaping up among the wide wooden benches, the lathe and circular saw, the three large upright drills and the industrial sanding machine. The Nex reached for a magazine for its emptied TMP, but Carter delivered a front kick which sent the magazine sailing through the air to clatter under a bench. They squared off for a moment, and Carter nodded as the Nex raised its fist.
‘I think you’re going to have some trouble with the ladies from this point on,’ he snarled through a string of blood and saliva, his freshly broken nose slamming sledgehammers of pain into his face and brain.
The Nex’s eyes widened, tongue swinging with violent slaps against its blood-speckled throat.
‘But then, hey, I’m pretty sure you always had trouble anyway—with that unholy Nex stink.’
The Nex leapt, and Carter swayed right, pounding three blows into the Nex’s head as it sailed past. It rolled, came up with awesome speed—and attacked, throwing an incredible array of punches that forced Carter back under the powerful onslaught. The Nex’s kick cannoned into Carter’s chest, slamming him backwards into the wall—and a bank of switches which operated the workshop’s machinery. Unexpectedly, the machines sprang into life, lathe spinning, drills turning, and an unhealthy vibrating whine coming from the awesome circular saw. This machine’s blade accelerated like it was turbocharged and Carter’s gaze snapped left, taking in the uncovered sweep of the eighteen-inch toothed metal disc.
Carter glanced back—into a left hook, which spun him towards the screaming circular blade, his hands lashing out to halt his fall with his nose a mere inch from the whirling scream of discoloured steel. Carter’s teeth gritted tight in a vicious snarl and he powered around, right elbow pounding the Nex’s temple, left fist slashing thin air over the Nex’s head as it ducked and then lunged forward. Its arms grappled with Carter as they locked together for a moment, stumbling back against the saw’s bench.
They held one another tight. Then Carter’s fists lifted and he pounded the Nex’s head three times, but the Nex was stronger than Carter—it forced him slowly backwards, twisting him towards the whirling saw blade.
Carter was face to mangled face with the Nex. He leant back as the creature’s tongue dangled forward towards him, disengaging from bruised skin with a
schluck
sound and dripping its purple blood onto his flesh. Carter growled something incomprehensible, muscles screaming, body straining against the iron power of the Nex and he could almost feel the insect-human hybrid
smiling.
Its copper-eyed stare bore into him with a focus so intense that it seemed to burn his soul with bitter vitriol. Inch by slow, painful inch Carter was forced towards the spinning, whining blade. He could feel its breeze caress his hair. Steel teeth swept past his gaze. His muscles were bulging, cramping, and the insect stench invaded his nostrils, making him want to gag ... he was forced closer and closer, and he threw a few more ineffectual punches which the Nex absorbed. Panic consumed him. His hands scrabbled out to the right, brushing wildly against the wall, over glass paper and sanding blocks, and onto the rack of mounted—chisels.
Carter’s hand curled around a handle, and slammed the edged tool into the Nex’s neck. Blood spurted out, drenching him in an instant as the Nex released its grip. Carter felt himself choking, suddenly aware that his supply of air had been restricted, and he looked on with cold fury as the Nex’s hand curled around the handle of the chisel and tried to pull the tempered blade free.
‘You just won’t fucking
die
, will you?’ snarled Carter. Then he lurched forward, grabbing the Nex and performing a judo shoulder throw; the Nex sailed through the air, slamming down onto the circular-saw bench—and the saw’s blade. There came a high-pitched
shhrrn
of blade slicing flesh and spinal column, and the Nex seemed to dance, lying face up with the blade protruding from its sternum, jiggling uncontrollably, legs kicking as blood spewed down through holes in the bench to spread out in a wide pool beneath, where it was soaked up by shavings.
Carter took a deep breath, staring mesmerised at the spinning circular blade tipped with tiny globes of crimson—which suddenly spat sparks as bullets struck it and spun off in flattened trajectories. Carter hit the ground hard and searched frantically for his Browning. Grasping the gun’s worn butt, he changed magazines and edged towards the bullet-holed wooden partition. Two more, he thought. Just two more ... I hope they die easier than the first son of a bitch.
He crept sideways and peered through one of the bullet holes. The woman and children had moved back into one of the horse’s stalls where they huddled beside a quivering gelding, its nostrils flared, its flanks vibrating in fear.
The two Nex were there, 9mm Steyr sub-machine guns pointing in his direction. They started to move slowly forwards, spreading out—and Carter shuffled backwards towards the wall hung with a hundred woodworking implements. And there, near the floor, a stack of spare blades for the circular saw ... Carter pulled three of them free of their greased wrappers and returned to the partition. He stood suddenly, and threw the discs, spinning, in quick succession. The first Nex dodged left, right and left with ease—as Carter’s Browning barked and a single shot took it between the eyes. It dropped to its knees and remained there for several seconds, its copper-eyed gaze locked on Carter’s narrowed stare. Then it fell face-down in the dirt.
Where had the other one gone?
Carter eased himself to the doorway and peered out. Behind him machinery was rattling and spinning, the lathe whining its 10,000 r.p.m. rotary song.
‘It’ll be with the woman and the children, like the true fucking coward it is,’
came Kade’s dark whisper. ‘
Come on, Carter, let me have a go—I’ve been a good boy recently, I promise I won’t do anything naughty. I’ll do
everything
that you tell me. Honest. ‘
‘Yeah, right.’
Carter crept forward, out into the realm of No Man’s Land, the muzzle of the Browning weaving slowly from left to right and back, tracing invisible trajectories in a figure of eight covering both the stalls which housed the horses and the stable entrance, one of the doors of which was now slightly ajar.
Away from the churning of workshop machinery, Carter could hear the sobbing of the young girls once more. He had been right in his assumption; they were in the end stall. And the chance that the Nex was with them? Using them as cover? Perfect. It would have four hostages if it needed them to escape ...
Fucking terrorists, thought Carter.
Always willing to sacrifice the innocent.
He reached the stable doors and glanced quickly outside. The Mercedes was still burning, smoke pluming up into the bright sky. Carter turned towards the first stall where a huge black gelding quivered, eyes wide and nostrils flared. Then something smashed into his back, arms wrapping around him, sending him and his assailant stumbling sideways to crash through the stall door where they rolled past the prancing hooves of the huge nineteen-hand thoroughbred.
Carter powered a punch into the Nex’s mashed face, then rolled to the right as the horse—which had reared up at their sudden intrusion—brought its hooves savagely down to strike sparks from the concrete.
‘Shit!’ He rolled again as the prancing rear hooves came close to caving in his head, stood and turned—straight into a Nex roundhouse kick that smashed his chest and hammered him back against the thick wooden wall. Carter ducked a blow and sent a right straight into the Nex’s nose, then a left hook, left straight and left uppercut which sent the Nex spinning down to the ground.
The horse was turning in panic and crashed into Carter, its huge bulk crushing him for a moment, then sending him sprawling to the floor where he rolled between its striking hooves—as the Nex dragged free its Steyr TMP and unleashed a stream of bullets directly into the animal’s glossy black frame—
The horse screamed.
Carter’s jaw dropped. Never had he heard such an unholy, pain-filled, haunting sound; and the mighty beast reared as bullets punched holes of blood-fountain gore up its sweat-gleaming flanks. Its head was thrown back, mane shaking, huge teeth grinding as a hoof crashed out, catching the Nex a massive blow to the side of the head.
The Nex went down hard. An instant later the stomping sounds of iron-shod hooves rang out as the horse crushed the Nex’s head into a purple pulp of butcher’s-meat slop.
The horse staggered against the wall of the stall, which creaked alarmingly in protest under the weight of the mighty animal. Then, slowly, its front legs buckled, followed by its rear ones. It thumped onto its side and lay, blood oozing from the fifteen or so holes in its chest and belly, eyes rolling. It wheezed softly as its ability to breathe slowly faded.
Carter slowly pushed himself away from the wall. He moved forward, knelt on one knee and slowly stroked the horse’s velvet muzzle. It made a tiny nuzzling sound and Carter shuffled around, placed the Browning’s muzzle to the back of its head and, with his eyes closed, ended the animal’s life.
After the sound of the shot, the world seemed suddenly, desolately, silent.
Carter climbed wearily to his feet, adrenalin still pumping, and left the stall. He turned, through the dancing motes of dust, and moved to the end stall where Mary crouched, trying to protect her grandchildren with the bulk of her own body.
‘It’s OK,’ Carter croaked. ‘The Nex are dead. You can come out.’
‘Carter? Carter ... what are you doing here? Oh thank you, thank you! Have you seen Tomas? Is he all right? Is he still alive?’ The old woman’s voice was powerful, and Carter witnessed a hardness in her eyes. These are tough people, he thought: the Nex had underestimated both their tenacity and their pride.
‘Tomas is alive. I sent him behind the house when I blew up the Nex’s truck.’ Carter crouched, and one of the little girls glanced tearfully at him. ‘You OK there, little flower?’
She buried her face back in her grandmother’s skirts.
‘Follow me,’ said Carter, rising to stand in acute agony—the horse had cracked several of his ribs when it had crushed him against the wall of the stable stall—and he looked along the length of the stable, which in the last few minutes had turned into a charnel house. He led the way to the doors—and the warmth of sunlight and freedom beyond. He dragged the portal open a little more with a scraping of old timbers, then stepped out into the sunshine with the old grey-haired woman and tear-stained children trailing behind his aching battered shell—