"Me?" Mosh asked in confusion.
"No, him." Franks jerked his thumb at me. "Drive."
I ran down the aisle of the tour bus as Mosh ground the gears. The bus was so opulent that if it hadn't been such dire circumstances, I probably would have stopped to gawk. It was like a death-metal version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. "You've got a Jacuzzi in this thing?" I shouted.
"Hell, yeah," Mosh said. "Hold on. I've only driven this once before."
The bus lurched forward, stopped, lurched again, and then was building up steam, heading for the garage exit and the open night. The rear end was crushed and a giant red visage was glaring at me through the broken back window. Cratos' tusked face curled into a snarl as we pulled away, freeing him. I raised Abomination, aimed carefully, and put my finger on my gun's second trigger. These things absorbed people's souls, and somehow that's how they had lived for thousands of years. I'd seen the pressurized bag inside them. Apparently the gateway to that was in their heads. If he lost some energy from a.68 caliber slug through the eye, let's see how he did with a 40mm grenade up the snoot.
"HUNTER!" Cratos roared.
I shot him in the mouth as we drove away.
The explosion blasted his head wide open, unhinging his jaw. There was a billowing cloud of that same white smoke as the giant toppled over and thudded to the earth.
That had to have finished him. The oni shook on the ground, facedown, head deflated like collapsed dough as the false body seemed to shrink. "No backstage pass for you, jerk-off." I laughed.
But then the head puffed back up. The skull was briefly soft as it bulged and throbbed but then it seemed to instantly harden. Re-formed, he looked up and focused right in on me, black eyes filled with simple hatred. Cratos lurched from his knees and started running after us, each step like thunder.
"Step on it, Mosh!"
Chapter 7
We tore out of the Buzzard Island Amphitheater parking lot and up onto the freeway heading south. There were a ton of flashing lights, ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars arrayed around the hall now. Thousands of people were wandering around, aware that something weird was going on, but not knowing what exactly. And it was about to get a whole lot weirder for them when that unkillable red bastard came running out after us.
"Head for the Air Force base," Franks directed Mosh.
"Listen, big scary dude, I don't know where the air base is," Mosh said. "Owen, who is this asshole?"
"He's my bodyguard…" My brother started to turn around. I knew he had a lot of questions at this point, and the look he gave me indicated just how pissed off he was. "Just…Never mind…Keep heading south. I'll tell you where to turn." I held onto a stainless steel pole by the driver's seat as the bus jerked violently through the gears.
Franks keyed his radio. "This is Delta lead. Southbound in the black bus with the primary."
Myers came back. "Are you all right, Franks?"
"Yes, sir. But Alpha Team was rendered combat ineffective." Apparently "combat ineffective" meant that most of them had just gotten dismembered. The quiet man stated it with less emotion than the average person expressed over stubbing their toe.
"Evacuating them now. Apaches' ETA ten minutes," Myers replied. I breathed a sigh of relief at that. There was no way that Cratos could catch up to us on foot before we had some serious firepower overhead. "We've got a level-five containment problem here, a couple hundred viable witnesses." The senior agent sounded really upset.
"Did you get Violence?"
"Negative."
Franks started scanning through the darkened windows. "Roger that."
"Owen, we've got to talk," Mosh said as he painfully ground the bus into a higher gear. He turned and looked at me. "Okay, what the hell were those things? What are you doing playing commando? You're an accountant! And these weirdos keep bowing and calling me War Chief." He waved his hand at the orcs. All three bowed simultaneously. "See? See!"
"I'll explain everything."
"No. You won't," Franks ordered. I had to remember that part of his job was murdering witnesses who couldn't keep their big mouths shut.
"Wait," Skippy interrupted before I could tell Franks to go screw himself. "Smell monster." He lifted up the base of his mask, revealing his face. The wide nostrils in his piglike snout flared as he sniffed the air.
"Aaaahhhh!" Mosh screamed when he saw Skippy's face, jerked the wheel of the tour bus, and clipped the rear end of a passing car. The car careened off the freeway and out into the wetlands. He barely regained control before we went off the road, all of us being slammed back and forth, and stumbling in the aisle. "What the fuck!"
Skippy dropped his mask. "Sorry…War Chief." Then he bowed an apology to Mosh. "Sister here."
There was a thump on the roof.
I raised my shotgun and started blasting random holes through the ceiling. Franks had lost his rifle at some point. A Glock appeared in his hand and he started shooting. Skippy raised my.45 and popped off the remaining rounds in the magazine. The roof was Swiss cheese in a matter of seconds. A purple hand smashed through the roof and wrapped around the shoulder of my armor. Bia hoisted me from floor as if I weighed nothing. My head slammed into the sheet metal as she tried to tug me through the gap. My boots kicked uselessly. Franks maneuvered for a shot. I levered Abomination up and emptied the rest of the magazine through the roof and right into Bia's body. She didn't let go.
Skippy and Gretchen grabbed my legs and pulled down. Monster tug-of-war. I screamed as my head slammed into the roof repeatedly. Ditching the totally ineffective baton, Edward leapt up and pulled the kukri from my vest. He swung, embedding the blade deep into the oni's arm. She shrieked and the claws released.
I landed on the minibar, shattering a bunch of expensive booze bottles and a fancy mirror. The arm disappeared. I hit the floor hard but my new angle gave me a clear view of the freeway ahead. "Mosh! Look out!"
My brother, distracted, had turned toward the action. He swiveled back just in time to see the rear end of the semi we were about to collide with. All of us were flung about as Mosh cranked it violently to the right and stomped on the brakes. We tore one of our headlights off against the rear of the trailer. The bus bounced wildly as we went off the pavement, tearing huge swaths out of the grass. We slid, somehow moving sideways in the mammoth vehicle, then jarred violently back onto the pavement.
We were on an off-ramp.
Mosh righted the vehicle, but now we were curving back, heading to the northeast. We began to climb up an overpass, going back over the freeway. We were in too high of a gear, and the engine made a gurgling noise as Mosh downshifted.
"Wrong way," Franks said simply as he shoved a fresh magazine into his 10mm.
"Maybe we knocked that bitch loose!" Mosh said hopefully.
Bia crashed through the side this time, a purple blur swinging down from the roof. The oni's massive fist hit Franks square in the chest and he just disappeared, his body flying through the glass on the opposite side.
"Franks!" But he was already gone, blasted right out the moving vehicle and into the night. Struggling, I pulled another Saiga magazine from my armor. A long purple arm stretched forward, searching for me, ripping up shards of thick carpet. Edward stepped forward, kukri swinging, and nailed her again. The blade bit deep but no fluids came out. Bia screeched, swinging at Edward, and without room to maneuver he couldn't dodge. The orc sailed down the aisle, colliding with the dash. Ed tumbled down the stairs, landing against the door.