For a moment, King thought the frankenstein had been thrown clear, but a moment later the shredding of the car resumed. He twisted around, trying to get a shot at the thing, but it stayed out of view, using the curl of torn metal like a shield. King knew the 5.56-millimeter ammunition from the XM8 would pass through the thin sheet like it was tissue paper, but so far the high-velocity rounds hadn’t done much to slow the monster down.
“Rook, blast that fucker!”
Rook didn’t wait for a clear shot. He aimed the Desert Eagle at a spot roughly in the center of the roof and fired into the headliner. The entire chassis rang like a bell as the .50 caliber round punched an enormous hole in the roof. Rook adjusted his aim to a point twelve inches behind the hole and fired again. He didn’t need to hit a vital organ; a bullet from the Desert Eagle could rip off limbs.
The tearing stopped.
Suddenly Knight’s window was filled with the creature’s head and shoulders. Blood streamed from dozens of wounds, but the thing was relentless. It had swung down from the roof and was now reaching into the Surf, stretching its fingers out to snare Sasha’s arm.
Knight was pinned against his seat by the monster’s bulk. Rook threw both arms around Sasha, trying to pull her back, but the prodigiously strong creature effortlessly dragged him along. Queen was the only thing between the frankenstein and its prey; she threw an uppercut that snapped the thing’s head back. The monster gave a low growl and shook its head, shrugging the punch off as effortlessly as the bullets, but in that brief instant, Queen did something that no one expected. She reached under the shredded fabric of the monster’s shirt, closed her fingers around the tubes that curled like external veins between its head and chest, and pulled. The tubes came free like clumps of hair, with scraps of bloody flesh clinging to the ends.
The frankenstein’s limbs went rigid for a moment, like it was being electrocuted, but whatever Queen had done, it was still not enough to permanently stop the beast. With an agonized howl, it resumed pulling Sasha across the interior.
Queen kept raining blows into the thing’s face, pummeling it unmercifully, but the monster did not relent. It drew its human prize closer, pinning Queen’s arms down and crushing her against the already immobilized Knight.
King twisted around and tried to find something to shoot at, but in the tangle of bodies, there was no way to separate friend from foe. Instead, he reversed his hold on the carbine and slammed the butt of the weapon into the monster’s head. There was a sickening crunch of bones breaking, but the creature refused to die.
Bishop stomped on the accelerator again, and as the Surf lurched forward, he swerved to the left. Locked in a mortal struggle, the other passengers were barely aware of the maneuver. None of them saw the delivery truck in the lane beside them.
The side panel of the truck was like a solid wall outside the windows of the SUV as the two vehicles scraped together with a hideous grinding noise, and then suddenly the Surf shot forward again, breaking free of the momentary effects of friction.
Rook and Sasha fell back as the creature’s efforts abruptly ended. The frankenstein — or rather what was left of him, head and shoulders — toppled forward into the SUV and landed in Knight’s lap. The monster’s lower torso and legs had been crushed and sheared away by the collision with the delivery truck.
For a few seconds, everyone just stared in disbelief at the twitching remnants of the monster. Then Knight, with a shudder of revulsion, pushed the bodiless corpse away, inadvertently putting it right into Queen’s arms.
“Oh, hell no!” She shoved it back at him.
King put an immediate stop to the gruesome game of hot potato by reaching back and heaving the remains out the open window, and for a moment thereafter, they all just slumped in their seats, too physically and mentally drained to say a word. Even Rook seemed unable to add his customary pithy insights.
It was Bishop that finally broke the silence. “Guys, we’ve got another problem.”
That was when King heard the sound of sirens in the distance. Behind them, weaving through the traffic on the road and quickly gaining ground, was a long serpentine chain of flashing police lights.
FORTY-TWO
King counted seven different sets of flashing lights, the nearest perhaps two hundred meters behind them. Then he became aware of something else; Deep Blue, was telling them that they’d missed a turn.
In the mayhem of the battle with the frankenstein, the task of navigating the unfamiliar roads hadn’t seemed all that important. “Sorry, boss man,” he broke in. “We’re a little busy here.”
“The road you are on will end in less than half a mile. You have to turn around.”
Bishop glanced over at him. “Now he tells us.”
King masked his concern with a sigh of mock-frustration. “I guess you should turn around.”
“Yep,” agreed Bishop and slammed on the brakes.
King was thrown forward against the dashboard, and he heard a collective howl from the back seat as everyone succumbed to the sudden deceleration. The Toyota skidded forward, enveloped in the tumult of noise and a noxious cloud of rubber smoke, and then it drifted across the road. It almost went into a spin, but Bishop kept making minor corrections with the front wheels to keep its nose forward until most of the momentum was gone. When the SUV was nearly at a complete stop, he let off the brakes and cranked the steering wheel hard to the left.
King felt his center of gravity shift and thought for a moment that the Surf was going to roll, but Bishop knew what he was doing. He stomped the gas pedal down, racing out of the turn, and headed back the way they’d come…and right down the throat of the advancing squadron of police cars.
For just a moment, King thought Bishop was going to challenge the Iranian National Police to a game of chicken. It was just the sort of thing Bishop might do, and — live or die — King felt certain that his teammate would never ‘lose’ in such a game. The police however, had no intention of playing along; as the Surf swung around to meet them, the lead chase vehicles broke formation and spread out to block both lanes. It was a hasty affair, and King felt sure that they could blast through with a minimum of damage. Unfortunately, the Toyota wasn’t the only vehicle on the road, and now a traffic jam several cars deep was piling up in front of them. Bishop, undaunted, kept accelerating toward the impasse.
Rook leaned forward, staring into the sea of bright red brake lights. “Ummm…”
King resisted the urge to comment, waiting to see what fancy evasive maneuvers Bishop would employ to get them past the barricade. As they closed the gap however — eating up the distance in mere seconds — King started to question his assumptions about Bishop having a plan…or for that matter, being sane.
A millisecond or two after passing what King thought surely must be the point of no return, Bishop nudged the wheel to the left. The Surf missed the rear bumper of a stopped car by millimeters as it veered into the opposite lane, now cleared of traffic thanks to the roadblock.
The next few seconds were like an amusement park ride from Hell. King was thrown sideways by the sudden turn, and then pitched forward as the SUV slammed into the front end of a blockading police cruiser. The impact sent the smaller vehicle spinning, but barely slowed the Surf. Bishop cut back and forth, attempting — not always successfully — to thread his way through the maze of vehicles. The Toyota’s bumper absorbed most of the damage, but each impact crumpled the fenders and the hood, and as Bishop slipped past the roadblock and into the now wide-open lane, King saw wisps of steam rising from the front end.