Deep Trek

“I’ll watch the back door,” said John.

“Sure.”

Mac noticed that his son’s eyes were wide with shock. His face was dappled with smeared gobbets of crimson, his beard filled with tiny bright rubies.

Mac had snatched a moment to reload his own shotgun, covering the remnants of the murder gang as they slouched past him.

One short man muttered, “Didn’t have to waste us all, mister. No harm.”

There was a flaring temptation to take his head off with another shot. After so much death, one more wouldn’t make any difference. But Mac managed to overcome the killing fever.

“Just get the fuck out,” he said, calmly.

“Want help?” called his second wife.

“No. Stay there. Nearly done. Just the dead left to get rid of. We’ll drag them out in a while. Deal with them later.”

There were finally seven corpses, sprawled among their dining-room furniture. The ordinary chairs and table seemed to mock the grotesque stillness of bloody death.

Mac saw that one of the dead was the skinny man dressed like a priest, lying huddled up against the glass-fronted bookcase.

He stepped toward him, conscious of the hot stickiness between his bare toes. John called from the kitchen, making him turn away.

“All gone. Gear over the bottom wall and across Beulah Creek.”

“Good. We’ll…”

The corpse at his feet erupted into violent life, swinging at him with a vicious ax.

Mac parried the first blow with the barrel of the scattergun, the blade of the hatchet sparking off the blued steel.

“Messiah’ll drink your fucking brains!” screeched the madman.

Mac jabbed at him with the gun, gripping the stock, unable to shift his hands to reach the trigger in case it gave the killer the chance to chop him.

“Dad?”

There wasn’t even a splinter of a second to call out to his son; every particle of his mind was concentrating on the rheumy eyes of the lunatic in front of him.

“Yes, yes, yesyesyes…” The chanted words slithered into each other like a nest of tangling cottonmouths.

The scarred blade came in again, low, aiming for Mac’s groin. But he was able to step back outside it, swinging the scattergun backhanded and catching the man a glancing blow on the side of the head. Blood trickled from the long cut. Mac was quick. He used the butt to knock the weapon aside, then dropped the Brazzi and got in close enough to use his hands.

Though he still wasn’t back to the level of fitness he’d achieved before the Aquila’s last, doomed mission, Henderson McGill still remained an enormously powerful man.

His left hand gripped the mock-preacher’s right biceps, fingers digging in like chromed-steel claws, separating the muscle from the bone and making Casey cry out in agony. The short-hafted ax cluttered into the puddled blood around their feet.

Mac’s right hand had the helpless man by the throat, clamping off the air. Fingers crushed the windpipe, cracking the fragile thyroid bone, tighter and tighter, all of his vengeful rage flowing down his arms, into his hands.

The leader of the attackers was choking to death. His eyes protruded like the stops on a mission harmonium, his tongue flicking out like a rattler tasting the air, darkening, purpling. Blood was suffusing the man’s face, and his hands clawed at Mac’s arms, struggling desperately to loosen the death grip.

“Dad? You all right? Let go of him and I’ll shoot the scum!”

“Waste of a good bullet,” Mac said through clenched teeth. “No need, son.”

With all his strength he hoisted the preacher off the floor. His feet drummed at Mac’s shins, but there was no power left in them.

Crimson worms inched from the open mouth and from the corners of the eyes.

Breath croaked deep inside the man’s throat, and he went limp. Mac didn’t let go at first, still holding him in the air until he was sure that life was truly gone.

He dropped the corpse to the carpet to join the others.

“We’ll clean up this mess in a while,” he said, rubbing his hands on his pants. “First, though, I reckon we all deserve a mug of coffee.”

Chapter Five

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