Free Cry Havoc by William Todd Rose Page B

happen.
    “I'm gonna getcha.... ”

 
    CHAPTER NINE
     
    It was utterly glorious.  The smoke. The fire. The blood that formed Rorschach patterns on the streets and sidewalks. Bodies were starting to pile up, heaping one on top of the other like mass Cambodian graves. Everything was swirling in chaos and Richard felt as if he were a general strolling through a victorious battlefield. The weak were falling and the strong were emerging as the dominant species, claiming the golden thrones that had awaited them for so long; even his leg didn't hurt, not really. He'd ripped up one of Polly's t-shirts and tied it so tightly around the wound that the leg of his pants almost seemed to bulge up around the tourniquet. Downing half a bottle of Captain Morgan had further dulled the throbbing pain and he found that he was able to walk with only the slightest of limps.
    When he'd made his way out of the apartment, he'd caught a glimpse of something shiny peeking out from underneath one of the bodies crumpled by the main entrance. He'd tossed the corpses aside as if they were nothing more than bags of garbage; which – in a way – they were. Simply meat sacks now, waiting for decay to set in and reduce their soft parts to a smelly ooze. Completely disposable. And once they were out of the way he'd found his treasure beneath, gleaming like a sacred relic and waiting to be claimed.
    The machete felt good in his hand. Almost as if it were simply an extension of his arm. He took a couple test swings, enjoying the sharp whack it made as the blade sank into the skull of one of the bodies. Placing his foot against the head for leverage, he pulled the weapon free and smiled.
    Oh this was good...  this was really good.
    When he hit the street he'd allowed himself to be distracted. He'd seen the action a few blocks away and made a bee-line for it.
    He made no attempt to hide. He walked openly down the center of the street, swinging the machete at his side, as he placed one foot in front of the other, allowing the double yellow lines to guide him into the fray.
    When he was close enough to smell the tang of the blood, to hear the moans of those who'd been left to bleed-out on the asphalt he broke into a quick trot, weaving back and forth across the lines now like a serpent on a branch. His pulse quickened and the trot became a jog, the jog a run, and then he was totally oblivious to the fresh blood streaming down the side of his thigh as his wound puckered with each flex of the muscle like some grisly mouth expecting a kiss.
    Richard burst through a crowd of hooligans and suddenly he was spinning and ducking, whirling like a dervish on meth, his arms swinging the blade of the machete in wide arches. He felt flesh and cloth rendered beneath his attack, felt the spray of warm blood on his face, and heard the unmistakable sucking sound of chest wounds as he ran people through. Some of his victims staggered around with their hands clutching their throats, trying to contain the arc of blood that gushed from the wide slit on their necks. Others had arms, legs, and hands drop uselessly to the asphalt: phantom impulses caused the fingers to twitch, as if they could somehow claw their way back up the street and reattach themselves to their former bodies.
    And it was everything he'd ever dreamed it would be. The confusion. The sounds of the battlefield, of skirmishes lost and won in a conflict that had no clearly defined sides. He could give or take life as he saw fit, could claim the spoils of war as he pleased...  out here he was so much more than the sum of his parts. He was a machine: a perfectly timed, precision juggernaut that couldn't be stopped.
    Molotovs were tossed from somewhere, the glass bottles shattering across the concrete as blue flames whooshed into existence and spread like lakes of Hell across the road. Those close to the point of impact were engulfed by the fire and they stumbled around, human shaped torches, screaming in wordless