Free Warhead by Andy Remic Page A

if readying itself to attack. Carter braced himself for the onslaught as Kade emerged, taunting in the back of his mind, offering promises of dark salvation.
    Carter’s trigger finger tightened.
    As the stable doors scraped against the floor, the Sleeper Nex half turned and Carter began to shoot, his Browning spitting fire. The doors burst open, spewing forth a cataract of charging, panicked horses that reared and jostled as they galloped over the creature in their path. Rearing and stomping and smashing iron-shod hooves as they screamed and whinnied in panic, they eventually veered off, heading away into fresh air and freedom, escaping the stench of Nex and death.
    Carter suddenly froze, realising that he had dropped to a crouch as the horses stampeded around him and his Browning emptied. Slowly, warily, keeping his stare fixed on the prostrate figure of the battered Sleeper Nex, he changed magazines.
    The thing’s eyes flickered open. Copper eyes narrowed to slits.
    Its front legs gathered beneath it and it heaved, muscles rolling. Then it gave a tiny chittering noise before slumping down once more. Carter uncoiled his own body and squinted at where the clear liquid oozed from cracked plates of armour across the Sleeper Nex’s back.
    Carter moved forward and looked down at the creature. He noted that three of his bullets had struck home, and this, combined with the steel hooves of the horses, had disabled the beast. He also noted that the horses’ kicks had broken the Sleeper Nex’s spine.
    ‘You win this one, little man,’ came the sibilant hiss. The head tilted, causing the Sleeper Nex great pain, and it surveyed Carter more carefully as he pulled free an HPG and turned the dial. A blue glow bathed his hand like ice-mist, and he smiled down at the creature.
    ‘Funny how things work out, my diseased little afterbirth.’ Carter dropped the HPG beside the Sleeper Nex and said, ‘I’ll see you in hell.’ He strode around its broken body, away through the doors and into the gloomy interior of the stable.
    Outside, there was a concussive boom, followed by rattling sounds as shards of Nex armour peppered the exterior of the stable’s walls. Carter looked over to where Mary stood beside the opened doors to the stalls—holding a Steyr TMP in her gnarled hands.
    ‘You need to get away from here,’ said Carter. ‘It’s a very dangerous place, and will become more so when the Nex discover what has happened.’
    ‘I will take the Skoda. Go to my daughter up in the Troodos Mountains. The Nex do not know she is there.’ She looked him in the eyes then. ‘You are a very brave man, Carter. The only way evil triumphs is when good men stand by and do nothing ... that was an option for you this day.’ Her hand dropped to ruffle the hair of her grandchildren. ‘Thankfully, you chose to help us and we will be eternally grateful.’
    ‘I... am sorry, about Tomas.’
    The old woman sighed, and it burned Carter to see tears on her cheeks. ‘He was a good man. A good husband ... like you, a good man standing up for what he believed in.’ She reached forward, surprising Carter, and kissed him gently on the cheek.
    ‘I am not a good man,’ whispered Carter.
    ‘You have risked your life. You have saved us. That is enough. God and his angels will be the judge of your worth.’
    Carter helped the woman and her grandchildren to the Skoda, and lifted the body of Tomas, laying it gently across the back seat. The Skoda, trailing blue smoke, disappeared in a cloud of dust up the hill. Carter threw a glance at the bent and buckled Mercedes, and the corpses littering the ground—including the mangled carcass of the dead Sleeper Nex.
    The world stank of death.
    I thought I had left all this behind, he thought.
    I thought the days of oblivion and destruction had vanished ...
    ‘Not vanished. Just hidden. You know they will never leave you,’ snarled Kade from the dark side of Carter’s soul. ‘You know you are entwined with