Free The Beast That Was Max by Gerard Houarner Page A

Max's ear. The narrow alley caught the burst of weapons fire and amplified it until it seemed a roaring, fire-sparking dragon had risen from the river in a surreal imitation of a cheap, man-in-rubber-suit monster movie.
    Mani ducked into the Lincoln's trunk and slammed the hood down.
    "Max?" Lee said, voice strained. "A little fucking support here?"
    Max grunted to keep himself from laughing at his comrade's nervousness. Their enemies were shooting blind and didn't even have the presence of mind to fire up a flare. The Beast roared in his head, deepening the gunfire's resonance inside him. It was eager to kill, and pressured him to join the battle. But the Beast's joyful rage did not touch Max's heart. Detached from instincts and self by Mani's power and his unwanted role in her life, Max watched the firefight a few moments longer. The atmosphere of unreality seeped into his thoughts. If he couldn't fuck Mani, why should he save her or her unborn pup? Why did he have to kill for her?
    A part of him wanted her to die, along with everyone else aboveground. A part of him wanted to walk out onto a field of dead bodies and disappear into a world where neither the dead nor the living could touch him. But the part that wanted this wish granted did not belong to him. It was a piece of Mani left behind in him.
    He laughed at last at the absurd wish, broke through the space Mani had created between him and the Beast, and embraced his instincts. The Beast tore into his mind, filtering the world through its blood hunger. Max stepped farther down into the manhole, letting the cover slam shut over his head. The triggers for the autoguns and mines fell into his hands when he searched for them in the bags. He set off the weapons simultaneously.
    The autoguns sprayed their clips of whizzing rounds in a sweeping arc that passed overhead like a horde of hornets. Popping mines punctuated screams of the dying. The Beast's laughter rang in his ears.
    Alarms blared. Sirens wailed in the distance. The stench of smoke and blood and feces spilled through the cover's holes into the tunnel, teasing Max, the Beast. Time collapsed into a desperate ball, and Max understood that anyone caught in its final implosion had the task of explaining what had happened on the street to officials. As he had already told Mani, he did not explain himself to others. The Beast's rage surged through him in a tide of eager destruction.
    The guns and mines exhausted themselves in seconds, though the din echoed for a while longer in the alley above, the tunnels below, and in his head. Max pushed the cover up just enough to peek and survey the damage. All the men along the walls were down. Moaning and twitching bodies announced that they were not all dead. Only two from the center group had fallen, legs cut to pieces by the crossfire. They still crawled forward on broken arms. The rest had gathered around the Lincoln. Some were trying to pry open the rear hood with their bare fingers, while others beat at the Lincoln's armor. The squeak and scrape of flesh against the car, the pounding of fists on metal added an arrhythmic baseline to the music of pain Max had composed. Dancing to the music, a head jerked as if slapped, a torso convulsed, hips and knees shattered, each marking a suppressed-muzzle hit by Lee shooting from his aerie. The Beast sent razor cuts of envy along Max's nerves.
    "They're not going down," Max said.
    "No fucking shit," Lee shouted, making Max wince.
    A side window shattered on the Lincoln, and someone crawled into the backseat to break through to the trunk. The same Khmer voice shouted once again from the intersection.
    Max threw the manhole cover away, ducked back down when small-arms fire from the headlight car kicked up tar and pinged off metal. The Beast snapped in reply, straining for action. Max grabbed a flash and a concussion grenade from one of the bags, tossed them both at the headlight car, picked two smoke grenades and threw them after the