She reared off-balance, her equilibrium shattered by the blow. The guy had put all his weight behind the strike, sending her reeling. King grunted, seeing flaming red, and got a foot underneath his body. He levered himself upright, wobbly, but functioning.
Too late.
The bearded man snatched two handfuls of Beth’s uniform and hauled her effortlessly over the railing. King watched it unfold in a state of paralysis, horrified. Beth tumbled head-first over the side of the deck, limbs flailing. She disappeared from sight instantaneously, and King’s stomach heaved at the thought of what came next.
A fifty-foot drop, minimum.
Into churning waters. Into open ocean.
With a crippling bullet wound in her upper body.
If the impact didn’t kill her, she didn’t stand a chance regardless.
King caught a final glimpse of Beth disappearing over the side of the ship, and a switch flipped somewhere deep in his mind. An audible click sounded in his ears — with a rushing flood of anger, he lost focus on any of the damage the bearded man had wreaked on his torso with the wrench. Everything from the neck down went numb, and he laser-focused on the guy, his brain steaming and his veins racing with raw fury.
But he kept completely still.
He allowed himself to slump back to the floor, staying on his feet for less than a second before seemingly succumbing to the build-up of pain.
In truth, he barely noticed any of it.
He had his mind and soul set on the bearded man — nothing else mattered.
He hoped his acting abilities were in shape. He’d need them to stay alive.
He knew, deep down, that he was badly, horrifically hurt. The adrenalin and emotion that came from seeing a woman he barely knew but cared deeply about fall to certain death couldn’t stay in his system forever. Eventually it would give way to the agony and the unconsciousness. When that time came, he would welcome it.
Just not right now.
Sure enough, the bearded man now sported a smug grin, satisfied that he’d effortlessly seized the upper hand. He strode slowly toward King, his boots ringing off the steel floor. He was a heavy man — King could tell by his footfalls. Out of the corner of King’s eye he watched the blurry shape draw closer and closer. The guy had a wrench in one hand and a Browning 9mm in the other.
King realised he could have taken a bullet between the eyes instead of the beatdown with the wrench.
This man wanted to prolong King’s suffering.
Draw it out, assert his own dominance, get some semblance of revenge for his three dead allies.
King felt a twinge of hope.
The bearded man wanted control, but this was a game of inches. In the movies, the guy would have been free to circle around King’s motionless form, delivering a speech revealing his grand intentions and relishing over how he’d gained the upper hand.
In reality, the man reached down to seize a handful of King’s hair — and King swung an uppercut with such ferocity into the guy’s unprotected groin that he audibly yelped in abject horror.
Jason King surged to his feet, his concentration absolute, his mind hungry for vengeance.
48
The bearded guy slumped to his knees, unable to help himself, battling to control his limbs but giving way to the natural bodily reaction — just as King had moments earlier.
The man was still armed with two weapons, and highly dangerous.
King scrambled to get his feet underneath himself in the space of a second and smashed the heel of his boot into the hand clutching the Browning 9mm. A collection of bones in the man’s fingers shattered under the force of the strike, and King spotted several of the digits twisting grotesquely at awkward angles, jammed between his combat boot and the trigger guard of the sidearm.
The gun cascaded to the floor.
By that point the bearded man sensed that he was metaphorically clawing for air and swung the wrench as hard as he possibly could at King’s exposed chin.
If it connected, King’s jaw would have shattered.
Thankfully, the groin shot compounded with the shock from his broken hand took the wind out of the guy’s sails, resulting in a half-hearted flailing instead of a furious swing.
King simply caught the wrench by its fat steel head and tore it free from the bearded man’s grasp, invigorated by the shifting tide of momentum. He thrust the thick jaws on either side of the head into the guy’s throat, plunging each pointed section deep into the skin.
Blood spilt.
The man reached pathetically for his neck.
King broke all the fingers in his other hand with a single downward slicing motion, smashing the wrench head home with an accompanying noise akin to popping a large sheet of bubble wrap.
The guy howled and went down on his rear, a sorry mess of a man. The confidence and glee and control were long gone. King had never seen someone pale at such an unbelievable speed. All the blood drained from his cheeks, leaving him white as a ghost as he realised the extent of his incapacitation.
He knew what was coming next, and he was helpless to stop it.
King sized up the distance between them — the guy seated on the floor a couple of feet away, King standing upright clutching the wrench. He assessed trajectories and momentum and technique.
Then he let all the stifling emotion swell in his chest, drawing energy from the sickening mental image of Beth tumbling helplessly over the railing. He used a single bounding step as a run-up, charging his two-hundred pound frame with momentum, and lifted the wrench high above his head — double-handed — as he leapt into the air. He brought it down harder than he’d ever followed through with an attack, a single devastating swing that connected right on the crown of the bearded man’s skull, omitting a noise that King realised he would never forget.
The man keeled over and lay still.
The wrench stayed embedded in his head.
He was unquestionably dead.
King turned away from the corpse, not interested in lingering on what he’d done. The guy had deserved worse than a bullet and a quick death, but he felt no personal satisfaction from the killing. It had been brutal in nature, but he couldn’t help but feel like he’d set things right.
At least, in this tiny unimportant corner of the globe.
The Browning 9mm had come to rest at his feet. Out of instinct, he bent down and picked up the weapon, ejecting its magazine to check it had enough ammunition before slotting it back into place. He briefly turned his attention to the AK-47 lying dormant a few feet away, but shook his head immediately at the notion.
Everything from this point on would take place in close quarters. He preferred a compact weapon to the fearsome assault rifle.
Still reeling from everything that had unfolded, sensing the dull pain of inevitable collapse dawning on him, aware that his time in the realm of the conscious was limited, he stumbled around to face the darkness of the ship’s interior and lurched straight into the belly of the beast.
Reed.
He hadn’t come this far for nothing.
49
The nightmarish hallucinations started almost immediately.
He knew exactly what was causing the sensation, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying. The injuries to his torso — he made an off-handed guess that he had at least three broken ribs and possibly a handful of tears in the muscles around his stomach — were adding up, pushing against the mental barrier he’d temporarily erected. As they fought to break through, his mind faltered as he plunged into the darkness.
Disgusting, haemorrhaging wraiths roared into his vision, cackling with glee and mocking his gait. He limped on, determined, trying not to let them faze him. He understood they weren’t real, nothing but demons in his mind warping and pulsing on the edge of his peripheral vision.