Chapter 51

The ranch house and the building next to it were engulfed in flames. The third building along was smouldering. Inside was the wreckage of a helicopter and vehicles and there was fuel everywhere. Just as Larry Bolan reached for the dropped M16 the building went nuclear.

Super-heated air blasted him, snatching at his clothing and spiky hair. He felt like he was on fire. But then the initial blast passed and he found that he was still standing: a little singed, but still alive. Smoke boiled all around him, invading his nostrils and lungs and making him cough. Then chunks of wood rained down, thumping to the earth like gargantuan hailstones. He avoided being smashed to pulp by some of the heavy beams that crashed down right beside him. Larry thought he could be blessed. Someone up there’s watching over me, he thought. It couldn’t be Trent: Trent had gone somewhere much lower down the celestial ladder.

Blinded by the smoke, it didn’t stop him reaching for the assault rifle a second time. He found the stock just where he remembered, then hefted it up into his hands. He’d never fired an assault rifle before, but how difficult could it be? Point and shoot, right?

He also remembered where Rink and the black guy had been lying and he pulled on the trigger, spraying rounds at them. The gun bucked in his hands, rattling out rounds until the magazine was spent.

Some explosions erupt outwards, causing a vacuum of displaced air. After the initial blast, the heat and smoke rush back in to fill the void, before mushrooming up into the sky. Larry felt the wind racing back towards the new implosion, the smoke following it like a thousand tattered banners caught in a slipstream. The air cleared surprisingly quickly, and showed him where he was shooting. It was where both men had been lying, but they weren’t there.

‘Shit,’ Larry growled.

Rink was ten feet to his right, the black guy the same distance to his left. Both men had pulled out sidearms and were aiming directly at his head.

‘Fucking pussies,’ Larry said to them. ‘You’re going to shoot me after all this, you fucking cowards?’

‘No,’ Rink said. He nodded over Larry’s shoulder. ‘We’re just keeping you busy till our buddy gets here.’

Larry Bolan turned.

Out of the smoke, covered almost head to foot in blood, walked Joe Hunter. His face was set in stone and his eyes were like slivers of ice. In his hand he held a huge butcher’s hook.

Some people would be terrified by the image but Larry only smiled.

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