Out of the Black - Lee Doty [138]
***
Hawthorne gripped Mendez's empty operating bed with one hand while the other wavered in the general direction of the broken observation window above. In that hand she held her pistol, covering the window above.
Behind her, Anne stood facing the gaggle of... well, she didn't have a description better than 'party demons'. Her vision was still skipping from the arduous trip from window to floor, her hands still shook, her teeth still clenched. She was still uncertain about being very, very sick. The demons' deranged chuckling seemed to dance around the jitters in her overtaxed mind.
"How many bullets you got in that gun, Hawthorne?" Anne asked quietly.
"Call me Sarah... and there'll be plenty left when we're dead."
"Ok, Sarah. Can I ask you a favor?"
"No."
"Fair enough."
"There it is!" The monstrous visitors all hissed at once. "Hiding in briars, but here it will be."
"That make any sense to you?" Anne whispered sideways.
"Nope."
Anne nodded. "Right. Thought not." Then raising her voice to be heard, she said, "You are on the road to destruction! All your base are belong to us!"
Hawthorne glanced over her shoulder, "Wha?"
Anne sniggered. The demons seemed unsure of what they should do now. Not so much thinking as just awaiting instructions. The surgeons had joined the OR tech behind Anne. Jeremy ws still frozen four meters before her, perhaps two meters from the closest demons.
"Jeremy!" Anne hissed.
In the slow motion of the shell-shocked, Jeremy's head turned slowly to point his sheet-white face and bulging eyes in her direction. "Onh?" He may have said.
Anne jerked her head and motioned with her eyes for him to skeedaddle behind her with the rest of the non-monsters. He gave a tick with his head that Anne read as a nod, but then his head turned back to the demons and he didn't move another muscle. Well, that wasn't entirely true- at least one sphincter muscle moved, and it was not to Jeremy's great advantage. "Oops." Anne whispered as Jeremy's pants darkened.
As if they were attuned to the scent of urine like sharks are to blood, the demons exploded forward. A demon wearing the color-traced black of a neo-goth grabbed Jeremy around the throat, or would have about three hundred milliseconds later if he had not instead received a face full of Anne Kelley's fist.
With her left hand, she yanks Jeremy back toward the others, perhaps a little too hard she thinks, since she sees his feet exiting her peripheral vision about a meter off the ground. At the same time, her right hand streaks forward, tearing through the toothy grin of the goth-demon. Teeth and blood disengage themselves from his face, but her fist is already gone. Her left leg lashes out low and the demon leaves the ground, smashing into one of the demons behind him.
Anne bores forward, whirling-jumping around another assailant, using the demon's head as a lever to throw it into another demon. Around her, two others turn in perfect sync to press attacks from both sides- one aims a kick to her side, the other levels a punch at her head. Neither connects as Anne dodges the punch while sweeping up the kicking leg. She wraps her arm around the knee and pulls up hard with the leg locked in her elbow. The hip joint dislocates under the pressure just before her kick destroys the knee of the supporting leg.
Gunfire fills the air as she pivots slightly, sliding her elbow backwards under the other demon's still-extending punch. At least three ribs shatter and the heart collapses behind them. The demon with the dislocated hip and hyperextended knee has just begun to fall as her right hand returns to shatter his skull.
The sound of screaming is punctuated by the frequent sounds of violent impact, but never interrupted. The hospital staff may be screaming behind her. She hopes not, but can't really tell. The only scream that she hears is her own. This may prove she's weak, but she can't contain her revulsion. Like a catheterized drunk after a big night out, the horror just flows out of its own shrill volition.
The world is now coming as a series