TORMENT (42 page)

“Peace,” Masters
said,
his voice a deep growl. The few sinews that held Austin’s body up finally snapped. His body dropped to the floor, oozing blood from his open neck. The thick red liquid drained into the cracks between the floor boards and rolled toward Mia like
miniature rivers
.

She backed away, her shaking body making little progress.

Masters watched her for a moment and then opened his clenched fist. A bloody chunk of flesh and bone fragments fell to the floor with a splat. He looked down at it. “Peace,” he said again.

A small portion of Mia’s mind returned during that pause. She scrambled to her feet, ran to the opposite door and unlocked it.

The loud metal clang of the lock snapped Masters’s head toward her. Eyebrows still knit with
despair,
he opened his mouth and let out a roar.

Mia fell to her knees. The point blank range of the blast twisted her insides. She vomited hard. Over the sound of her retching she heard pounding and falling bricks. But she couldn’t stop her body from convulsing. Before she could even look up, a tight pressure wrapped around her body and squeezed.

50

Mia wasn’t crushed into oblivion. She felt no new pain as something lifted her off the ground and put onto her feet.

“This way,” said a voice.

A hard tug yanked her through the door she’d unlocked. She spilled into a dim hallway and through a blur of tears saw a man running ahead of her. She followed after him as the violent shaking behind her intensified.

A second roar sent her to one knee, but her rescuer was there in an instant, pulling her back up and shoving her forward. “Keep moving!”

Mia ran down the hallway, drunk with fear, stumbling and slipping, but somehow staying on her feet. When she reached an open side door, the man took her arm and pushed her in. A thin staircase led up.

“It goes to the roof,” the man said.

Mia climbed the stairs while the man waited below. She opened the door at the top and toppled onto the mill roof. Sheets of peeling, rough tar stretched to the edges. The roof’s uneven surface looked like waves, gently rising and falling where water and time had warped portions of it.

She heard the door at the bottom of the stairs close. Footsteps pounded on the stairs as the man took them two at a time. Then her rescuer spilled into the light and fell to his hands and knees, catching his breath, head turned down. When he looked up at her, she was shocked into silence.

Garbarino stood and reached out his hand. “C’mon,” he said. “I know a way out.”

“Joe?” she said, climbing to her feet.

The roof shook as something rumbled on the floor below them.

“There isn’t much time,” he said.

Mia squeezed him in a tight embrace. He squeezed her back,
then
pulled away. “Are you ready yet?”

The question confused her, but then she remembered her earlier fears of death, Hell and eternity. With Austin, those concerns had been buried by hope, but now, with him dead, her confidence began to wane. “No,” she answered.

“Then let’s move!” He ran to the far end of the mill, pulling her by the hand.

“How did you escape?” she asked as they ran.

“They followed me for a little while, but were more interested in the two of you. I crossed the river using a pedestrian walkway that led to a park.”

They stopped at the edge of the mill roof. The next mill building in line was ten feet away. Mia was about to point out that neither of them could make the jump, but Garbarino was already picking up a long thick floorboard from the roof.

He saw her looking at the board. “This is how I got here.”

“How did you know how to find us?”

Garbarino lifted the board up and slowly lowered it so that it bridged the gap between buildings. “At first—” He grunted as the board’s weight strained his arms. He placed the board down. “I noticed the mobs had stopped chasing the runners and had all headed in a single direction.”

As Garbarino adjusted the board so that each side had a foot overhanging the edge of a roof, she asked. “You
followed
them?”

“Not at first. I thought I was home free. But then I figured out they were headed in your direction. I saw them focused on the mill and figured you were inside. When I saw Masters go in, I found a way around and came to get you out.”

“But why didn’t they chase you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “There were two of you.” He motioned to the board. “Go ahead.”

The roof beneath them shook. A muffled roar rose up from below. Henry Masters was looking for them.

Mia climbed onto the thick, eighteen inch wide board. It should have been easy to cross, but the height was dizzying. And she could see killers below, still focused on the walls and windows of the building.
If they looked up...

Mia pulled her arms and legs in close and crawled across the board. She moved quickly, holding her breath, and when she reached the other side, she stood and turned around. Garbarino was already half way across.

The doorway at the center of the mill they’d fled exploded. Henry Masters stepped onto the roof. He looked away from them, searching, and then turned toward them. With Garbarino only a few feet from the roof, Masters howled.

Mia dropped to one knee, clutching her stomach, which still reeled from the point blank roar she’d endured just a few minutes before. Garbarino slipped and fell. His stomach struck the board and he slid to the side. But as he rolled, he latched onto the board with his arms and legs. The board began to tip.

Masters charged across the roof, his heavy feet leaving dents in the tar behind him.

Mia saw the board tipping up and knew that if Garbarino hung from it, there was no way he’d get up in time. She jumped up and put her weight on the board. It slapped back down.

Garbarino pushed himself back up and crawl-sprinted the rest of the way across even as it shook from Masters’s approach. When he jumped onto the far roof, Mia began running. When Garbarino didn’t follow, she shouted back to him, “What are you doing?”

He yanked the board toward him and it fell between the buildings. “We need it!” He grunted as he hung onto it and pulled it up.

Masters was twenty feet away.

Mia returned and helped Garbarino lift the board. Just as it fell onto the roof between them, Masters reached the edge and jumped. His massive body rose up into the air, arching toward them, silhouetted by the heat lightning-filled sky.

They fell back, raising their hands as if to fend off the blow. But Masters dropped out of sight. The roof shook as his body struck the sidewall of the building.

Garbarino stood and took a step toward the edge. A hand reached up and grabbed the brick overhang. The old wall shifted under the weight, but held. Masters was climbing up. When his other hand took hold of the ledge, Garbarino dropped onto his back, turned his feet toward the wall and kicked.

Mia saw what he was doing and sat next to him. They kicked the wall together, and each blow shifted it a little bit more.

Masters’s head rose up over the small ledge and looked down at them. He let go with one hand and reached out for Mia.

“Kick now!” Garbarino shouted.

All four of their legs struck the wall at the same time. It shifted back slowly, bricks grinding as mortar loosened.

They kicked again and this time the wall fell away.

Masters didn’t shout as he dropped. He simply stared at them, his sad eyes and hate-filled face glaring at them all the way to the ground. He crushed a group of killers when he landed. A hailstorm of bricks struck next, slamming down more killers who hadn’t already helped break Masters’s fall.

Garbarino picked up the long board. “There are four more mills to cross. If we can make it the rest of the way without being seen, we might have a chance.”

A roar, similar to Henry Masters’s, but somehow more powerful, tore through the air. They turned to find a second hunter emerge from the mill behind them.

“How did he get back up so fast?” Mia asked.

“That’s not Masters,” Garbarino said.

Mia saw that the giant man had no tattoo on his chest. His face was deformed like Masters’s—missing cheeks, a perpetual grin, and frightening, but sad eyes. The only features on his white, shirtless torso were three scars—one long, curved streak on his side beneath the ribs, and two circular scars on the opposite side.

As the giant charged, Garbarino stood still, unable to move.

Mia tugged at him.

Garbarino took a step forward, staring at the charging monster.

“Garbarino!”
Mia shouted.

“Oh God,” Garbarino said as he recognized the scars, that when turned sideways, mirrored the smiley face the man always doodled during meetings. “It’s Austin.”

51

Austin landed short, just like Masters. But the transformed Austin still had all the skills learned over years of Secret Service action. With one arm wrapped over the top of the building, he began pulling himself up.

Mia stared at Austin long enough to confirm his identity, and then took Garbarino by the arm. “Let’s go!”

They ran together, heading for the far end of the mill where they could use the board to continue on to the next building. But between Mia’s battered body and Garbarino carrying the long, heavy board, they didn’t manage much more than a brisk jog.

Austin on the other hand, unhindered by pain or fatigue, pulled himself onto the rooftop and pounded after them like an oversized Olympic sprinter.

The roof shook beneath Mia’s feet. She looked back and saw Austin gaining. “Can you shoot him?”

Garbarino looked down to the holster strapped beneath his left arm. “Only one shot left.”

Both knew that one shot would do little to slow Austin. But what other choice was there? Garbarino dropped the board, drew his weapon and turned. But Austin was already there, raising a hand up to swat Garbarino.

A loud crack rang out, but Garbarino hadn’t fired his weapon. Austin growled as the roof caved in beneath his weight. He slipped down through the hole as though being swallowed by quicksand.

Garbarino holstered his gun, retrieved the board and continued to the far side of the mill with Mia by his side. They reached the edge without further incident, but neither believed Austin or Masters had given up the chase.

As they laid the board across the divide between them and the next mill, Mia was glad to see the ground below free of killers. “I can’t believe it...Austin...”

Garbarino balanced the board between the buildings.
“Makes sense.”

Mia gasped at the thought. “What?”

“Austin saw himself as a protector of life. He could be violent, sure.
Deadly.
But to him, he was saving people.
Protecting people.
His mission, just like Masters’s, was to save lives.”

Her eyes turned down. “And now he takes them.”

Confusion tore at her mind. The irony seemed too impossible to be chance or the way his genetics randomly responded to some physical change in the atmosphere, or food, or anything else. But the other possibility, that Austin—her protector, who thought of nothing other than saving lives and who brought hope into a hopeless world—could be damned? She didn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe it.