Emergence by John Birmingham Page A

for-real, no-bullshit fight since college and his football days. A few push and shove bar-room confrontations for sure. But Dave was much more of a sucker punch ’em and run type.
    The Sliveen hefted a throwing axe, twirling it in his hand.
    Uh oh.
    Gunfire struck the creature from Dave’s left: a burst from a machine gun of some sort. Chief Allen, still in the Expedition, was hosing the ugly fucker down with a short, stubby-looking weapon and yelling at Dave to stay the hell out of the way. It wasn’t nearly as loud as Dave would have expected, and there wasn’t much of a muzzle flash. As he stood there, feeling like an idiot with his fists bunched in front of him, he had time to wonder if that fat black nozzle was some kind of attachment, a suppressor or silencer or whatever they called them. Whatever it was, it didn’t cut the . . . the Sliveen . . . in half, but it did have an effect of sorts. Thick blood spurted and bubbled from the creature’s flanks where the bullets chewed through leather armour and . . . what?
    Was that chain mail? It sparked and flashed as the bullets hit, and Dave knew, he just knew , that yes, the Sliveen scout was outfitted in boiled leather and light chain mail.
    It shrieked as though stung by a swarm of hornets, staggered backward, and turned toward Allen.
    Heath appeared at the rear of the vehicle and opened fire with a pistol. A big fucking hand cannon, a .45 by the look and sound of it. The gun roared with every shot, and fire leaped from the muzzle. No suppressor there. The rounds hit the Sliveen in its centre mass as the soldier would have been trained to do. It dropped the tomahawk and staggered back under the impact.
    ‘Shoot it in the head,’ Dave cried. ‘It’s wearing armour. Shoot it in the fucking face.’
    But Heath had already emptied a whole clip into the monster’s upper body.
    ‘Chief, get out of there,’ Heath yelled.
    ‘No good,’ Allen cried. ‘I’m pinned.’
    The creature looked like it was in real trouble. It struggled to reach back over its shoulder, producing a bow and arrow. Dave spluttered at the incongruity of it all. The bizarre old-time weapons put the zap on his head even worse than the rabid monster wielding them.
    The burning pyre of the Prius caught his eye. The boy stared sightlessly back at Dave, pinned under the wreckage, all life long gone.
    The family members in the Prius were all dead.
    Fuck this , Dave thought.
    Drawing on his linebacker days, he launched himself across the short distance separating the Sliveen from them. He dropped his shoulder and pitched into the creature, driving the thing to the ground.
    It screeched in rage – and in pain, he hoped.
    ‘You dare touch me, calfling?’ the creature said, baring its teeth. ‘You dare –’
    Dave had straddled the Sliveen, but it was strong even with a clip or two of lead inside it. Taking a pointer from all the Ultimate Fighting Championship vids he’d watched out on the rig, he kept its long arms pinned with his knees and drove his fists into its face, shattering nostrils, cracking the long, distended jaw, pulverising the eyes, the cheeks, the mouth, everything.
    ‘Fuck you,’ he shouted into the disintegrating face, and then he lost himself in a tightening, accelerating spiral of rage and bloodlust. This was for Blackbeard. This was for the Birkenstocks in the Prius. The little boy easily coulda been Toby or Jack. This was for Marty and Vince and everyone on the rig. But mostly it was for Dave, who was heartily pissed at how much trouble and grief these fucking things seemed set on causing him.
    His blows rained down faster and faster, mechanically, methodically, but it seemed as though they landed at half speed, then quarter speed, then in the same super slo-mo he recalled from the car crash. He dismantled the skull of the Sliveen in much the same way a meth head might pull apart a rotisserie chicken, punching and tearing and ripping until all the skin and flesh and greasy