Sorrow Space by James Axler

rims collapsed to the road.
    Grant joined Kane seconds later, the Sin Eater materializing in his hand. He kept silent, recognizing what Kane was doing. Grant knew the man’s body language well enough to identify it—Kane was drawing on his fabled point-man sense, an uncanny combination of his normal senses that made him almost prophetic in a hot zone.
    “There’s someone out there,” Kane said. “I’m certain of it.” He kept his voice low, aware of how close Grant was.
    “Where?” Grant asked.
    Brigid joined them, hurrying from her descent of the wall and ducking behind the edge of the automobile. “What’s happening?” she whispered.
    “Company,” Kane said.
    As he said it, he spotted the movement down one of the streets. Four figures were moving from behind a burned-out truck and trailer. They strode in step, walking side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Each was dressed in dark clothes, faces hidden behind the brutal lines of their matching helmets, eyes obscured behind tinted visors.
    “Magistrates...?” Grant muttered, not quite believing what he was seeing.
    Before anyone could say anything else, the distant figures raised their right arms, tensing their trigger fingers as sleek blasters appeared in their hands. And as the bullets left the chambers, there came a screaming like dying children. The agonized shrieks grew louder as the bullets closed in.

Chapter 10
    Four bullets came spiraling toward Kane and his companions, screeching like living things as they cut through the air.
    The Cerberus warriors were highly trained, and all of them ducked down behind the cover of the burned-out automobile as the bullets struck, cutting chunks out of the blackened metalwork, abruptly ending their loud screams.
    “The hell?” Grant spit. “Don’t these guys even ask questions first? What did we do wrong?”
    “Probably not the time to ask, partner,” Kane said, scanning the nearby buildings for better cover.
    Grant stretched his Sin Eater out before him, eyeing down its sights. “You want to return fire?” he asked.
    Kane watched the approaching figures from behind cover, automatically ducking as another cluster of screaming bullets came hurtling across the distance between them. There could be no mistaking the phenomenon now—the bullets really did let out a shriek like a child’s scream as they were expelled from their foe’s blasters. “Once we do, it sets a precedent we may never be able to go back from,” Kane pointed out. “They’re Magistrates. Hold fire—for now.”
    Crouched beside the two ex-Magistrates, Brigid was reloading her shotgun. She peered over the hood of the auto, watching the approaching figures with morbid interest as they strode down the street. There were four in all, each of them dressed in the familiar black-leather garb of a Magistrate, just like the uniforms that Kane and Grant had once worn. Though they were each dressed in the Magistrate uniform, they were not matching. The one to the right wore a heavy black duster over his regulation uniform, with bloodred piping that highlighted its neat pleats. The third from the left had a subtly different helmet; a motif was emblazoned across its center in a putrid green script.
    Brigid narrowed her eyes a moment, focusing on the man’s helmet. From this distance, the motif looked like a child’s skeleton, curled in on itself. But as he took another step closer, she saw something else there—the humanoid skeleton had a curling tail of bones, reaching up from the base of its spine to wrap around its own neck.
    “Hideous...” Brigid muttered, feeling sickened by the image.
    But as she spoke, the figures stepped more clearly into the sunlight—what little of it there was—and Brigid’s words seemed to catch in her throat, her mouth suddenly dry as bone.
    Beneath his visor, the leftmost figure had putrid sores spreading across his skin, and black pus oozed from them. His flesh was red, like cooked meat, the skin flayed away,