AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He had no wallet, no credit cards or phone. But a young man walking past a vast construction site in North Las Vegas, and who arguably looked a bit like Justin, had all that and more. Justin had not wanted to kill the young man, but necessity made its own rules. One more body for collection by the crews that were scouring the city for the dead. Justin took his victim’s wallet and phone and caught a taxi to the airport. He’d bought the first available ticket to New York and now merely waited for the gate to be called.
Back to New York.
He would be safe in New York.
Tom Peaks had run from Las Vegas after the horror at the Triunfo, the hotel where Dillon Poe had made his unspeakably brutal last stand.
Peaks had arrived in Vegas as Napalm, the ten-story-tall reptile with the belly full of liquid fire, believing he was there to take down Dekka, who he hated for what he still thought of as betrayal.
But when he’d arrived . . .
He had not known about Dillon Poe. He’d had no idea what Dillon was doing. He had not known that the hundreds of people gathered by the entrance of the Triunfo were slaves to Dillon’s will, unable to flee.
He had definitely not known that the Charmer had sprayed that crowd with gasoline.
Now Peaks sat trembling in a booth at a diner in one of the multitude of identical shopping centers that ringed the city. His coffee was undrunk. The pancakes he’d ordered were untouched and now cold.
There had been so many horrors. So much destruction. The Ranch, his great creation, was exposed to the world and destroyed. What had once been his staff of carefully recruited scientists and techs and guards had been hunted down and murdered by vengeful mutants and cyborgs.
His family . . . He closed his eyes and tried to picture them, but each time he did he saw disgust and contempt on their faces. He could never go home to them, not now.
No job. No home. No family. No purpose in life. And for the rest of his life he would see the Triunfo fire over and over and over again. A fire he had unwittingly lit.
“Can I get you anything else, honey?” the waitress asked.
Peaks shook his head. He fished out a twenty-dollar bill and laid it on the table, got up, went to the men’s room, and vomited coffee and bile.
Peaks splashed water on his face and looked at himself in the dirty mirror. Looked at a face now known to every law-enforcement agency on earth.
There was no safety.
There was no escape.
There were only the screams of people burning.
Peaks stumbled out of the diner into brilliant sunlight. Across the vast parking lot was a Big 5 Sporting Goods store. He headed for it, spotted a liquor store, and bought himself a bottle of excellent scotch on the way.
“Damn good scotch,” Peaks muttered, draining a quarter of the bottle as he maneuvered through parked cars.
The clerk at the liquor store had given him a strange look, a shrewd look of recognition. Would he call the police? More likely than not.
Time was running short. If they came for him, he could morph and fight them off. He had only to belch the dreadful napalm and they would burn. . . .
Innocent police officers just doing their duty. My God.
He set the scotch bottle, now half-empty, on the curb and went into the Big 5. He easily found the gun-sales area. He pointed to a 12-gauge shotgun in a rack.
“How much?”
“That model will set you back $899.99.”
Peaks stuck a credit card into the reader. Denied. Tried another card. Denied.
“I know who you are,” the clerk said suddenly. He looked at Peaks as if seeing the devil himself.
“I need a gun,” Peaks rasped.
“You get nothing from me, you piece of shit,” the man said. “Give you a gun? Why, so you can kill some more children? Get out of here! Security! Security!”
