Without Mercy (Mercy 1)

Hot pain sizzled through Trent’s shoulder.

Before the kid could get off another shot, Trent rolled across the floor.

Spurrier howled in pain as flames crawled up his pants. “Help! Oh, for the love of God, help me!”

The kid turned toward his leader.

Pain rattling through his body, Trent rolled toward the kid and swept Bernsen’s feet out from under him.

Crack!

The rifle fired again as the kid went down with a heavy thud. “You bastard!”

The bullet went wild, ricocheting through the room.

Bernsen scrambled to his feet.

Spurrier was yelling in pain, the flames climbing up his body. Howling, digging at his eyes, he fell to his knees, a burning pyre.

“Oh, God!” Horrified, a true coward, Zach crawled frantically toward the kitchen. Abandoning his leader, leaving the damned rifle on the floor, he ran.

Trent lunged at the fleeing kid.

Zach dodged quickly. Terrified, the TA took off through the back door.

And straight into the muzzle of Frank Meeker’s gun.

“Stop. Police!” the deputy ordered, Bert Flannagan at his side. Trent, trying to climb to his feet, witnessed it from the hell of the living room.

Zach was pinned against the porch wall. “Oh, fuck!”

“You okay?” Flannagan asked Trent, sliding by Meeker, unintimidated by the wall of flame in the living room.

Trent turned to Spurrier. “I’ll live,” he said, forcing himself to his feet.

“Help!” Spurrier, blinded, screamed. Fire climbed up his clothes and caught in his hair. Anguished howls erupted from his throat.

Trent spied the fire extinguisher under a flaming chair and dived for it.

“Don’t!” Flannagan warned. “It’ll blow!”

“We can’t let him die!” Trent grabbed the cannister, the hot metal burning his hands. Spurrier was trapped behind an ever-climbing wall of flame, his body afire, his face a blackened, horrified mask, his shrieks of pain echoing over the roar of the flames.

“Oh, hell, let me.” Flannagan ripped it out of Trent’s hands and turned the hose on Spurrier and the surrounding flames. CO2 filled the air.

Spurrier fell to the floor where he screamed and writhed. “Take me, Father,” he cried desperately as the smell of burning flesh rose to the heavens. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

As if he truly thought he were Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER 43

“So now we wait,” Eric Rolfe said smugly. “The others should be joining us, once they’ve finished their missions.” He glanced over at Missy, and she nodded, her blond hair pale in the fallout shelter, her expression one of supreme satisfaction. She’d cleaned her teeth of blood and now seemed confident that whatever horrid plan they’d all hatched together was working.

“What missions?” Jules asked from a hard folding chair, the one she’d been forced to take.

Whimpering Nell sat to one side of her, and Shay, belligerent, her eyes hot with fury, was seated on the other. They were trapped in a small subterranean room that, Jules guessed, was the fallout shelter from the fifties, the one Charla King had mentioned. It apparently had been recently fitted with a state-of-the-art security system and backup power and had been converted into some kind of weird underground chapel that housed not only an altar but also a floor-to-ceiling cabinet that held guns, rounds of ammunition, night goggles, and God only knew what else. It was certainly enough firepower to arm a secret militia. The place gave her a serious case of the creeps; the kids holding guns on them scared her to death.

“You don’t need to know anything else,” Missy said in her grating voice. Nonchalantly studying the nails on one hand while pinning the three captives down with a handgun with the other, she seemed at home in her position as prison guard. “The Leader has it all planned out. Perfectly.”