Nick struggled to rise, his eyes hooded with pain. "You go anywhere near my family and I swear I'll swing for you. I'll get you. I'll get you." He stumbled forward, arms outstretched. "You fucking miserable excuse for a human being. . . .
Baz had lashed at him with the knife and there was bright blood everywhere, pumping from a deep gash in Nick's shoulder. The front of his shirt rapidly changed color to a dark plum and hung slackly to his chest.
"Oh, yeah? What are you going to do?" Baz taunted him, waving the dripping knife blade in a circle. "Bleed to death? Yeah, great, I like it. Go on, bleed, you cunt." He continued to grin, spots of blood on his forehead and cheeks.
Chase supported Nick and helped him to a chair. He bound the wound with his handkerchief and knotted it tightly to stanch the flow. It was pointless trying to reason with Baz because there was no reason left. His was a mind on a one-way track, fixated, a mind that needed only the flimsiest excuse to slaughter them on the spot.
If there was a way out of this he couldn't think of one. It wasn't only the three of them here who were in danger, but the women too. Jen and Jo at the mercy of this drug-crazed mob, Ruth and Cheryl out there in the darkness on a lonely road . . .
He raised his eyes to where Baz was standing with the others bunched around him, each of them with a fragment of a common expression like a splintered mirror showing a single demented face. And as he looked something locked in Chase's throat. Under his hand he felt Nick's body stiffen. The double doors across the passage had silently opened and they watched a man come through with a double-bladed ax lifted high above his head and bring it down with maniacal force on the crown of Baz's head, splitting it into halves.
The scene turned red. Through the sticky fountain Chase saw other men pawing their way forward clutching knives, hatchets, steel bars, hacksaw blades, scythes and cutting and slashing indiscriminately at whatever was in their path. They were filthy, with matted hair and beards, their clothing stained and ragged. Some were putrefying, their faces and arms covered in scabs, others totally bald with skin a drab pasty white. All of them were demonical and possessed with bloodlust.
The carnage spilled into the passage as the attackers were flung back by a barrage of gunfire. At such close range the large-caliber weapons made a ghastly mess of human flesh and bone. All but three of the young men had been killed and one of these had had the side of his face scythed open, his ear hanging off like the tab of a zipper.
There were rifles on the floor among the hacked bodies, and Chase grabbed two and flung them to Nick and Dan. His Browning automatic was stuck in the belt of a corpse with its neck almost completely severed and an arm hanging by a tattered sleeve of skin.
Both double doors had been ripped off their hinges by the blast of gunfire and in the main hall Chase could see the attackers regrouping. Of the three young men still alive the one with the scythed-open face was bent over holding the flap in place, blood running freely between his fingers. These were no longer the enemy, but allies.
Chase pulled Nick to his feet under the armpit. "Can you make it?"
Nick held up the rifle. "You take this, I'll have the gun." He made a quizzical grimace. "Dicky shoulder, I'm afraid, old chap."
The floor was awash with blood. The two young men still holding rifles, one on either side of the door, were uncertain what to do next. Chase stepped forward and took charge. "We'll have to rush them," he said tersely. "If we get trapped in here we've had it. There are five of us, all armed. We should get through. Ready? Let's go!"
With that he grabbed one, then the other, and pushed them forward. They stumbled across the passage and into the hall, firing from the hip, but as Nick and Dan crowded behind Chase in close support, he ducked aside and ran toward the kitchen, yelling over his shoulder, "Back the way we came in!"
Nick steered Dan along the passage. As they reached the kitchen door the explosion of gunfire and the screams of injured men made a dreadful symphony. Dan went up first, onto the table and hauling himself weakly through the trapdoor, reaching down to give Nick what help he could while Chase got underneath and lifted him bodily from below. Chase went up and slammed the trapdoor shut. The open hatch in the end wall was clearly outlined a different shade of black in the blackness of the loft, and they stumbled toward it not caring whether they walked on the rafters or not.
"Right, the pickup," Chase said breathlessly when they were on the ground. The rifle was sticky in his hands.
They ran with Nick leading the way across the compound where the old truck and the Dodge pickup were parked next to a small shed with a door paneled in metal sheets. Holding his shoulder, Nick raised his foot and kicked at the padlock on the door.
