Nocturnal: A Novel

Pookie rolled to his back and sat up. “Bryan, get me out of these!”

They were outnumbered four to one by motherfucking monsters with guns. Bryan wouldn’t be able to get Erickson and Pookie out through the hall — he’d have to go out the window. He stood, aimed at the glass and flicked each trigger two times. Four rounds flew out in less than a second. Big spiderweb cracks radiated out from four small holes, but the window didn’t break. Security glass. And not just that, there were bars on the other side.

He’d forgotten he was in a psych ward.

“Bri-Bri, get me out of these!”

Bryan slid his left-hand five-seven through the slot in his back, clicking it into the holster. He reached for his pocket before he remembered — he’d left his handcuff key with Jessup.

A blur ripped through the door. Bryan raised his right hand to fire, but the thing ducked under the barrel. It hit him hard in the chest, wrapping him up and driving him to his back where they both slid across the floor. Bryan’s head smashed into the wall below the window. He felt the attacker slide up to straddle him. Bryan tried to bring his right hand up to shoot, but the attacker grabbed the gun with both hands, ripping it away with shocking strength.

The attacker drove its head forward. Bryan twisted his head to the right. A jagged pain ripped through his left cheek, fire-brand hot as it tore across his lower-left gumline.

The thing pulled back, trailing an arc of blood. Bryan saw the weapon — a sharp, blood-covered, hard needle-beak where a nose should have been. In a hundredth of a second, Bryan recalled Susan Panos’s chest, the gaping hole, the lack of blood. This thing was Susie’s killer.

The monster reared back to drive forward again, but before it could Pookie slammed into it, knocking it off Bryan. Pookie and the thing crashed into the foot of Erickson’s hospital bed.

Bryan lurched up, his right hand sliding into his left sleeve to grip the handle inside.

The beak-nose stood and turned just as Bryan stepped forward. Bryan drove the ceramic knife into the thing’s chest with all his newfound strength, punching through the breastbone and into the heart beyond. The eyes above the bloody, curved beak went wide with surprise. Bryan kicked low with his right instep, knocking the monster off his feet while simultaneously pushing down hard on the knife handle, driving the monster to his back.

“Pookie! Hold this in!”

Hands still cuffed behind his back, Bryan’s partner threw himself facedown across the stunned monster. Pookie’s belly pinned the knife in place.

Bryan grabbed his five-seven off the floor just as Sly’s big body came through the doorway. They fired at the same instant, the cracks of gunfire filling the small room. Bryan felt a round hammer into his right hipbone, twisting him back and making him miss twice, but he instantly corrected and put two shots center-mass in Sly’s chest.

Bryan’s five-seven’s slide had locked on empty — he was out.

He reached back for his left-hand gun. Before he even gripped the handle, Sly spun away from the door and back into the hall.

Bryan ejected the spent magazine from his right-hand weapon, slid his hand into a chest slot to grab a fresh one and slammed it home.

“Monster!”

Bryan turned. Jebediah Erickson was awake. He looked half drunk and as psycho-angry as an old man could be. Erickson reached to his left with both hands and grabbed a rolling table next to his bed. He hurled it back- handed. Bryan ducked the table, which smashed into the wall.

Now he had to fight Savior as well? “Knock it off, old man!”

“Monster! I’ll kill you!”

“Bryan! A little help here?” Hands still cuffed behind him, Pookie was trying to stay on top of the squirming beak-face. The monster fought, but it didn’t have much strength left.

Bryan walked over and stepped on its neck, pressing down hard. The creature tried to breathe. Its hands pulled weakly at Pookie’s jacket.

The clutching hands slowed, then fell away.

Something big smashed into Bryan’s head. He stumbled back. Erickson was throwing anything he could get his hands on. Bryan’s temper snapped.

He slid the five-seven into its holster as he stepped to the side of the hospital bed. Erickson groggily reached for Bryan’s throat. Bryan hit him in the mouth with a short right. Erickson sagged back.

“Sorry,” Bryan said. “I hope you’re as tough as they say, old-timer.”

Bryan bent at the knees. He reached below the bed, grabbed the heavy machinery underneath, then lifted. His arms and legs shook with the weight. He didn’t know how strong he really was, but this wasn’t the time to doubt it — he took three stumbling, running steps to the window, then threw.

The foot of the bed smashed into the bullet-ridden safety glass. The wire-embedded glass folded out like a stiff blanket. The bed, with Erickson still in it, sailed out into the night sky.

Bryan turned to grab Pookie, but before he came all the way around he had a glimpse of a massive, moving pile of brown fur — and then a tank smashed into him.

He flew backward out the window.

Finish Him

Blanket still draped over his shoulders, Rex Deprovdechuk clutched his bleeding arm as he walked to the edge of the broken window. He’d been shot again, but way worse this time. He couldn’t move his right arm at all, and there was an awful lot of blood.

Down below, Savior’s hospital bed was a ghastly gray-white against the nighttime grass. The other man, the one in black who had killed Sucka, was facedown, not moving, still lying where he’d fallen after Pierre had knocked him out of the window.

“I got him,” Pierre said. “I kicked his ath.”

Rex turned back into the room. Sly was hurt bad, but he had one arm wrapped tight around the neck of a handcuffed man covered in Sucka’s blood. The man looked like he might crap himself. Rex couldn’t blame him. Rex used his good hand to pull papers out of a blanket pocket. He set them on the ground and unfolded them, his hand smearing the photo printouts with blood. The third sheet matched this man’s face.

“Pookie Chang,” Rex said. “Sly, that’s one of them.”

The man struggled, but Sly held him fast.

“I’m a cop, goddamit,” the man said. “Let me go!”

Sly squeezed, his bicep pressing into one side of the man’s neck, his forearm into the other. Chang’s eyes widened, then wrinkled shut. His legs kicked, but he couldn’t escape. His kicks slowed, then he went limp.

One-handed, Sly tossed the man over his shoulder.

“My king, we have to go,” Sly said. “I have to get you to safety.”

Sly had also been shot. His blue San Jose Sharks sweatshirt was soaked at his right shoulder, and also at two spots on his chest. He moved much slower than normal.

Rex pointed back to the window. “Savior is down there. I want him.”

“Let Pierre take him,” Sly said. “Zou said the police with the machine guns would be gone, but they weren’t. There could be more of them. I have to get you out of here.” Sly looked to his taller brother. “Pierre, can you finish the job?”

Pierre nodded rapidly. “Doth a bear thit in the woodth? I’ll kick his ath!”

Sly adjusted his blanket so it covered both him and the policeman on his shoulder. He walked to the room’s ravaged door, turned and waited. “My king, we have to go, now.”

Rex had to trust his best friend. He pulled his own blanket over his head, his arm screaming with protest as he did. He grabbed his wound with his left hand to try and squeeze the pain away.

Pierre leaned out the broken window. “Hey, that guy I clobbered. I think he’th moving. And he’th one of uth, I felt it.”

Rex looked down again. The man in the black coat was struggling to rise to his knees. Chief Zou had said