Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection

Trapped between Carson and Michael, Harker turned toward the alleyway on the left, which led toward the waterfront, but it was fenced to twelve feet, with a wide padlocked gate, so he veered toward the front of a warehouse.

When Michael closed on him with the shotgun, Carson held back, giving him a clear approach.

Harker built speed toward the man-door at the front of the warehouse, as if he didn’t see it.

Following the usual protocol, Michael shouted for Harker to stop, to drop, to put his hands behind his head.

When Harker hit the door, it held, and he screamed, but he didn’t bounce off and go down as he ought to have done. He seemed to stick to it.

The crash of impact was followed at once by Harker’s cry of rage and the shriek of tortured metal.

Michael shouted again, five steps from point-blank position.

The warehouse door sagged. Hinges snapped with reports as loud as gunshots. The door went down, and Harker disappeared inside just as Michael halted and brought the 12-gauge into firing position.

Carson joined him at the entrance. “He’s going to try to get out the back.”

Once Harker was on the waterfront – the docks, the boats, the cargo esplanade – there were a thousand ways for him to disappear.

Offering Michael her pistol, grip first, she said, “You two-gun him at the back when he comes out. Gimme the shotgun, and I’ll move him through to you.”

This made sense because Michael was taller than she, stronger, and therefore could scale the twelve-foot alleyway fence faster than she could.

He took her pistol, gave her the shotgun. “Watch your ass. I’d hate for anything to happen to it.”

The mantle of the black sky cracked. Volcanic blaze of light, volcanic boom. At last the pent-up rain fell in a volume to inspire ark builders.

CHAPTER 93 (#ulink_6f31e043-7171-5b08-92ac-5d0ea655984b)

TO THE RIGHT of the broken door, Carson found switches. Light revealed a reception area. Gray-tile floor, pale-blue walls. A few chairs. Low railings to the left and right, desks beyond.

Directly ahead was a service counter. At the left end, a gate stood open.

Harker might have been crouched against the farther side of the counter, waiting for her, but she doubted she would find him there. His priority wasn’t to waste her, just to get away.

She cleared the gate fast, swiveling the 12-gauge to cover the area behind the counter. No Harker.

A door stood ajar behind the clerical pen. She pushed it open with the shotgun barrel.

Enough light came from behind her to reveal a short hallway. No Harker. Deserted.

She stepped inside, flicked on the hall light. She listened but heard only the thunder and the insistent crash of rain on the roof.

To each side stood a door. Signs identified them as men’s and women’s lavatories.

Harker wouldn’t have stopped to take a pee, wash his hands, or admire himself in a mirror.

Assuring herself that he would have no desire to get behind her and take her by surprise, that he only wanted to escape, Carson went past the lavatories toward another door at the end of the hall.

She glanced back twice. No Harker.

The end door featured a traffic-check window through which she saw darkness beyond.

Conscious that she was a backlit target as long as she lingered on the threshold, Carson cleared it fast and low, scanning left and right in the flush of light that accompanied her. No Harker.

The door fell shut, leaving her in darkness. She backed up against the wall, felt the switches pressing into her back, slid aside, held the 12-gauge with one hand, snapped on the lights.

Suspended from the thirty-foot ceiling, a series of lights in cone-shaped shades revealed a large warehouse with goods stacked on pallets to a height of twenty feet. A maze.

She turned right across the open ends of the aisles, looking into each. No Harker. No Harker. No Harker. Harker.

Thirty feet from the mouth of the aisle, moving away from her, Harker hobbled as if in pain, bent forward, cradling his torso with both arms.

Thinking of the people he’d sliced open, thinking of the makeshift autopsy table in his bedroom, where he had been prepared to dissect Jenna Parker, Carson went after him with no intention of cutting him any slack. Closing to within twenty feet before shouting his name, she brought up the shotgun, finger on the trigger rather than on the guard.

If he dropped like he should, she’d cover him, use her cell phone to get Michael, get backup.

Harker turned to face her. His wet hair hung over his face. The shape of his body seemed … wrong.

The son of a bitch didn’t drop. From him came the eeriest sound that she had ever heard: part a cry of agony, part excited laughter, part an expression of brute rage.

She fired.

The pellets hit him in a tight group, where his cradling arms crossed his abdomen. Blood sprayed.

So fast that it seemed as if he were not a real figure but one in a time-lapse film, Harker clambered up a wall of crates, out of the aisle.

Carson chambered another round, tracked him as if he were a clay disk in a skeet shoot, and blew a chunk off the top crate, missing him as he vanished over the palisade.

SAYING A PRAYER for the family jewels, Michael jammed Carson’s pistol into his waistband, scaled the fence at the mouth of the alleyway, wincing as an ax of lightning chopped the night, figuring it would whack the steel chain-link and electrocute him.

He got over the fence, into the alley, unfried, and ran through drenching rain and the rolling echoes of thunder to the rear of the warehouse.

A concrete ramp led up to the loading dock at the back. A big roll-up door and a man-door served that deep platform. Harker would come out of the smaller door.

He drew Carson’s pistol but left his own holstered. He was not literally going to two-gun the fugitive, one pistol in each hand. For the best possible placement of shots, he needed a two-hand grip on the weapon.

If as advertised Harker proved to be as hard to bring down as a charging rhino, Michael might empty a magazine trying to pop both his hearts. If after that Harker was still on the move, there would not be time to eject a magazine and slap in a fresh one. He’d drop Carson’s piece, draw his own, and hope for the kill with the next ten rounds.

Embracing this strategy, Michael realized that although the Frankenstein story seemed like a can of Spam, he had gone for it as eagerly as if it had been filet mignon.

Inside, the 12-gauge boomed. Almost at once, it boomed again.

Thrusting one hand into his jacket pocket, he felt spare shotgun shells. He’d forgotten to give them to Carson. She had one round in the breach, three in the magazine. Now only two left.

The 12-gauge boomed again.

She was down to one round, with no backup handgun.