Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,89

smoke stung his eyes, causing them to blur and water. He dropped to his knees, so he could see in the space where the smoke had risen off the floor. He spotted the last man. He was several feet to the right, lying motionless on his side.

Beetle seized him by the wrists and dragged him toward the door. At the threshold he scooped him into his arms, stood—and heard coughing from deep within the church.

“Shit!” he mumbled. Leaping through the flames, Beetle deposited the man next to Greta and returned inside the church, thinking, So this is what a firefighter feels like—only firefighters have fire retardant suits and oxygen masks and powerful water hoses.

Crouched low, he scrambled on all fours down the main aisle, and discovered a woman atop a candle-lit altar. She was naked. Her wrists and ankles were bound with rope secured to the eyelets of four iron stakes hammered into the floorboards.

Ignoring the questions banging around inside his head, he untied the ropes and carried the woman outside. He set her down on the ground, then collapsed next to her. His eyes itched maddeningly. His throat felt stripped raw. Each breath was equally glorious and excruciating.

“Greta…” he rasped. He might not know what happened here, but he didn’t think it was an innocent sex game gone wrong. “Go…”

“Not so fast,” the first man out of the church said, standing straight and wiping puke from his mouth. “No one’s going nowhere.”

Still on his knees, squinting against the rain, Beetle whipped out the Beretta and aimed it at the man with the muttonchops and handlebar mustache. “Get back!” he said. “Now!”

The man, who had been approaching them, froze. “Whoa, hold up there, hoss.” He raised his dripping hands. His hair was plastered to his head like a helmet.

“Get back!”

“Listen—”

“Get back!”

He took a single step backward.

Greta helped the naked woman into a sitting position. “Can you stand?” she asked her, taking off her jacket and draping it around the woman’s shoulders.

Still coughing, the woman nodded. Greta eased her to her feet.

“Get behind me,” Beetle told them.

“Now wait just a sec—” Muttonchops said, his words drowned out by an explosion of thunder. “You don’t understand,” he went on a moment later. “We weren’t doing nothing wrong. The little lady there, she’s here of her own free God-given will.”

The woman shook her head vigorously. Lightning shattered the sky. The succession of brief flashes illuminated her face starkly, gouging deep shadows beneath her saucer-wide eyes. “He’s…he’s lying…he killed them…he killed everyone…” Her coughs turned into sobs that wracked her body.

“Who’s everyone?” Beetle demanded.

“Everyone!” she blurted, fixing the man with a murderous glare. “Noah! Steve! Jeff! Austin! You fed Austin to a snake! You fed my boyfriend to a snake!”

“Listen to her!” Muttonchops said. “Too much smoke got into that tiny pinhead of hers—”

“It’s true! I heard you! And Jenny…” She issued a low moan, as if reliving some terrible moment inside her head. “I saw you…you raped her…all of you…she’s in there…the church…” She devolved into inarticulate noises.

Beetle glanced at the church. His stomach sank. It was nothing but a gigantic fireball now. If anyone were still inside, they were dead. He didn’t know what was going on, but even if half of what the woman was saying was true, it was something much bigger than either he or Greta had imagined, or were prepared to deal with.

“Greta,” he said without taking his eyes or pistol off Muttonchops, “take her back to the motel, call the police, get them out here.”

The big man, who had been slowly getting his coughing fit under control, now wiped a meaty paw across his slobbering mouth and pushed himself to his feet. He glanced at Beetle’s pistol, then at Muttonchops. Beetle didn’t like the dumb, cruel look he saw in his eyes. It reminded him of a dangerous dog awaiting an order from its master.

“Greta,” Beetle said. “Get going, now—”

Muttonchops tipped his head in a barely perceptible nod. The next moment he and the Goliath charged Beetle simultaneously. Beetle fired a round at Muttonchops, clipping him in the shoulder, sending him to the ground. He swung the pistol at Goliath and fired two more rounds, point blank into his chest. Goliath stiffened and slowed but didn’t stop, and then he was right in front of Beetle. He batted the pistol into the flames. In what seemed like the same instant his huge hands were around Beetle’s throat, lifting him clear off the ground. Beetle straight chopped him