Resurrection, Inc. by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson [Anderson, Kevin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Fiction
ISBN: 9780963339799
Publisher: Overlook Connection Press, The
Published: 1998-08-31T23:00:00+00:00

21

Enforcer Jones ran blindly through the streets, waving his hands in front of him though the crowd had long since thinned out. He breathed heavily; the damp, unfiltered air whistled through his nostrils.

The Enforcer wore only his armored boots and his black skin-pants; everything else was gone. He had discarded the rest of his armor in scattered pieces during his dazed flight. The suit radio had gone with it, smashed under someone’s feet. His skin crawled with the memory of hundreds of hands grasping, groping, tearing, trying to kill him by sheer force of numbers.

His ears roared, but Jones kept himself from screaming, from releasing the pressure still building within him. What had he done? How had he deserved this? The Enforcer continued to run, trying to flee farther, hide deeper into anonymity.

Enforcers weren’t supposed to run. But right now his Guild status didn’t concern him. Most of all he wanted to forget the nightmarish memories, sharpened by his own fear....

As the rebel Servant had vanished down the streets, moving faster than seemed humanly possible, Jones found himself trapped by the murderous mob. He had killed someone. Maybe more than one. The people surrounded him like the tentacles of a voracious squid. Chaotic anger filled the air, making it difficult to breathe with the sweat and shouts and liquid hatred. Hands, bodies, people pushed at him.

Some of the pedestrians began to throw things. Jones felt his armor battered and pummeled — and he struck back. He fired his weapons, hoping to awe and frighten the mob, to drive them away, to give him some breathing room.

He was an Enforcer. His friend Fitzgerald Helms had died for Jones to get into the Guild. He wasn’t after the pedestrians — he wanted the Servant. He had to stop the Servant, because he didn’t want to think where the Guild would demote him if he screwed up one more time. Jones had no more amnesty units left to his name.

But the runaway Servant had escaped — wounded but gone, and the mob remained. The mob wanted only blood anyway, and they hated Enforcers almost as much as they hated Servants.

A suicidal old man managed to snatch one of Jones’s weapons and cradled it gleefully in his gnarled hands, but the Enforcer shot him. The weapon spun away into the crowd, and moments later someone else picked it up and began shooting indiscriminately. Jones realized with horror that several people in the crowd were laughing.

Two more people reached for the remaining weapons that bristled from his armor. Training and blind reflexes took over now; panic smothered all thoughts from the rational part of his brain. Moving jerkily, Jones shot in all directions until the pocket bazooka was empty.

But still the people didn’t fall back.

Someone yanked the heater-knife from its socket at his side, and the seal broke with a thin pop. The hot blade glanced off the Enforcer’s white armor. Grasping hands tore the other two projectile weapons from their sockets, and Jones knew that even the dura-plated armor couldn’t withstand such an attack.

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