Читаем SNAFU: Hunters полностью

Late-second precognition made Rowley and a select few other Augs impossible to surprise, at least while awake. The whispers gave warning, but not much. Matt swerved, taking the bonk head-on.

He squeezed his eyes shut as the airbags deployed, gritted his teeth against the impossibly loud crunch, and yanked the 9mm from the glove box. Two pulls of the trigger deflated the airbag and caused the massive shadow dwarfing his vision to stagger. His eardrums healed as fast as the explosions shredded them, and the car lurched sideways. Gasping in a breath of chalky white dust and the tang of gunpowder, he tore off his seatbelt.

Flynn had disappeared, his door hanging ajar on a crumpled hinge.

A monster lifted the car by the front, a wall of muscle and spikes with jet black eyes, teeth filed to cruel points, threaded steel studs protruding from its head in a regular pattern. The bonk roared and Matt’s world overturned, the roof imploding as it impacted the asphalt. Neck tilted almost to ninety degrees, he fired twice out the spider-webbed windshield.

Hot red blood exploded from the bonk’s enormous black sneaker, a chunk of leather torn free from the glancing shot. Matt pushed with his legs, straining against the seat as massive fingers gripped the hood under the car and lifted. If the bonk had felt the gunshot, it made no sign of it. Matt’s stomach lurched as the car raised up. He pushed harder, bracing his hands on either side of the steering wheel for leverage.

The seat snapped and he fell back, his face sliding across the upholstered roof as the car smashed into the ground again, trapping him in a sandwich of crumpled metal.

* * *

Conor Flynn rolled right as gunfire peppered the sidewalk. His heart soared as civilians screamed, the adrenaline rushing through his veins in an orgy of pending violence while his augmented heart beat at a steady seventy beats per second. He hit the facade of the brick building at a full sprint and ran straight up it, using his momentum to gain traction on the vertical surface.

Twenty feet up he grabbed the roof lip and jerked, sailing over the top in a graceful arc. One knife had already left his hand, sinking to the hilt into his first opponent. Conor ignored the dead man as he drew and threw the second knife left-handed.

Shooter number two held his HK53 like a movie gangster, the stock collapsed, relying on arm strength to bring and hold the weapon to bear. He jerked as the knife hit, glancing off the gun instead of finding purchase in his flesh.

Conor landed, crouched low, grinning in the thrill of battle. Bullets zoomed over his head as the gangbanger’s weapon jerked high. Three steps brought Conor in range, so he drew the katana and spun. The ancient bone fragment hidden in the hilt sang to him, urged the blade forward, thirsted for the death that it had brought in life. He resisted and pulled back at the last second. The monofilament blade took the man in the bridge of the nose without the slightest resistance, a spray of red gore joining the near-silent steel breeze. Stepping in as the man dropped the weapon to bring his hands to his face, Conor shouldered him off the roof.

He fell with gurgling wail that cut off in a wet thump on the pavement.

Picking up the carbine, Conor looked down at the overturned car and the giant bonk slamming it into the pavement. “Oh, Matt, you silly boy. I called dibs.”

He dove sideways as the roof access door banged open, bullets tearing through the air where he’d just stood. Three men armed with ARs fanned out as Conor scrambled behind an air conditioning unit. They moved with an uncoordinated, nervous energy, to make room for a dark-skinned bonk in a black trenchcoat, like Wesley Snipes’s Blade enlarged on a photocopier.

A sharp itch shot up from his ankle, and he looked down to find his cuff darkening with spreading blood just above his boot.

The pain hadn’t hit him, and wouldn’t before the wound healed.

“Brilliant, lads. Let’s play.”

* * *

Automatic weapons-fire punctuated the mind-rattling crunch as the bonk beat the car into the ground. Matt squirmed to the back, popped down the latch to access the trunk, and pulled the case containing his AA-12 combat shotgun into the back seat. His stomach lurched as the car lifted and he ran his thumb over the biometric lock.

The car slammed down and a searing, white-hot pain shot up his leg into his spine.

He popped open the case and slid out the weapon, the drum magazine already loaded with fin-stabilized fragmentation rounds. He turned, his left leg making a sloppy ripping sound as it tore free from the jagged chunk of metal that used to be the gearshift, and took aim.

The car came up, and in the four-inch space between the dash and the remains of the roof the bonk’s abdomen came into view, rippling muscle barely contained in a baby-blue t-shirt. Matt fired, the roar deafening in the confined space.

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