The Murdered World 17 (Patreon)

The action had become a rout. With their fortress unquestionably breached, gunfire raging, seizures regularly exploding through the mansion, and now word of the Punisher spreading, an effective defense became impossible to throw up. Many threw down their guns and fled; others hid. Whatever they did, they did with a total lack of military cohesion. They acted as lone wolves, easily picked off by Frank as he cut a swath to his objective. None of the men he killed even knew where the principal they were guarding was.

***

“This is crazy, it’s crazy!” Christina groaned, following Frank as he rampaged through the top floor of the mansion.

She considered picking something up—a lamp or a framed painting on the wall—and hitting him with it. He had his back turned to her often enough. But he’d killed so many men already. Not just killed them, obliterated them with a cold fury guiding his actions. Christina didn’t want to chance so much as a stern glance from him. It had taken all her courage to go against her husband. And the Punisher was clearly a warrior on a level beyond any Angel could possibly reach.

“Move,” Frank barked at her, pulling on her dress and flinging her towards the hallway ahead.

She knew what he wanted. She flattened herself against the wall adjourning the opening. As Frank approached it, his rifle held at the ready, a door creaked. Christina squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears. Whoever came out, he got the rolling thunder that blasted out of Frank’s rifle.

Christina opened her eyes after the eardrum-hammering burst went silent. She poked her head into the doorway. Emilio, the latest of Angel’s recruits, laid dead on the floor, holes punched through his body from his belly to his clavicle. His intestines slowly unspooled from his opened stomach, washed out of his corpse on a tide of gushing blood.

Christina turned green. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she moaned.

Frank popped an eyebrow. “You might as well,” he told her gruffly. “Not like the cleaning bill can go any higher.”

“Jesus. Jesus. What kind of cold bastard—”

Frank grabbed her by the ear and pulled. “Come,” he ordered her, and Christina went along, knowing she’d lose the ear if she didn’t.

***

Angel’s bedroom was built into a cupola, a sort of third and a half floor that was the highest point in Jupiter Island. Adding it into the mansion, Mercader had constructed it out of inch-thick bulletproof glass and ballistic shielding. Frank had seen the work order. It made for an imposing panic room. And if Angel had any sense, he’d drilled his troops to rally on that panic room in an emergency to bolster whatever guards he had on hand. There could be guards streaming in to regroup there even now.

Frank stopped, aimed the remote at his feet, and hit the button repeatedly. Explosion after explosion went off, hollowing out the innards of the floors below until the entire house was groaning threateningly.

If that didn’t send Angel’s reinforcements running, they’d likely never move again.

Angel still had the advantage, though. It was only a matter of time until the police showed up. Frank wouldn’t have as free a hand with them as he would with Angel’s thugs. It might already be too late for a getaway. But if he was going to be captured, it would be with his hands around Angel’s throat.

***

Christina had to stop. She wrenched her way free of Frank’s grip and to her surprise, he let her go before her ear tore off. Maybe he knew she wasn’t going far. Just doubling over so she could dislodge what felt like ten pounds of excess baggage from her stomach.

After it was out, she spat and tried to clear her senses of the mess that had momentarily been a part of her. She heard something tear and wondered what in her beautiful home was breaking now when Frank handed her a shred of his shirt. She wiped her mouth with it and scraped off her tongue before looking up at him.

“If you’re smart, you should just leave right now,” she told him. “My husband employs a small army. They’re probably all on their way here right now—the police, too. They won’t care if you surrender. They’ll kill you the moment they lay eyes on you.”

“They’ve been trying. They haven’t been succeeding.” He took her by the arm and hauled her up, but a little slower than the last time. Giving her time to cooperate with the motion. “I’m here to kill your husband, Mrs. Mercader.”

“I know he’s… I know he’s not a moral man…”

Christina didn’t know what point she was even trying to make. Frank cut her off the moment she faltered. He kept them moving through the third floor as he spoke.

“Last time I saw him, your husband was in his bedroom with a woman.”

Christina immediately knew who he was talking about. It wasn’t like the serving staff was still here at this time of night. Angel appreciated his privacy in the evening hours.

She felt an irrational flush of anger, as if she would want Angel to touch her at any time in the next millennium: “That whore.”

“Don’t be too hard on her,” Frank replied. “It wasn’t by choice.”

A door open to their side. Frank whirled and let the hood have it. Bullets stitched through him, flooding the wall behind him with his blood. Christina screamed and threw herself to the ground among the fallen shell casings.

A second gunman emerged as soon as Frank took his finger off the trigger, filling the air with lead. Frank juked to the side and fired on the run.

Bullets chopped into the gunman’s face; his head came apart like an overloaded grocery shack, spilling out his brains along with chips of skull.

As he fell, Frank sprayed the doorway with the rest of his clip, blowing holes in the walls to either side. Then he took a knee while he staked in a new clip.

Again, Christina was drawn to her feet. She felt like she was in a daze—high off the thick smell of cordite in the air.

“You’re telling me my husband is a rapist?”

“He would’ve been,” Frank said, racking the bolt on his rifle. “I think I may’ve killed the mood.”

He pulled her along. Behind her, Christina heard the first man Frank had shot. He was still alive, for the moment. And it sounded like he was vomiting up something much thicker than simple bile.

“I need you to do something for me,” Frank said. He wasn’t asking. He spoke with the same guttural growl as before.

“Oh God,” Christina moaned. It was all she could do to keep her legs in motion. The thought of being asked to do something, anything, seemed as impossible to her as flying a 747.

They were almost upon the antechamber to Angel’s bedroom. Curving stairs led up the side of the room to the cupola. A glass floor shone down on the antechamber. Once, long ago, Angel had enjoyed smoking a cigar up there while Christina laid a story below him, masturbating as he watched from up high. It seemed like a million years ago.

Frank held back. Keeping out of view of the glass pavers.

“That room will be in lockdown by now,” he told Christina, favoring her with eye contact. She felt chilled to the bone by his stare—and yet oddly warm.

Even when he’d been raging at her, she’d felt Angel’s dismissal of her as an annoyance. This Frank was focused on her, on every minute detail of her. After thirsting for attention for so long, his concentration was like having a firehose turned on her.

“You need to go to the door and ask to be buzzed in. Don’t let him know I’m here. Just get the door open. I’ll handle the rest.”

This seemed like the final, nightmarish absurdity that would push this evening into the stuff of dreams. Things could not be this insane and yet real. But she didn’t wake up. Everything kept happening like she was being buried in one maddened event after another.

“You want to kill my husband,” she said to Frank.

“Don’t you?”