Read Online Metro by Stephen Romano - Free Book Online

waking world to flash-fried embers in a BOOM-CHAKA-BOOM-CHAKA-BOOM that cancels out every other sound in the known universe.
    She doesn’t really know what’s going on.
    Just sees and hears the flashing dinosaur.
    Knows Mark is somewhere in the mix.
    Senses Andy, pulling her further into the dark under Mark’s bed.
    And meanwhile, the world and the universe are ending.
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    M ark fills the hallway with automatic fire and keeps on moving, shredding the thug like paper, his finger jerking quick-time Morse code that turns into maximum destruction. White flashes blow strobe-bombs and blood-bursts all across the collaged walls and ceiling as the enemy target staggers back in herky-jerky stop-motion, twitching and convulsing and coughing up a death rattle that sounds like choked curses run through a meat grinder. The last man still in the bathroom catches no less than five stray shells, all from the gun of his pal in the hallway as he slam dances backward, firing all willy-nilly into the walls and through the bathroom door. One of the bullets removes the last man’s right eye as he turns away from the toilet and faces the chaos, his fly still open, piss drizzled down the front of his pants, and then the door to the bathroom detonates in jagged explosions of wood and plastic and he flies apart in meaty chunks, painting the big porcelain megaphone with visceral glory. It’s all over for the last man real damn fast.
    Out in the living room, Mark scans the dead faces.
    None of them are Darian Stanwell.
    Not that it would have been easy to kill Darian—Mark’s just damn relieved that the big guy ain’t out here. There is still that deader-than-dog-shit issue with Darian’s brother. It will be a problem for them later. If there is a later.
    But first things first.
    Mark thumbs the Herstal to semi-auto, ejects the spent clip, and loads a new fifty-round magazine from the largest pocket in his cargo shorts as the cops outside finally get their act together and decide to storm the living room.
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    J ollie doesn’t see what happens next, trapped in the dark under the bed, but she hears guns go off at the front of the house—pistols that remind her of popguns. Pap pap pap! And then she hears the monster roar again, drowning the hell out of them. BOOM-CHAKA-BOOM-CHAKA-BOOM!
    And then she thinks about Senator Bob.
    Peanut Williams and his nutty boys in Washington.
    The terror of a target in the crosshairs of a lone gunman plunges into her.
    Assassination , she thinks.
    Shit, they’re here to kill me finally .
    Aren’t they?
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    M ark’s last target is the remaining dirty cop on the front lawn—the one retreating for his squad car, who wasn’t dumb enough to charge into a war zone. Mark steps over the corpses of the other three unfortunate law-enforcement officers—they’ve been shredded like all the rest, damn easy with this tiny little assault monster he’s carrying—and his shoes crunch through glass shards as he heads across the front porch toward the labyrinth of cars and trucks parked outside. There are several dozen different vehicles, all shapes and sizes, some brand new, some beat to hell, all of them belonging to the dead people inside his house. Damn shame, that. The shapes of the Mazdas and Volkswagens and 4x4s create a series of bizarre, ghostly afterimages, each vehicle lit up in split-second flashes by the rolling red and blue cherries on top of the cop cars idling in the street—it’s like burning neon hell and frozen ice bathing the whole world, some apocalyptic splash-art canvas strobing eerily in a nightmare.
    Mark admires the artistry of it, the terror of it.
    He admires it for less than half a second.
    The cop spins with his revolver, almost to the squad car, and fires—but he’s not aiming at anything, or using his brain like Mark is. The shot blasts out