Read Online Midnight Special by Phoef Sutton - Free Book Online

for?” Matt asked, puzzled.
    “Well, we can’t just leave him here,” Barnabas said, like he was talking to a petulant child. “We’ll take him back to the theater. Get some coffee in him.”
    “You don’t understand,” Matt said. “He’s not going to get better. He’s going to wake up and try to kill you.”
    “Not if he’s cuffed to the wall.”
    Who was Matt to argue with that? Besides, he couldn’t very well kill Flint here, in front of everybody. Better to lug him away and figure out what to do with him later.
    So he grabbed Flint’s legs and started to haul him toward the hearse.
    “What the fuck are you doing?” Eva asked.
    “Not now, Eva,” Barnabas said. “Be a doll and open the back of the hearse.”
    “Fuck you, Barney. Open it yourself.”
    “Can’t you see my hands are full?”
    In retrospect, Matt wondered if Flint had ever really been unconscious or if he was just waiting for the right moment to strike. It didn’t really matter, Matt supposed. All that mattered was that at that instant Flint’s hand shot up toward Barnabas’s face and grabbed hold, nails digging into his flesh.
    Barnabas screamed a scream that sounded a little like his laugh and dropped Flint.
    Flint’s hand fell with him, scratching deep grooves into Barnabas’s face. His legs were jerked out of Matt’s grasp, and as soon as he hit the ground, Flint sprang back up, nails at the ready, reaching out for Barnabas’s throat.
    Eva screamed, and Matt looked over to where his duffel lay, left behind under Darren McGavin’s tombstone. Flint followed his gaze. Both men dived for the duffel, but Flint had the head start, so he got there first.
    Flint picked up the duffel and examined it. He didn’t seem to know what he had—he had just seen that Matt wanted it. He shook it a couple of times and smiled.
    Then he pulled out the ax.
    “What the fuck?” Barnabas said, blood dripping from his gouged face as he watched Flint weighing the ax in his hands. “What the fuck do you have an ax for?” he asked Matt.
    Because of situations like this , Matt was going to reply when Flint charged at him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    Matt didn’t like fighting.
    The more he did it, the more it became second nature to him, but he still hated it. It was brutal and ugly and it never ended well.
    Flint was big, scary, and full of fury. But he didn’t know how to fight. Matt guessed he’d never been in a fight, a real fight, other than some playground scuffle when he was a child. So even though Flint had the ax and was pumped full of adrenaline and evil, it wasn’t really a fair contest.
    Because over the past couple of years Matt had learned how to take care of himself.
    When Flint came running at him, ax lifted above his head to strike, Matt went low and charged him, hitting him in the gut with his shoulder. Flint toppled over Matt, and the ax went crashing into John Huston’s crypt.
    “What’s going on?” Eva cried.
    Matt scrambled up and dashed to the ax before Flint could get his bearings. He seized the ax by the handle and swung it at Flint, just as he lunged for Matt, crying out, “You’re his new favorite, damn it!”
    The ax struck Flint just below the temple.
    If the ax had gone at him blade first, it would have chopped off the top of his head, spilling his brains all over John Huston’s nice marble sarcophagus. But Matt had turned the blade away so that the butt of the ax struck Flint on the brow and knocked him off his feet, felling him like a tree.
    Matt didn’t really know why he spared Flint. Maybe it was because he felt sorry for him. Maybe it was just because there were all these people around and he’d have to explain himself.
    Maybe it was because of Eva. Because she was looking at him with pure horror in her eyes.
    “Why did you do that?” she asked.
    He turned to her and was about to explain that he’d had to do it, to protect himself and her and everyone around them from what Flint had become.
    But before he