The Alex King Series A BATEMAN (summer reading list txt) 📖

the men had moved, but he guessed they hadn’t when he heard the screams above the woof of the petrol igniting. He got to his feet, chanced a look and saw the smaller man on his back, his feet on fire as he scrabbled backwards on his backside. He had dropped the machine pistol and was looking horrified as the giant clawed the air, staggering onto the lawn, leaving a sticky trail of burning fuel that singed the grass in his wake. The addition of the slug-pellets, largely consisting of Methiocarb - a substance which liquifies at 114°c and turns to syrup - meant that the fuel stuck in place and allowed the petrol vapour to burn for longer and more intensely than it normally would have, like an improvised napalm.

The giant’s blood-curdling screams started to die down but were replaced by those of the smaller man. King peeked out, saw he was patting his feet with his hands, but the sticky fuel merely stuck and burned. The man leapt up, staggered the twenty-metres or so to the pool and threw himself in.

King bolted down the stairs, barging Anna out of the way as he reached the bottom. She was in shock, her expression one of terror as she shielded her daughter.

“I’m sorry…”

King silenced her with a right jab to her jaw and she fell to the floor, already unconscious. Dina screamed, and King glared at her. “Stay there!” he shouted.

He dashed over to the window, saw two men at the Range Rover. They were taking cover behind, aiming pistols at the house, unsure what to do next. They had heard the gunfire, the screams, but it took a lot to run towards that, and these men were not that type.

King unlocked the door, lit one of the tapers of newspaper, and picked up the bottle. He took a deep breath to ready himself, then opened the door and darted outside.

The men froze for a second, enough time to get the bottle airborne and travelling in a gentle arc across the road. He ducked down, as they opened fire. One man had a fully-automatic Glock and wasted his twenty-rounds on the house, the garden wall and the open doorway. King hoped that the girl had stayed put. He heard the vehicle engulf with flames, the woof that petrol makes in large quantities when it ignites. He ducked back into the house, used the doorframe for cover as he peered back outside. The bottle had landed just short of the Range Rover, but the liquid had spilt underneath and engulfed the vehicle in flames. The men were on fire, stumbling into the fence and unable to escape the horror of the flames. Everywhere they trod started to burn, the syrupy fuel sticking to and burning whatever it encountered. The Mercedes had started up and was reversing erratically away. It had caught some of the burning fuel, its front wheels burning fiercely.

King turned and walked along the side of the house. He could see the man in the pool. He was clinging to the side, breathing erratically, fighting the pain. He looked up at King as he walked past. The giant was dead, but still burning. King never ate roast pork, something he had learned many years before whilst operating in areas where war had been fought from the air, or rebels had ethnically cleansed entire villages. The smell would always stay with him – the smell of fuel, of rendered fat, of burned meat. It clung inside the nostrils, the sweet and sickly essence of death. There was a distinct likeness to over-done pork that always took King back to those hellish scenes.

King picked up the smaller man’s machine pistol. It was an older version, where the action fired from an open bolt. The bullet visible in the neck of the magazine. A squeeze of the trigger and the bolt would slam forward, the firing pin fixed and take the bullet to the breach where it would fire instantly and cycle until the trigger was released. Not an ideal design for grime and debris, but it was instantly recognisable as empty or loaded. He walked over to the pool, aimed at the man clinging to the side.

“What were your orders?”

“Fuck you…” the man winced, the side of his face was burned too.

“She warned you, didn’t she?” King asked. “At the window.”

The man smirked. “What the hell did you expect? You killed her husband.”

“And you came here to kill me?” The man shrugged like it was nothing. “And her?” King asked.

“What?”

“Did you come here to kill her too? Her daughter as well?”

“Why the hell would I kill them?” the man asked incredulously.

King shot the man in the forehead, turned and walked back to the house without seeing him sink to the bottom of the pool, a trail of blood discolouring the water like a pale, crimson mist. He checked the weapon’s magazine as he walked, best guessed there were ten rounds left. He could see the Mercedes on fire a hundred metres up the road. The burning wheels had set something alight in the engine bay, or perhaps the fuel lines underneath, and the flames had taken hold. King had no way of telling if the driver or whoever else had been inside had gotten clear. He couldn’t see anybody, so entered the house vigilantly, the weapon aimed in front of him.

Anna was on the floor, her back perched against the sofa, her daughter cradling her as she rubbed her jaw. She looked groggy, possibly only coming round in that moment. She looked up at King, her eyes wild and her expression full of hate.

“Bastard!” she shouted at him.

“You called them, didn’t you?” he said quietly. “When you got the coffee.”

“Of course,” she said. “I said what I said to you, because it suited me. I survive. That’s what I