Ben Bracken: Origins (Ben Bracken Books 1 - 5) by Robert Parker Read Free Book Online Page B

spreads his arms around the floor, trying to find something through his hazy vision with which he can defend himself. His hands rake through his own vomit.
    ‘Oh for Christ’s sake...’ he mutters, moving his hands through - then his outstretched fingers bump something solid. He averts his eyes to the object and can just make out that he is touching his table leg - and has never felt so relieved to see a piece of busted home furniture. He curls his fingers around it tight.
    Suddenly, a cold firm hand grasps around his ankle. Ben hadn’t even realized the flock were up and moving. Without hesitation, from it’s resting position on the floor, he swings the table leg at full force, calculating the trajectory as the leg is in flight with a little monologue to himself: ‘If the hand is on my ankle, the assailant is in a crouch or bending, therefore, taking into account the average height of over 65’s at 5 feet 7 inches, the optimum height to swing the club for impact above my foot is about there -’ CRACK. Another happy customer.
    Ben’s vision is coming back quickly now, but he knows he has to find the source of the incense before that horrible haze comes straight back. He looks to where he made contact with his makeshift bat, and there is a bald man lying slumped on the floor with a huge gash atop his fleshy wrinkled skull. Ben doesn’t take any pride in maiming the old fellow, but God knows what the High Priestess of this awful congregation is able to make them do. And Ben knows, for every weird and awful thing that happens here, the likelihood of the child being safe and staying that way gets further and further distant.
    He stands, and, as he surveys what awaits him, the scene begins to resemble some kind of zombie apocalypse. Swathes of people who approaching him menacingly - not with that lumbering gait of the undead from the Romero movies, more with a clear-eyed, single-mindedness fettered by the capabilities of the older demographics body type. They approach him with a purpose that, on making eye contact, is very real. And then he spots her - the High Priestess, the Baroness, running down the aisle to the front of the church, her arms bunched and folded tightly below her chest. Ben knows that, unless she is somehow injured, that’s got to be the baby.
    Ben thinks at this point that, if he was a religious man, he should really say ask for some sort of forgiveness - here in God’s house, he’s going to have to dish out some nasty punishment to these people, men and women, in order to save the supposed infant. He thinks that these people should be the one’s begging for forgiveness, not him. Truth is, from a theological standpoint, Ben doesn’t know what he believes. He has seen enough horrors whose very existence warrants the belief that no God could exist, but then again, nobody guaranteed that God would be ambivalent. Either way, cracking a few OAP skulls in a church doesn’t sit right with Ben, and he reaches into the furthest nooks of his mind for some words for forgiveness, perhaps something he can remember from school. All he can think of is the Lord’s prayer, and a pre-dinner prayer for Grace. Since he has no intention of dying here, he opts for the latter, albeit modified.
    ‘Umm... For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make me truly... sorry’ he says. He knows he botched it, but at least he tried. That must count for at least something if he pops it and finds himself pitched up unexpectedly at the pearly gates. And with that he starts running and swinging at the oncoming horde.
    To the casual outsider, the scene would most definitely cut a disconcerting sight - a half-cut bloke swinging a table leg at a pastel-clad army of senior citizens. It would certainly go a long way to increasing the amount of jail time he might face if he is ever forced to face justice. SMACK goes the wood into an older lady’s shoulder, then THUNK straight into an older man’s chest. It feels awful to Ben,