Dark City Blue: A Tom Bishop Rampage by Luke Preston Read Free Book Online Page A

blow would be coming at his head, he knew that much, and drew his elbows to his ears. The bat smacked into his forearm.
    He was getting used to the pain, so when the hitter stepped back for a third blow, Bishop was ready. He caught the bat in his left hand and threw a right hook into the hitter’s knee. It buckled. He cried out in pain and crashed to the ground.
    The hitter pulled a sidearm. A round went off: buried in the roof. Bishop wrapped one of his big hands around the hitter’s wrist, slammed it and the weapon into the floor. Drew up his fist and slammed it into the hitter’s face. A tooth scraped Bishop’s knuckle. Didn’t slow him. He kept pounding.
    His eyes were vacant and his actions came from a place deep in his subconscious where the memories of his mother’s body slumped over the kitchen table lived. He remembered the vacant look on his father’s face. He remembered feeling helpless. He remembered never wanting anyone to get hurt again.
    When he finally stopped, Bishop looked down. He had beaten the hitter’s face into the carpet.
    Then Bishop remembered the girl on the phone. He climbed to his feet and picked up his weapon. Bishop worked his way up the narrow staircase. A submachine gun hung over the edge and randomly sprayed the wall.
    Bishop froze, waited.
    Held his breath.
    The shooter peered over.
    Bishop put one in his neck, another in his eye. His body slumped over the banister.
    A row of doors lined the walls on the second floor. One opened, and Bishop swung his weapon toward the sound. The man was in his forties, dark, with a moustache. He held an MP5 to the head of a petite teenage girl in mismatched underwear. His other hand was wrapped around her mouth. Her snot ran over it. He yelled something in a foreign tongue and stepped backwards through the door behind him, closing it with his foot.
    Bishop could foresee how the next hour was going to unfold. SOG would try to negotiate. Negations would fail. The shooter would put a bullet in the girl and one in himself and that would be the end of that. Bishop had to act, now .
    He thought about how short the girl was and how tall the shooter was. He aimed accordingly. Took a breath and blasted one round through the door. He heard a thump, kicked the door open. The girl in mismatched underwear stood staring down at the corpse at her feet. Traumatised, but alive. To the right, the floor creaked. Bishop swung his weapon and took aim: more teenage girls. They said nothing, but they didn’t have to. Their eyes begged for help.
    A muffled scream rose up from the basement.
    Bishop whispered to the girls, ‘Stay here.’
    He descended the staircase four steps at a time. Back in the foyer, SOG had just begun to sweep in through the front door.
    Bishop found the basement door and kicked the bastard in.
    It was dark, empty. Movement in the corner caught his eye:
    Chloe.
    He ran over, fell to his knees. She was drenched in blood. Coughed a spray of it into the air. Bishop tried to apply pressure to her wounds, but there were too many and he didn’t have enough hands.
    ‘Medic!’ he shouted. ‘Medic!’
    Chloe tried to move.
    ‘Stay still.’
    ‘It hurts,’ she whimpered.
    ‘I know, baby. I know.’
    ‘Am I going to be alright?’
    ‘It looks worse than it is.’
    Chloe grabbed hold of the back of Bishop’s head and pulled him near. She was weak, and struggled to say the words that eventually came out. ‘Justice. It’s Justice,’ she said.
    The ambos ran down the stairs. Pushed Bishop aside and went to work.
    It was dark; he couldn’t see what they were doing. ‘Is she going to be alright?’
    ‘Keep back, sir.’
    Bishop did as he was told.
    Slowly the ambos stopped working. One of them leant on his heels while the other wiped his face with the back of his hand, leaving blood on it.
    ‘Is she alright?’ Bishop asked.
    ‘No’.
    ‘I told her everything was going to be alright.’
    The ambo began to say something comforting but Bishop