Chapter 43: Melee

Chapter 43: Chapter 43: Melee

Chapter 43: Melee

Freddy Krueger stared in disbelief at the bisected infected bodies still crawling across the pavement. For several seconds, his burned face actually showed confusion as he tried to understand what kind of people could continue moving after being cut in half. "What the hell happened to the real world while I was gone?"

He did not get much time to think about it. Vera’s infected horde had already surrounded him from every direction, growling as they stumbled over severed limbs and lunged toward anything that moved. Freddy instinctively swung the blades of his right-hand glove and carved through the first two attackers with almost insulting ease.

Blue-green fluid exploded across his face.

Freddy immediately spat to the side and wiped his mouth with his striped sleeve. "Oh, that is disgusting." The infected pieces continued crawling even after hitting the ground, making his expression twist with even greater revulsion.

It finally occurred to Freddy that these things were not normal victims at all. He sensed almost none of the fear or living spiritual presence he normally exploited, only bodies driven by a primitive need to bite and tear. "Get away from me, you soulless garbage!"

His bladed glove flashed again and again as he shredded the infected surrounding him. Heads rolled, arms fell, and torsos split apart, but every fallen body was immediately replaced by two more stumbling forward. For perhaps the first time in Freddy’s existence, he was discovering how irritating an enemy could be when it possessed no fear worth feeding on.

Across the street, Axel Vance had problems of his own. His Remington 870 thundered into Jason Voorhees, but every blast only forced the massive killer to pause for a moment before continuing forward. Deep wounds opened across Jason’s regenerated torso, wriggled grotesquely, and closed within seconds as flattened pellets were slowly pushed back out of the healing flesh.

Axel backed away while feeding fresh shells into the shotgun. "You have got to be kidding me. You actually leveled up." Jason’s strength and recovery were noticeably worse than during their first fight in the woods, as though his violent return from the dream boundary had strengthened whatever curse animated him.

From inside the battered pickup, Paquita Sanchez’s grandmother leaned toward the missing driver-side door and stared at the infected surrounding Freddy. "Those things are Vera’s work, but don’t confuse what she did with any real spiritual tradition. She took crude binding tricks and twisted them into corpse animation."

Axel fired another shell while listening. The old woman continued, "There’s almost no true spiritual awareness left in those bodies. They’re driven by instinct, hunger, and whatever binding Vera forced into them."

Lionel Cosgrove stared through the shattered windshield until he spotted his mother among the crowd. Vera moved near the center of the infected horde while the others repeatedly grabbed and bit at Freddy as though responding to her presence. Lionel closed his eyes and muttered, "At least she finally got what she always wanted."

Paquita turned toward him.

Lionel gave a miserable smile. "A whole crowd of people she can boss around."

Paquita clearly did not know whether to laugh or cry. She wrapped both arms around Lionel instead and held him tightly while he stared at what remained of his mother. Axel had no time to comfort either of them because Jason’s machete was already coming toward his head again.

Axel ducked beneath the swing and glanced toward Freddy. The dream killer had almost vanished beneath the infected horde, while Jason continued pressing forward with relentless determination. A reckless idea suddenly formed in Axel’s mind.

"Everybody hold on!"

Axel drove his boot hard into the side of Jason’s knee.

Even Jason’s supernatural strength could not completely ignore the angle of the impact, and his enormous body shifted just enough for Axel to break away. Axel sprinted back toward the pickup, jumped into the driver’s seat through the missing door, and grabbed the steering wheel.

He twisted the ignition.

The engine coughed.

Then it roared back to life.

Axel immediately shifted into reverse and slammed his foot onto the accelerator. The damaged Ford shot backward while Paquita, Lionel, and the old woman grabbed anything solid enough to keep them from being thrown around the cab. Broken glass scattered from the dashboard as the truck bounced over the damaged street.

Jason saw Axel retreating and immediately pursued.

His massive legs covered ground with unnatural speed despite his slow-looking stride. His attention remained fixed on Axel behind the wheel, and nothing else on the street seemed important enough to distract him.

Freddy finally hacked his way out of the infected crowd at almost the same moment. He emerged covered from fedora to boots in blue-green slime, pieces of rotting tissue hanging from his sweater, and fury burning in his eyes. When he saw Axel’s pickup moving away with Jason chasing it, his temper exploded.

"You bastard!" Freddy screamed. "You’re not getting away from me!"

He sprinted after them.

For several seconds, two of the most infamous killers in the nightmare surrounding Axel’s life were chasing the same battered Ford pickup. Jason came first with his machete clenched in one hand, while Freddy followed behind him cursing and waving his bladed glove. Axel watched both through the damaged mirror.

Instead of panicking, he smiled.

"Perfect."

Axel kept reversing until he had enough room.

Then he turned the wheel sharply.

The Ford whipped around in a fast, ugly U-turn as the rear tires screeched across the pavement. When the truck straightened, its ruined front end was pointed directly toward Jason and Freddy.

Paquita’s grandmother immediately understood what Axel intended. "You’re insane."

"Probably."

Axel looked toward the others. "Hold on tighter."

He floored the accelerator.

The pickup surged forward.

Jason continued coming straight at him.

Freddy realized what was happening a little later and threw both arms outward. "Oh, come on!"

CRASH!

The front of the Ford slammed directly into both killers.

Jason and Freddy were lifted from the pavement by the impact and thrown backward into the mass of infected corpses. Their bodies crashed through the horde like wrecking balls, sending severed limbs, broken bodies, and streams of foul blue-green fluid into the air.

The pickup did not survive the collision gracefully.

Its hood folded upward into a mangled slab of metal, the front grille vanished beneath the impact, and black smoke began pouring from the engine compartment. The engine coughed several times before finally dying.

Axel stared through what remained of the windshield.

"No."

Smoke rolled past his face.

Axel looked down at the dashboard and then toward the crushed hood. "I owned this truck for less than a week."

Lionel wisely stayed silent.

Paquita did the same.

Even the grandmother seemed to understand that this was not the moment to comment.

Outside, Jason rose from beneath a pile of infected bodies as though the collision had been nothing more than an inconvenience. A zombie lunged toward him with its mouth open, but Jason barely looked in its direction before driving one fist downward. The infected creature’s skull collapsed so violently that its head was forced into its own chest cavity.

Another infected grabbed Jason’s shoulder.

Jason seized it by the torso and tore it apart.

The surrounding horde did not care.

They kept attacking.

Freddy was having a considerably worse morning. He crawled out from beneath several pieces of infected bodies only to discover that severed arms were still clutching his sweater and a detached torso had wrapped both hands around his ankle. "Get off me!"

His glove flashed wildly.

More blue-green fluid sprayed across him.

Freddy’s once recognizable red-and-green sweater had become so thoroughly coated in slime that even he looked offended by its condition. Every time he removed one crawling piece, another grabbed his leg, arm, or clothing.

Jason slowly turned toward him.

Freddy noticed.

"No."

Jason began walking.

Several infected bodies blocked the way.

Jason simply tore through them.

One was thrown aside with enough force to break against a parked car, while another was ripped in half and dropped without ceremony. Nothing in Jason’s posture suggested he regarded the infected as opponents rather than obstacles between himself and Freddy.

The street became complete chaos.

Vera’s infected attacked anything within reach.

Freddy carved them apart while desperately trying to avoid their filth.

Jason crushed everything in front of him while steadily advancing toward Freddy.

From the pickup, Axel watched the three-sided battle unfold and knew it would not last forever. The zombies could delay Freddy and Jason, but sheer numbers were unlikely to permanently stop either supernatural killer. Once the infected were reduced to pieces and Freddy or Jason won their personal argument, Axel and the civilians would become targets again.

He needed something bigger.

Axel turned toward Lionel, Paquita, and the grandmother. "I need something that can carry a huge amount of water."

All three stared at him.

Axel continued, "Preferably something mobile."

Paquita blinked.

Her grandmother still looked too stunned by the battlefield to answer.

Lionel, however, became strangely focused under pressure.

"Fire engine."

Axel looked at him. "What?"

Lionel pointed shakily toward another section of town. "The volunteer fire station is near the town center. They have a pumper engine with a water tank."

Axel’s eyes lit up.

A fire engine carried hundreds of gallons of water, a powerful pump, hoses, and a roof-mounted deck gun capable of throwing a heavy stream over distance. If Axel could consecrate the onboard supply, it would stop being ordinary firefighting equipment.

It would become a mobile Holy Water weapon.

Axel grinned.

"Lionel, that is the best thing you’ve said all day."

He slapped the young man approvingly on the shoulder before turning back toward the ignition. The Ford’s front end looked barely attached to the rest of the vehicle, but Axel only needed it to survive one final trip. He twisted the key.

Nothing happened.

Axel tried again.

The engine coughed.

"Come on."

A third attempt produced an ugly grinding noise.

Then the engine suddenly roared back to life.

Axel laughed.

"Good truck."

Black smoke continued pouring from beneath the hood, but he had no intention of questioning the miracle. "Everybody hold on. We’re borrowing a fire engine."

Axel turned the steering wheel hard and pushed the accelerator. The pickup limped forward, swung around the edge of the ongoing melee, and headed toward the town center. One wandering infected stumbled directly into the truck’s path and disappeared beneath the wheels with a sickening crunch.

Nobody looked back.

They had bigger problems.

Behind them, Freddy finally tore the last crawling torso away from his leg and staggered upright. He saw Axel’s smoking pickup disappearing down the street and immediately started after it. "Oh no you don’t!"

Freddy had taken only a few steps when something struck the back of his head hard enough to send him stumbling forward.

He slowly turned.

Jason stood directly behind him.

Freddy pointed angrily toward the disappearing pickup. "You brain-dead idiot! Our enemy is the forest ranger!"

Jason stared at him through the hockey mask.

Freddy threw both arms out. "Go after him!"

Jason answered with his fist.

The punch slammed directly into Freddy’s face.Chapter 43: Melee

Freddy Krueger stared in disbelief at the bisected infected bodies still crawling across the pavement. For several seconds, his burned face actually showed confusion as he tried to understand what kind of people could continue moving after being cut in half. "What the hell happened to the real world while I was gone?"

He did not get much time to think about it. Vera’s infected horde had already surrounded him from every direction, growling as they stumbled over severed limbs and lunged toward anything that moved. Freddy instinctively swung the blades of his right-hand glove and carved through the first two attackers with almost insulting ease.

Blue-green fluid exploded across his face.

Freddy immediately spat to the side and wiped his mouth with his striped sleeve. "Oh, that is disgusting." The infected pieces continued crawling even after hitting the ground, making his expression twist with even greater revulsion.

It finally occurred to Freddy that these things were not normal victims at all. He sensed almost none of the fear or living spiritual presence he normally exploited, only bodies driven by a primitive need to bite and tear. "Get away from me, you soulless garbage!"

His bladed glove flashed again and again as he shredded the infected surrounding him. Heads rolled, arms fell, and torsos split apart, but every fallen body was immediately replaced by two more stumbling forward. For perhaps the first time in Freddy’s existence, he was discovering how irritating an enemy could be when it possessed no fear worth feeding on.

Across the street, Axel Vance had problems of his own. His Remington 870 thundered into Jason Voorhees, but every blast only forced the massive killer to pause for a moment before continuing forward. Deep wounds opened across Jason’s regenerated torso, wriggled grotesquely, and closed within seconds as flattened pellets were slowly pushed back out of the healing flesh.

Axel backed away while feeding fresh shells into the shotgun. "You have got to be kidding me. You actually leveled up." Jason’s strength and recovery were noticeably worse than during their first fight in the woods, as though his violent return from the dream boundary had strengthened whatever curse animated him.

From inside the battered pickup, Paquita Sanchez’s grandmother leaned toward the missing driver-side door and stared at the infected surrounding Freddy. "Those things are Vera’s work, but don’t confuse what she did with any real spiritual tradition. She took crude binding tricks and twisted them into corpse animation."

Axel fired another shell while listening. The old woman continued, "There’s almost no true spiritual awareness left in those bodies. They’re driven by instinct, hunger, and whatever binding Vera forced into them."

Lionel Cosgrove stared through the shattered windshield until he spotted his mother among the crowd. Vera moved near the center of the infected horde while the others repeatedly grabbed and bit at Freddy as though responding to her presence. Lionel closed his eyes and muttered, "At least she finally got what she always wanted."

Paquita turned toward him.

Lionel gave a miserable smile. "A whole crowd of people she can boss around."

Paquita clearly did not know whether to laugh or cry. She wrapped both arms around Lionel instead and held him tightly while he stared at what remained of his mother. Axel had no time to comfort either of them because Jason’s machete was already coming toward his head again.

Axel ducked beneath the swing and glanced toward Freddy. The dream killer had almost vanished beneath the infected horde, while Jason continued pressing forward with relentless determination. A reckless idea suddenly formed in Axel’s mind.

"Everybody hold on!"

Axel drove his boot hard into the side of Jason’s knee.

Even Jason’s supernatural strength could not completely ignore the angle of the impact, and his enormous body shifted just enough for Axel to break away. Axel sprinted back toward the pickup, jumped into the driver’s seat through the missing door, and grabbed the steering wheel.

He twisted the ignition.

The engine coughed.

Then it roared back to life.

Axel immediately shifted into reverse and slammed his foot onto the accelerator. The damaged Ford shot backward while Paquita, Lionel, and the old woman grabbed anything solid enough to keep them from being thrown around the cab. Broken glass scattered from the dashboard as the truck bounced over the damaged street.

Jason saw Axel retreating and immediately pursued.

His massive legs covered ground with unnatural speed despite his slow-looking stride. His attention remained fixed on Axel behind the wheel, and nothing else on the street seemed important enough to distract him.

Freddy finally hacked his way out of the infected crowd at almost the same moment. He emerged covered from fedora to boots in blue-green slime, pieces of rotting tissue hanging from his sweater, and fury burning in his eyes. When he saw Axel’s pickup moving away with Jason chasing it, his temper exploded.

"You bastard!" Freddy screamed. "You’re not getting away from me!"

He sprinted after them.

For several seconds, two of the most infamous killers in the nightmare surrounding Axel’s life were chasing the same battered Ford pickup. Jason came first with his machete clenched in one hand, while Freddy followed behind him cursing and waving his bladed glove. Axel watched both through the damaged mirror.

Instead of panicking, he smiled.

"Perfect."

Axel kept reversing until he had enough room.

Then he turned the wheel sharply.

The Ford whipped around in a fast, ugly U-turn as the rear tires screeched across the pavement. When the truck straightened, its ruined front end was pointed directly toward Jason and Freddy.

Paquita’s grandmother immediately understood what Axel intended. "You’re insane."

"Probably."

Axel looked toward the others. "Hold on tighter."

He floored the accelerator.

The pickup surged forward.

Jason continued coming straight at him.

Freddy realized what was happening a little later and threw both arms outward. "Oh, come on!"

CRASH!

The front of the Ford slammed directly into both killers.

Jason and Freddy were lifted from the pavement by the impact and thrown backward into the mass of infected corpses. Their bodies crashed through the horde like wrecking balls, sending severed limbs, broken bodies, and streams of foul blue-green fluid into the air.

The pickup did not survive the collision gracefully.

Its hood folded upward into a mangled slab of metal, the front grille vanished beneath the impact, and black smoke began pouring from the engine compartment. The engine coughed several times before finally dying.

Axel stared through what remained of the windshield.

"No."

Smoke rolled past his face.

Axel looked down at the dashboard and then toward the crushed hood. "I owned this truck for less than a week."

Lionel wisely stayed silent.

Paquita did the same.

Even the grandmother seemed to understand that this was not the moment to comment.

Outside, Jason rose from beneath a pile of infected bodies as though the collision had been nothing more than an inconvenience. A zombie lunged toward him with its mouth open, but Jason barely looked in its direction before driving one fist downward. The infected creature’s skull collapsed so violently that its head was forced into its own chest cavity.

Another infected grabbed Jason’s shoulder.

Jason seized it by the torso and tore it apart.

The surrounding horde did not care.

They kept attacking.

Freddy was having a considerably worse morning. He crawled out from beneath several pieces of infected bodies only to discover that severed arms were still clutching his sweater and a detached torso had wrapped both hands around his ankle. "Get off me!"

His glove flashed wildly.

More blue-green fluid sprayed across him.

Freddy’s once recognizable red-and-green sweater had become so thoroughly coated in slime that even he looked offended by its condition. Every time he removed one crawling piece, another grabbed his leg, arm, or clothing.

Jason slowly turned toward him.

Freddy noticed.

"No."

Jason began walking.

Several infected bodies blocked the way.

Jason simply tore through them.

One was thrown aside with enough force to break against a parked car, while another was ripped in half and dropped without ceremony. Nothing in Jason’s posture suggested he regarded the infected as opponents rather than obstacles between himself and Freddy.

The street became complete chaos.

Vera’s infected attacked anything within reach.

Freddy carved them apart while desperately trying to avoid their filth.

Jason crushed everything in front of him while steadily advancing toward Freddy.

From the pickup, Axel watched the three-sided battle unfold and knew it would not last forever. The zombies could delay Freddy and Jason, but sheer numbers were unlikely to permanently stop either supernatural killer. Once the infected were reduced to pieces and Freddy or Jason won their personal argument, Axel and the civilians would become targets again.

He needed something bigger.

Axel turned toward Lionel, Paquita, and the grandmother. "I need something that can carry a huge amount of water."

All three stared at him.

Axel continued, "Preferably something mobile."

Paquita blinked.

Her grandmother still looked too stunned by the battlefield to answer.

Lionel, however, became strangely focused under pressure.

"Fire engine."

Axel looked at him. "What?"

Lionel pointed shakily toward another section of town. "The volunteer fire station is near the town center. They have a pumper engine with a water tank."

Axel’s eyes lit up.

A fire engine carried hundreds of gallons of water, a powerful pump, hoses, and a roof-mounted deck gun capable of throwing a heavy stream over distance. If Axel could consecrate the onboard supply, it would stop being ordinary firefighting equipment.

It would become a mobile Holy Water weapon.

Axel grinned.

"Lionel, that is the best thing you’ve said all day."

He slapped the young man approvingly on the shoulder before turning back toward the ignition. The Ford’s front end looked barely attached to the rest of the vehicle, but Axel only needed it to survive one final trip. He twisted the key.

Nothing happened.

Axel tried again.

The engine coughed.

"Come on."

A third attempt produced an ugly grinding noise.

Then the engine suddenly roared back to life.

Axel laughed.

"Good truck."

Black smoke continued pouring from beneath the hood, but he had no intention of questioning the miracle. "Everybody hold on. We’re borrowing a fire engine."

Axel turned the steering wheel hard and pushed the accelerator. The pickup limped forward, swung around the edge of the ongoing melee, and headed toward the town center. One wandering infected stumbled directly into the truck’s path and disappeared beneath the wheels with a sickening crunch.

Nobody looked back.

They had bigger problems.

Behind them, Freddy finally tore the last crawling torso away from his leg and staggered upright. He saw Axel’s smoking pickup disappearing down the street and immediately started after it. "Oh no you don’t!"

Freddy had taken only a few steps when something struck the back of his head hard enough to send him stumbling forward.

He slowly turned.

Jason stood directly behind him.

Freddy pointed angrily toward the disappearing pickup. "You brain-dead idiot! Our enemy is the forest ranger!"

Jason stared at him through the hockey mask.

Freddy threw both arms out. "Go after him!"

Jason answered with his fist.

The punch slammed directly into Freddy’s face.

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