The Franklin Incident (Philly-Punk) Read Online Free Page B

and disorienting.  I can scarcely tell which end is up and which is down.  My world is just a succession of spinning horizons and painful spasms as limbs connect with stairs and banisters.  The pistol goes crashing off somewhere and I feel the iron fist strike wood with a thunderous tattoo, splinters showering my body.  A white searing pain explodes on the back of my skull.
    Just when I think that I will roll forever, like some twisted backwards Atlas, I plow into the bottom landing and my battered frame stops on the marble floor.  The stone feels cool under my warm skin.  I have no idea what kind of damage my body has sustained for I hurt everywhere.  It seems impossible to tell if one place hurts more than the other to indicate more severe wounds.  All the pain can tell me is one thing: I'm alive.
    creak...
    And that the killer is at the top of the stairs.
    Turning painfully toward the steps, I can see the shape of it approaching the top of the stairwell.  Though the building lay in the shadow of the airship, which I can make the shape of it out in the evening sky, an evening light filters down.  It renders the world in shades of a blue as if I donned one of those fancy colored-lens spectacles.
    creak...
    The killer steps into the moonlight, its towering frame illuminated.  It takes the slow steps as if it is unsure of its footing or is merely stalking its prey.  I cannot analyze its behavior for I am finding it impossible to even understand the sight of the creature that descends the steps before me.  There are so many things wrong about what I am seeing that I scarcely know where to begin.
    The stout legs are encased in an armor that is bulky and intricately decorated with unfamiliar symbols and glyphs.  This armor covers legs and torso and small stubby arms.  The plating across its chest looks dented and marred with signs of battle.  The creature's hands have four long fingers tipped in black claws.  On top of broad shoulders, sits an oval shape that looks to be a helmet adorned with twenty small portholes—
    Suddenly a bright light comes on above.  I immediately find the source of the light: the airship.  The airship bathes this part of the city in an almost-blinding light as if it were searching for something.  However, the light suddenly begins to flicker as if someone were turning it on and off... at varying lengths of time.
    Code.
    The killer on the stairs pivots towards the ceiling and the lights I had seen in the upstairs hallway flash on again.  This time, though, I'm a stone's throw from the killer so I can see that the light is coming out of the portholes.
    And the light is pulsating.
    My growing sense of dread seems to suddenly crest and that need to flee pulsates like the light.  Moving my limbs experimentally, I find that they respond to my brain's directions with little physical resistances.  However as I stand up, one of Poe's cartridges falls out of my vest pocket, flittering to the ground and spilling the gunpowder it encased through a tear in the paper.  I pick up the cartridge only to find that it's stuck to a wad of chewing gum someone had left on the floor.
    "Wha— What in God's name?" a voice suddenly wails from behind me.
    I painfully turn to find a young woman in a plain white dress no different from the two dead women I've seen today.  She's standing just outside a glass door, one hand on the doorknob and her other shielding her face from the pulsating light.  Her face contorts in horror as she stares at the creature on the stairs.  But when the creature's lights suddenly stop pulsating and it turns towards the young woman, her face suddenly blanches white and the scream that erupts from her lips chills me to the bone.  The creature returns with its keening and begins to shuffle hurriedly down the stairs.
    I turn toward the woman, yelling "RUN!" but my voice is drowned in the din of their noises and can't seem to turn from her gaze from the creature.  It has pulled