Messiahs by Matt Rogers (bookstand for reading txt) 📕

his skull struck the concrete as it whiplashed. The Beretta came out of his hand, but Alexis had no chance of snatching it. Reality never works with precise coordination like in the movies — it’s inherently random.

So the gun skidded under one of the pews and stayed there.

Brandon was nearly fifty pounds heavier than her.

If they ended up in a neutral position, he’d beat her to death. That’s physics. There’s no way around it. Fifty pounds is fifty pounds, and it’s distributed across muscle and bone structure to provide an incredible advantage. If they were standing up, and Alexis punched him in the face, it’d maybe break his nose. If he punched her in the face, she’d snap out of consciousness instantly, maybe for a long time. There was every chance he’d put her in a coma.

All she had to rely on was the advantage of surprise.

She’d managed to take him down simply because he hadn’t been expecting it. Now she was on top, in mount position, and he was possibly concussed from his head bouncing off the stone floor.

Aside from that, she had nothing.

So she made full use of her advantage.

She targeted his forehead with the point of her elbow and dropped her limb hard, aiming to slice instead of strike. It worked. Her elbow ran a jagged line across the skin of his brow, splitting it, sending blood flowing down his face.

She lined up another elbow…

…but he bucked her off like she weighed nothing.

She realised she’d massively miscalculated. Drawing blood had both brought him back to his senses and enraged him. It had put him in fight-or-flight mode, and now he was fighting like an animal. Alexis tumbled across her back as she spilled off him. One of the pews stopped her momentum and she started scrabbling to her feet.

Brandon was already on his feet.

He charged her, grabbed her around the waist and picked her up.

Terror seized her.

She was out of control, no limb in contact with the ground, and her life was in Brandon’s hands.

He could do whatever he wanted to her.

He kept lifting, then changed direction and slammed her down on the pew.

On her neck.

An inch or two to the left or right and she would have been paralysed forever, but she recognised which way she was going in mid-air and tucked her chin to her chest in anticipation. Brandon drove her into the wooden seat across her upper back, bruising the muscles and maybe tearing something in one of her shoulders, but that was preferable to unconsciousness, paralysis, or death.

She spilled off the long bench and tumbled to the floor, squashed against the back of the next pew. Brandon stood over her, and raised a foot to stomp her face to mush.

Alexis’ heart sank and through the pain she suppressed tears.

This angry kid, his teeth gnashing together in rage, was about to stomp her to death.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

A voice said, ‘Don’t you fucking dare.’

It took Alexis a moment to realise who’d spoken. She’d never heard the voice say anything with confidence.

Addison’s timidity was gone.

She was in the aisle, out of sight, so Alexis couldn’t see what she was doing.

Brandon sure could.

He slowly lowered his boot and stepped back out of the pew.

Alexis clambered to her feet, her upper back screaming.

It was agony, but when she saw Addison, pride overwhelmed the pain.

Addison aimed the Beretta at her brother.

Her finger was less than an inch off the trigger.

Brandon said, ‘You dumb bitch.’

Addison’s eyes were wet. She composed herself before she spoke. ‘Do you even know who you are anymore? Do you realise what you were about to do?’

Brandon was beyond reproach. Anger drowned out any chance of introspection. ‘Addison, listen to me. Shut the fuck up and put the gun down before someone comes in and sees you aiming it at me. You know what they’ll do to you? I’m a loyal disciple. You’ve been hit and miss since you got here. Who are they going to side with?’

‘You’d get them to kill me?’ Addison said. ‘That’s what you’re saying you’ll do?’

Brandon said, ‘Trust you to act high and mighty. Remember Karlie?’

Her throat spasmed as she gulped.

He nodded, his eyes crazed. ‘Yeah, you remember Karlie. Acting like I’m the devil for hurting this bitch here when you took a baseball bat to an innocent girl’s head. Why don’t you think about your own actions for a while? In the meantime, put the fucking gun down.’

Addison’s hand trembled.

Brandon’s voice became monotonic. He knew exactly where to press. ‘Karlie. You killed her.

‘Karlie. You beat her brains in.

‘Karlie. She was only looking for her brother.

‘Karlie…’

Addison screamed, ‘Shut up!’

Brandon said, ‘Karlie’s corpse is in the ground. There’s dents in her skull where you swung that bat. I mean, you really gave it your all, didn’t you?’

Addison squeezed her eyes shut and dropped the gun. She sank to her knees, clamping her hands over her ears, giant sobs wracking her body. A confused, lost, innocent young woman, twisted into something she couldn’t comprehend by Maeve Riordan.

Alexis felt sick.

It took Brandon a second to compute the fact there was no longer a gun trained on him.

That’s what did him in.

Alexis lurched out of the pew and leapt onto his back, locking in a body-triangle with her legs, clamping to him like a backpack. He spun, arms flailing as he threw punches, but nothing worked. He reached back to gouge her eyes but she already had a forearm around his throat, and she locked the rear naked choke in and wrenched tight.

That’s the only scenario where fifty pounds of weight difference doesn’t matter.

It took him fifteen seconds to go out.

Impressive, considering he should have been down by ten.

But the end result was the same.

He went limp and collapsed, falling forward, face ricocheting off the stone. There was a crack as his nose broke, but he didn’t react. He was already unconscious.

Alexis clambered off him, and already he was beginning to resurface from unconsciousness, but he wouldn’t be cognisant