Running From Himself 3-10

“Take the right side!” 

He’d been through a lot in just one year.

More than he was pretty sure most people had ever gone through their whole lives.

From getting covered in blood and guts, literally exploding a founding member of Earth’s Most Mighty, getting covered in blood and guts again, to stealing a boat and then getting covered in even more blood and guts — this time from a whale — Hughie Campbell was pretty sure there wasn’t much life could throw at him that would make him freak out.

“We’re g-g-gonna fucking die!”

Like many times before, Hughie Campbell was beginning to realize he was wrong.

“Butcher, the right!” The big man in the passenger seat barked directions as if the driver ever would listen. “Motherfucka, the right!”

The engine of the commandeered Mustang squealed like a dying animal hooked up to a megaphone, every bit of V8-powered sound vibrating straight up through the floorboards and into Hughie's spine.

"Hold onto yer knickers, boys!" The man in the driver’s seat, psychotic as ever, spun the heavy  steering wheel with a grin, the muscle car swerving around a slower-moving minivan with another screech of rubber on asphalt.

Whether it was from the g-force or just raw nerves, Hughie had the feeling his stomach was located somewhere around his knees at the moment as the Mustang pushed miles past the redline. The seatbelt bit sharp into his collarbone, knuckles paler than he knew they could get gripping down on the seat beneath him as they tore down a packed residential stretch of Long Island. 

All the neat manicured lawns and identical picket fences almost looked idyllic, the sort of beautiful suburban living Hughie would trade at least one toe for if it meant he didn’t have to be stuck in this car ever again.

With another grunt, Butcher threw the wheel in a left hard enough to make the whole car buckle from the sudden drift, Hughie tasting blood as they clipped the curb and swung onto yet another residential straightaway.

For all that it had lasted barely thirty good seconds, Frenchie’s makeshift smokescreen managed to still force him to blink too many times a second as wind rushed in through open windows. It wasn’t enough to make them water but it was more than enough for Hughie to be aware that chunks of the stuff were clinging to the upholstery. The thick gray cloud wasn’t just there to make him suffer, though; the stuff had probably saved their lives before a certain man in black could cut them down. 

Whatever bathroom supplies Frenchie had made it from, the thick wall of chemical fog had covered their exit from Aunt Judy’s house before the rushing wind had shredded it and left them exposed again.

Speaking of exposed…

“Did you see him?” Hughie’s voice was almost a screech loud enough to match the engine, still blinking too fast as he twisted in the backseat to look out the rear windows. “Does anybody fucking see him?”

Hughie didn’t need an answer because it only took a second for the ‘him’ in question to round the corner, a black shape tearing down the center of the road on a straight path toward them.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck—Butcher!”

“Oi, I see the mute cunt!”

Black Noir was sprinting.

His legs a literal blur as he pumped his arms, the black-suited supe kept pace with a muscle car doing ninety down suburban streets, the sigh of it enough to make acid rise in the back of Hughie’s throat. Ohfuckohfuckohfuck! No wind-up, no real exertion, just a terrifying machine eating the asphalt, with armor darker than a black hole.

“Oh fuuuuuck!”

Kimiko sat to his right, perfectly silent with her knees pulled up to ther chest. To his left, Frenchie was rattling out a constant muttering stream of French, hands shaking slightly.

“Here!” The sound of a zipper was enough to get Hughie to pull himself out of an imminent panic attack, a dark brown duffel bag tossed into the backseat and into Frenchie’s lap courtesy of Mother’s Milk. “Check the action. Make sure it’s hot.”

Hughie blinked, breath still coming quick as Frenchie pulled free a weapon, a heavy black assault rifle held over the center console. Metal clacked against metal, the sound loud as he popped the magazine just to slap it back in, the heavy barrel suddenly dropped directly into Hughie’s open and waiting hands.

Said waiting hands almost immediately fumbled the thing, Hughie nearly letting the ice-cold weapon fall onto the floor mats. “F-frenchie, what the fuck, man?” 

The Frenchman eyed Hughie even as he checked another weapon, Mother’s Milk doing the same in the passenger seat. “What eez wrong? Not your first time with a real weapon such as this, eh?”

Hughie blinked back, mouth open as he couldn’t deny that exactly. Even still, the last time he’d had to use anything like this was a good year back and all he did was manage to waste every single bullet while screaming apologies. “What… what is this supposed to do?”

“Hughie, you got more brain cells than half of us.” MM grunted from the front, the man’s heavy shoulders moving as he adjusted his own weapon. “You know what the fuck it’s for.”

"I mean, okay, b—" Hughie swallowed his first set of words as he processed what Mother’s Milk had to say. As flattering as that was, that didn’t answer his question at all. “But no… I mean, like honestly, what are some standard hollow-points going to do against that guy? It’s Black fucking Noir we’re talking about it.”

“Well…” Frenchie slapped a hand down hard on Hughie’s shoulder, the grip tight and bony as he patted him. "It will give us valuable seconds to pray, Petit Hughie."

“That…” Hughie blinked, eyes darting from the rear window to the road ahead. "...that’s not encouraging."

"Don't think he meant it to be, beanpole." MM offered from the front, not even bothering to turn his head.

"I did, actually.” Frenchie racked the weapon again. “Important to have the time to make the peace with God, yes?”

"Did a right shit job of it then, didn't ya, Frenchie?" Butcher growled from the front seat, car drifting close to the curb before he yanked it back into the center lane. "Oi, Hughie. Where's the fuckin' supe you called? Because if he's having himself a lazy wank while we're getting hunted by this bastard, I'll carve his bloody heart out."

"He's coming." Hughie forced the words out, clutching the rifle tighter to his chest with one hand as he checked his phone with the other. Blank. "I mean, he… fuck, he said he’s coming. We just have t—"

"Where'd he go?"

The question made the inside of the car feel still.

Hughie whipped his head around to Frenchie, stomach dropping even further than he thought it could go. He didn’t want the answer. He already knew the answer. “Where’d who…”

His mouth went bone-dry as he looked out the rear window to a completely empty road. “Oh…”

"Oh fuck no!"

MM’s scream ripped through the whole car, the raw volume of it forcing Hughie’s attention straight forward — Oh, shit! — as something black dropped out of the afternoon sky directly into the path of the car.

Noir landed like an anvil, the road ahead cratering beneath him as he faced down the Mustang like it wasn’t several tons of speeding metal.

"Fuckin’ supe cunt!" Butcher yanked the steering wheel to the right, tires smoking.

They almost cleared him.

Almost.

Everything suddenly became weightless by the next time Hughie opened his eyes, the Mustang completely spinning out. What… The world outside the windows was a washing machine, a blur of gray concrete, sparks, and shattered safety glass after Noir threw a casual backhand at the passing two-ton terror.

By the next blink, the Mustang crashed down hard on a concrete median, rifle digging deep into Hughie’s ribs as every part of him shook and shuddered. The vehicle skidded for God-knows-how-many feet, busted tires chewing up the pavement. A line of overgrown bushes were no match for the out-of-control beast of a car, each one in their path ripped apart before the Mustally finally came to an unforgiving halt directly into a light pole.

“Fu-!” Hughie’s head snapped forward, forehead cracking against the back of Butcher's seat as white dust exploded from deployed airbags. His ears rang, skull throbbing as something hot spilled onto his nose and stung as it dripped into his eye.

Before Hughie could even blink the black spots or the blood out of his vision, the door to his right groaning as something struck it.

He blinked up as a size 5 boot met it again, the door flying free as the one supe among them jumped out of the car. “K-Kimiko!” Kimiko was the first one out, the woman vaulting onto the pavement like a coiled spring, a heavy iron crowbar gripped tight in both hands.

Through the spiderwebbed glass of the windshield, Hughie watched Noir walking towards them across the parking lot; the cracked concrete, overgrown weeds and shuttered stores of a long-emptied strip mall his execution spot.

Kimiko sprinted toward the other supe, tearing up the ground far faster than Hughie could ever hope to move in his wildest dreams, crowbar already up and aimed dead at the side of Noir’s armored skull.

A single black-clad arm snapped up faster than Hughie could track, the solid iron bar caught without Noir even bothering to move his head or even brace for impact. Two more swings, each one made so fast they literally blurred, were blocked just as quickly; Noir’s movements almost as clinical as they were robotic.

All of a sudden, the bar was no longer in Kimiko’s grasp, Noir’s hand plucking it free. With a squeal, the assassin wrapped the metal tight around his bracer, the entire thing bent like cheap aluminum pipe. 

Kimiko froze.

Noir didn’t.

With a casual, almost bored, thrust of his open palm, he struck the much smaller woman right in the center of her chest.

“Kimikoooo!”