The initial discharges of Michael and Gabriel seemed to draw the ire of nearby Streeters like a dinner bell. They turned their heads slowly and growled hungrily. Elijah piled around the corner, faced off against two Streeters. One raised a snub-nosed .38 and another hiked up a Tommy gun. Elijah aimed the angels and clicked the triggers, sending flickering bursts of flame that eviscerated the doomed gangers. Several damned cops saw the exchange and surged on Elijah.

  “Picked the wrong pals, choir boy!” one of the coppers hissed.

  Elijah swung the cannons over to the raving cops and sicced the angels’ barrels on them, too. In a few teeth-grinding seconds, he cut them down.

  The cops and Streeters were locked in a heated skirmish, flicking lead through the dimly-lit building and puncturing holes through the shabby walls in trails of scattered, undisciplined fire.

  A zombified Streeter ran out of ammo and tossed his pistol aside, charging Elijah and tackling him through a crumbling wall. As they tumbled back, Elijah dropped the pair of heavy iron. Upon landing on his back, he used the backwards momentum to flip the ghoulish hood up and over sending him crashing through a wobbly wooden table. In a dash, Elijah spun onto his knees and snatched up his fallen friends. He turned to light up the grounded Streeter with several furious trigger-clicks which blasted the thing into fire-flayed chunks.

  “Crowe! That you?” a familiar voice asked through the cacophony of gunfire and shouting.

  Elijah recognized the voice right away, even though death and resurrection had lowered it several octaves. It was plain as day; the nasally, niggling rat-chuckle as he enunciated was a signature for Mick Routh. Mick used to lead the Streeters. Pick-pocket extraordinaire. Used to punt puppies for sport and giggles. Word was that he got it bad. One of the worst third acts any of the street toughs he knew concluded on. After the war ended and Elijah was back in the states, he heard a few months in that Mick got fished out of the Chicago River in pieces; the punk had so many enemies that no one knew who punched his ticket. The culprits were never found. City got a tad safer without him around.

  When Elijah looked about to pinpoint where that weaselly voice was coming from, he saw Mick’s insufferable face mounted through a sizable hole in a wall across the room. Time wasn’t friendly as the ruin of the undead tightened the Streeter’s skin, dulled his eyes, yellowed his teeth and rotted his nose away. That shit-eating grin never went away, though. Mick still had that.

  “You back in town?” Mick asked as Elijah pointed Gabriel and clicked off a shot, exploding another hole through the wall right beside the ghoul’s head as he dashed off with a vile giggle.

  A badge emerged from the dark, firing off rounds blind and trying to get a lucky shot. Elijah put the poor bastard down in a hail of bloody flashes.

  Mick was on the other side of the wall and peeked through a small fissure. “You think you’re walkin’ outta here, Crowe?”

  “Out the front door, Mick,” Elijah growled.

  “Not in the cards, kid. You got debts to pay. I’m gonna collect!” Mick giggled as he ran along the wall, intermittently visible through the holes. Elijah took aim and fired at his running target, popping a trail of bursting plaster and missing by half a stride with each shot.

  The crossfire was chopping up the combatants. Elijah saw a cop get clipped in a hail of bullets—his uniform puffing in frayed blossoms—and topple over into a limp pile. The Streeters were overwhelming the cursed badges.

  Mick’s voice cut through the tumult. “You were out fightin’ other people’s wars while our boys were gettin’ cut down in the streets, Elijah! You ran out on us!”

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  Elijah slid to a knee behind a semi-crumbled wall and hiked up his holy arms. “I didn’t run out on you! You got up every day and chose the dead-end instead of the parkway.”

  “And we ended up in the same spot. You sure you made the right choice?” he cackled.

  Mick always knew what to say to get under Elijah’s skin. He wanted nothing more than to plant a few rounds past Routh’s fangs and out the back of his head. He knew the angels in his hands were game.

  “Pigs blood is worth more than yours, deserter. I got badges to claim!” Mick said as he fled, chasing after the cops who were in retreat.

  The cramped corridors converged into a large rotunda lobby; the last holdouts were fortifying on the ground level for this battle of attrition. A mezzanine balcony wrapped around the upper level and two curving staircases flowed into the ground level. Four marble columns framed the central space and were pockmarked by gunfire. A stained glass skyline loomed overhead.

  The lobby had been turned into war-zone. Numerous fires had broken out, swelling and dancing in place. Several black and white cruisers were scattered about; one was partially embedded in a wall and bathed in powdered plaster, its rooftop red light pirouetting madly; another car was flipped on its side, its wheels still spinning; a third cruiser was upside-down in the center of the lobby where the floor was cracked and visibly unsteady near the mouth of the staircase.

  The last few cops were hiding behind the inert cruisers, intermittently popping off shots before receding behind cover. Half a dozen Streeters were peppered about entrenched positions on the other side of the shooting gallery, returning wild fire of their own. Mick was among them, laughing it up like a hungry hyena pressed for time. He marinated in this kind of madness.

  Elijah emerged onto the mezzanine looking down into the chaos where bullets whizzed about, clipping off of marble columns, clattering off of the cruisers and kissing what remained of the plaster walls. A Streeter was standing mere feet away, partially obscured by a support column and firing down at the badges. His back was to Elijah and when he finally noticed, it was just in time to eat a front kick to the chest that sent the goon tumbling back over the wrought-iron railing and folding upon the bone-crunching impact below.

  As Elijah skittered towards the stairway, he briefly glanced up to the skyline and his eyes locked onto one of Mick’s boys who was positioning himself to angle for a shot at the cops. Elijah swung the 45s skyward and let them sing, clicking off several rounds that roared with petals of searing white-gold and pelted up through the glass. The poor bastard took every shot, his cursed flesh bursting into grizzled chunks as the skyline shattered and rained bloodied glass down to the lobby below. The falling Streeter landed on the cruiser sitting atop the fractured floor which weakened it further.

  When the hail of splintered glass hit the Streeters, all they could do was wince and cover their heads. Mick looked up and saw the source of his ire: Elijah.

  “Fuckin’ turncoat,” Mick growled, crawling out from his position and running towards the mouth of the stairway below, inviting a duel. “C’mon, Crowe! I’ll help you get fitted for yer pine box!”

  Elijah eyed the curving wrought-iron rail on the stairway and charged towards it. The Streeters aimed up and started shooting. Elijah leapt up on the rail, landing on his rear end and the momentum carried him into a smooth, curving slide downward. The Streeters’ bullets whizzed away, popping into the railing and support column near him. As he slid along, he aimed down and flicked off shots that detonated cursed flesh, liquefying the damned in gurgling death rattles.

  Mick stood at the foot of the stairwell, pistol raised and taking bitter shot after bitter shot. The errant bullets clanged mere inches from Elijah as he swung the angels over to his old buddy. The two old pals traded fire until one of Elijah’s shots clipped Mick on the shoulder which twirled him away. Elijah kept shooting, peppering Mick’s desiccated body with bursting rounds.

  As Elijah speedily reached the end of the railing, his momentum carried him off, dropping him hard on the cruiser at the instant that Mick hit the deck. The combined weight and force caused the already fractured and stressed ground to give way and collapse through the floor.

  Elijah caught a breath as gravity pulled them into the void. He looked up and saw the breach shrinking like a jagged maw vomiting him out as he fell away. After a prolonged gasp—which the abyss did not indulge—the trappings of time and physics rushed back in and the cruiser crashed, tossing Elijah away. He’d hit the floor. The carpet reeked of death, but he wasn’t ready to go. Not yet. There was work to be done.