Then he felt its arrival. With a tense knot in his stomach, he didn't need to look to know it was there. It just appeared out of the darkness. A malevolent force of nature. For one moment, the shooting stopped. The babble of fear and excitement could be heard as the shooting party drew its breath. As the malign being appeared near the head of the corridor, before his cornered shock troops. No puff of smoke. No materializing out of nothingness. But at one moment he wasn't there, and in the next, Jason was ominously present. Imposing, wrathful, hideous. His terrible features crowned by the strange majesty of a black welding mask.

Even those who could not see through the tiny gaps in the cell doors felt his malignancy. In the students’ cell, those who had previously come under his attack shuddered and breathed hard. Tina, who had never had to face him before, sobbed softly. Trey knew now that he was something more than just a creature of violence. Jason Voorhees had long since transcended his humanity. He was a death-force, something not bound by normal human limitations. If violence was in the air, then Jason could appear out of the ether. If his filthy, murdering lackeys were present, then Jason was somewhere close at hand.

And the response team fired at him. With the second line dropping to the crouching position in place of their fallen number, the first four hit him with everything they had. At least one of the shots hit home, tearing holes in his black jerkin. Jason was knocked back, but unbowed. Unbeaten. Ten feet behind him, his feral shock troops cursed and sputtered with pain. Those shots that had barely left their mark on the masked man were ripping into their flesh, tearing them apart against the wall.

Jason held his weapon high. A symbol of his intended triumph. It was no gore-encrusted blade, but something much more deadly, conjured out of recent memory. He extended the powerful semi-automatic hunting rifle from his shoulder, lining up the sight against one eye. His obliterated, vacant eye, which should have been blind. Then he fired. He opened up a rapid repeat-fire fusillade, gunning down anyone in his path. Hitting the guards' response team, and a couple of prisoners released at the end of the corridor by humane guards all too aware that they may be about to enter hell.

Jason was no longer just a living, breathing vehicle for murder, a violence-crazed thing. He was a destructive crusader, and he was declaring war on all of America.

   Chapter 13

Jason was killing everyone in his field of vision. Strewn on the ground were the bloodied bodies of guards and prisoners alike. Some inmates remained trapped in their cells, hoping that if they cowered in their corner they would not attract the hate machine's attention. Others had freed themselves with the single set of guard's keys passed down the block, after their owner had been blasted to death.

Once an enterprising prisoner was clear of their door, those who yearned for safety in numbers turned the key of the next cell, or pushed it through the metal grids in the old cell doors. Those who never cared for anything but their own hide merely ran for it. Neither made much difference to their survival prospects. Some made it out of the corridor, running with a heart-bursting intensity that told them they would never be clear, never be safe, as long as they stopped running long enough to look over their shoulder. To see if the man-thing would be on their tail forever.

Others had the essence blown out of their human form by wildly flying bullets. But when the ammunition was exhausted, Jason Stalked down the corridor and reverted to using his hands. To slashing and disemboweling with his long machete. To rending human forms apart, by pulling a disarticulated arm or leg out of its socket.

It was as the Crystal Lake Killer reverted to primitive violence that the Forest Green posse made their break. Trey and Shawna had commandeered the massacred killers’ rifles, with only one or two rounds left each. Gerry Nielsen had bridled at that, but they told him to shut his mouth and run, relaying as many of the other kids as he could with him. The moment they chose was one of heartless opportunism. Voorhees had grabbed a demented vagrant who dared to emerge from his cell at the wrong time. As his mighty fist crushed the poor loser's teeth and jawbone, forcing them down his gullet so that he was choking on his own bones, Gerry and the other guys ran for it.

Chapter 14, Friday the 13th: Hell Lake