by Daniel James
Diane leaned over the crouching, shaking forms of her children, watching the knife dance in flares of blinding light. Roach thrashed about, unable to break free and fight off the strength-sapping grapplers holding him tight. He screamed their names. He screamed for the killer’s mercy. He screamed how much he loved Diane, Peter and Vicky, and how sorry he was.
The pig raised his knife and let it fall.
Isaac had a few bruises of his own. When he’d refused to watch the imminent execution of his friend and his family, Colquitt had decided it would be prudent to slap him about into submission. Now, with Colquitt’s vice-like grip on his jaw and the back of his skull, he was forced to watch the nightmare unfolding on the grainy camera feed. Jensen had become a statue in his viewing, his gaze expressing no more life than that of any dull sculpture. Isaac had expected him to be enjoying this more. On the screen, Roach was on his knees, quietly begging and demanding in equal parts, wrath and compromise at war. The butcher brought his ruthless cutting tool up, ready to plunge and turn the concrete room into an abattoir, when Jensen snapped from his deep freeze, hands scrabbling for the microphone.
“Stop,” he demanded. The would-be executioner obeyed without fuss. “Leave them. Lock up and leave them.”
The knifeman quietly retreated to the doorway. The two roughed-up mercenaries were true professionals, relinquishing their sparring partner without further harm and making a quick exit.
Colquitt brought his walkie-talkie up, selecting the proper channel. “Return to the perimeter.” On screen, the knifeman acknowledged the command and closed the door behind him. The bolts were thrown home.
Isaac didn’t thank Jensen, or try to convince him that they were both part of some secret and exclusive survivors’ club. In truth, as grateful as he was for this unexpected act of clemency, he feared what came next. And how far could this leniency really go? Would Jensen blindfold Roach’s family and drop them off somewhere safe and sound?
Jensen swiped the laptop off the table with a ferocious outburst, cracking the screen and reducing it to a useless heap of plastic and chips. “I can’t cross that line,” he said to himself breathlessly, leaning over the table in bleak contemplation.
Colquitt released his painful grip on Isaac’s head and jaw and took a step back, carefully rolling his shoulder under his blood-crusted bandage. After a few moments, Jensen looked up from studying the table top in what, Isaac thought, resembled a look of guidance.
Isaac had to say something; the moment seemed frozen, snagged on this silent cue. “You’re not Wyndorf. You’re better than him. This is the proof. The world doesn’t need another monster. You still have that rage, though, right?” Jensen watched him silently, his own thoughts twisted and lost in the barren landscape of his mind, the beacon fires of vengeance and hatred not fully suppressed. “And you need to put it somewhere. Well, I’m still here. Wyndorf’s still here. Do the right thing, Jensen. Let everyone else go.” Jensen considered this with a withering stare.
Colquitt remained disengaged, the perfect hired gun. Outside, the rural quiet was suddenly broken by the mechanical chatter of rapid gunfire.
Colquitt’s walkie-talkie crackled into urgent life. “Sir, we have an unknown number of hostiles moving in from the west and east sides of the property.” The rumble of overlapping burst fire was edging closer like thunder on the horizon.
Colquitt wore a fleeting look of confusion, then gave Isaac an intimidating snarl. “Friends of yours?”
Isaac shrugged, looking unconcerned about the possibility of being flanked by two opposing sides with a common objective of murdering him. “Not mine. Must be Wyndorf’s.”
“That asshole with the machine gun,” Colquitt said through gritted teeth. “Mr. Jensen, stay here and keep your head down until I return.”
Isaac looked toward the flimsy wood nailed over the large picture window. “This place screams secure.”
Colquitt looked as though he would have enjoyed slapping the wise-ass out of Isaac if time wasn’t a factor. “This was a short-term assignment. We didn’t anticipate guarding against an attempted siege.”
“What are your numbers?” Isaac asked. “The nine from the convoy, plus you?”
Colquitt hesitated.
Isaac assumed he was right. He looked at Jensen, their eyes magnetised. “I still have my rage too. If there’s any chance of a last request, let me help you kill Wyndorf.”
Weekend Warriors
Garland leaked through the moonlit woodland north of the farm like spilled ink on a black canvas. The night vision goggles painted his vision in a palette of emerald and white. As expected, one of the strung-out toy soldiers in the westward squad had thought this was paintball or some goddamn game, and sprayed lead at the first target they found, probably an old wheelbarrow or the side of a shed. That was fine. As to be expected. It would create a confusing shitstorm which would pit the itchy triggers against Wyndorf’s captors, and allow him and his handful of good men to opportunistically pick off any oxygen wasters during their hunt for Wyndorf. Up ahead, a few disused grain silos were illuminated like squat jade towers.
A pig-masked perimeter guard in a dark windbreaker was listening to the squelch of a walkie-talkie, his frame becoming rigid with alertness. Even without the radio contact, it was impossible to mishear the rampaging Xbox army going off to the east. Garland watched how the enemy guard moved, alert, focused, bringing up his suppressed sub-machine gun and about to join the fray. Garland wished he had a camp full of such sharply honed troops. Though he could do without the strange masks.
A whistling blur raced across Garland’s vision, right to left, the arrow piercing deep into the guard’s back, flooding his lungs with blood. The dark array of structures was suddenly lit up in a harsh, retina-scalding wash of electric light. Garland ripped his night vision goggles up to his scalp, letting his pupils constrict and adapt to the surprise blaze of the spotlights arranged around the farm buildings. Looking to his right, he saw Schecter, the silent assassin, lowering his takedown bow and removing his own set of Night Owl Tactical Night Vision Binoculars. They made him look like some creepy alien insectoid hunting human flesh.
More sporadic gunfire thundered through the trees and clearing, bouncing off the barns, sheds and buildings to create a confusing din.
Garland’s squad moved forth from tree to tree in silence, deftly side-stepping loose branches and dry leaves. Garland made it to the duo of silos first, Schecter, Kershaw and Higgins covering him. An explosion went off somewhere in the thick of it. That had to be that redneck Bruhl and his pet M32 MGL, a six-shot grenade launcher with rotating barrel. It had only ever been a matter of time before that armchair soldier decided to indulge in his Schwarzenegger delusion. Garland shook his head at how easily this was falling into place. He gave it five minutes before Bruhl committed his first act of friendly fire.
“Stupid bastards are going to bring S.W.A.T. down on us,” Kershaw admonished, running over and crouching down beside Garland.
“By the time they get here, we’ll be long gone.”
Schecter swept up beside him, keeping an arrow nocked against his recurve bow. “You think the major’s still spitting lead?”
“Crazy old bastard has one eye and a case of the shakes,” Kershaw answered. “I’d be impressed if he made it from the drop-off point.”
Garland checked Wyndorf’s GPS on his phone. The signal placed him a bit further south-east. Right in the thick of it. Garland surveyed the clearing between their position and a large hay barn, the nearest perimeter lights shining on the peeling paint of the tall structure. Raising Shauna, Garland rattled off a short burst at the lighting rig, dropping the area into a concealing gloom. The four of them paced across the open ground in a squat-run.
Halfway across the open ground, Higgins went down, peppered with a few erratic shots to the chest and neck. Something else blew up near the eastern edge of the farm, the explosion rocking the world, spewing flame and hot light high enough to reach
over the barn’s roof and sketch long shadows behind the three men. Higgins’ killer blind-fired from behind the barn again, punching up nothing but dirt this time, his shots barely audible over the ear-rattling of another blast. Garland caught sight of the muzzle flash and let Shauna chew through the aged wood, spraying a fine pink mist into the background shades of fire and electric light. The body went limp and fell away from the cover. Another dead pig.
Kershaw grabbed Higgins’ legs and Garland grabbed his arms, Schecter covered them as they raced for the cover of the barn. Another of the distant lighting rigs sparked out into darkness as they lowered the young soldier’s body. Kershaw knew the man was dead even before they lowered him. The bullets to the body had hit his Kevlar, but the slug in his throat had turned him into a cardinal garden hose.
Garland heard the thumping tread of shoes on grass-clumped soil rushing toward them from around the side of the building. His Ka-Bar knife was out and ready with a fluid snap. Moving like an oil slick, his massive frame swept around the side of the splintered wall and dispatched the speeding enemy with a savage slice to his carotid. He locked eyes with his opponent. It was one of Thurman’s, a jittery liability named Carson, and from the looks of things he was running scared. Abandoning his alleged brothers in the middle of a pitched battle. Setting aside the group’s ethos for a debilitating drug addiction was bad enough, but to desert your comrades was cause for execution in Garland’s opinion. Garland let him drop in a gasping slump and wiped the blood from the blade, allowing his large hands to caress the cold beauty of Shauna again.
Kershaw sighed in frustration and lowered Higgins, avoiding his blank, staring eyes. Garland dropped a hand on Kershaw’s shoulder, bringing the man back to a stand. They had to keep moving.
With their backs against the barn wall, they carefully moved around to the tall doors, the sound and fury of the theatre giving them momentum. They counted to three and swept into the barn, weapons high. It was vacant and lifeless: nothing but old hay bales and cobwebs. Schecter placed a finger to his lips and pointed up to a concealed shooter in the loft, taking down troopers from the window. The archer scurried light-footed across the barn floor, creeping up the ladder, keeping his weight away from the middle of each rung for fear of them creaking in stress. Ducking low, he came up on the sniper and momentarily paused. The vista before him was absolute chaos, the scene validating Garland’s strategy. It was a massacre. Although they had the greater numbers, the raw, green Joes of the Midnight Frontiers were getting neatly picked off by superior shooters. Most of Thurman’s loyalists were already kissing the dirt. The floodlights had all been shattered, leaving the wide open grounds swathed in oily black smoke and bathed in warm firelight.
A hundred yards in the distance, sheltering behind a low stone wall which was quickly becoming rubble, sat Bruhl, giggling like he had gone apeshit, his M32 braced against his Kevlar. About two hundred yards opposite him was a large farmhouse, controlled burst fire leaping out from the shadows of the porch’s front entrance, each shot getting closer and closer to tearing down the cover of the wild man with the grenade launcher. Five feet from Schecter, the sniper was waiting to get a bead on the top of Bruhl’s head.
Bruhl boldly sprang up. Thunk. The launcher’s revolver-style barrel spun, the grenade trailing over the yard and blasting above the double doors of the farmhouse. Stone slabs and granite chips poured down, sealing the entrance.
The sharpshooter was about to return the favor, his finger slowly squeezing the trigger. Schecter could easily get close and kill Bruhl when the time came, but right now this crazy bastard and his heavy ordnance could come in handy. Pulling a ludicrously large hunting knife from the sheath on his belt, he lunged forward and skewered the prone sniper through the top of his thoracic vertebrae, just as the man pulled the trigger. The bullet veered crazily and disappeared somewhere in the dark tree line.
Elsewhere, the salvos, though greatly diminished, continued sporadically. Peering out of the hay barn’s cover, Garland checked his GPS signal and tried to gauge which building Wyndorf was in. The run-down farmhouse seemed to be too close, but beyond that was what appeared to be a livestock shelter and an enormous airplane hangar. Now the three of them just had to get by an unknown number of well-concealed enemy combatants hidden amongst the smoke and the rusting hulks of long-abandoned agricultural machinery.
Within the farmhouse, the blast threw Colquitt backward down the hallway in a plume of smoke and dust. Coughing his lungs up, he fumbled to his knees and hurried back into the empty lounge, panting and agitated.
The blast didn’t even cause Jensen to flinch. “Colquitt, if you want the rest of your payment, do not let them free that bastard.” His voice was querulous.
Colquitt let the Heckler & Koch MP5 hang at his side, and boomed into the walkie-talkie, “Secure the pen, they’re coming for Wyndorf.”
It took a blood-chilling moment for a voice to finally reply. “Rossbach and I got him covered.” The responding voice, a merc called Olivetti, sounded terse. “But I can’t raise anyone else. I think this swarm of fuckers took out Jordan, Wells and Chase.”
Colquitt squeezed the talkie so tight his knuckles bulged like bleached pebbles. “Just hold the position. I’m on my way.”
Isaac, the kneeling supplicant, sucked back blood from his torn lip. “Sounds like you need all the help you can get.” He raised his tied wrists. “Roach and I might even the odds.”
Jensen still looked conflicted at the idea, but the sounds of war were beginning to fade away, along with any hope of keeping Wyndorf in his grip.
Seething but level-headed, Colquitt looked to his employer, hating the idea but lacking a better alternative.
“Bigger picture, Jensen.” Isaac pulled his hands as far apart as the wire would allow.
Jensen quietly agonised over it for a taut second, then gave Colquitt a nod.
Grinding his teeth, Colquitt snapped open a wicked, short blade and sliced the black zip tie around Isaac’s wrists and ankles. Then he gave Isaac the knife. “Don’t do nothing stupid.”
Isaac kept the blade close and roughly shoulder-checked Colquitt on the way past. “Is there a back door out of here?”
“Kitchen. Let’s go,” Jensen commanded, leading the way.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Colquitt stalled him. “You die, I don’t get paid,”
“I lose my chance to kill Wyndorf, you don’t get paid,” Jensen rephrased.
“Fuck!” Colquitt kicked the fold-out table across the room. “Doc, keep your damn head down and stay the fuck behind me.” He hurried past them toward the empty kitchen. “Wait here a minute. In case you didn’t hear it, there’s a guy out there knocking on the front door with a grenade launcher.” He peered through a glass pane in the kitchen door, only able to make out ember-gilded shadows. Then he gently opened the door, his gun leading him out carefully on to the macadam step. The fire-lit fields were clear, as was the eastern side of the large house. Colquitt nudged his head to the pair of them, his attentive eyes constantly scanning for the invader.
Jensen touched down on the gravel path, tasting the cold, smoky air. “We need to hurry,” he yelped, speeding toward the basement prison to the north of the property.
Isaac grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. “Careful.”
Jensen shrugged his hand off imperiously, about to retort when a silhouette marched out from the southern corner of the house, backlit by a burning tree. The gangly figure, garbed in Kevlar and camouflage, had a weapon with a big rotund drum at its core.
Colquitt pegged it for an M32 grenade launcher as quickly as it took the shock to kick in. So here was the guy arcing fireballs all about the property like a drunken fire imp, stalking the place for pockets of resistance.
Bruhl’s launcher swung down at them in a tight arc, the last payload ready to reduce the group to chunks of cooked gore and bone. Unlike Bruhl, Colquitt didn’t have the shakes. As sideways as this assignment had gone, it was just another da
y on the job. He double-tapped Bruhl with his MP5, the second shot coating the gravel behind him in a fine spray. Bruhl’s dead finger spasm tugged the trigger, his limp arms dragging his aim down toward the crunching path before him. The grenade made its familiar tinnitus-inducing boom and propelled Bruhl’s shredded body backward ten feet in a shower of tamped soil and gravel.
The topside crescendo had the Roach family flinching from shock and exhaustion, the quartet huddled for warmth in the corner of the musty, empty cellar. After checking to make sure the knife wound wasn’t too deep, Diane rested her head on Curtis’ shoulder, his coat giving off a faint whiff of countryside. Their son and daughter had gone quiet, and both parents were hoping they might be sleeping it off. If there was any justice, maybe they could get through whatever this nightmare had left without waking to experience it.
“You were right to get as far away from me as possible.” Roach broke the silence, taking Diane by surprise. “You did everything for me. You were so patient. But I couldn’t turn it around. I just couldn’t. It’s hard to admit this, but as much as I loved you, and I did, please believe me, I couldn’t put you before Isaac. You know how it is … how it was. I thought me and him would be sticking through thick and thin until the end. After he went away, seeing how he chose Maggie, and a future that didn’t involve all this bullshit, you’d think that would have been my wake-up call. If anything, I resented him for doing that. Turning his back on me. So I walled myself up, pushed you further away, brought the bottle closer.” Diane lifted her head up, brushing a blonde strand away from her cheek, trying not to get angry. “You did everything you could to save us, and I threw it all right back in your face. I was a shitty dad, shitty husband … and now my mistake is going to get us all killed.”
“Stop with the self-pity. I don’t want to spend my final moments hearing you whine about past mistakes.” Her eyes were tough, protective, no-nonsense. “Whatever’s happening outside sounds bad. We should save our strength. And you weren’t a shitty dad, they both love you.”