by Brad Hart
He could see it then, and he could almost feel the sensation of the old seat as his backside dug into it, as well as the familiar and comfortable grip of the steering wheel he knew so well. He could practically smell the pine tree air freshener his wife had placed in there when she complained about the smell of smoke while riding with him.
Honey, I’ll never smoke again…
Then he felt a cold sting in the back of his shoulder, and another in the back of his arm. His adrenaline was pumping so fast that he had barely registered the fact that he had been shot twice, but his body had slowed down despite his attempts to keep up the pace. Then he felt the cold wet sensation of a drenched shirt and he mistook it for sweat, but it was nothing of that sort.
It was blood, and a whole lot of it coming out fast.
And yet, it didn’t stop him. As Walker neared the car, he fumbled for his miniature satchel. If the key was in there, he didn’t know, but he was sure as hell going to hope it was, because hope was all he had left. Bullets whizzed past him, but they didn’t make contact. Blood seeped from the two holes in his body.
As Walker ran and reached into the satchel, feeling the cold metal of a keychain against his fingertips, his adrenaline reached peak level and he didn’t even feel the bullet graze his left thigh. His cruiser was within ten feet. He lunged forward, slamming hard into the door and then jamming the key into it and unlocking it as a bullet penetrated the window right next to his head. He crawled quickly into the seat, staying low as he slammed the door shut with one hand and shoved the key into the ignition with the other. Bullets hit the metal and burst through the glass. A loud thud rang out on the top of his roof as if a branch had just landed on it. Walker’s foot slammed against the gas and the car burst into motion.
He swerved blindly to miss the druggie’s car right in front of him, but still clipped the bumper. But it wasn’t enough to slow him down. Nothing was. Bullets crashed into the back windows and doors. He was going thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy miles an hour down the winding road and barely looking ahead.
When the bullets stopped, when he seemed far enough away, Walker looked up ahead and then into the rearview mirror.
He considered the possibility that he was dreaming. His mind was racing, and his heart felt like it was going to blow to pieces. Then he noticed the bit of blood pooling up in the seat and the pain from the entry wounds. He reached back with his right hand and touched his arm, then winced with pain. He could feel his thigh burning.
Walker never thought he would be grateful to have been shot, but at that moment, he was. The pain made him realize he was alive. It made him realize he wasn’t dreaming. He picked up the radio and called for backup as he sped down the road toward the city.
And then his sudden euphoria came crashing to an end when a bullet dug into his leg.
“Damn!”
Walker crashed his foot onto the brake. The bullet had come from the roof of the car. As he screeched to a halt, a tumbling noise came from above, and then a figure rolled loudly down the windshield and hood of the car and then flopped onto the ground below. It rolled about ten feet on the concrete and then stopped.
Walker looked down at his thigh. Blood was pouring from it, and fast. His eyes were watery as he thought about his wife and kids. The blood kept coming and he was getting dizzy. The cloaked and hooded freak on the ground was standing up, but he was injured. He started to limp toward Walker’s car, pulling a knife from his side.
Walker stared at the freak as a bloodthirsty sensation passed through him. He started to scream as the man slowly limped toward him, and then he moved his foot from the brake to the gas and ran into the cloaked man, sending him tumbling up over the hood of his cruiser, the windshield, and then over the top where he went spiraling off the back.
He stopped the car, looked in the rearview mirror. The man on the ground was lifeless. If he wasn’t dead, then he probably would be soon. Walker smiled. His head was getting too fuzzy. He was starting to see stars. He looked down at the amount of blood that was pooling in his car seat and then he took off his shirt.
He pulled off the undershirt beneath it and tied it tightly around the wound. That slowed the bleeding down, but it wasn’t enough to make it stop. Not even close. Five minutes later and Walker felt like he had to stop the car. If he kept driving, then he would pass out and have an accident. He could hear the sirens coming in the distance… They were close, he thought. He considered the possibility, however, that he was having an auditory hallucination. After all, he was closer to death than he had ever been in his life.
The road was getting dark. Was it that time of day, or was his vision fading?
Walker took a breath and felt cold. The loss of blood made him that way, and it didn’t help that it was sticking against his legs and ass as he slowly moved his head down and against the wheel. He was going to take a nap, that was all. Then he would feel better…
The lights came into view up ahead, red and blue. They were coming fast up the winding hill toward Walker’s car, but he didn’t see them. He was awake, but his eyes were closed. Everything was getting silent, and he couldn’t even hear the sounds.
When his door was forced open moments later and he fell into the arms of the paramedic, they rushed him onto a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance. Cop cars flew past them, lights blazing ferociously as the sirens blared.
Walker saw and heard none of it. He was in a deep, dreamless state of sleep, bleeding out from his wounds.
Chapter Seventeen
The master was thoroughly unimpressive to Logan Stone. He sat there, hands bound, sitting cross-legged as he watched the master wandering through the makeshift camp, barking orders and waving his hands this way and that way. Then he watched as the master entered a larger hut about a hundred yards away and disappeared into it.
Logan was close to Walsh, but not close enough to talk quietly. He glanced back at her and barely noticed her arms moving.
“What are you doing?” He asked.
“You can tell?”
“Shit. You’ve got a blade? Don’t let anyone else see. If I noticed, then that means they can too. You closed to finished with that thing? I could sure use it.”
“Got the knife in my hands. I think… Logan, I think I’m almost through the rope.”
Then a loud scream filled the misty air and they looked ahead at the hut in the distance as the master emerged from it, dragging something in his arms. It was a body, but whether it was alive was a different story. The master dropped it onto the ground and then stooped over for dramatic effect and cupped his knees with his hands, breathing hard.
“Someone bring him to the fire,” the man said through wheezing breaths.
One of the cloak wearing grunts picked up the body and started dragging it toward Logan and Walsh. Remnants of a small campfire were about ten feet in front of them, and when the grunt reached the spot, he dropped the body over it and pulled out a book of matches.
“Not yet,” the master slithered. “We’ll do them all at once. And beforehand, I want to rehearse their deaths and then film it when we finally do it and send it to the news stations. The notoriety from this will send us into oblivion. They will speak of us from Timbuktu to Manhattan island, from Alabama to China.”
“Rehearse our deaths?” Walsh spat at the barren firepit.
The master looked down at her. A cold smile filled his face.
“Yes. So that way it will be perfect. And so you will anticipate the real thing happening. It’s going to be lovely, making each of you rehearse repeatedly until we actually do it. Until we actually kill you.”
“Damn you,” the man on the ground said, pulling himself up and moaning. It was then that Walsh and Logan realized that the man was Michael Jones. He looked pale and sickly, and neither of them cared very much. Logan didn’t care at all.
“Well, here we all are,” said the master, and then glanced at the grunt who stood beside him. “Now bring me the women.”
/> The grunt nodded and left for a moment. The master leaned down and grabbed Jones by the neck. “It comes full circle. The man who hires another man to murder his own wife then gets to be murdered in front of his daughter after she finds out what daddy did… After she finds out how cowardly of a man he has been.”
“You bastard,” Jones said, eyes glazing over. He didn’t even seem to realize or register the fact that Logan and Walsh were sitting before him.
He was too far gone, doped up on something and dying. He’d lost far too much blood on top of that to live for much longer.
The grunt returned with a small group. Five men in cloaks like himself, wearing hoods, and two women. One of the women was Brianne Jones. She had her hands tied before her. She was crying as she stared at her dad on the ground.
The other woman was Isabella Weir, but neither Logan or Walsh knew that.
She looked perhaps worse off than Brianne, despite having been a fresh abductee. She had only just arrived at the mountain an hour or so before Logan and Walsh had, and yet her clothes had already been removed, and her skin was bare except for what looked like a handmade white dress, filthy with mud. Her hair was sweaty and matted to her head. Her face was filthy with mud and streaming mascara that had dried in the shape of her tears.
“Help… Please,” she said, eyes wide and terrified.
One of the cloaked men nudged her in the back. Logan watched, helpless, waiting for the moment when Walsh would get her hands free. But what then?
Unbeknownst to him, Walsh had already been free for more than a minute. She kept the knife in her hands and kept her hands behind her back, in the same position they had been tied. She didn’t want anyone to realize she had cut the rope. She wanted to look like an obedient, bound prisoner. She was waiting for the right moment to make her move. With no gun and only a knife for a weapon, she wondered how she was going to get them out of this.
She remembered learning how to throw knives. She’d gotten pretty good at it, and although she hadn’t practiced in at least a year, she figured it wasn’t unlike riding a bicycle. If she learned to do it once, then it would come back quickly through muscle memory. She hoped.
Walsh grinned. She was tired of waiting. When the master spoke, it made her feel cold inside. But in another way, it warmed her heart, because she knew that it was almost time for her to burrow the blade in his throat and finally silence him.
“An announcement, my children,” he said in a patronizing voice, looking down at his grunts and then shifting his gaze to the prisoners. “A brief, if important announcement. Well, to make it short - I would like to recommend that you don’t feel hope for what is going to happen to you on this day. No, hope should not exist for you, and there is no point in feeling such a trivial thing,” he paused. “You’re not going to get out of this. You’re not going to escape. You’re going to die by my hand, and I’m going to laugh while I witness the life fading from you. My smiling face will be the last thing you see. What you should feel, rather than hope, is something else. You should feel dread. Dread for many reasons. For one; you’ll not be welcomed into charming afterlife when I end you. You will be welcomed into hell. You may wonder how I know this. I will attempt to explain. It’s quite simple. I have seen the afterlife. I escaped it more than once. That is all you need to know. You will not be so lucky, my children. Anticipate that,” he chuckled, almost choking on his own glee and self-satisfaction. “I am, as we all have learned, the sole and secret leader of humanity. I am the one who decides who lives on this earth and who goes from it. Now, fetch me my sword, my bow and arrow, and my dagger. Our prisoners will each get to experience the pain I inflict on them with all three of those pleasant weapons...”
Logan stared. He’d seen his fair share of insane people, but this guy took the cake. This guy was bat-shit insane, without any hope left for him. His sword, Logan thought, and then began to tense up. His damn sword? He didn’t want to die from being sliced down the center with a medieval weapon. No thanks. He started trying to twist out of his bonds and break free, but it wasn’t working. He needed the damn knife. He needed Walsh to hurry it up.
Four of the cloaked grunts had left. One remained, and he stooped down on his knees and listened carefully while the master faced him and whispered into his ear. Logan couldn’t stand to watch any more of the weirdness, so when Walsh quietly called his name he beamed back at her.
“Take – the -knife,” she said.
“What?” He whispered.
She nodded her head, eyes wide. Logan looked back at the master who was focusing all his attention on the grunt as they spoke. Then he turned around and saw that Walsh had tossed the knife to him. It was a foot behind him, and he quickly scooted back on the hard dirt until he felt the warm steel handle with his fingertips. He smiled.
He was able to grab it and pull it upside down so that the blade was facing up. Then he went to work, nice and fast, but careful not to drop it or move his arms too much. Any kind of obvious motion would have gotten him noticed, and he wanted nothing of the sort. He cut, and he thought, and he wondered about many things.
How long has this strange cult been going on?
He knew that it hadn’t sprung out of thin air and come to fruition last week. These guys must have been operating for a long time, maybe years, but probably under much more discretion than they were using now. For some reason, they had gone hog wild over the last week or so, with the bodies found at sea and all the deaths from San Feliz to Los Angeles. They had gotten hungry and gone overboard.
Why, Logan didn’t know. In the meantime, it didn’t really matter to him much. What mattered was the present. The questions could come later. The present was what could kill him. He thought it over silently as he cut and finally broke through the last bit of thread. His hands were free.
Brianne Jones and Isabella Weir were standing side to side, next to the grunt. They looked far too scared to even move. The master was still speaking into the ear of the grunt, and Logan knew it would be smartest to act when it was just the two of them, rather than wait for the other four to come back. He turned back to Walsh, shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
“Are you ready to go?” He asked.
She nodded. He nodded back.
“Let’s go,” she said. “On three… One, two, three.”
They lunged forward, Logan holding the knife, and jumped through the blackened fire fit. The grunt saw them coming first out of the corner of his right eye. It grew large and frightened, bulging in its socket. His mouth opened as he began to speak, to warn the master, but he didn’t need to, because the master then saw them before he even uttered a word.
He grabbed the grunt quickly, spinning backward on his heels, and held him there in front of his body as if he were to act as a human shield. At the same time, he began to scream for the others.
Brianne Jones and Isabella Weir started to run.
“Go toward the house,” Walsh screamed.
Then it happened in a matter of seconds. Logan reached them first. He was holding the knife and he slid it into the grunt’s stomach. Blood pooled out over his hand before he twisted the blade and then he finally pulled it from the open wound he had created. The man was screaming, “No,” as his cloak quickly turned red.
Logan went for the hands that clutched onto the grunt – the long, ugly, bony white fingers that belonged to the master himself… It was going to feel so good for Logan to slice those up… It was going to please him to hear the wailing that came from the sick throat of the master when he felt the blade slicing into him…
Logan’s expression never wavered. His eyes were blank and emotionless. His lips were pursed tight and his teeth were barred to prevent himself from biting off his own tongue in combative times such as this.
He rammed the sharp side of the blade against the master’s fingers and watched the as it cut through to the bone. Deafening screeching filled his ears. Then the master’s hands pulled away, allowing the grunt to fall dead onto t
he ground as he was released. The master stared down at his bloody fingers with a look of disbelief in his eyes. His hands were shaking.
“How?” He asked slowly, staring at the blood running down his bony arm from his fingers, and then up at Logan.
Walsh reached for the grunt who lay dead in a pool of his own blood. She grabbed his gun.
“Don’t move,” she said.
It took a lot of willpower for Logan not to plunge the knife right into the master’s heart. The man was dangerous, and he felt like the best option was killing him while they could. This was a sick, brainwashed cult, and none of them were going to go down easy, least of all the leader. He almost laughed when he tried to imagine the old man being a good boy and putting his hands behind his back for Walsh to cuff. That wasn’t going to happen. It never would. She should have known that.
The master’s eyes wide were. He looked as if he was in a state of shock. He nodded his head as his followers came into view from behind. They were holding guns, crossbows, and even the sword that the master had ordered them to bring.
“Do not fire, you may hit me,” the master yelled, sensing their presence.
They were about twenty feet away.
“You heard the man,” Logan said. “Put the weapons on the ground slowly and then get your hands up in the air.”
He felt amused at the words. It was useless to say. The orders went through one ear and out the other. They weren’t going to put anything down.
“Well,” the master said, having gotten over the dismay of having his fingers cut halfway off. “It looks as if the two of you are sitting ducks, does it not?”
He kicked at the ground and Logan remembered for the first time in a few minutes that Michael Jones was lying there. He looked down for a brief second and saw that he wasn’t breathing. The ground beneath him was caked in blood. He had finally bled out.