Masters of Mayhem

by Franklin Horton

  The girl dropped to her knees. Conor stood over her, gun levelled. “How many more are there?”

  She was in shock, staring at the sunken puddle of gore in her friend’s face. Blood filled and overran it, streaking his neck and face. She reached out to touch him, to stroke his face, but could not find a part not already splattered with his blood.

  “Are there more?” Conor demanded, raising his voice and nudging her with his foot.

  She looked at him and shook her head. “That’s all.” Her voice was unnaturally calm, disconnected from the violence and chaos of her surroundings.

  Conor let his rifle hang from its sling while he flex-cuffed the girl. “I’m checking the rest of the house. You move, you try anything, and you’ll end up like the rest of them.”

  Conor searched the closets and under the bed, then went through the rest of the house until he was satisfied it was empty. It was a small house, built in a day when closets were shallow affairs only intended to hold a few meager changes of clothing. There were few places where one might hide. There wasn’t much to be found in the house except for dirty clothing, garbage, and objects that looked so out of place he assumed them to be stolen. When he was done, he returned to the young woman. He slipped the heavy Donnie Dunn knife from its sheath and cut the cuffs loose.

  “Pastor White came with us. You know him?”

  The girl nodded. “My mama goes to his church.”

  “We came for the girl you all kidnapped but we’re taking you back to your mother. How could you hang with trash like this, robbing and killing decent folks? How could you let them treat a girl like that, chaining her like a dog out in the cold?”

  The girl looked back at him, her eyes wide with surprise. “They didn’t treat me much better than that. What was I supposed to say?”

  “You could have left.”

  “And go where? Back to Pastor White’s church? They ain’t just like regular people going to church on Sunday. Those people live and breathe that church. It’s all they do. It’s like some crazy cult you see in the movies.”

  Conor shrugged. “You can stay or you can go. It’s nothing to me. Like I said, I came for the girl. She’ll be needing shoes, a jacket, and a blanket. You get them while I search for the keys to that chain.”

  “Tim,” she said. “The guy on the couch. He had them.”

  Conor set off in that direction, finding the keys in the blood-soaked pocket of the red-haired dead guy. “Got the stuff I asked for?” Conor yelled back through the house.

  The girl came struggling up the hallway, her arms laden with a sleeping bag, a pink fleece jacket, and a fashionable pair of slip-on fur boots.

  “Take them outside,” Conor said.

  The girl did as instructed. When she was gone, Conor made a cursory pass through the house. He found a vile pillowcase with a greasy head print on it and dumped what ammunition he found inside it. He cleared any handguns he found and dumped them in his loot sack. He piled the hunting rifles he found into a clear spot in the living room. He’d leave those for the pastor’s folks. They could bury the dead if they were so inclined and confiscate the rifles for their troubles.

  Conor took two shotguns and a low-end AR-15 that he could use for parts, sticking them in the sack and knotting the open end around the protruding barrels. He left the decrepit house and found Barb supervising while the young woman helped Sam get dressed. Pastor White watched from the safety of the road, tenderly probing his damaged jaw and looking even more embittered than he’d looked just before Barb knocked his ass out.

  Conor slung the sack of gear over his shoulder, descended the porch, and joined his daughter. “Where are the horses you stole?” he said to Sister Betty’s daughter.

  “Around back. There’s an old barn.”

  Conor warily circled the house and returned several minutes later with a half-dozen horses who were still saddled.

  “You ain’t taking all of them, are you?” the girl asked. “How are we getting back to the church?”

  “It’s not far. You can walk,” Conor said. He shot Barb a look. “Besides, I don’t want to have to take Pastor White back to his church and fight off his congregation. When they see his condition they’re liable to attack us.”

  “I’m not scared of them. We can take them,” Barb insisted.

  “We don’t need to take them,” Conor said. “We need them alive and securing this valley.”

  Barb frowned. “You may have a problem there. Could be some hard feelings over the broken jaw. You might have to try again later.”

  Conor gave his daughter a withering stare as she expressed exactly what he’d been trying to tell her. There would be hard feelings. Of course he would have to wait now. Neither of those were good things.

  “Looting the dead?” came a slightly-garbled comment from the approaching pastor. “Are the ghoul and his daughter plucking trinkets from the corpses? Can’t say I’m surprised.”

  Conor was preparing an answer when Barb spun on the man. “You haven’t had enough of me yet? You want to taste my boot again? I can be a nasty bitch, preacher. Trust me, you don’t want to see how nasty.”

  Conor intervened to try to keep things from getting ugly again. “There are guns in the living room, pastor. You and your people are welcome to those. You can bury the dead or burn the house, makes no difference to me. You’ll have to walk back to the church. We’re returning these horses to their owner.”

  “Suits me fine,” Pastor White said. “I prefer not to ride alongside Satan’s minions, anyway. I’ve had my fill of the ‘justice’ you and your foul daughter dispense upon the land.”

  Barb whipped out a knife and took a step toward the pastor. “That’s four,” she hissed. “Nobody has ever got to four.”

  “Barb!”

  She spun toward her father, her eyes alight with a simmering fury.

  “Help Sam. Take the horses,” Conor said. “Saddle up.”

  Barb sheathed her knife and reluctantly took Sam by the arm, leading her away. When she passed Pastor White, Barb shouldered him out of the way and burned him with a look that might haunt the pastor for years to come.

  Conor stepped over to Pastor White and leaned close. “I tried to stay out of the fuss between you and my daughter. She can be hot-headed, especially when she’s being disrespected.”

  “She—”

  “No,” Conor said, interrupting the man. “You don’t talk to her or about her ever again. You ever refer to her by any unflattering term or in any demeaning manner again and you’ll suffer. I’ll cut out your tongue and blind you. You’ll be forever dependent on the charity and goodwill of others. You won’t be able to manipulate with your tongue, and you won’t be able to cast judgment with your eyes.”

  “I’m not scared of you,” the pastor slurred with some difficulty.

  Conor shrugged as if the comment was immaterial. “Then you’ll sit easier for the cutting.” The two men stared at each other for a long moment before the pastor looked away, turning his broken jaw up at Conor.

  Conor left the pastor with Sister Betty’s daughter and took the reins of his horse from Barb. “We’ll cross the river and keep it between us and the church,” he said. “Maybe they won’t notice our passing.”

  Barb merely nodded at him, apparently having said all she cared to say. Sam sat on her own horse, looking frail and exhausted. Conor swung into his saddle and they rode off.

  It would be some time before they crossed paths with Pastor White again. Sister Betty was so overjoyed at the return of her daughter that it helped soothe some of the Pastor’s anger over his injuries. When the more hot-headed men of his congregation were ready to ride off in pursuit of Barb and Conor, determined to settle the score, the pastor dissuaded them.

  “You’ll all die,” he warned them. “If you leave, you won’t return. Your bodies will not be found and your bones will never have a Christian burial. Let it be. If we’re to work with this man or smite him, only time will tell.”

&n
bsp; 22

  It was late morning when Conor, Barb, and Sam reached Johnny’s house again. This time the mission had been a success. Instead of heading to the barn to care for the horses first, they rode directly toward the house after announcing themselves on the radio from a safe distance.

  “We got her,” Conor stated, answering the question before it was even asked.

  Sam slid off her horse and hit the ground running. She was under a full head of steam when her husband stepped onto the porch, Shannon and Doc Marty behind him. Jason pulled away from their supportive hands and stumbled down the steps. Conor could tell that stiffness was setting in from the beating he’d taken. He was moving slower, more carefully, but when he hit the ground he started running toward his wife. His arms were thrown out, his battered face contorted with both relief at his wife’s return and grief at all else that had taken place. He ran like a hurt child, knowing that the faster he traveled, the faster the hurt would stop.

  When Sam and Jason met, they slowed, each afraid of hurting the other. Hands hovered tenderly around faces. They came together with a heartbreaking delicacy, finding a gradual confidence that they could increase the intensity of their embrace without killing each other.

  Conor and Barb had stopped to watch, not wanting to intrude on the reunion.

  “Kind of gets to you a little, doesn’t it?” Conor said to his daughter.

  Barb rolled her eyes. “You’ve seen one Lifetime movie, you’ve seen them all.”

  Conor gestured at Jason and Sam. “Where’s your heart, my child? Tell me, can you not appreciate the emotion of that? The discovery that the person you loved more than anything had been returned to you from a certain grave?”

  “You’re being a bit dramatic, aren’t you?”

  “You’re being a bit cold,” Conor replied. “Is that chest of yours hollow? Are you like the Grinch with some little bitty kitten-sized heart in there?”

  “You told me once that the heart is the most useless chunk of gristle in a human carcass.”

  “I did?”

  “Yep.”

  “I must have been in an especially shitty mood that day.”

  Barb nudged her horse and peeled off toward the barn. “I’m too tired to stand around for another of your where did I go wrong speeches. Let’s lose the horses and catch some sleep.”

  “Roger that,” Conor agreed, falling in behind her. The stimulant he’d taken earlier was starting to wear off. Had he still been in the shit, he could have taken more but it seemed pointless now. He just had to stow his horse and carry his crap inside. Surely he could manage that.

  Inside the barn, he and Barb worked in silence, too tired to talk anymore. With the adrenaline ebbing, they were dead on their feet. While Barb fed the horses, Conor cleared their weapons, emptying chambers and making sure there were full mags inserted. When everything was done, they piled their gear on their bodies—Go Bags, weapons, armor, NVDs with helmets, everything—and slogged out of the barn.

  Shannon and Doc Marty were coming toward them and took some of their burden.

  “I cleaned Jason’s mom up and wrapped her in a sheet,” Doc Marty said. “I laid her out on that long coffee table until we could bury her. Jason and Sam are paying their respects now.”

  “I’ll help you dig the hole,” Conor said, “but I’ve got to have me some shut-eye first. I’m so tired I could puke.”

  “God, I hate that feeling,” Doc Marty said.

  “The sooner we get to the house, the sooner we can get to sleep,” Barb announced, determined to avoid any conversation that delayed her getting to sleep. “So quit mucking about.”

  Taking the lead, she charged off toward the house. Shannon ran and caught up with her since she was carrying part of Barb’s gear.

  “How’d it go?” the doc asked.

  “We got Sam back.”

  “I noticed as much,” Doc Marty said. “Was it that easy?”

  “I killed three men, one woman, released a second prisoner, and Barb broke a pastor’s jaw.”

  Doc Marty nodded. “That’s more along the lines of what I expected to hear. Was it hairy?”

  Conor shook his head. “No worse than any other door you kick in. You just never know what’s on the other side of it. The preacher business was the worst.”

  “How’d that even happen?”

  “After what Jason said about who took his wife, we went to the church and asked if anyone knew where to find those folks. They did but the pastor insisted on going with us to bring home the daughter of one Sister Betty, a member of his congregation. I’m not sure the daughter was a prisoner but she was definitely a subordinate. One of the men I killed tried to use her as a human shield.”

  “How’d that work for him?”

  “It didn’t.”

  “So how did the pastor get his jaw broken?”

  “He seemed to have an attitude about women. It didn’t sit well with Barb so the two of them kept butting heads. She gave him three chances and he failed to grasp the gravity of the situation.”

  “So he’s wearing his lower jaw as a hat now?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “She that good?”

  “She’s bloody dangerous,” Conor admitted. “I started her in martial arts at four years old. She can grapple with anyone. She’s like one of those Gracie’s in Brazilian Jujitsu. You think you’ve got them under control and the next thing you know you’re tapping out and hoping to God there’s no permanent damage.”

  “Good to know.”

  Conor gave Doc Marty the side-eye. “Why? You planning on pissing her off too?”

  “Absolutely not,” the doc replied. “But Shannon needs that kind of training. She’s got the basics. The Foreign Service trainings designed to keep Americans safe abroad, a little street safety and self-defense stuff designed for young women. Nothing serious.”

  “Barb can teach her,” Conor said. “You ask her tonight and she’ll have Shannon working out tomorrow.”

  “Good. I’ll do that.”

  The two men stopped and finished their conversation on the porch, trying to give Sam and Jason some quiet time to deal with the loss of his mother.

  “Before we go in, what’s the plan here?” Doc Marty asked.

  “What’s Johnny’s condition?”

  Doc shrugged. “He’ll make it. Eventually. He’ll be down for a while. He’ll need meds and monitoring.”

  “You think Jason and Sam can do it?”

  “With a little instruction, yes. I’d probably want to check on him once a day for a few days, then start cutting back.”

  “We can talk about it when I wake up,” Conor said. “But how about you plan on staying here another day? Shannon, Barb, and I will return to the compound. One of us will come escort you home the day after tomorrow.”

  “Escort?” Doc Marty replied with a look of disgust. “You think I need an escort?”

  “Until I see you in action yes,” Conor said. “You may be too rusty to fight. I don’t know. You kind of proved your worth today, despite not being a real doctor.” Conor let that hang in the air, wanting to get the maximum sting out of his insult, then he opened the door and went inside.

  As soon as the door was open, soft crying filtered outside.

  “Not a real doctor,” Doc Marty grumbled. “I am too.”

  23

  At night, the compound on the top of Jewell Ridge could be a spooky place. Ragus had never been there alone before. The place was so ridiculously big, with its acreage and array of buildings, that he was often working away from Conor and Barb, although he always knew they were there somewhere. Now there was no one there but him. He didn’t even know where the other folks were exactly. It was the most alone he’d felt since moving onto the property.

  He’d been left with no specific instructions other than to keep an eye on the place and to not go outside the fence. Ragus knew that a routine would distract him from boredom and from the spooked feeling he had. He could never tell Barb
about the feeling. She wouldn’t understand. She’d make fun of him and probably go out of her way to scare him when he least expected it. She was like that sometimes, a cold-hearted and mean-natured person. He’d overlooked those qualities earlier when he was so enamored with her, partly because they seemed inextricably tied to the qualities he most admired in her: her strength, her determination, and her ability to make decisions under pressure.

  With Shannon in the picture, so sweet and kind, the contrast made it difficult to imagine why he’d pursue Barb over Shannon. The only risk he could imagine in falling in love with Shannon was a broken heart. With Barb, one risked not only a broken heart but perhaps a broken arm, leg, or ribs as well. Shannon was normal. She was like the girls he’d gone to school with, though much more cultured and well-travelled. She was predictable and he understood her.

  Barb, not so much.

  Barb was like no one he’d ever met before. He’d only won her over in the most superficial way by pursuing her when she’d been kidnapped and helping lead Conor to her. He was still uncertain if he’d actually won her over or if she simply gave in and agreed to tolerate him since he’d risked his life for her. There was a lot of ground between tolerance and affection. Ragus wasn’t sure where he stood on that long, desolate stretch of ground.

  After Conor had so hastily fled with the girls earlier, Ragus had geared up in what Conor called his load-out. It was the collection of gear that was for his exclusive use when they were outside the walls. Besides a Go Bag, there was a ridiculously heavy plate carrier that slipped over his head and held armor. When he’d pointed out that Conor’s seemed lighter, Conor told him that his own armor was ceramic and the armor in Ragus’ vest was thick steel.

  “That carrier can’t be comfortable to wear all day,” Ragus said.

  “Ever worn a bullet?” Conor had asked.

  Point made.

  The plate carrier had a variety of pouches for ammo and a few tools. There was a flashlight, batteries, and a multi-tool. Besides the plate carrier, Ragus had a pistol belt with a holster, a knife, a water bottle, and magazine pouches. All the gear, combined with camo clothing and his own assigned weapons, had gone a long way toward making Ragus feel like he was part of the team.