by Hunt, Jack
Denise hurried over and looked her up and down. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but I never joke, especially about taking the Lord’s name in vain.” Instantly she backhanded Erika across the face, then forcefully pushed her up against the staircase. Erika struggled but Zara punched her in the kidneys causing her to gasp. “Stop resisting.”
“Hey, get off her,” Nate said rising to his feet and trying to intervene, but he was quickly pulled back by Gus, pushed to the ground and Jesse and Gus zip tied him. Nate cried out “Help!” hoping someone would hear them.
“Shut up!” Gus said squeezing his head against the floor then looking at Denise.
“Denise, what are we doing here?”
“Gus, do I have to spell it out? Put them in the van. Let’s go before someone sees us.”
“Are you out of your mind? You want to bring the cops down on us?”
Denise didn’t bother to answer that. She had her own agenda.
“Gus. Put them in the van,” she said in a slow, demanding tone.
Erika kicked and resisted as hard as she could but it didn’t matter. They were strong-armed out of the house and thrown into the back of an old ’70s cream and green van that looked like the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo. In the back there was a dirty carpet that stank like piss, and several bottles of beer. Erika fell headfirst into the thick shag carpet and she felt her lips touch something wet. She grimaced as she rolled and kept kicking as they tried to close the double doors behind them.
That was when she saw another side to the woman. Denise pulled a large bowie knife from a sheath and grabbed Erika’s legs, forcing them down. “Girl, I will cut you up and scatter your pieces all over this fucking county if you don’t stop being a bitch.” For a woman who had a problem with Erika using the Lord’s name in vain, she had quite a mouth on her. “Now are you gonna play nice?”
Erika nodded and her two kids hopped in with them.
“What do you want to do with the mutt?”
“Ah leave it here.”
Denise hopped in the passenger side, slipped out of her sandals and put her feet on the dashboard. She looked around nervously. It was clear she hadn’t done this before. “C’mon, get this vehicle moving, Gus.”
The van roared to life and surged forward.
“You want to tell me where we’re taking them?”
“Back to our place.”
“Why?”
“Leverage, you idiot. Geesh, I sometimes wonder why I married you.”
He shook his head and gave the van gas, its muffler let out a guttural cough before it bounced out of the driveway and took off. Behind them Erika could hear Bailey barking and chasing after the van.
“That damn dog is going to draw attention.”
“Jesse, shoot the damn thing.”
“No!” Erika yelled but they didn’t listen. Jesse crawled towards the back of the van and pushed open one of the rear doors. Erika caught sight of Bailey pounding the ground, trying to catch up. Jesse raised his rifle and fired off a round, then another, fortunately because the vehicle and Bailey both were moving, neither shot hit her. Erika pulled back her legs and thrust them as hard as she could at Jesse’s back. As the van was still moving, as soon as she kicked him, he went flying out the rear.
“Mom,” Zara yelled. She smacked Erika in the gut with the butt of her gun.
“Oh you mutha,” Denise yelled. “Gus, stop the vehicle.”
The van swerved erratically and while Zara was beating on Erika, and Denise ran back to get her son, Nate shuffled his way to the end and hopped out trying to make a break for it. All chaos broke loose as Zara yelled to alert Gus and he slipped out the driver’s side and took off after Nate.
Several rounds were fired, and Erika heard a dog squeal. “No!” she yelled.
Within minutes Nate had been caught and brought back to the van. “Get off me, you asshole. When I get out of this restraint, I will fuck you up—” Gus struck him over the head and tossed him in. Unconscious, he lay still beside Erika. A few seconds later Denise returned with a bruised, and angry son. She slapped him around the back of the head and blamed him before crawling into the back with them, banging the doors closed. In the darkness of the van, Denise pulled her knife and loomed over Erika as the van took off.
The choice to stick around the hospital was kind of pointless. His father had nothing to say after their argument, and Corey was out cold, filled with pain meds. The doctor had said he would recover fully as the round had gone straight through his shoulder but he would probably be recovering for a while. They’d recommended he go home and check back later.
On his way out the door his father caught up with him.
“Look, um. About earlier,” he cleared his throat as if something was stuck in there. “I know I’ve been hard on you but at least now you can see why.”
Tyler scoffed. “If that’s your attempt at an apology, save it.”
“Tyler. Don’t go up to the mountains, Jude isn’t a good person to be around.”
“Yeah? And you are?” Tyler said over his shoulder as he walked out the front door.
“Tyler!”
But he didn’t respond or return. As he trudged back through the town that was still ablaze, his mind ran amok with questions, and pain from the past. Nine years away from Whitefish had given him distance and he thought that maybe things would be different but they weren’t, his father still had something to hold over his head. He looked at a fire consuming two buildings, and watched people frantically trying to use buckets of water to keep the business beside it from going up, but it was pointless. By morning it would be interesting to see how much damage had been done.
Residents and tourists walked aimlessly past him, their faces covered by black soot. None of them could have imagined it would get this bad but it had and this was only the tip of the iceberg. Walking down the streets with an AR-15 over his shoulder might have once given people reason for concern but now they were oblivious to it.
It took Tyler over two hours to walk back to Corey’s home in the north end on Woodland Star Circle. When he arrived, he was hungry, thirsty and exhausted — all he wanted to do was fill his belly and curl up inside a comfortable bed, but as soon as he rounded the corner into the driveway, his jaw went slack.
8
In between tall ponderosa pines, a few hundred yards away, Gabriel watched the whole thing play out though a set of night vision binoculars. He was positioned across the road in a neighbor’s home waiting for Corey to return. He brought a cigarette up to his lips and inhaled deeply, not removing his focus. He’d watched the group arrive in a van, and the scuffle that had taken place. He could have easily intervened, questioned them, hell, killed them all, but that wasn’t the goal and by the look of those who showed up, they weren’t his target. He took another drag, and blew gray smoke out the corner of his mouth. Not far from him on the ground were the homeowners’ bullet-ridden bodies. In the background the steady drone of a generator provided enough electricity for them to heat cans of food before settling in for the night. The sound of laughter, and conversation was a good sign. The group had been grumbling over the past few days — too much time spent on this man, and not enough in living it up. They were free. He understood. Five days in this hellish nightmare had started to take its toll. He’d promised them a good night’s rest, a belly of food and as much beer as they could down, but it was an empty promise just to keep them off his case while he turned the knife on Corey’s life.
It didn’t take long for them to push back now that all of them were armed. So, he figured the neighbor’s home would do and what a find it was. Stacked with food, a generator with plenty of gas, a nice selection of vintage wines and cases of beer. If they wanted, they could ride out the next couple of weeks there but he figured he would handle business first then move on to a different town, somewhere warm as winter was approaching and he didn’t like the idea of dealing with snow and the cold.
Before strangling Ter
ry’s wife, he’d managed to convince her to give him the address of Corey’s home in exchange for her children surviving. Of course, it was just a ploy but it worked. As soon as she told him, he went back on that promise, strangled her, then let Torres and Jericho loose on her kids. He’d never been one for youngsters and in some ways, he felt he was doing them a favor — growing up without a father and mother would have destroyed them, so killing them was a gift.
Torres walked over with a beer in hand. “Here.”
Gabriel glanced at him. “Ah, good man.”
He cracked it open and took a swig, then spat it out. “Warm beer?”
“What do you expect? Maybe if it had been winter, we could have left it outside but in this heat. Nope. But hey, it’s better than nothing.”
“You’re right, but the generator? Why wouldn’t this fool use the generator?”
“Probably only used it when he needed to cook food.”
“Crazy. Can’t stand warm beer.”
Torres took a seat beside him in a plush chair and peered out. “You mind?” he asked reaching for the binoculars. Gabriel handed them over and he sipped at the beer. “Ain’t no one over there.”
“There will be.”
He lowered the binos. “What are you playing at, Gabriel?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well the guys were saying, we could have stayed there, and waited.”
Gabriel raised his can. “And miss out on this warm beer?”
Torres laughed. “No, I mean perhaps those people knew where he was. If we could find that out, we could go in and kill and be on our way.”
“It doesn’t matter where he is. He’ll return. You saw the photo above the fireplace. He has a wife or girlfriend, and a kid on the way. They won’t stay away from home. And as for being on our way. The door is there if you want to leave. Like I told the rest of the boys, you want to go. Go.”
Gabriel had been a little concerned when he gave that speech a day earlier. He was sure one or two of them would want to walk but nope, people stuck with the devil they knew. The only one that wanted to leave was correctional officer Martin Lee, and they’d kept him on a short leash since the crash. The only reason he was keeping him alive was he felt indebted to him for releasing him from his restraints.
“If she shows. Will you kill her?”
“Haven’t decided,” he said before taking another swig.
“I’ve been chatting with the boys. They want to go out and wet their whistle.”
“It’s not a good time.”
“Gabriel, you can only keep them cooped up so long. These men have needs.”
“And I’m meeting them. The rest will have to wait.”
Torres snorted. “What they needed is now lying dead on the ground,” he said, looking over at a young female. He had to admit she was attractive but rape was one line he wouldn’t cross. For some of the other guys, it was what had got them locked up in the first place, but that was then, this was now and he was at the helm.
Gabriel didn’t respond to that as it would have only created another argument and he’d already put a gun to the head of one of the men that evening. The truth was the woman was dead because if she wasn’t, they would have taken her.
He took the binoculars back and peered through again. “Do me a favor, Torres. Have Lee come see me.”
Torres tossed his beer on the ground in frustration and walked away.
A minute or two later Lee walked over. “You wanted to see me?”
Gabriel gestured to the chair beside him. “Take a seat.”
He slumped down, with a look of frustration, perhaps boredom.
“You’ve had a number of opportunities to run. Why haven’t you?” Gabriel asked.
“Because you said you would let me go when we got to Whitefish.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I did.”
“I have a family.”
“You do?”
“I mean, parents, a brother and sister.”
“Ah. So, no Mrs. Lee waiting for you at home with a bun in the oven like our friend Corey.”
“Nope.” There was a long pause. “Look, I get why you want him dead because of your brother but I hate to point out the obvious. You’re free. Why not use that to your advantage and get far away from here before the lights come back up? Because if you’re still in the area, you know how it will end.”
“Lee, I have spent years and years inside prison doing what correctional officers like you tell me to do. Jump. How high? Go left. Go right. Eat now. Get up. Step outside. Come in. Open your mouth. Strip down.” He looked at him. “Do you really think I’m going to do what you want now?”
“I wasn’t meaning it like that. If you want to stay put and spend your time tracking down a man to inflict punishment on him for your brother’s death, be my guest but you’ll find disappointment.”
“Really? How so?”
“Hate consumes the cup it’s placed inside, just like acid.”
“Oh please. Don’t tell me you listen to all that self-motivating mumbo jumbo.”
“I don’t listen to any of it. I know from experience.”
“Yeah? A Chinese boy like you growing up in America. Tell me what kind of hate have you experienced that would make you want to kill another? And please don’t say racial hate.”
“My sister was raped, the man got away. I was studying in college at the time to become a correctional officer. I just wanted to go out and hunt him down. I was prepared to let go of my career and my life just so I could find this man.”
“And?”
“I decided it wasn’t worth it. Even if I found him and killed him, the only one that would suffer was me. It wouldn’t change what happened to my sister. She’d still have to wake up every day and live with the memory of that night but now she would have to deal with visiting me inside a prison. I couldn’t do that to her.”
“Yeah, well I don’t have a sister, a brother or even parents. We grew up in the foster system being bounced around from home to home, and…” He closed his eyes and thought back to every horrific experience that had been inflicted on him. Maybe that was why he wouldn’t allow another person to rape someone. Murder. That was different. That was justified in his mind. He opened his eyes. “When my brother died that was it.”
“I get it. I really do.” He breathed in deeply. “So you kill this guy and then what?”
“I haven’t thought about it to be honest,” Gabriel replied.
“Too consumed with finding him.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, are you going to let me go?”
“I still haven’t decided.”
There was silence as they sat there looking out.
“You know I could run.”
“You could and maybe you’d get away but there is that slim chance, isn’t there, Lee?” He didn’t need to spell it out.
Lee gritted his teeth and balled his hands. “I set you free on that plane. You owe me.”
Gabriel turned in his seat and gave him a stern look. “You’re right. You set us free but I was thinking about it, it was also you who locked us up every day.”
“I was doing my job.”
“And right now, I’m doing mine. When I say you can leave, you can leave, until then you are one of us.”
“I will never be one of you.”
“Do I need to remind you what you did to Ted Stevens on the plane?”
Lee shook his head. “He gave me no choice.”
Gabriel’s lip curled. “We always have a choice.”
Lee narrowed his eyes. “And yet here you are peering through binoculars for hours at a time just so you can satisfy vengeance. And you speak to me about having a choice? Fuck you.” Lee got up and walked away leaving Gabriel with his thoughts.
Tyler didn’t walk down that driveway. His gut instinct told him to back up and go back to the neighbor’s home farther down and cut through the back and observe the house from a distance. He adjusted the backpa
ck on his shoulder and cradled an AR-15 as he jogged up the driveway of another neighbor and ran at a crouch down the side of the house. Slipping through the trees he dropped to a knee just on the perimeter of his brother’s backyard. He brought the night vision scope up to his eye and scanned.
Nothing.
No movement.
No sound.
Five minutes turned into ten before he burst out of the bushes and ran towards the rear of the home. He couldn’t believe the amount of damage. If the power grid ever did come up again, it would cost Corey thousands, then again, at least his home hadn’t gone up in flames like many of the others in town. Tyler entered the back of the home moving cautiously through the mud room, past the kitchen and into the corridor. As soon as he entered, a dark mass came trotting over to him wagging a tail.
“Bailey?” He crouched down and the dog licked his face and whined. “Where’s Erika, girl?” He looked up and took in the aftermath. His stomach sank. What if they were dead? He’d sent them on without him. What if they had walked into a trap? It would explain why the house was in a mess. “Stay. Stay here,” he said to Bailey as he pressed on and went upstairs. He stayed low and avoided windows just in case anyone was watching. With every room he cleared he felt a renewed sense of hope. Maybe they made it out, and Bailey had got lost? No, that dog stuck with Erika wherever she went. And she wouldn’t leave her behind. The last room he entered was the baby room. He looked at the words on the wall. This is just the beginning. What the hell?
He wanted to call out their names but he had a sense he was being watched. It was an eerie feeling. Turning, he made his way down and motioned for Bailey to follow him out the back. It was late, he was tired and he knew that whoever had done that probably wouldn’t be back until the morning if at all. There wasn’t much he could do and walking another two hours back to the hospital just to alert his brother wouldn’t have helped. No, he needed to handle this. Concerned but exhausted, he went to the far end of the yard to a shed that was almost hidden by overhanging branches. It was metal. Small. Nothing fancy. Corey used it to store his lawn equipment, and it was a spot he said he frequented when Ella had PMS. He opened the doors. Inside was a lawn mower, rakes, a leaf blower, bags of soil and a workbench with tools.