The Winter Man

by Perry Bhandal

  Erovan stared impassively at the dead two women who had been pleasuring him just moments earlier.

  Blake stepped forward and pressed the Sig muzzle hard into his temple, burning a ring into his skin.

  ‘You’re going to give me something.’

  ‘I have money.’

  ‘I don’t want your fucking money.’

  ‘Information then.’

  ‘What information?’

  ‘Files, access codes, things you can use.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘No, not bullshit. Real. Information. Drops, safe-houses, manifests, delivery schedules, customers. All here.’

  ‘Why.’

  ‘Trade for my life. What other reason. Shall we?’

  Erovan turned his head, the Sig muzzle still pressed against it. He looked up at Blake the muzzle dead centre in his forehead.

  ‘You are a man of honour. If you give me your word, you will not kill me.’

  Blake shook his head.

  ‘You fucking people. Yeah, you have my word. If the info’s good, I’ll let you live. Happy?’

  Blake stepped back. Erovan stood. He raised his injured hand towards the door.

  ‘Shall we?’

  The guard with his jaw shot off struggled up. He staggered across the yard toward the building.

  The opulence reached as far as a pair of double doors at the end of a wide corridor past the rooms and the audio-visual suite. Beyond that lay a utilitarian vestibule. Another heavier set of doors sat closed beyond, single translucent panes in each. Erovan pushed them open into a vast high ceilinged space.

  Rows of tables and chairs took up one half of the space. At the far end, what looked like a long kitchen and serving bar. The other end was dominated by two dark flatscreens. The walls were bare punctuated by open doors that lead into various sized rooms and a dormitory. It looked like the prison it was.

  Erovan Ryakorum made his way across the hall and stopped outside one of the darker rooms. He rested on the edge of one of the tables cradling his bleeding hand, the formica edge of the table pressed into his buttocks, the colour rising in response to the pressure. The rest of his skin had taken on a pale, sweaty sheen. The blood loss and pain seemed to be beginning to take its toll.

  Blake slowly took in the abomination before him. Behind his impassive face lay emptiness. He could not feel anything. The sight before him lay inaccessible, like a glassed off exhibit. Picture it differently; it looked like any normal school classroom, dormitory, canteen. He found himself unable to engage with it. He understood the purpose of what he saw laid out before him. He grasped the depth of the cold perversion that had been perpetrated in its construction. He could decipher the insidiousness of the coercion and the utter ruthlessness of the manipulation articulated in its purpose. But still it remained flat, unattainable, distant.

  He had failed them. They had taken the children and he had stood by and watched it happen. Now he had only the promise of information. A promise he considered worthless. Bullshit from a condemned man.

  ‘I expected you to be different.’

  ‘What?’ said Blake, turning slowly to face Erovan.

  ‘Bigger, more substantial somehow.’ Erovan shifted his bulk, a look of defiance on his face.

  ‘God must be with you, given how far you got. Either that or we were being unforgivably stupid. The general consensus was the former. He favours you.’

  ‘Enough talk. The files.’

  ‘You have become quite the assassin. Most men would have sought solace in the arms of our lord but not you.’

  ‘You talk of god in this place. Let me show you god.’

  Blake put a bullet in Ryakorum’s foot. His face and eyes screwed up with pain. He allowed only a small groan to escape. He brought it back under control. He looked up at Blake.

  ‘The power to cause pain. That’s the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.’

  ‘That sounds familiar. Tell me, Blake. Is there anything left of you in there or is it all Nathaniel Winter now?’

  The guard heard talking and staggered towards the sound. He stopped at the cantina door. Listening, he cocked his automatic.

  Ryakorum saw the movement behind the translucent panes. He looked away quickly.

  ‘Let me ask you something? God had bestowed you with Chicken Jack’s money. You could have taken it and made a new life for yourself. Instead you chose this.’

  ‘God didn’t bestow me with anything. And it wasn’t my choice. It was yours and men like you. You chose for me. The day you took my daughter.’

  ‘Most men would seek solace in the arms of God, but not you,’ he scoffed.

  ‘There’s no god. He’s an invention, created by bastards like you, to keep men on their knees when they should be up blowing your fucking heads off.’

  ‘Eloquently put. But you forget,’ Erovan gestured around. ‘This is god’s work. He created us. He created this. We are all his children, Blake. Even you.’

  Blake shook his head and took aim at Erovan’s knees.

  ‘You know we were meant to meet, Blake. It was inevitable. A path we chose before we descended. You know. The irony is I was one of the ones advocating just letting you carry on with your work.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘But the others felt it needed nipping in the bud as it were.’

  Blake was confused.

  ‘Your work, Blake, was deemed a threat to us. But we could hardly kill you without drawing attention to it.’

  Realisation dawned. Blake raised the Sig.

  ‘You killed my daughter to stop my work?’

  ‘Did the trick.’

  Behind him the door slammed open. A dark movement flickered in his peripheral vision. A pop, then something slammed into his shoulder whipping him around a full three sixty. He bounced off the table-top and to the floor onto his back.

  The table splintered where he had hit. His vision span, light swirled as he tried to orient himself.

  More movement as the guard re-oriented himself and Blake fired at the dark blur. It stopped dead, motionless for a moment as if hooked, then slid to the floor, firing once, punching a hole in the gas boiler, blowing it apart and throwing a plume of flame out across the kitchen.

  The table beside Blake came alive, rising up on its legs, its flat surface bearing down. He fired at it, punching four holes in it before it slammed into the Sig, twisting it in his grip, nearly breaking his wrist.

  He tried to deflect it with his other arm, but it wasn’t responding. The table toppled onto him, trapping him momentarily like some flailing insect finding itself under a foot.

  He scrambled back, kicking and thrashing himself free.

  As he cleared the edge he saw Erovan.

  He was standing, arms by his side, a look of utter disbelief on his face as he examined the four holes that pocked his enormous twin-slabbed chest. Blood seeped from each, four thin rivers of dark viscosity trailed down his torso and thighs.

  He shook his head as if loosing a fly and looked up. He seemed surprised to see Blake still moving.

  Without warning and seemingly unaffected by the bullet holes Erovan turned, bent down and picked up another table as if it were made of paper and raised it above his head.

  Blake aimed the Sig unsteadily and pumped the trigger.

  The muted sounds of the silenced automatic filled the air. The click of the trigger followed by a dull thud like a wet fist on a thick wall.

  More spots appeared on Erovan’s torso.

  Behind him tiny explosions on the white walls marked the misses. Some disappeared into the empty rooms beyond as the loss of blood from his shoulder took its toll on his grip and aim. The force of a single bullet from the Sig would have knocked a normal sized man off his feet, but such was Erovan’s bulk that each impact only forced a small step backwards.

  It looked comical. The small spots ap
pearing on his chest seemed to have no effect, like shooting at a bear with a BB gun, but Blake knew the kind of damage that was being inflicted. The bullets were Dum-Dums. Designed to deform on impact. There would be no clean entry or exit, the warped shapes would veer off in unpredictable directions, some would go up and across, cutting a ragged channel through organs, muscle, tissue, bouncing off bone, exiting somewhere completely unpredictable. Blake himself had seen one bullet enter a man’s shoulder and exit through his groin. He had been dead before he hit the ground. Intellectually he knew the damage being done to Erovan internally was horrendous but looking at him standing there, barely affected except for the small red dots it was hard to believe they were having much impact.

  Erovan’s face twitched once. He looked confused for a moment, then his eyes rolled up inside his head, the table slipped from his grasp, hit edge first onto the hard floor and then slapped top down with a hard thwack. He teetered for a moment and then fell straight back, his torso disappearing from view into one of the small dark rooms.

  The sound of the dry firing Sig penetrated and Blake willed his finger to stop pulling on the trigger.

  His left shoulder was an empty space to him. He could articulate his lower arm at the elbow and move his fingers but the rest was like a distant land.

  The flame from the gas boiler began to catch, sending smoke up into the high ceiling.

  Working as quickly as he could with shaking hands, he released the empty clip and let it fall onto the floor, he placed the gun down, pulled another clip from his pocket and held the Sig steady and slid a new clip in with his right.

  He got himself unsteadily to his feet at the third attempt, the Sig held out, leaving a worrying amount of blood on the floor.

  He half expected Erovan to have disappeared, but he was still where he had fallen, the soles of his feet poking out of the room. His senses alert for any movement, Blake switched the Sig into his blood sodden left hand and felt his left shoulder. He found the entry wound, a small hole the size of his thumb at the back of his shoulder. He couldn’t find an exit point. The bullet was still inside. The fact he was still walking meant the round hadn’t been a Dum Dum and was still lodged in his shoulder. Getting it out was not going to be easy.

  A fuzziness began to creep into the edge of his vision. The loss of blood and trauma to his shoulder almost guaranteed shock. It was unlikely he was going to make it back to the car that he had stolen in this condition. The last time he had been shot he had got lucky; he had been able to tie down the blood loss and the bullet had gone straight through. He could do neither now. But he was more prepared than he had been before.

  ‘First things first,’ whispered the darkness.

  Leaving a trail of blood behind him he stepped over to Erovan’s body. His open eyes glittered dully from the light spilling into the dark room. His torso was peppered with rounds. Blake counted nine. He was dead. Behind him the flame was building. He had better leave while he could.

  Something shifted in the corner of the room.

  Blake twisted and snapped off a shot into the dark. The silencer killed any muzzle flash but he dove down anyway, acutely aware that whoever was in there could not have been armed. Had they been, he would have been dead already.

  The sounds of laboured breathing drifted from the dark corner. It sounded wrong.

  Blake peered into the gloom, shifting his position to allow in more light and using his peripheral vision to compensate for his too slowly adjusting eyes.

  A small bundle of white resolved itself.

  The boy lay on the floor. Brown hair, thin, fair, chalk-white skin, seven or eight years old. He was dressed as an Angel. Snow white feathered wings lay flattened and bent underneath his pale painted body. An ornate cherub’s loincloth covered his genitals, tiny white slips sheathed his feet. The same as the painting of the cherub hung above Ryakorum’s bed.

  His eyes were wide with confusion and fear. His small chest rose in quick succession, each breath shallow and wheezing as if exhausted from hyperventilating.

  Blood streamed from a bullet hole in his chest, starkly dark against his pale white painted torso.

  Blake dropped to his knees.

  ‘No. No. No.’

  He moved to pull the child off the floor but stopped. He could not without causing him more damage. His hand shifted to the bullet wound but pulled back before touching it. His palms hovered powerlessly over the boy’s body.

  ‘Oh God, Oh Jesus Christ. Oh, No. No. No.’

  He held his shaking head in his hands as the boy’s features suddenly broke and he coughed up blood, speckling the white chalk makeup on his face with dark spots.

  His eyes rolled up. Blake bent and put his arm underneath him and lifted him.

  ‘No. Stay with me!’ he shouted. ‘Stay with me!’

  He pulled him close. He felt light and limp. His small bones fragile. His back was a mess, the exit wound was the size of a cue ball. The blood had soaked and matted the feather wings.

  The boy blinked back consciousness and searched Blake’s face. His lower lip began to quiver.

  ‘Daddy?’ he whispered, tears streaming down the side of his face as he strained weakly against him.

  Blake’s throat tightened, causing him to gag. He felt like he was going to throw up. He fought the reflex down, tears streaming down his face. The little boy twisted weakly as he began to fit. He clamped his hands over the two wounds. He could feel their fleshy writhing beneath his palms. He pressed harder desperately trying to stem the hot sticky warmth spilling from them.

  He couldn’t.

  It squeezed through the gaps in his grasp.

  He swallowed bile.

  A throb filled his head, beating at his skull, filling his ears.

  Eyelids fluttered, opened, closed, opened.

  Tiny wisps of breath fell uselessly against his neck.

  Small futile movements rocked the man as he cradled the boy in his arms. His head bowed, the child’s head held in his hand like the most precious thing in the world.

  The thin legs shook for a moment then lay still.

  Something left the room and a heart made glass cracked.

  Failure spread across the floor beneath like angel wings of red.

  An inhuman moan rose in the silence of the room, bestial, like the baying of dying animal. Blake raised his head to the sky and screamed. He squeezed the little boy’s dead body, head shaking like a madman, gasping ‘Please god no, please god no, please god no,’ over and over again.

  Beyond the room the flames had reached the tables and chairs and was moving fast. Flames began to appear at the entrance to the room illuminating his face. He considered just ending it here. Letting the fire take them both.

  He tried to pick the boy up but he found he was too weak. He pulled an adrenaline autoinjector from his pocket and punched the needle into his thigh with a gasp.

  He traced a line gently across the pale cheek of the little boy. It was as if he was sleeping.

  ‘Wake up,’ he whispered. He bent his head down and kissed him on the forehead. He smelt so clean.

  ‘Wake up.’

  The adrenaline kicked in properly and a new energy suffused his muscles. He lifted the boy, wrapping the blood soaked wings round his body, and carried him through the burning hall, through the white corridors and out of the building. He staggered past the treeline. Behind him a low burning glow grew beneath a thick column of smoke.

  He placed the dead boy gently on the soil. He started digging with his bare hands.

  The moon sat bright in the sky like a monochrome sun. Small beams of flat light filtered through the treetops. He placed the boy in the shallow grave. He folded the wings around him.

  Thick smoke roiled into the night sky. He toiled on his knees, spading the soil into the shallow grave with his hands. Finally he stood, silhouetted against the burning Wonderland, dripping bits of mud and leaves as if they were pieces of him and he was coming apart.

  He staggered
to his car, sat, unscrewed the silencer, chambered a round and pulled the hammer back. He placed it in his mouth, it felt cold, it tasted acrid. He closed his eyes, willing his finger to pull the trigger.

  When it would not, he dressed the wound as best he could, took another hit from the adrenaline auto injector to keep him going, started the car and drove into the night.

  CHAPTER 26

  josie dying...interviewing rivers...blake found...desert riders...time to heal...

  Josie lay in the dark staring out of the window at the night sky. Her phone was ringing. It was Rainer. Her jaw was shut tight, her teeth grinding. Silent tears streamed from her eyes.

  Kamal escorted a disheveled Dr Rivers onto their office floor. Rainer was seated at his desk, phone to his ear. It went to Josie’s voicemail. He put the phone down. Kamal showed Rivers in. Rivers brushed Kamal’s hand off his elbow.

  ‘Take a seat,’ said Rainer, without getting up.

  Rivers sat. Kamal leaned against the door.

  ‘Thank you for ruining my vacation. Though as a plus I do have empathy for inmates that have their doors smashed in and are dragged awake in the middle of the night,’ said Rivers folding his arms over his belly.

  ‘Sorry about that. Time is of the essence.’

  ‘What do you want, detective?’

  ‘You brought the file?’

  ‘What’s left of it.’

  Kamal handed Rainer the water damaged paper folder.

  Rainer opened it and started to leaf through the curled and warped sheets.

  ‘Tell me about him,’ he asked without looking up.

  ‘The man’s a fucking psycho.’

  ‘That your professional opinion?’ asked Rainer looking up briefly, wondering at the source of his venom.

  ‘What else do you call someone that breaks into a high security facility assaults five orderlies and then kills one of the inmates with his bare hands.’