I feel a flush of anger and a burning sensation in my chest. If that guard’s loaded his weapon with the same shit I’d dodged in Angola, then each of those bullets would have punched through the thin walls of the clinic. Any one of them could have just smashed through Mary. For a moment, I’m disappointed that I’d left my cache Glock behind, because if I’d had it, I’d have turned right then to gun that guard down in the streets. I don’t have the gun, though, which is probably a blessing. A pistol won’t match up well against a machine gun, especially if the former is being fired by me. With no choices, I keep running until I make it to the clinic then onwards to the door.
It’s unlocked and comes open when I slam into it at more or less full speed. My entry’s noisy, and for the second time today, I scare a hallway full of nurses as I scramble to a stop on the other side of the door. I close it behind me and dance away from it as fast as my bad leg will take me.
No one follows me through the door, and when I risk a peek through one of the windows lining the prefab building’s outer wall, I see one of the last things that I’d wanted to see. The guards are coming. Not a handfull, like I’d seen when checking the camp out with my scope, but dozens, converging on the building from every direction.
Seeing that many men show up, and do it so quickly, makes me realize something as my heart sinks. The number of people that I’m seeing outside is far far more than what’s needed to keep the peace in a camp this small. This is a trap, and one that I should have seen coming. I don’t know where the bastard who took Mary has been hiding them all, but I do know something else for sure.
Every one of these fuckers is coming for me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
My bag of tricks won’t hold that many people off. All I can do is find Mary and run.
I turn away from the windows and go deeper into the building. For a moment, a nurse walks towards me as if he’s going to say something, or even try to stop me. That ends when I reach down into my duffel bag and pull out a flash bang. The thing is (mostly) non-lethal, but apparently he doesn’t know that, because he raises his hands and backs up from me.
I brush past him and go through the door at his back, entering a cramped little room filled with a pair of movable hospital beds. One of them is empty. On the other is a girl with a bright yellow flower at her bedside.
She’s propped up in bed and holds a flower in one of her hands. One arm and both legs are bandaged in fabric, and I can see the weeping edge of a burn on the curve of her cheek. She’s awake, and despite all the commotion outside isn’t turned towards the window. She just sits there, open mouthed, staring at me.
Mary.
Hands shaking, I walk over to where she sits in the bed. I smile at her, my eyes wide and brimming with tears. She blinks when I come near, and soon the tears come to her eyes as well. She cries, clutching my hand even as I slip it out so I can brush back her hair and kiss the top of her head.
“I knew you’d find me.” She says. “God Robin, I just knew it.”
I close my eyes for a long moment, drinking in the smell of her hair and the sound of her voice. All day I’ve been shaking myself to pieces inside, trying to keep it together enough to do what needed to be done. I’ve bled for this, burned for this, and now I’ve found her. It’ll soon be over. We just have to get out of here first.
I hold my finger up to my lips and she nods back to me, her jaw clenching tight. I know that part of the tension on her face has to be from the pain - Lord knows I felt how badly a burn mark can sting. But I also know Mary, and with an escape from here in sight, she’ll be just as focused and determined to get through this as I am.
It only takes me a few seconds to find a wheelchair worth stealing tucked away in the room. I wheel it over to the side of Mary’s bed then come over to help her get into it. She’s already moving to help me as I do, and despite her burns, keeps quiet whenever I bump one of her bandaged limbs into the side of the bed or the railing of the chair.
Getting her settled in the chair without putting too much pressure on her bandages takes a little while, but we get it done. More importantly, we get it done quietly. Once Mary’s settled, I run over to one of the hallway windows to see the situation outside. What I see doesn’t please me, because what I see is nothing.
OK, that’s not true. The collection of tents lined up row by row and the handful of aid trucks parked outside of the clinic are all there, but the people are gone. When I’d entered the building, I’d been able to see at least a few civilians in view, though none of them seem to be hanging around now. The camp guards, the dozens that I’d seen surrounding my earlier are similarly gone, and that’s what worries me most of all.
Though I’ve been busy with Mary for a rushed minute or so, that’s not nearly enough time for that many people to clear out of the way. The lack of civilians makes sense, especially if they’d had some rough run-ins with the camp guards before. They’d have seen the men with big weapons flowing in, and would flee as far as they could to stay out of this mess.
The lack of guards, however, makes not one lick of sense. While I can imagine some of them pulling back to hide behind the concealment of the masses of tents nearby, at least some of them should have been in my view. The wind is blowing hard out there, making the tents shake enough that a wobble or two would eventually show a glimpse of a man hidden behind. The guards I’d seen coming are not hiding out there.
Or maybe they are, but are closer than I have expected.
If I was on their side and had to choose something to hide behind other than a tent, I’d get as close to the walls of the building as I could, so that someone peeking out from inside couldn’t see anything flattened on the side of the building without exposing themselves to the men hiding there.
I also think about the breaching charge I have packed in my own duffel bag. Getting close would also make sense if they’d had a few charges of their own to use against me. With one of them, they could press up close to one of the walls, blow a hole somewhere I won’t expect it, and flood in moments later to bury me with their sheer weight of bodies or just light me up with a machine gun while leaning out around the hole.
None of those options is something I can reliably deal with, and I realize that I’ll have to fall back on a decision I’d been avoiding. We’ll have to make a drop straight out of here. It’s closer to my arrival point than I’d like, but there’s still a chance, albeit a small one, we can make it through downstairs without being noticed. It’s not a safe bet, but it’s the least bad decision that I can think of with the time that we have. I start moving back towards Mary, ready to risk a drop and get her away.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I almost make it back to her when one of the guards outside takes the choice out of my hands by setting off a breaching charge fixed to one of the prefab building’s walls.
There’s a pressure. I don’t know how else to explain it. Not a noise, not even a bang, but an actual press that squeezes me right down to my bones. My inner ear goes haywire, and the next thing I know I’m blinking, writhing and choking on the dust that’s now filling the air. I don’t even realize that I’m laying on my back until I see the boots of a mercenary come to rest beside my face.
On the other side of the boot, I see another shape. All the crap in the air may have made my vision blurry, but I can tell that whatever the shape is has been broken and bent.
No.
The thought comes to me as I try to crawl towards the shape. The shape may be broken, but I’m going to stay strong. That’s what Mary needs from me. That’s what I need from me, if I’m going to get her out of this thing alive.
I come closer, but stop when something hard, maybe a boot, makes contact with the side of my head. The blow snaps my head to the side, and stars start to swim in front of my eyes.
“Stay down.” Says a voice that I recognize. I’m scared, but I can’t let him see it. I
have to stay strong. Show no weakness, for Mary.
“Hi Tom.” I say in the direction of the boot. I try to keep my voice light, and probably fail.
“Evening, Ms. Kohl. Thank you for getting my name right this time.”
“No problem.” I say. The stars in front of my eyes are starting to clear, so I try again to move to where I can get a better view of the shape behind Tom. I don’t know why I need to see it, but it seems like something Mary would want. My vision’s blurry, and it’s too far to see from here. If I could only get closer.
Another boot smacks into me, this time in my ribs. The kick is lighter, but still enough to drop me down from my knees. I sprawl out on the floor and groan.
“Just stay down, Ms. Kohl.” says Tom. “You don’t need to make this more difficult than it already is. It’ll be over soon enough. Our friend will be getting here soon.”
It was hard enough to breathe with all the dust in the air, and gets even worse with the pain now rolling through my chest after the kick. I still need to get closer to the shape. I need to be sure.
I try crawling again but Tom isn’t having it. His first stomp catches my bad leg, making me scream. The second comes my way, but by some miracle I get a sense of it coming, and manage to scoot forward enough for it to hit nothing.
Tom shifts position to keep up with me, moving to my side before rearing his leg back for another kick at my side. I don’t try to defend against it, because I’ve already gotten what I need - a clear view of the shape. The shape of Mary.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
No.
Another boot, this one cracking my ribs. Pain.
No.
Still another aimed at the bad leg again. More pain, along with something else.
No.
Muted voices, growing close all around me. Some of them asking where the garbage bags are, the others telling me to stop moving or freeze. I feel rough hands in my hair and a tug as someone lifts my head high enough for a blade to come close to my throat. The movement gives me another clear view of Mary. Not breathing. A broken, lonely thing.
No.
I reach up with one hand before the knife can touch flesh. I don’t know who I’m reaching for. I just grab hard onto a shirt sleeve, and reach for my lighter with my other hand.
The drop takes us down into the heat of the pit. Someone’s screaming, not me, and I don’t bother looking to see who.
I just let go, and leave the shouting behind me in the pit.
The next instant, I land back inside of the clinic. My vision’s still blurry, but there’s a shape in front of me, one that’s standing man high.
None of the things in the room are people to me anymore. They’re just shapes. Less than that, so I grab the nearest one and drop down through downstairs again. I let the shape go and don’t listen when it screams. I return. Grab another one. Repeat. Repeat.
I don’t know how many I grab hold of and leave behind in the deeps. All I know is that I don’t stop until I get to the last shape. The one I catch stumbling back towards the hole in the wall. The one with a voice that I know too damn well.
“Hi Tom.” I say, flicking my lighter again.
The fire downstairs is still blazing, but I barely feel its heat. Tom opens his mouth to say something to me, or maybe to scream.
“Bye Tom.” I say as I let go of him downstairs. In the distance, coming closer, I can see other shapes. Shapes with wings and smiles and char shifting flesh.
I leave them all there behind me, and return to the clinic. It’s empty save for the girl with the flower, the shape of Mary, and me.
I walk over to Mary and lay a hand on her head.
“We’re going home.” I tell her.
She doesn’t answer me.
“We’re going home.” I say again, and then we leave.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ole Beeze finds me in my ruined kitchen a few hours later. I’ve been drinking, and barely notice when he takes a seat.
“You look like shit.” he says, handing me another beer. I take it, wishing I’d had something stronger in the house to take the edge off what I’ve …
No.
I down the bottle in one go, gag a little, and spit bile on the floor. Ole Beeze squints his eyes and me from the other side of the kitchen island. I take out another beer. Finally he speaks.
“”You can’t expect me to accept payment like this, little imp. Your end of the deal was three years of use. In the state you’re in, I’ll waste at least two of them waiting for you to heal.”
He reaches out and takes what’s left of the bottle out of my hands.
“And I can’t wear you if you die of alcohol poisoning.”
I ignore him, laying my head down on the island. My head hurts but my ribs are killing me. Even the burns on my arm and leg seem like bug bites in comparison. The world sways around me but nothing goes dark. God what I’d give for the world to go dark.
God. Why didn’t that bastard just kill me? At least then I wouldn’t have to see it. But I did see it. I saw exactly what those fuckers had done to Mary because Tom didn’t just want to kill me. He was waiting for someone. Someone who was coming for me.
“Why didn’t he just kill me?” I say the words out loud this time. Why not? Maybe god will hear and answer me.
God doesn’t answer. There’s only Ole Beeze.
“Excuse me?” he says.
I turn towards him, my head spinning as I do.
“When I was down on the ground after Tom Angler’s men made their breach. They had guns, I was defenseless, but they didn’t kill me.”
Ole Beeze is silent for a while, his face scrunched up, as if in concentration. Eventually he shrugs.
“Inexperience?” he says. “Panic? Not many can keep as cool a head as you. There’s a reason you’ve lived this long, after all.”
I lay there awhile, thinking about that. Thinking about my contacts, all dead within hours after taking my calls. Thinking about Mary, and how quickly she’d been taken after I’d turned down Tom Angler’s job offer. All of that took coordination and skill, but what followed the breach was an amateur move. It doesn’t fit.
“Bullshit.” I say. “His people were too good for that. One of them should have shot me. The only reason not to is if he’d ordered them not to.”
“Not everyone’s like you, little imp.” he repeats.
I think on that again, and realize that Ole Beeze is right.
“Yeah.” I say. “Most of them die. All of them, except for me.”
“Except for you.”
I hear an edge in his voice, one that I’d bumped into once earlier today. The last time I’d heard it was when I’d insulted him by mistake. I’d cowered, then, but I won’t be doing that now. Not after the day that I’ve had. Not after all that I’ve lost.
I leave my chair and am just sober enough to stagger to my feet. I walk over and get right into the face of my old mentor.
“I’m not afraid of you, Beeze.” I say. “If you take that tone with me, you can just go get the hell out of my house.”
“Enough.” Says Ole Beeze, rolling his eyes. “This game tires me. It’s enough.”
“Fuck you.” I snarl. Spittle arcs from my lips when I speak, spraying the stolen face of the woman he’s wearing.
Ole Beeze lifts a hand to his face and wipes the saliva away.
“First rule of an agreement,” he says, looking at his hand, “I can’t kill you.”
“No, you can’t.” I say, and am surprised to find that I sound disappointed. I think some idiotic part of me wanted him to get angry. Strike me down. Make all of this go away.
“It’s a shame that I can’t, really.” he continues. “After all that you’ve cost me, it would have been cheaper to do it myself.”
“Cost you?” I ask. “I paid you back a long
time ago.”
“You paid for your bargain.” he says. “That’s not the same thing.”
He snorts.
“Your kind gets their power from me. Holds onto it, keeping it from me, until nature takes its course.”
Ole Beeze walks over to the wall of the kitchen and touches one of the bullet holes.
“It gets tiring, little imp. The constant feeling of a piece that’s missing. A piece that’s far more than any of you ape-dogs deserve.” He sighs. “Besides, I hate waiting to go places. When you get to be half as old as me, even limos and first class get boring.”
My mind is sluggish, but the pieces from the day are starting to make sense.
“That’s why Tom didn’t finish me. He was waiting for you to come over. For you to see.”
“I told him not to.” Ole Beeze says with a sigh. “It would have been better if he’d just done it at the table in the Philippines. But I suppose he was old fashioned in his own way. If a man gives you his patronage in exchange for a thing, it’s only polite to show him what he’s purchased in person.”
I shiver.
“What did you pay him?”
“Power. Influence. Apparently not enough.”
Ole Beeze shrugs and starts walking in my direction. I try to back up, but Ole Beeze lifts a single finger, and I feel a shock as my limbs lock together in place. I try to struggle, but nothing happens. I don’t move. I barely breathe.
Ole Beeze draws even closer.
“The one bright side, at least, is that you killing him has returned at least some power to me. Nothing that I miss as much as you’ve tied up, but still a thing worth appreciating.”
Ole Beeze comes to a stop within arms reach of me. I still can’t move, or scream, or smack the smug fucking expression off his face.
I try and say something and realize that I can talk, though only barely.
“You. Can’t. Kill. Me.” With how much I’ve been drinking, I’m not surprised when the words come out slurred. I am surprised, however, when I realize how unsure I am. How much I fear I don’t know.
The Brimstone Series Page 8