by Will Mosley
Pavel's weapon fell silent, then clicked. That click, Cal knew after watching this inhuman being predict his thoughts, signaled the end of his best friend's life. He reached for his magazine, unclipped it from its holster and tossed it to him. “Pavel!” Cal shouted. Pavel reached for the clip, but the vapor of pale man snatched the magazine from the air – having had moved a distance of ten feet in a second – and smashed the metal into Pavel's temple, easily crushing that fragile bone. Though dazed, Pavel recovered and feebly fought back. Cal brought his weapon to bear – head shot. He fired twice, three times, the man quickly nodded forward, then turned his face to Cal, allowing the rounds to pass within inches. He then wrapped Pavel in the crook of his elbow and moved into the darkness. The fourth shot slammed into unseen bodies and Cal searched the dark for his bounty. With the flashlight between his lips, Cal tried following the blur of human, but he had already known where Cal would search, and his flashlight burned against the walls, floated atop mounds of the dead.
“Let'em go!” Cal yelled to the basement.
“Make me.” The voice grumbled.
“Don't make me do this –,”
In the void, near him – maybe not – Cal heard the whizzing of a zipper, then gargling, then a body collapsed. Fuck me! His mind raced. He swung the beam to Patrick's corpse and the knife was now missing from his face. Fuck me!
Laughter, menacingly torturous echoed, and an object half the weight of a bowling ball slammed into Cal's stomach. He took the blow as his air was ripped from him, but wouldn't take his hands from his weapon to catch it. Instead, he listened to where it landed and turned the light to it. A head, newly removed from its body with loose, jagged skin for a neck, laid on its ear. Suddenly, the heads accusative Russian eyes, in a last effort, turned to Cal. The lips of the head splayed in a silent gasp. Dammit Pavel! You idiot! He mentally scolded his old friend as moisture welled up at his tear ducts. Instantly the beam turned to the darkness. Love for his friend would not allow for an emotional response – not now – and hate at this man who seemed to be made of liquid, that he wouldn't be able to kill, writhed, curled his lips into thin daggers, his eyes into spotlights.
“Who are you?” Cal asked, anxiously listening for movement, his senses like electrified antennas.
“Who? Does it matter?”
“No.”
“Then, let's get this over with –,” Movement. Sliding shoes approaching... closer... from the right, he turned. No! Other right! Cal sent two rounds into the night over his right shoulder. Scurrying away... planning... watching me, but from where?
A knife whispered through the air and a fey scratch ignited into flames and ran the course of his arm. His teeth clinched in a soundless grimace, feeling the slice of the blade almost as quickly as the man passed him. Following the scrambling sound, he swiveled, the beam of light a second behind his gaze, and fired two stray rounds that crunched into the cement block wall.
“You think too much, bro,” the voice said.
“Fuck you.”
“You ain't gone catch me if you don't know your right from your right... from your other right.” The voice laughed again and, in that moment, Cal knew.
“What are you? How are you doing this?”
“Just a dude... like you. I got fucked by Heady... just like you're gonna get fucked.”
Fucked by Heady? He knows Heather Luzader? The question spawned a series of new, more engaging questions within him since both men now had something in common, but impossibly quick footsteps rushed him, his mental inquest thwarted. The phantoms feet had the cadence of a typewriter. Cal angled the flashlight and the rifle toward the new sound from a new area, but the figure changed directions. A body... feet.... He thought as he caught a wispy glimpse of the man moving through and away from the light – just ahead of the directed beam as if it were chasing, but would never be allowed to settle on him.
“You know, Heady?” Cal asked.
“From Desert Storm.” The voice replied.
“I was in Desert Storm.”
“Not like I was.”
“Special Ops?” Cal listened, swinging his flashlight, searching fruitless for the voice which seemed to be moving.
“I was more special. Apparently, I was Blackened.”
“What does that –,”
From his back right, the force of gravity on his body – his shoulder – magnified, something sharp was dug deep behind his collar bone, instantly shrinking his will. The sensitive, sliced neck nerve burned in acute agony, his head and shoulder both angled toward the object that protruded from him. Faint squeals screeched from has larynx, his knees buckled, his weapon swung up weakly from his left arm, as his right arm was useless, and blindly fired into the ceiling. Pale fingers snatched the light, tossed it, and ripped the gun from his hands with no effort.
As if he were a dishonored Samurai ready for disembowelment, he heard the air parting whirl of his rifle being wielded. From pure animal instinct, from the lust to live, he forced himself up and grabbed the rifle, yanking it from the man's hands. Then, stood and turned, and the phantom was on him, already knowing what Cal had planned. Thumbs gouged at his eyes, tremendous pressure in his orbital sockets made it feel as if the soft eyeballs were a second away from popping like juicy plums. The man's knee pounded into Cal's groin repeatedly with the agility of a soccer player, but the barrel of the HK jabbed the man in his mid-section. Cal's hold on the gun was awkward and his eyes ached, but the length of the gun separated the two. Cal grunted, blindly searching for the trigger until his finger caught the trigger guard and that deadly yet, life sparing trigger dangled from inside the ring of metal. He tugged on the trigger, holding it, receiving the gun's recoiling jolts in his ribs until the pressure on his eyeballs let up.
The scream jarred her to attention, but the loud sobbing and the clanging of a knife against concrete kept her from returning to sleep.
“Pavel?” Heather forced forth. A series of rapid gun fire rang out in the basement, then a grief stricken scream. After a moment, boots slammed on the stairs, hard and fast, until the figure was in the kitchen. “Pavel?”
“You bitch!” Cal shouted. “You –,”
“Where's... Pavel?”
“That bastard was one of your guys – one of the guys we're supposed to be protecting you from – wasn't it?”
“Cal... Where's Pavel.” She hadn't moved from her position in the chair, but maneuvered her arms as if she wanted to sit up. Somewhere in that post sleep entrancement she felt that the answer was already revealed.
“He's gone, Heady.” Cal sucked back tears from his red eyes. He walked over to the glass door and yanked the tape-sealed curtain open, spraying light across the menagerie of dried blood and filth throughout the kitchen and living room. “He's gone. That was no fight. He knew our moves before we made'em! And you wanted us –,”
“Part of... his training.”
Cal's tears and expression froze in place. “Training?”
“ESSEX. ExtraSensory Special operations Experiment. Pre – precognitive combat. So much money spent... military, CIA was experimenting with it... to save cost and soldiers’ lives.”
“Precognitive? These assholes are psychics? Military trained psychics? And you put our lives on the line in a fight that two good men died in, and I barely escaped from? You bitch. Why didn't you tell us to bring more men?”
“Didn't know he was here.” She moaned, then in quiet memoriam whispered, “Pavel,”
“How did he find you? Oh, let me guess – they foresaw where you live, huh?”
“I am their Check Point... when they have trouble,” Heather weakly scraped sentences together, “they connect to me and can find me... wherever... I am. This is classified... Cal. Should not have to remind...”
“So you knew this all along?” Cal's jaws worked and tears rolled easily from his burning cheeks. “You knew and still put us in danger?” He raised his weapon and cocked it with a grunt as strength slowly returned to his rig
ht arm. He laid the tip of the gun on the back of Heather's head and she didn't protest. “You're no better than a politician.”
“He wasn't going... to kill –,”
“Oh really? Pavel? Patrick? They're dead, Heather! The bastard killed them!”
“They didn't know anything,” She uttered slowly. “You do. So... do I. He wanted answers.”
“How the hell could he have known –,” Cal started, but recent information had answered the question for him.
Far in the distance, he heard sirens and knew where they were headed.
“I wouldn't blame you.” Heather moaned, reacting to the gentle pre-death caress from the warm barrel of the HK-90.
“No? You wouldn't because I wouldn't be accountable for this.” Cal ran the barrel through her hair, shuffling it as he thought. Heather was tense and waited for him to bring a much needed end to her suffering.
“Just do it, dammit!” Heather said.
“Nah.” Cal withdrew the gun and shouldered it. “I can't be here for this, and if you're dead, whoever called the cops will surely see me walk outta here. Then, they'll have an open case and a manhunt. If you're still alive, you're the one who has to answer to all this shit! No, Heady, this is your game. You fucked me, now let's see you explain what happened here to the local guys.” Cal chuckled at the thought of Heather Luzader trying to explain the thirty or more dead bodies to a pair of city cops and slid the door open. He stepped outside, but before he closed the door, he turned to Heather. “Tell PK to lose my number.”
There was contemplative silence as Heather laid across the kitchen chair, feeling the precious life blood drip from her open leg wound. Death under those circumstances would take at least a week of neglect, but even then the death would likely be the result of dehydration or asphyxiation since she wouldn't be able to manage holding the chair down while its edge cut deep under her ribs and into her lungs. She supposed death would be the only thing that could ease the emotional contraction of her heart and she whispered to the floor, with no emphasis only acceptance, “Pavel.”
She loved him as a brother and had only imagined spending a much heralded New Year’s Eve's with the Ozerov's. He described it as nothing less than a gluttony of food and drink. Heather frowned at that lack of self-control, but craved the bonds, the tight knit familiarities, the nicknames. Heath and Kathy offered no such retreat and Pavel's stories of the motherland and family had become her escape for several years. Death is so permanent, Heather thought and could not yet accept.
She heard glass shatter, then shouting voices and the bass vibration of heavy footsteps in a bleary haze of pseudo-reality, and her reaction time had slipped to nothing. She knew from their near riotous entrance and lack of attention, that they were a local SWAT team, or they would have noticed the rise and fall of her breathing body. Instead, the eagerness of these men was a result of long stints between seeing action. They plodded right past her; bumping her limbs, almost knocking her from the chair. She made several attempts to grab the jacket or pant leg of a passing officer – attempts that seemed great, but were no more than tiny movements – and failed. Minutes later, silence woke her and a static voice remarked, “Copy, 191. So, they're all dead?”
Like a leaky gas valve, strength seeped from her. Her eyes no longer stared at the shattered glass door, but were closed to conserve the energy that the eyes used in observation. Her hands no longer pressed her torso up from the chair to avoid suffocation. But from her dangling arms, on her right hand, a finger wagged.
“10-4, 156,” The officer said. “Mass casualties, 20 plus bodies, a couple of illegally modified rifles, even looks like a former bureau boy, a Patrick Eisen, was involved in –, Negative, 156! Negative! It's a female... alive! We've got one, sir!”
Chapter 32.
Already marveling at Tanner's powers of perception, Ken was jounced back into the situation room the moment Greg's pistol hand flung up and sought Lainy as its target. Without thinking, he launched both his arms at Mary, one against her arm, one against Lainy, and shoved them both into Judith. The act exposed the entire left side of his body for just a few seconds, but his head took the brunt of the blast. Limply Ken's skull crashed into Mary's lap. Blood gushed from entrance wound and the room erupted in screams.
Tanner dashed toward the sofa, tears ready to rupture from his eyes, when the soft thump of hard plastic dropping to the floor followed by the round chambering clack of a Glock, stopped him in his tracks. His eyes back on Greg, seeing the expended clip on the floor and the fresh magazine being shoved into the weapons base. It snapped into place and he sent out another burst of rounds – two, which Tanner adverted easily, and one at the wall behind Mary's head – effectively silencing the room.
“Oh! I'm leaving here alive, Tanner,” Greg aimed and his torso and let loose three more rounds – all finding the wall behind him. Anticipating Greg's next action and knowing that there was nothing immediate he could do to save his family, Tanner slowly moved to his right, putting Greg between his tumultuous family and himself – surrounding him. “Even if I have to kill the entire –,” Greg stopped short when he realized what was happening, that the family was now behind him with Tanner in front. To stay alive, he could no longer engage the family and Tanner, he had to choose, or back into the kitchen, maybe find an exit door there. But Tanner had time on his hands to entrap him. Greg didn't. For purposes of escape, the kitchen would prove suitable, he'd lose his control over the family, but he'd retreat – alive – to meet Tanner another time.
“Nice one, Tanner! Well done, old chap!” Greg joked, backing into the kitchen, daring not waste ammunition on his elusive enemy – not yet – sliding his hand along the counter top for guidance.
Even through his nebulous past, Tanner saw something never before seen in Greg's eye's: Fear. That fear could not be allowed to weaken into some subjunctive resolve that could ignite hope in Greg Hart, and Tanner stalked him, his legs wound, ready to pounce the second Greg blinked too long or took his eyes from the gun or bumped into something, taking his attention away momentarily. But everything changed when Greg's hand slid to the stove. In Greg's eyes, he again held all the cards.
Tanner saw the man's hand fumble with something behind him, then there was a hiss. He waited for a glimpse into the predestined future that had mentally come and gone with smooth normalcy, but nothing came and Greg stopped at the stove in his retreat.
“You seem to know what's going to happen, Edgar Cayce, so why don't tell me? Let's see if our plans jive.”
“You just shot my brother, Greg. I predict that they'll be no place you can hide where I won't find you... if you could leave.”
“Well,” Greg shrugged, a sanguine smile strewn across his face. “If I can't leave, we all die.” A cloud of transparent distortion drifted above him accompanied by the nostril irritating smell of burnt Cumin.
“Gas. That's your out, Greg?”
“That's right.” He moved away from the stove and trained his gun on the gas spewing burner.
“This is all about Brandy, isn't it?”
Greg scowled, removed his attention from the burner and pointed the pistol at Tanner, then remembered that that act was probably useless and turned the weapon back to the eye. “You –,”
In the living room, the front door slammed closed. Greg's instant anger boiled over and he screamed, “Sit down in there or, I'll blow this bastard up!”
“Face it, Greg, your control over this situation is gone.” Tanner said.
Greg nodded to the burner, then turned the knobs of the next three burners. “Has it?” Still, Tanner could not see anything in his near future – perhaps an omen of death voided any near term events. “You,” Greg sternly shoved his finger into the space between he and Tanner. “Were the last one to see her alive!”
“Greg, I remember very little about that night. It was nearly twenty years ago!”
“Should that matter? Should I spare your miserable life because it's been so long ago? Time
doesn't heal all wounds, my man.”
“I think you're being irrational about this. The police even said I had nothing to do with it! This is stupid and savage!”
Greg smiled. “I've been called worse. Besides, you just told me that there was nowhere I could hide where you wouldn't search for me. Sound familiar? Why shouldn't that apply –,”
A large object slammed against the back door and startled the two men. Greg turned towards it and in that moment, something came to Tanner, slipping into his mind like an inserted DVD. The image was not an image at all... merely white light, nothing of consequence. But now, as Greg looked to see what banged against the door, an opening had appeared and Tanner took it. He seized Greg at the waist, his elbow wedged under Greg's chin, and slammed him to the floor. The impact loosened the gun from Greg, the door exploded from its hinges and a bloody man in Lee Garay's clothing swung the pump action shot gun at the two downed men. Greg struggled, but was subdued quickly, only able to maneuver one arm.
“Tanner, get off of him!” Lee yelled, unemotionally with the barrel of the shotgun at Tanner's back.
“Dad, no! You can't –,”
“Get off me –,” Greg shouted.
“Tanner, son, move!”
“Dad, the stove –,” Tanner struggled to warn Lee, but Greg, like a bagged orangutan, kneed and kicked and punched at any part of Tanner he could get to.
“Tanner, get off of him now!” Lee screamed and cocked the weapon, his voice cracked under hysterical strain.
“Dad, turn the stove –,”
A bright pain was driven into Tanner's neck, incapacitating him and he weakly rolled from Greg, removing a small knife blade from the wound. Without delay, only inches away from Tanner's face, the shotgun exploded spraying point blank buck shot into Greg's face which erupted with a red splash. Tanner felt the hot rain of blood and spent pellets ricochet and embed themselves around his shoulders, face and neck, but did not have time to suffer the pain. His vision of a white image only moments ago, had caught up with time. The spark from the shotgun shell grew exponentially into chasing flames, seeking to be fed, finding it through the burners on the stove, igniting the kitchen in blue, then orange, then a crystalline white orb of fire.