by Matt Rogers
King sat completely still. Something about the situation felt off. He saw the driver’s side window roll down.
'Can I help you?’ a voice from inside called out.
The voice was curious. A little hesitant. One of the workers, surprised to see another soul in these parts.
The man from the woods stepped out of the pickup’s path, moving to the driver’s side.
'I’m lost,’ he said, his voice quivering.
'You want a lift into town?'
‘That'd be great,' the man said. 'Me and my buddy have been walking in circles for hours.'
'Your buddy?'
A second man emerged from the trees, dressed similarly. His face was also clean. Both men’s clothes were brand new. There wasn’t a semblance of dirt on either of them. King knew for certain they were not telling the truth. They had not been lost in the forest for hours. In fact, he was sure they knew exactly where they were.
They’d been waiting.
The second man walked over to the passenger’s side window. It rolled down too. Now both workers were exposed.
'Thanks for this,' the second man said.
'No problem. You boys okay?'
'I think so.'
'Cold night to get lost.'
'Tell me about it.'
'Anyway, jump in the back tray. We’ll get you into town.'
Neither of the men moved. The man by the driver’s side visibly stiffened.
'Are your names David Lee and Miles Price?' he said, his tone now firm and authoritative. Demanding an instantaneous response.
'Yeah,' came a voice from inside the truck. 'How’d you know—'
That was what killed them.
The correct response to realising a couple of strangers from the forest knew your name would be to stamp on the accelerator and get as far away as possible. As soon as the confirmation came, both men slid guns from their belts in unison. There were suppressors attached. King couldn’t ascertain their exact make in the low light, but they were fearsome-looking pistols. He guessed Glock 17s.
There was nothing he could do to save the workers. It only took one shot through each man’s skull to silence them forever. The two discharges were muffled, but no suppressor fully silences the noise of a gunshot. Instead, a pair of vicious coughs echoed down the road. Without a soul around to hear.
Except Jason King.
He watched the pair of killers move with calculated efficiency, each sliding a corpse out of the respective doors. They dragged the bodies along the road and heaved them into the rear tray. They constantly checked for cars, but the road was empty at this time of night. When they were done they straightened up and slammed the tray closed.
'We need to get rid of this before anyone sees. Take our payment and get the hell out of here.'
'You didn’t see anyone?’
'No.'
'Take a quick look. I need to clean the blood off the seats.'
King remained motionless. He clenched his fists. Perhaps he would be spotted.
The man lit up a flashlight and scanned it quickly over the surrounding trees. The yellow beam passed briefly over King. He remained motionless, resting against the tree trunk.
To most men, he would be invisible.
Not this time.
'Hey!' the man screamed to his friend, immediately producing the same pistol from his holster.
King exploded into action. He got his feet underneath him and scrambled around the trunk, disappearing from sight. From the road he heard the familiar sound of a suppressed gunshot. The bullet grazed past the space he had occupied moments earlier. He felt the displaced air, close by. They were good shots.
Most men would panic and run. King stayed deathly still on the other side of the trunk, his pulse barely rising, remaining calm. This would confuse his assailants. He knew exactly how to play mind games.
There was silence from the road. Then voices.
'Where did he go?'
'What the fuck are you talking about? What are you shooting at?'
'A … a man. He was sitting against that tree.'
'You’re sure?'
'Yeah, I’m sure. Scared the shit out of me.'
'And he ran away?'
'He was so fast.'
'You couldn’t shoot a guy sitting on the ground?'
'What do we do?'
'We make sure there’s no fucking witnesses.'
King smiled. They were panicked. The one with the buzzcut seemed to be in charge, and a little more under control. But they were both amateurs. Compared to him, at least. They spoke loud and fast. Adrenalin rushed through their veins, scrambling their instincts. King could hear it in the tone of their voices. They could kill when they were the ones with power, but now he had made them uncomfortable. They would make mistakes.
They would die.
He heard noises. Footsteps on the asphalt. Inaudible to the average person. But King picked up every little nuance of the pair's movements. The man with the buzzcut was on the left. He made less sound. The man on the right had been startled by the sudden appearance of a witness. His impatient footsteps showed it.
King stayed where he was, pressed against the trunk. They would assume he had taken off into the forest when in reality he had moved no more than a few feet. He let adrenalin flood his own system. The added boost of energy was useful to someone who knew exactly what to do with it. He didn’t allow himself to get jumpy.
His hands grew warm, despite the freezing night air. He rolled his wrists and took a deep breath. The footsteps had moved from the road to the forest floor. The two men were unable to walk quietly on the dirt surface. Leaves crunched underneath their heels. They quickened their pace.
The panicked man passed the tree first, moving fast. In his haste, he failed to take a look at the trunk where he had first seen King. He stared ahead, eyes wide, searching for the slightest sign of movement amongst the trees. He thought the witness was long gone.
Now.
King darted forward and wrenched the suppressed pistol from the man’s outstretched arms as effortlessly as plucking a dandelion from the grass. After all, he was six-foot-three and packed with muscle and his attacker was a slight man shaking with nerves. For a moment he almost felt sorry for how unfair the situation was on the smaller man. Nevertheless, he had still tried to kill him. Which, unfortunately, was unforgivable in King’s book.
He slid a finger into the trigger guard the moment he had control of the weapon and drove the barrel up under the man’s chin. He fired a single shot through the base of his skull. It sliced through the guy’s brain and exploded out the top of his head. He dropped like a rag doll. Death was instantaneous.
Just then, the second man with the buzzcut rounded the tree trunk.
King spun and fired a shot but suddenly Buzzcut was no longer there. He had ducked away, assessing the situation and retreating with lightning speed.
King heard scurried footsteps on the road. The man had fled. He rounded the tree trunk and saw the muzzle flash of an ejected round. A loud metallic bang echoed off the surrounding trees. The noise took King by surprise. He ducked back instinctively and paused for breath, confused. He glanced down at his left hand. A second ago, it had been firmly clasped around the dead man’s Glock.
Now it was empty.
Buzzcut’s warning shot had miraculously struck the handgun, blasting it out of King’s palm. Wild luck. Completely unintentional. Nevertheless, the man was smarter and faster than his dead partner.
He would be more of a problem.
King listened until he was sure it was safe, then stuck his head around the trunk.
He saw nothing but a slight rustle of leaves as Buzzcut disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road.
CHAPTER 3
King powered through the scrub, having shed his leather jacket long ago. He knew he was keeping pace with Buzzcut. Every few moments there would be a sign of movement up ahead. Nothing more than a fleeting glimpse of a limb, but it was en
ough. He flew past pine trees with decaying branches, some torn clean off near shoulder height. Deep boot imprints were stamped into the muddy surface of the forest floor at random. The man had little interest in stealth. He was in a hurry.
The woods were silent at this hour. Chirping crickets and nearby critters had fallen quiet as the pursuit raged around them. King kept a consistent pace. He made sure his mind was calm and his lungs were full of air. Ahead he could hear the panicked breaths of the man who had tried to kill him. The guy was an amateur in every sense of the word. Perhaps he was gaining distance temporarily, but in the long run King would catch him. He could keep this pace up for hours. He doubted Buzzcut could.
It was difficult terrain to traverse. He hurdled fallen logs and twisted roots that lay in his path. This section of the forest lay on a steep mountainside, which Buzzcut was in the process of rapidly descending. King made sure to take care in his descent. It would only take a twisted ankle to incapacitate him. Then his target would get away and he would have no answers.
He knew the man was out of ammunition. Buzzcut’s footsteps were loud and fast. He’d seen what happened to his partner. The pair hadn’t been anticipating a fight. They must have only had a clip each. Otherwise, King would have bullets cutting through the air around him.
Five minutes into the pursuit and he was already gaining. Buzzcut’s sharp inhales became longer, drawn out. The man wheezed for breath. Panicked.
Rookie mistake.
King could see him now. He made out the silhouette just ahead, darting between trunks and tripping on obstacles. He could hear King behind him, his pace measured and even. The woods began to thin, the trees growing further apart as the steep ground evened out. Large areas of grass and undergrowth filled the spaces between the trunks.
They had reached the bottom of a valley.
King saw Buzzcut burst out into an open area devoid of trees. He pressed on. Inhaling through the nose, exhaling through the mouth. Measured breathing was the key to preserving his gas tank. Buzzcut was panting and stumbling up ahead. He had run for his life and exerted all his energy in the process.
The forest disappeared behind King. He found himself in the middle of a large expanse of overgrown grass. It was not a natural clearing. The trees had been cut down to make room for what lay ahead.
An abandoned metal work factory towered over the rest of the forest, constructed in the centre of the clearing. It was a behemoth of a facility, easily surpassing the tops of the tallest surrounding trees. Twisting rusted pipes snaked their way around the exterior of the structure. That was as much as he could make out in the darkness.
For a moment, he reconsidered his previous decisions. He could have just run blind into a slaughterhouse. There could have been dozens of reinforcements within the factory waiting as he jogged obliviously into open ground.
He could have been exposed.
Could have.
But he wasn’t.
There was no-one waiting.
Buzzcut seemed just as surprised as King was to have happened upon the factory.
King sensed an opportunity and broke into a sprint. He gained ground fast. His quadriceps strained under the exertion.
Then Buzzcut spun, raised his Glock 17 and fired.
A muzzle flash lit up the clearing and King recoiled, shocked by a white hot burning sensation in his left arm. He reeled away. The shot had taken him completely by surprise, and now he was hit. Because Buzzcut had held off on firing for so long, King had assumed he was out of ammo. He’d paid the price for such a foolish mistake. He wouldn’t make the same error again.
Instantly he could tell it was just a graze. His nerve endings screamed and his skin bled, but his arm was fully functional. It moved without obstruction. He took nothing more than a quick glance down, glimpsing a thin trail of crimson running down his bare arm. The wound was difficult to make out in the soft moonlight. There was no time to focus on it. He was still on open ground, with no idea whether Buzzcut still had a round in the chamber.
As if on cue, a hollow click echoed across the clearing.
King recognised the sound all too well.
An empty magazine.
He charged forward with a newfound energy. He saw on Buzzcut’s face the same expression that he’d seen on countless men in the past. Eyes widening, arms shaking, skin paling. The look of a man who had wasted his one opportunity to remain in control and would now pay the price for blowing it.
Buzzcut took off into the darkness. King watched him run into the bowels of the metal work factory, vanishing from sight.
The night became absolute as the moon dipped behind a low cloud. The structure loomed ahead, nothing more than a black outline against a black sky. King slowed his pace and stopped to listen. Crickets in the grass. The occasional creak of a rusty pipe. No sound of the man he was chasing. Buzzcut had done well to disappear.
There was no point in giving up now. King decided he would take a look inside the factory before calling it off. He knew that by now Buzzcut could be on the other side of the clearing. If it was his goal was to escape, then King would never find him. But he had a sneaking suspicion that there was something else on his mind. The guy had just witnessed his partner’s gruesome death.
King wondered if Buzzcut wanted revenge.
He hoped so. Revenge meant it was personal, and making it personal led to making mistakes.
He jogged lightly through an enormous set of double doors and into the ground floor of the factory. The space was cavernous, once home to enormous industrial machines. He could feel the grooves in the concrete floor under his feet, where they’d used to rest. It was silent in here. There was no moonlight. He couldn’t see anything. He relied on touch and sound alone. His footsteps echoed off the walls. Every now and then, he splashed through a small puddle in the cracked concrete.
He made just enough noise to be heard.
Thirty seconds after he entered the factory, he picked up a sound. Behind him. Not an effect of his movements. Something else.
He smiled.
Buzzcut was still here.
King was quietly impressed. The man had been almost completely silent in his movements. He had tracked King across the factory floor without making a sound, avoiding all the puddles, all the obstacles. Then he had made a fatal mistake.
King heard a soft thunk that to any other man would have been inaudible. But he was paying attention. Twenty feet back, he’d sensed something next to him and softly ran his hand over a hollow metal tank, fixing its position in his mind. Buzzcut had just scraped against it. King recognised the noise.
He turned and exploded back in the other direction.
Buzzcut would hear him coming.
But it was too late.
In the darkness they crashed into each other. King stuck his shoulder out, bent his knees and drove the bulk of his weight into the other man’s chest. He heard a surprised gasp and a wince of pain. He could sense Buzzcut’s horrid surprise. One second he had been stalking his prey, and the next he was on the ground, winded.
King still couldn’t see. But he didn’t need to. He clamped both of his huge hands around Buzzcut’s head, one on either side. Before the man could regain control of the situation King slammed the back of his skull against the concrete. A crack echoed off the factory walls.
It was a formidable, crushing blow. King was two-hundred-and-twenty pounds of muscle, yet even stronger than he appeared. His strength had been something of legend in his former life. Now, he used it to devastating effect.
Buzzcut went instantly limp. There was every chance he was dead, but King made sure by winding up and slamming a closed fist down against his windpipe. He put his entire bodyweight behind it. Bone and cartilage gave under the strike. Buzzcut gave a final pathetic wheeze before joining his partner in death.
CHAPTER 4
King rolled off the body, panting with exertion. His blood boiled and his skin tingled. An unavoidable reaction after killing with his bare h
ands. This kind of adrenalin was impossible to control. No amount of discipline would reduce its effect. There was nothing to do but ride it out.
He let the stillness wash over him. The silence was oddly calming. Slowly, his heartbeat began to return to a normal rate.
As soon as he stopped shaking, he set to work.
It seemed he would never know what David Lee and Miles Price had done to deserve a pair of bullets in their skulls. But now both their killers were dead. What occurred had entered all kinds of muddled grey areas, both morally and legally. King had four dead bodies on his hands, and it was his job to hide the evidence. He certainly didn’t care for a murder trial, and if it came to that he would probably be found guilty of something. Chasing an attacker through thick woods to cave their throat in would certainly tarnish his reputation in a courtroom.
He much preferred natural law in situations such as these.
It took him twenty minutes to make his way back to the main road. A tough trek through steep, rugged terrain. He stepped out of the woods with sweat dripping off his brow. The pickup truck’s murky headlights lit up a section of the asphalt, carving twin paths of soft yellow light through the darkness. Insects buzzed in the glow. An eerie silence lay over everything, something that often occurred in the aftermath of sudden violent conflict.
Everyone in earshot of this place was dead.
As he passed across the road in front of the truck he saw blood splattered across its windscreen. The contents of the cabin were blocked from sight. No signs of tampering. If any traffic had passed by, no-one had stopped.
He crossed to the opposite side of the woods and headed deep into the scrub. It didn’t take long to find the other man’s body. He lay face down, slumped into the undergrowth. Despite the dim light, the gunshot wound through the top of the guy’s head was clearly visible. A fat gaping hole. King hefted the body onto his shoulders and carried it back to the ute. He threw it in the rear tray alongside the workers’ corpses.
'I wonder who you two pissed off,' he muttered under his breath.
King went round to the driver’s door and climbed inside the cabin. The interior smelled like alcohol and death. A half-empty packet of cigarettes lay in the centre console alongside a small satchel of marijuana. There was a helmet in the passenger’s footwell, coated in flecks of concrete. The glove box held receipts dating back eight days, each for meals at the bar down the road. These men had lived simplistic urban lives. Work hard, eat a full meal, rest, repeat.