Lion

by Matt Rogers

  Conveniently, they would also be the last few seconds of his life.

  The hairless lion advanced toward him, with pale skin and bloodshot eyes and a menacing gait. Slater imagined it sprinting the last stretch, its mighty jaws clamping down on his unprotected upper body. No amount of strength in his arms would hold off a fully healthy lion — especially considering he could barely feel his limbs. It had taken all the power in his system to keep a lion on the verge of death at bay for a few seconds.

  Any kind of resistance against this new arrival would result in catastrophic failure.

  He would only be prolonging his death.

  In his final moments, he thought of Shien. He prayed she would take initiative and find her way home. Maybe she could even usher the other kidnapped children to safety. As long as she made it out of Mountain Lion before the entire complex went into lockdown to deal with the chaos, Slater could rest easy.

  He hoped he’d done enough to save her.

  The lion continued to stalk, prolonging the inevitable, closing the space between them.

  It was eighty feet from the cable car.

  Seventy.

  Sixty.

  Fifty.

  Its giant limbs tensed up. The lion bared its teeth, its eyes widening, the rush of an imminent charge crackling in the air. Slater’s insides went weak as he rode out the stress. He tasted raw fear, unlike anything he’d ever felt before. Human hostility — no matter how terrifying — had its limitations. This kind of natural fear knew no bounds.

  Then, from the other end of the emporium, the sound of footsteps. Multiple bodies moving through space, bursting out into the open, clattering against railings in haste. The lion obscured Slater from view, but he heard low voices ringing through the space.

  The lion didn’t care.

  It burst off the mark.

  Slater tensed up, expecting the inevitable, watching it close the gap, spelling his death.

  Then, from across the walkway, ‘What the fuck is that?!’

  ‘I told you!’ another voice roared, sounding congested, as if its owner had both nostrils clogged. ‘Nobody listened to—’

  The voice was drowned out by automatic gunfire — Slater realised far too late the party was firing down the walkway, directly at the lion. Bullets slashed past the sprinting predator and thudded into the rear wall of the elevator, some sinking home only a few inches above Slater’s head.

  He recoiled away from the impacts, flattening him into the gap between the dead lion and the wall as best he could.

  Then there was nothing to do but wait in terror. Chaos reigned across the emporium — bullets flew, men shouted and barked commands, a low roar emanated from somewhere between the two parties, steel rattled, muzzles flared, and after a few seconds of Slater’s hearing being drowned by madness he heard the distinct shriek of a man being mauled to death.

  Slater kept his head down as the wall behind him thudded with the impacts of stray bullets. Directly on top of him, the first lion’s corpse twitched involuntarily, spasming in the elevator with enough force to rock the cable car in place. His heart leapt at the sensation. As he burrowed further into the carpet — now soaked with blood — he realised he could wriggle one leg free from underneath the crushing weight of the dead lion.

  He grimaced and worked his good knee back and forth, yanking it inch by inch out from underneath the slab of meat, all the while ducking as wild shots ricocheted off the cable car. Pandemonium struck — more horrific screeches echoed through the vast space beyond.

  Goddamn, Slater thought.

  When the gunfire ceased after a brutal stint of madness, Slater wrenched his bad leg free with a gasp and leapfrogged over the dead lion, tumbling in a heap onto the other side. He splashed down in a puddle of the predator’s blood — barely noticing the disgusting surroundings — and snatched up the M4A1 carbine, ejecting its magazine with a practiced motion. The magazine shot free and Slater slammed the fresh one home.

  He powered to his feet — a difficult task indeed — and hobbled out of the elevator, leaving the foul stench of the dying lion behind.

  He observed the carnage.

  With a wheeze and a groan of desperation, the second lion hobbled from one side of the walkway to the other, limping away from a fresh kill. Blood drenched the sides of its mouth — it had done well. Another bullet from one of the new arrivals slammed into its torso, spurring it on. The lion omitted a final yelp of anguish and dove for any kind of safety it could find.

  In this case, returning home.

  Slater watched with mouth agape as the mortally wounded beast lurched over the railing, tumbling like a rag doll toward the jungle canopy below. He realised it was instinctively returning to its enclosure, fleeing from the steel bite of the bullets dotting its hide.

  The lion smashed through the canopy, five hundred pounds of bodyweight destroying a portion of the broad jungle leaves. It disappeared from sight, crashing to the forest floor below. Slater estimated the drop at a couple of dozen feet. He wasn’t sure if it had died on impact, but the beast would succumb to its wounds before long.

  He sized up the trail of devastation the lion had left in its wake.

  Three of the men on the walkway had been brutally mauled, leaving no doubt as to their fate. Their wounds weren’t survivable — Slater merely glanced at the bloody corpses before turning away. His stomach churned at the sight. A couple of others had been dumped on their rears further down the steel path, shocked into immobilisation by the sight of the predator bearing down on them. They clutched sub-machine guns in their sweaty palms, the barrels smoking.

  They couldn’t believe their luck.

  They’d survived.

  That’s a shame, Slater thought.

  He hobbled a few steps away from the bank of elevators, stepping out onto the walkway — the structure dizzyingly high amidst the emporium — and raised the carbine rifle to his shoulder. He let twin bursts of fully automatic gunfire fly, dropping each man where they sat. The pair crumpled, their weapons clattering to the floor.

  Slater locked his gaze on the only two men remaining on the walkway, both unarmed, both flabbergasted at the horrific turn of events.

  Peter Forrest, beaten half to death, and a muscular Asian man with the identical neck tattoo of the triad snaking its way past his collar.

  Even though neither were armed, Slater didn’t want any trouble. He lined up his aim and put a bullet through the triad gangster’s thigh, dropping the man where he stood. Forrest yelped in fright and cowered away from Slater, leaning over one of the railings in an attempt to minimise his target area.

  He was no threat.

  Slater deployed his best poker face and placed as much weight as he feasibly could manage on his bad leg without passing out. The pain proved staggering, ripping through him with all the force of a gut punch, but he kept his balance. Sweat broke out across his brow, but it meant nothing.

  He could function.

  For now.

  ‘Look, mate,’ Forrest said, clutching the railing for dear life, his knuckles turning white. ‘You’re the guy from the elevator, yeah? I’m sorry, mate. I don’t know what I’ve done to you.’

  Slater pulled to a halt in front of the pathetic man. The triad had dished out unbelievable punishment, to the point where his face had swollen beyond recognition. It looked like he’d been stung by a thousand bees at once. He could barely keep his eyes open through the swelling.

  ‘You haven’t done anything to me,’ Slater said.

  ‘Then what do you want? For fuck’s sake, just leave me alone.’

  Slater said nothing. He stared down at the man who had caused such suffering, who had stripped innocent children of their freedom and forced them into a line of work barely imaginable. He wondered how many girls he had used up and murdered, their bodies dumped when their ability to serve the paying customers proved suddenly useless.

  He wondered if Forrest had ever given it a second thought.

  But,
in his desperate, snivelling state, Forrest took the silence as a form of hesitation. His mouth opened in a half-gasp as he sensed an opportunity, displaying his emotions without a second thought.

  Getting your face smashed into a pulp often stripped you of the ability to employ subtlety.

  ‘Do you want a job, mate?’ he coughed. ‘Y-you seem like the type of guy who can dish out a fair bit of damage. What do you say? Help me get my feet back under me and I’ll make you rich, brother. Richer than you can imagine. There’s work to be done, but—’

  ‘The girl. Shien.’

  Forrest paused. ‘Yeah? What about her?’

  ‘Where are her parents?’

  ‘Her dad’s dead. He got caught up in all this shit. Not his fault. Not mine either.’

  ‘And the mother?’

  ‘Probably halfway to Texas by now, mate.’

  ‘How do you know she’s from Texas?’

  ‘I thought about kidnapping her instead of their daughter. But … she’s not in the picture. She won’t want anything to do with this.’

  Slater lapsed back into silence, twisting the M4A1’s barrel in imperceptible semi-circles, mulling over what to do next.

  ‘Look,’ Forrest said, ‘did you hear what I said about a job? I’ve got some openings. Clean this mess up and I’ll give you millions of dollars. Millions. I just need time to—’

  Slater offered a half-smile, barely putting any effort into the acting job.

  Humouring the man for a single second.

  Forrest was clutching at anything he could. His face lit up at the sign of the smile. He grinned through a bloody set of teeth. ‘Millions of dollars, mate. All yours.’

  Slater reached down and hauled Forrest to his feet, dragging him up by the collar. The roughhousing didn’t seem to deter Forrest in the slightest. He desperately held onto the false reality that Slater was his ally. Like a teenager believing their crush was head-over-heels in love with them because of momentary eye contact.

  Slater peered over the edge of the railing, staring down into the artificially lit jungle enclosure. From somewhere on the dark forest floor, he thought he heard a noise similar to a weak growl.

  ‘You think that lion’s still alive?’ he said, passing it off as simple banter.

  Forrest smirked. ‘Dunno. Fifty-fifty, mate.’

  ‘That’s better odds than you gave those girls.’

  Forrest started to open his mouth to speak but Slater swung an uppercut that crashed against the underside of the man’s chin and knocked a fat wad of teeth loose in a spray of blood. Then he hauled the pathetic billionaire over the railing, barely putting any effort into the act. Forrest tumbled headfirst over the side of the walkway and fell silently into the jungle canopy.

  Too terrified to scream.

  52

  Slater didn’t bother to watch the ordeal. He wanted to wrap this destruction up in the next minute or so. He turned to face the last hostile left alive in the emporium — the triad figure with a useless right leg and a bad neck tattoo.

  ‘You someone important?’ he said, his voice cold, his bones drained of energy.

  The madness had taken its toll on him. He could barely see straight as he used the railing to lend assistance to his mangled leg.

  The triad member had gone horrifically pale — Slater realised he must have severed an artery with the thigh shot. The guy was bleeding out, already sprawled in a puddle of the crimson stuff.

  ‘You could say that,’ the guy muttered, his English good. ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘Let me guess. Head of the triad?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Thought as much,’ Slater said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Jerome.’

  ‘That’s not your name.’

  ‘It’s what everyone calls me.’

  ‘You’re the one who ran that basement operation, huh?’

  Jerome paused, but Slater had spent enough time around liars to understand exactly what that pause meant.

  Whatever words came out afterwards would mean nothing.

  They would be false.

  Without question.

  ‘We had no choice,’ Jerome said. ‘Forrest paid our organisation to offer him protection and enforcement throughout Mountain Lion. He couldn’t keep the complex running without dipping into the horrible stuff. It started out as bread crumbs, but … I’m guessing you saw what it became.’

  ‘I sure did.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ Jerome said, his tone confident but his eyes pleading for a break in the interrogation — to compose his thoughts, to arrange his defence. ‘That’s why we came. To make things right. You saw how we beat him half to death. We were here to put a stop to all the sex slavery. We’re gangsters, but we have morals.’

  ‘That’s why you came?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have anything to do with your two friends I killed in the basement, would it? You didn’t show up to get them back?’

  Jerome took a moment to respond — the hesitation revealed all. Both of them sensed it. Acceptance spread over the man’s face. He wasn’t talking his way out of this one.

  His entire demeanour shifted in the blink of an eye.

  ‘Alright — we weren’t here to make things right,’ the man snarled. ‘Don’t know why I bothered trying to hide it. But it doesn’t make a fucking difference. You’re going to help me.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘I’m bleeding out. Get me to a hospital or you won’t make it out of Macau. I’m God here. You understand? I run this fucking region.’

  Slater had heard it a thousand times before. The same old spiel, laced with outrage and scorn and supreme confidence.

  The only way bad men knew how to gain leverage.

  Through intimidation and threats.

  ‘What do you think you’ll do if I die here?’ Jerome spat. ‘Where do you think you’ll hide? You don’t know what’s coming.’

  Slater gazed around. ‘Seems like all your men are dead.’

  ‘There’s more. There’s hundreds more.’

  ‘That’s odd. I don’t see them.’

  ‘You take one step out of this casino without me by your side and you’ll be a dead man walking.’

  ‘Somehow I doubt that.’

  ‘Macau is mine. If you think—’

  Slater unloaded three bullets into Jerome’s face. He’d listened to the gangster go on for long enough. Nothing he said would have ever affected Slater’s mindset — he wanted to cleanse the earth of anyone involved in this kind of operation. Excuses proved useless.

  Excuses wouldn’t bring his mother back.

  The final gunshot faded away, blisteringly loud initially before fading into a soft echo rolling along the emporium walls. Then that too dissipated, leaving Slater entirely alone at the top of Mountain Lion Casino & Resorts. He let the carbine rifle fall to his side and gazed around in a state of shock.

  A dead lion in the elevator. Dead men scattered about the walkway. Dead men underneath the complex, their corpses left to be discovered in the most incriminating of settings. Their legacies would be ruined, their lives lost, because they felt the need to satiate their twisted vices.

  He’d done enough.

  Not just for his time in Macau — but for a lifetime.

  You crossed that bridge long ago, he thought.

  He should have stopped halfway into his career. But he’d carried on pressing forward, throwing himself into combat time after time, adding scar after scar to his mental state until he’d devolved into a broken man by the time he’d finally left the service to his country behind.

  From there he’d plunged into hell in Yemen, and followed it up with a war for the ages in Macau.

  To this day, he couldn’t ascertain whether he found trouble, or trouble found him.

  But his work here was done.

  He honed in on the total silence draped over the emporium and stared up through the glass-domed ceiling at the cloudy sky. It w
as late afternoon, and he hadn’t slept in what felt like days. He dropped the carbine, recognising the finality with which it hit the steel mesh of the walkway.

  Signalling an end to the chaos.

  For now.

  For a brief stint of his life where he could recover from the craziness. Put his feet up for as long as it took to heal back to full health. Maybe he’d revisit the stem cell clinic in Zurich. There were a thousand options, all of which he had the opportunity to capitalise on.

  But first, he needed to sort out the future of a young girl waiting in the basement of the complex for him to return.

  He limped for the elevators in tentative fashion, ignoring the cable car containing the dead hairless lion. For superstition’s sake, he strayed as far away from the beast as he could manage, calling for the elevator at the very end of the line.

  It arrived in seconds — clearly it was a slow day for VIP customers — and he hobbled into the centre of the thickly carpeted box, thumbing a button on the panel.

  He wiped blood from his face, winced as fresh pain coursed through seemingly everywhere at once, and leant back against the metal banister to take the pressure off his mangled leg.

  All in a day’s work.

  Before the doors closed, he thought he heard a low growl resonate up from below the walkway, piercing the air. Slater tuned his ears to the sound, just as a follow-up scream of pain tore through the emporium.

  Then silence.

  Peter Forrest, murdered by his own pet.

  A wry smile spread across Slater’s face as the doors sliced closed.

  53

  It took less than ten minutes to devise an exit plan.

  Shien had acted years ahead of her age, finding the keys to each cell on one of the dead guards and freeing each of the young girls one by one. By the time Slater arrived in a bloody heap at the correct sub-level, a broken mess of his former self, Shien had arranged the drugged-up children in an orderly line by the bank of elevators.

  She saw Slater hunched over, dripping blood onto the thick carpet.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Will…’

  ‘Told you I’d be alright,’ he said with a bloody smile.

  By now Shien had grown accustomed to the violence, and none of the other kids were in a suitable state to react to it. They stared at him, glassy-eyed, probably seeing him as some kind of apparition. He stumbled through the elevator doors and sucked in deep breaths as he thought about their next move.