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Officer Barcomb vs. The Undead

Page 16

by Darren Barcomb


  Haws knew immediately from the way he carried himself that this was Torrento and that this was his house. Haws wasn’t expecting an Iraqi. It threw him.

  “I haven’t got all day,” Torrento said.

  “Eddie Haws. You must be Mr. Torrento.”

  “You know of me?”

  “I’ve heard, yeah.”

  “Where have you heard?”

  Eddie nodded to the lamb. “You gonna eat that?”

  Torrento frowned. He turned and said something in Arabic to one of his men. Within a few minutes, a second plate of lamb was brought out by a young woman and placed at the table. Torrento gestured to it. Haws started eating.

  “This is good shit,” Haws said.

  “Eddie,” Torrento said, grimacing as if the very idea of it angered him to the point of pain, “where have you heard about me?”

  Haws was chewing a mouthful of food when he answered. “Some low-life drug-dealing piece of shit. A motherfucker named Dutroux,” he said. “He told me and my buddy all about you. He told us all about this place.”

  Torrento’s right eye twitched slightly.

  “Fuck knows who else he told, the loudmouth prick.”

  “Where is Dutroux now?” Torrento said.

  Haws kept eating. It had been a week since his last real meal.

  “Do you know?” Torrento said.

  “Got anything to fucking drink around here?” Haws said. “Man, I am thirstier than a duck in the desert.” Haws looked confused for a moment. “Is that a real saying? Fuckin’ should be,” he said, and continued eating.

  “There is something you should know about me, Eddie” Torrento said, through gritted teeth.

  “What’s that?”

  Torrento pulled out the biggest and ugliest handgun Haws had ever seen. It was gold-plated with an ivory grip, some kind of modified Desert Eagle. Haws almost laughed. Torrento laid it on the table. “I am not a very patient man, Eddie,” Torrento said. He went quiet for a moment and saw that Haws was studying him, trying to figure him out. “You must know that my time comes with a price. When it is wasted, there will be payment. You should know that I am not thinking about threatening you right now. I do not deal in threats. I am not thinking of a punishment to give you to make you pay for your behavior here. I have punishments in mind. I have a complex system of punishments which I can bring to mind at any point. What I’m doing right now is counting, Eddie. I’m counting how much of my time you waste so that I can take from you the correct payment when we’re done.”

  Eddie put down his fork. “Mr. Torrento,” he said, “let’s cut the shit. I came here with an offer for you. I’m offering my services. Way I see it, they’re sorely fuckin’ needed. The gang you have working for you here?” Haws leaned in. “They’re fuckin’ amateurs. And in this world, amateurism will get you dead faster than a bullet.”

  “I asked you a question, Eddie,” Torrento said calmly.

  “What?”

  “Where is Dutroux now?”

  “Dutroux’s dead,” Haws said.

  “Dead?”

  “Yeah. My buddy put a fuckin’ grenade in his mouth and shoved him off a rooftop. He ain’t walking away from that.”

  Torrento squinted as he studied Haws, looking for something. Haws sat still, letting him look. Suddenly, Torrento laughed. He laughed so hard he slapped his hand on the table. Haws started laughing, too.

  “You should’ve seen his fucking face,” Haws said. “Bam. Painted the fucking street red, he did.”

  Torrento, laughing, stood up. He gestured to the door, to the Frenchman who saw Haws in who was stood waiting. He came over quickly. Before Haws could stop laughing, the other man had wrapped a garrote around his throat and tightened it, immediately cutting off his air, and grabbed his right hand and twisted it behind his back. Haws tried to fight with his left hand free. Torrento grabbed hold of it with both hands and slammed it down on the table. He used one hand to take something out of a sheathe that was hidden underneath the table, bolted to the underside.

  Torrento lifted up a machete.

  “You seem like a professional,” Torrento said, as Haws’s face began to turn blue. “I will accept your offer. You can live with the others. You will earn your place. You will be one of my best men. But I will have to disadvantage you.”

  Haws tried to tell him no, but he couldn’t speak. He could feel his bones bending in the arm twisted behind him by the unseen man.

  “As I said at the beginning of our conversation,” Torrento said. “I am not one for idle threats. You wasted my time, Eddie. It was only a small amount of time, but, as this is our first meeting, I must make it very clear to you how much I value my time. The men will want revenge for what you’ve done today, so this will serve a dual purpose. There are lessons to be learned here, Eddie, lessons that will serve you well.”

  Torrento held Haws’s hand firmly on the table just above the wrist.

  He swung the machete down through Haws’s left wrist. In one motion, Haws’s left hand was freed from its wrist with a small explosion of blood and a thud as the machete was buried in the wooden table. Haws’s arm flew back, released by the amputation, spraying bright red blood across the ceiling. Haws was unconscious in a matter of seconds and the man behind him released the garrote.

  “Burn the stump, Boris,” Torrento said. “He’s no good to me dead.”

  Haws slumped in the chair as his blood pooled at his feet, soaking through his boots and getting his socks wet. Were he awake, he would have been furious about that.

  *

  When Barcomb came around, he thought the ceiling was moving. Steel pipes danced left and right and then stopped central above him. He closed his eyes for a moment and listened. He heard wheels. He opened his eyes and realized he was the one who was moving. He was being wheeled along, strapped to a bed.

  “Which way?” someone whispered. “Where the fuck do we go?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Munday,” someone else said.

  Barcomb looked up and mumbled, “What the shit is going on around here?”

  The bed stopped moving. Munday and Ash came in front of him to get a look at him. Ash cringed. “You look like shit run over,” she said.

  Barcomb tried to sit up, but his chest was strapped down.

  “Why am I tied to this fuckin’ thing?” Barcomb said.

  Ash looked around.

  “And why are you dressed like fucking-” Barcomb began, but Ash threw a sheet over his face.

  “Don’t say a word,” she whispered.

  Barcomb heard footsteps, heavy ones, coming down the hall. The bed started moving again.

  “What if he-” Munday whispered.

  Ash shushed her. “Keep it together, for Christ’s sake,” Ash said. “If they figure out what we’re doing, there’s no fighting our way out of this shit.”

  Munday coughed.

  They rolled the bed quickly. Barcomb heard the footsteps getting closer, and then there was a voice.

  “Hey,” a man said. “What are you girls doing down here with that?”

  “Another dead one,” Ash said. “Doctor said to get rid of it before it, you know, he comes back and eats everyone.” She laughed nervously.

  “Let me take a look at him,” the man said.

  “We took care of him already,” Ash said. “Back of the head with a screwdriver, you know? Done it so many times I could probably kill these fuckers in my sleep.”

  The man walked over and stopped beside the bed. Barcomb tried to make his breathing shallow enough so as to be as unnoticeable as possible.

  “Who was he?” the man asked. “One of our guys?”

  “No,” Ash said. “You see that truck rolled in earlier with the big dude in it?”

  “I saw that, yeah,” the man replied. “Big motherfucker.”

  “This is his friend.”

  “This gonna cause us a problem, you think?” the man said. “That guy was really fucking keen to save his friend. I don’t want to be hav
ing that guy wandering around the place pissed off and looking for a fight, I tell you what.”

  Ash laughed, “No shit.”

  The man went quiet for a minute. Barcomb listened close.

  “So, uh,” the man said. “Is there any meat off this one or what?”

  Ash was thrown. “Um, err,” she said, “how do you mean? You want meat?”

  “What kinda shape is he in?” the man said.

  “Real bad,” Ash said. “Hideous, actually. Yep. He’s all tore up.”

  “I mean, it’s been a while since anyone but the boss man has had any meat,” the man said. “There’s nothing you can save?” Barcomb felt the man’s hand grab the sheet above his head. He started to pull but stopped suddenly as extra weight came down. Ash had put her hand on his arm.

  “He was bit,” Ash said. “Bit all over. He’s tainted meat. You don’t want any of what he’s got, trust me.”

  “Maybe I better take a look anyway,” the man said. “There might be a little something down there I could-” The sound of the slice of a blade on flesh stopped the man mid-sentence. Barcomb opened his eyes and the white sheet over his head was splattered with red.

  “Whoa!” Ash said. “What the fuck was that?! What are you doing?!”

  The man slumped on top of Barcomb. Ash pulled the sheet off Barcomb’s face and he could see that the man’s throat was cut and he was pouring blood all over him. Munday grabbed the man by the hair and rammed her knife through the back of his skull. Then she dropped him to the floor, his pierced skull cracking more as it hit the concrete.

  “Fucking unstrap me,” Barcomb said to Ash.

  She undid the strap around his chest. Barcomb sat up. Munday looked at him and said, “He was gonna raise the alarm.”

  “This wasn’t the fuckin’ plan,” Barcomb said.

  “Yes,” Munday said. “It was.”

  “Nobody needed to die,” he said.

  “It’s too late for that now,” Munday replied.

  Barcomb glared at her. She began coughing. A little blood came up.

  “What is it?” Barcomb said. “Have you been bitten?”

  “No,” Munday said. “It’s just a cold.”

  Barcomb looked at Munday. She was blushing a little. He made a mental note of that.

  “I know where we can hide this body,” Ash said.

  *

  “I don’t want there to be any hard feelings over this,” Torrento said, dangling Haws’s severed hand by its little finger in front of its previous owner. “This is a lesson. If you learn it, you will have a place here. If you refuse, there will be nowhere you can hide. This will be the last day of your life.”

  Haws was slumped against the wall outside the house next to a barbecue, breathing in the smell of his own cooked flesh, drooling from the shock and the pain through gritted teeth, trying real hard, and failing, to avoid looking like he wanted to kill every motherfucker in sight.

  “We’ve burned it, so you won’t bleed to death,” Torrento said.

  “Aren’t we little angels?” Boris, the bald, bearded pussy said with a smile.

  “Usually,” Torrento said, “I make people eat whatever I cut off. But I can see that won’t be necessary today. Will it?”

  Haws took a few deep breaths and said, “No.”

  Torrento smiled. “Get him up, Boris.”

  “Let me give you a hand,” Boris said, laughing.

  Haws stood up by himself. “Get the fuck away from me, Frenchie,” he said.

  The pain was beginning to dull as Haws got used to it. Most people were crushed by pain. Haws, he thrived on it, turned it into anger. He let his anger bubble under the surface and he had a good look around. He was gonna feed Torrento his own balls, but not yet.

  Haws saw three people moving in the shadows across the courtyard, past the parked cars. They were carrying something heavy and trying real hard not to be seen. Haws smiled. Hand or no hand, it was going to plan.

  Torrento walked away, saying, “Take him to the bunk house and get him set up, Boris, then go see about his friend. See if my girls haven’t sewn him up yet.”

  “Come on, Captain Hook,” Boris said. “Let’s find you a nice bed to cry in.”

  The bunk house was a five-car garage with beds bolted into the walls. From the number of beds, Haws guessed there must’ve been around twenty-five people in all.

  “Where the women sleep?” Haws asked.

  “Outside, usually,” Boris said. “They go wherever the fuck they want. Most of the women here,” Boris said with a smile, “they don’t last too long.”

  Haws gritted his teeth. He could feel his fist clenching on the hand that wasn’t there anymore.

  Four guys rose from their bunks and two in the back playing cards stepped up. They were big guys, angry-looking guys, a little out of shape and more than a little ugly. They looked Columbian.

  “Who the fuck is this punk?” one said. He looked like Dwayne Johnson if Dwayne Johnson was conceived in a car crash and raised by coyotes.

  “This is Eddie Haws,” Boris said. “Eddie here is gonna be joining us all. He says he’s doing us all a big fucking favor, too.”

  Haws gritted his teeth until his jaw hurt.

  “This fuckin’ faggot?” another said. He looked like a Columbian late-stage John Travolta, bald head, goatee and all.

  Dwayne Johnson and John Travolta got up close. The other four crowded behind them. Haws tried to the pain of his stump out of his head. He’d fought through pain before, but nothing like this. But these motherfuckers, he kept telling himself. These motherfuckers…

  “Torrento got this bitch already, huh?” Dwayne Johnson said.

  Haws squared up to him.

  “Well, look at this puta,” Dwayne Johnson said.

  “Looks like he ain’t taken enough of a beating already.”

  “Go and get more men,” Haws growled. “Let’s make this a fair fight.”

  Boris almost pissed his pants laughing.

  “You got a death wish, cocksucker?” John Travolta said. “Not enough you lost your hand, you want to lose your life too?”

  “Make him feel at home, boys,” Boris said as he left the bunk house.

  Boris shut the door behind him and heard the crashing and the banging begin behind him. He shook his head and laughed at the dumb American with one hand. He headed over towards the Pit.

  *

  John Travolta took a right hook to the face and tumbled to the floor with a face full of blood. The others were on top of Haws in a heartbeat, kicking and shouting. Haws grabbed one by the foot, twisted him down to the ground and pulled until he heard it snap and felt the bone break skin. He screamed like a hungry baby and Haws moved on, kicking out and getting to his feet. Haws had never fought one-handed before, but he’d trained hard in hand-to-hand combat and he always liked getting his elbows involved anyway. He cracked Dwayne Johnson in the nose with a firm elbow and then brought a knee into his stomach, flooring him. One of the men grabbed a chair and threw it. Haws dropped a shoulder and moved aside and it smashed into one of the other men.

  “I told you,” Haws said with a grin, “you should have gone for more men.”

  John Travolta got to his feet and pulled a knife. He was holding his bloodied nose with tears running down his face.

  “Motherfucker, please,” Haws said. “You’re gonna need more than that shitty little knife to get through this.”

  John Travolta charged him. Haws kicked downwards, meeting John Travolta’s knee as he ran forward in full stride. The knee cracked and he screamed. As John Travolta fell, Haws grabbed the knife as he was on the way down, broke John Travolta’s hand and twisted the knife around, sinking it into his throat as he hit the floor in one fluid motion. John Travolta’s blood splashed up onto Haws’s face.

  Haws looked up at the other men. Two were left standing. They looked at each other in panic.

  “What are you waiting for?” Haws said.

  They charged at him at the s
ame time. Haws snapped one’s leg with a firm kick to the side of the knee and ducked a punch from the other. He came back up, grabbed the guy’s arm and snapped it over his back with full force, sending the guy tumbling over him with his arm fractured in three places.

  Everyone who wasn’t unconscious was screaming.

  Haws looked for a gun. He found one in a foot locker under a bed, a pistol. He checked the ammo, and then grabbed a pillow off the top of the bed. He walked up to each man, placed the pillow over their heads and pressed the gun into the pillow before firing, killing them instantly and muffling the sound somewhat.

 

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