by A. R. Shaw
When he was only three feet away, his pulse raged with hate. The one shadowy young woman who dared to run out for the fallen food lay dead. Her blond hair stained red, her white skin frozen in time—she’d been shot not once, but three times. Both of her thighs had gunshots through them, and the last one was through her temple. They’d tortured her. He guessed why. She’d seen him.
Bishop shook his head. “Condemn them to hell…” he said under his breath. Such a senseless killing. She probably had children in the home, he guessed. This had to stop. This had to stop now.
Bishop followed what looked like the tractor sled’s distinguishing tracks. They were choppy on the outer sides and smooth on the inner, made by the larger tractor wheels in the front of the sled and the sleek blades of the vehicle carrying these sick bastards.
It didn’t take long for Bishop to follow them far enough to see where they led. In fact, most of the tracks in the town were the same. Hardly anyone else traveled from their homes, even though occasional curtains flickered. He knew they were in there—just too afraid to come out.
An entire town was terrified because of the tyrant in the big hotel controlling everything.
Under cover of darkness, Bishop edged closer to the hotel, where the tracks had led him. They swung up into the parking garage multiple times. They were fresh, and Bishop wondered why they didn’t try to hide them. Then he remembered the dead police officer on the lake and knew they didn’t feel the need to cover their tracks. They owned the town now.
Hidden behind a corner building on East Front Avenue and Fourth Street, Bishop watched as guards walked back and forth in the opening of the parking garage attached to the hotel. Then something else caught his attention. A noise, and it sounded like its source was traveling closer, from across the south side of the lake. In his helmet, he used the magnify app and zeroed in on the source of the noise. There was a man on an older snowmobile. The louder gas two-stroke engine was from before everything became battery operated. Where the man got the gasoline mixture was a mystery to Bishop. With his night vision goggles, Bishop could only see that the traveler was alone and pulled a small trailer on skis behind his snowmobile. He wasn’t certain if the guy was with the hotel bullies or not, but as the guards from the hotel scrambled to intercept him, he assumed the latter.
Afraid the guy was driving into his own death like the last guy he’d watched die on the ice, Bishop anticipated gunshots any minute. But that’s not what happened. As the guards scrambled to intercept the guy, another man walked outside. This guy stood taller than rest. A few of the guards went to him for instruction, and he made hand gestures toward the guy on the ice. What surprised him was that it wasn’t Frank. Nor were the men guarding the hotel Frank’s men. These guys wore black uniforms, and Frank’s men wore street clothes.
“Odd. This guy’s got his own army.”
Several of the uniformed hotel guards intercepted the guy on the ice. Or rather, they met him on the ice as he slowed down. Their rifles raised on his approach. The man, who held his hands up, didn’t appear to be armed from Bishop’s view and only talked to the men. One of the three guards stepped away and used his radio on his shoulder to relay what was probably a message. Bishop looked back at the parking garage and saw that two other guards were standing next to the leader, discussing something. Obviously they’d received the message and were contemplating what their next move would be. By this time, the sun was beginning to rise, and soon Bishop had to switch off the night vision to watch the scene unfold in front of him. Near dawn, some decision was made, and the three guards holding the traveler searched through his belongings and patted him down while another one held him at gunpoint. Whatever they were saying to the man, he seemed to object to it. He waved his arms angrily and made pleading gestures.
The three men then turned and began walking away from him as the traveler shouted at them. One of the guards turned back abruptly and yelled. This Bishop could hear from his position. “Do you want to die?” The guard aimed his rifle at the man’s head. The traveler shook his head in defeat and turned on his engine, arching a circle with his vehicle and racing away the way he’d come.
Bishop didn’t know the man, but he was obviously desperate. And from the previous scene here, he was surprised they let him live, let alone leave on his own.
Switching his view to the men standing in the opened parking garage, the taller man watched the traveler speed away. His breath clouded out behind him. He had to be freezing standing out there in only a coat, but it didn’t seem to bother him. The guards left his side after saying something more, and the tall man stood there for a while longer, watching the ice. Then he turned and went back inside.
At that moment, Bishop knew who the enemy was. Frank was a henchman, but this guy was the head of the snake. The one Bishop needed to take down.
Bishop began to leave, but when he turned, he spotted someone coming around the back of the building where he was hiding. Immediately he knew he’d been too involved with what was going on in front of him so that he’d forgotten to check behind his position. The man was dressed in the black uniform associated with the guards of the hotel and was speaking rapidly into a mic on his shoulder while drawing a pistol from a holster on his side.
Bishop was already on his snowmobile, had started it, and was racing toward the guy, who aimed, fired, and missed as Bishop leaned to the side when he reached close proximity. Bishop kicked the guard square in the chest, flinging him into a snow berm. Too late, he thought. They’re on to me now.
He took off up Fourth Street and jetted right onto East Indiana Avenue. Most of this was residential, and he couldn’t leave tracks leading back to the storage unit, nor did he want to get anyone killed. When he hit Seventh Street, snow vehicles were coming from the south, so he made several shots in their direction.
He was desperately trying to get out of the residential streets when shots rang out behind him. He began zig-zagging in the street to evade the bullets and continued to gain distance. Nearing Phippeny Park on the right, Bishop swerved through the two-block-wide park, cutting between the trees until he sped east and then doubled back south on Eighth Street. If he could get them in between the streets, he could end this.
But by the time he hit Pennsylvania Avenue, sparks flew from a bullet hitting his engine cover. Someone was shooting at him from the west side. Continuing on in hopes of losing them, Bishop hit Foster Avenue but turned too late to see a roadblock pull into place, and not only that, but a young boy had emerged from his home between him and the roadblock and was walking out toward the road through the snow in his driveway.
Shots flew through the air, and all Bishop could think of in that split second was the child’s life ending from a stray bullet. He was about three years old, dressed in head-to-foot pajamas. Beyond the boy, there were the men shooting at Bishop, heedless of the child making his way between them into the street. Bishop did the only thing he could think of, and that was intercepting the child. Bishop sped toward the enemy. Halfway there, he skidded down to the right, his kneecap grazing the ice as the boy entered the kill zone. He grabbed the child with his right arm as his snowmobile landed on its side between them and the enemy.
In seconds, the armed men were on them, shouting and pointing their weapons at him and the child. Bishop held his hands in the air in hopes they wouldn’t kill the boy. The little boy cried out in fear. One of them grabbed the boy by the back of his pajamas and flung him away hard toward the path he came through in the snow.
Behind Bishop’s helmet, he glared at the man. The child still screamed. Five armed men dressed in black quickly removed Bishop’s helmet, knife and firearms and had fitted him with plasticuffs.
They roughly picked him up out of the snow and began leading him toward their vehicle. The child still screamed from where he’d landed. “Put the kid inside his house at least,” Bishop shouted. They made no effort to do so.
Bishop struggled as they took him away, and one of the officer
s laughed and then took his rifle and butted Bishop in the side of the face. Blood spewed from Bishop’s nose, and yet he yelled again, “You’re going to kill him. Get the kid inside!” Again, the same officer this time raised his pistol and, before Bishop could duck, the handle end came crashing down against his skull. Bishop’s vision faltered as his peripheral vision went black and what he could see was quickly zeroing out into darkness.
They didn’t listen, and as they held Bishop down, the last thing he heard as he was losing consciousness was the sound of the boy’s cries as he screamed from the snow berm beside the street.
In his last seconds of consciousness, his thoughts turned to another boy, Ben, and his mother and Louna, who were hiding still, hiding in a place they would not be safe in for long. Not from the men in his way, but from the greater danger, the cold.
Damn, I’ve killed us all.
36
A child’s cry was his last memory and was also what woke him as he lay on cold concrete floor. Groggily, Bishop realized the sound wasn’t the cry of a child at all, but a thrumming in his head reminded him of what had happened.
He tried to rise, but as he lifted his cheek from the rough, cold floor, he found his hands were still tied behind his back.
He’d realized then, too, that he wasn’t alone in the dark room. Someone else was in there with him and had made a noise like the brushing of fabric across the flooring, fibers catching on tiny concrete thorns.
“Who’s there?”
Though no one answered, Bishop could hear him breathing in the dark. His breath was coming in and out in at a faster rate of speed, which meant he was scared. In Bishop’s experience, scared men did dumb things. Things that got you killed despite the desire to save yourself. Like he did earlier, trying to save the child from the crossfire only for the little boy to freeze to death in the snowbank where the thugs had left him.
Attempting to sit up, Bishop rolled over first onto his side and then scooted backward a few feet until he hit a wall. He leaned against the solid structure and felt grooves in the wall with his fingers. A painted cinderblock wall was easy to detect. Must be in the building’s basement.
“Hey,” he called out to the unseen occupant. His voice bounced off the walls. The ceiling must be high in here. Maybe a stairwell?
He tried again. “Hey, I know you’re there. I can hear you.” He didn’t hear anything for a second, only another shift of fabric on the floor. “Hey, what’s your name?”
Silence for a time and then, “I’m…Austin. Austin Sanchez.”
Young man, Bishop thought at the sound of his voice. Not more than twenty-five.
“Why are you here, Austin?”
“I…I won’t do what Roman wants me to do. I’m Mr. Geller’s personal assistant. I’m not a…a gangster.”
“Who’s Mr. Geller?
He laughed, incredulous. “Mr. Geller owns this hotel and half the town.”
“Where is he now?”
“He flew back to Arizona. He doesn’t know any of this is going on. He wouldn’t allow it. Mr. Geller is a good man.”
Bishop nodded in the dark. Pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place. “Who’s running the show now?”
“His name is Roman. He’s Mr. Geller’s manager.”
Bishop thought about this for a moment. “Roman a tall guy? Dark hair?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have any way of contacting Mr. Geller?”
Austin sighed. “No, cell towers are down. I don’t even know if he made it there. I hope he did. They took me prisoner right after he left.”
“How often do they come to check on you?”
“Twice a day,” he said, his voice back to normal. However, it was so cold in the room that Bishop knew if they were left there without heat, they’d die of exposure in a matter of days.
“Each time they come in, it’s the same thing. They ask if I’ll join them. They say I only have one day left to decide.”
“Join what?”
“I guess, join them. I don’t understand why they haven’t killed me yet. They’ve already killed so many.”
“Does Roman come here himself?”
“No, I last saw him right after Mr. Geller left on the helipad. That was like a week ago. Right before this all began.”
Hmmm. The question that had plagued Austin now plagued Bishop. Why hadn’t they killed him long ago? There had to be a reason, since killing seemed so easy to them. These men who abandon children to die weren’t likely to think twice about offing someone who wouldn’t go along with their plans. There must be something special about Austin, or there was the possibility that he was lying to Bishop. The thought crossed his mind. Possibly he had been stowed there to gain information about Bishop, the vigilante who came to take the town.
Before he could ask questions, though, the door opened. As it did, a stream of light spiked into the room and separated shadows on the floor that rose up the wall and instantly confirmed Bishop’s guess that he was in the bottom of a concrete stairwell.
Besides the light, a rifle appeared in the doorway, followed by three men all dressed in black, and then the light source appeared in the form of an electric lantern.
“Hello,” the first guard said as he shined the light onto Bishop. Even though he knew it might be a waste of effort, his hands worked overtime in trying to free themselves from the plasticuffs behind his back.
“What’s your name, sir?”
Bishop diverted his eyes to the young man sitting across from him. He had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His blond hair was mussed, and the first thing Bishop zeroed in on was the bruising around his right eye. Someone had roughed him up. His shirtsleeve was torn, and there was old dried blood on the kid’s shirt. He was thin and, worse yet, had the look of someone defeated. He made eye contact with Bishop for a second before looking down again. In that short time, Bishop didn’t think the kid was a spy, but he was no expert on human behavior. That young man was in pain and, judging by his defensive stance, he didn’t trust the guards to not hurt him again.
“What do you want?” Bishop asked, ignoring the question, swinging his attention directly to the closest guard at the same time he secretly wrestled with freeing himself of the restraints.
The guard stepped aside and let another man into the room. A man Bishop had seen before in town and kept his distance from. Frank moved toward him with a grin on his face and a cigarette between his lips. Dressed in denim and snow boots, he didn’t have the swagger he usually walked with, but he was menacing all the same.
“I know you,” Frank said, pointing his cigarette at him. He flicked his ashes on Bishop’s black pants. The red glow within the ashes threatened to burn a hole in the nylon snow gear. Bishop brushed it off with his other leg before it got the chance.
“You’re that guy.” Frank said it in such a way that Bishop wasn’t sure if he really knew who he was at all. He was only taking a stab in the dark about his identity. Bishop had only run into Frank once, but it was a memorable event and one that Bishop never intended to repeat again.
The man scrunched his brows together for a moment as if that would jar his memory. “I know I’ve seen you before. But it doesn’t matter now because you’re a dead man anyway.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know, you coward.”
Frank’s laughter bounced off the concrete walls. “Dead man’s funny,” he said to the guard next to him. “It doesn’t matter who you are. You don’t exist beyond this room and you never will again.”
Frank abruptly averted his attention away from Bishop and addressed Austin.
“Last chance, son. This is it. You have to join us. Roman said so.”
Austin squirmed in his seat. He looked terrified. His gaze went from Frank to Bishop, pleading for help, but there was nothing Bishop could do. “I…I can’t do what they do. I won’t.”
Frank knelt at the young man’s side. “Look, kid. You’re going to die unless you do t
his. I can’t step in anymore.”
Bishop watched the exchange, and it appeared to him that Frank genuinely cared for the kid. He was almost pleading with him.
“Just go along, Austin. I’ll make sure you’re with good people. I’ll look out for you.”
Austin searched Frank’s face. He was nearly in tears. “But why?”
Frank rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “I made a promise to your mother a long time ago. I intend to keep it. Look, I’ll make sure you’re out of the way of things. OK? Just say you’ll go along.”
Austin again looked to Bishop as if he would have the answers.
Frank tapped him on the leg again. “Hey, I need an answer now.”
Austin nodded tentatively at first and then said, “OK.”
“That’s a good lad,” Frank said and helped Austin stand. He removed his cuffs while he said, “You have to do one thing first before you can leave this room, though. You have to prove yourself, Austin. This one time. I won’t ask you to do it again. But this time, you have to do it. Understand?”
“Do what?” Austin asked, surprised, but Bishop had a sick feeling he knew what the task would be.
When Frank pulled a gleaming chrome .50 Cal Desert Eagle out of his shoulder holster, that he kept on at all times without regard to concealment, and put the heavy, chrome gun in Austin’s hands, Bishop knew his hunch was right.
Frank pointed to Bishop on the floor. “Kill him.”
Austin jerked and shook his head quickly. “I…I can’t. I said I wouldn’t do anything like that.”
Frank put his hands on both of Austin’s arms. “Just this one time. That’s all it will take for you prove yourself. Just shoot him once in the chest. That’s all you have to do. That’s the only way you’re leaving this room.”
Frank motioned for the guards to leave. “I’ll stand right outside the door, Austin. You can’t miss. Just one shot to the chest. That’s all I ask.”