There were so many things that Simon wanted to say, but it was pointless. Only action presented a solution, and it was action that Simon both yearned for and dreaded. When he thought about fighting—of having to fight the enemy once again—it brought a deep pain. He could still feel the sickening sensation of his blade slicing through sinew and bone, vibrating his fingers, aching his hands. He wasn’t sure if the nightmares would ever cease. But with the terrible realization of Brian abducted, locked away in some dungeon to be tortured, killed … he yearned for the vibration once more. He wanted to feel his blade sink deep inside Karl Metzger. He wanted to cut down the entire sadistic army, hack away until nothing was left but a mountain of bodies. And although it was hard to admit, these violent urges were not the result of Brian’s abduction alone; it was the pain and torment inflicted on Bethany that made him want to rip the heart out of the Red Hands. Watching her suffer, witnessing her uncle murdered and her cousin abducted, further delaying the prospect of the two of them residing in peace, content, happy to be together; that was what made the heat in his chest rise with rage.
Carolanne got to her feet and Bethany said through tears, “Come on, let’s go home.” Only a few feet out, a doctor took a look at them and said, “Dear God, what happened?”
Carolanne shook her head, tears falling. “B-Brian …” she squeaked out. “I’m gonna-gonna be sick.” She held her stomach. The doctor found a chair for her to sit, and Simon told a rushed tale. The doctor listened, then told them to remain there until he returned. A minute later, he appeared with a bottle of benzodiazepine. “Take one and go home,” he told them. “Both of you.” He exchanged glances with Bethany. “Try to rest.”
Carolanne took two pills and offered the bottle to Bethany, who shook her head. “I’m going to get him back,” she said. “I swear it, Carolanne.”
“Beth,” she said. “We-we have to leave. We can’t stay here anymore. They’re coming. The Red Hands. They’re going to kill us all. They’re going to murder everyone.” Her chest was bobbing up and down and her cheeks flushed red. Simon hoped the pill would kick in soon.
He put an arm over her shoulder and helped her to her feet, with Bethany on the other side. “I’ll do everything in my power to stop them,” Simon said.
“You’re one man,” she said. “Did you hear what they did to Uncle Al? Oh, God, we have to run.”
Simon felt her body weight dip, and thought for a moment she was going to faint, but she remained walking past the hospital door, and pressed on through town until they arrived at the apartment. Winston greeted them at the door in his usual frenzy.
Simon gave a short whistle and said, “Relax, boy.”
Connor appeared at the kitchen and stopped short when he saw Carolanne and Bethany, their faces red and wet with tears. “What happened?” he asked.
Simon took Connor aside, his hand resting gently on the boy’s bony shoulder, and gave a quick explanation as Bethany got Carolanne to the couch. Her eyelids were droopy, and Simon guessed that a combination of the pills and the shock and stress were kicking in. A part of him wanted to collapse beside her. A portion of his brain wanted to shut off, allow for sleep to shield him from his anguish, at least temporarily. But the better part of his mind was consumed by a cocktail of adrenaline, fear, and anger.
Jesus, he thought, I need to focus. I need to calm my thoughts.
Connor stood by the doorway to the kitchen scratching at his growing hair, his eyes large. He’d traded in his monk robes for jeans and a flannel, and he was beginning to look like another boy altogether. A frightened boy. A boy growing up in a world filled with dread, and an uncertain future with little prospect for change.
“Christ,” Simon said. “I’m sorry. Come here. It’s going to be all right.” He motioned for Connor to come to the couch.
Carolanne’s eyes were open to slits. “Tell him the truth, Simon,” she said with a slight slur. “He’s old enough to know. He’s seen the state of the world. The Red Hands are coming, Connor. We’re at fucking war again.”
Connor walked to the couch, his eyes wet.
“The same people who killed my family?”
He was referring to the monks, Simon knew. He shook his head and gripped Connor’s shoulder. “Come here,” he said, not wanting to give an answer.
“Is it them?”
Simon hugged the boy, felt warm tears on his shoulder.
“I—” was all Simon got out as he heard footfalls leading to the door, followed by a fast and loud knock, and Winston barking.
Thank God …
Simon stood, and Carolanne resumed hugging and consoling Connor. Simon pushed Winston back from the door, where a member of the Rangers was waiting.
“Simon,” the man said, out of breath. “Where the hell have you been? We’ve been calling for you.”
“I … um.” Simon felt his belt for his radio and realized it wasn’t there. He remembered taking it off at the hospital. Did he leave it behind?
I’m not a leader, he thought. This is too much pressure, all of it. Surviving, it’s just too much.
“You’re needed back at HQ,” the Ranger continued. “Jeremy’s looking for you.”
Simon nodded and turned. “Carolanne …” Her eyes were closed. The pills appeared to be working. “Connor, keep an eye on her, okay?” The boy nodded and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Hold up,” Bethany said, standing from the couch.
Simon was about to recommend that she stay, that it was her cousin who was taken, so maybe a bit of rest would do her good. But Bethany wasn’t the type to be swayed.
Outside, Simon asked the Ranger, “What’s going on?”
“Some of the scouts have returned.”
“Which scouts?”
“From the other colonies, sir. A few have returned.”
Chapter Fifteen
Compulsion
The army was restless. Normally, Karl would share in that restlessness, and not feel peace until the final bullets were exchanged and victory was certain, but events were transpiring so smoothly that he remained calm. The army would march—soon—and Alice would fall. It was no longer a question of if, it was a question of when. And at the present, Karl was content to rehash the plans with Liam and the Priest as they inspected the defensive line.
A young private with a limp approached. “Sir,” the man said, “Captain Briggs has sent me to inform you, they’re back, sir.”
Karl turned to him, eyebrow raised. “And?”
The soldier swallowed visibly. “Perhaps, sir, you should speak to Captain—”
“Do you not know the outcome?”
“Sir, it’s …” His eyes cast to the ground. “It didn’t work, sir. We didn’t kill Jeremy Winters or Simon Kalispell, and the girl wasn’t captured.”
The sting was worse than he could have predicted. For nights, weeks, and months, he’d envisioned the raven-haired Bethany, played out fantasies in his mind of her chained to his bed. She would have to be broken and rebuilt, see her loved ones perish, know that all hope was lost. Over time, she could be turned to see the magnificence of his form of governance. She could become a lieutenant, an officer, the one and only female allowed into their ranks, to be treasured, adored, and feared by the soldiers. If she could not be broken, she would be chained away nonetheless, a hidden plaything. Both options piqued his arousal.
A fleeting thought crossed his mind, that his obsession over Bethany was not unlike the other girl, from his childhood. That girl had not arisen in his thoughts for decades. She had been sufficiently blocked from his mind, hidden away with all the other abuses, losses, and crimes of his past. It was something in Bethany’s persona, her straight dark hair, that managed to bring the memories of his lost love back to the surface of his repressed memories.
The private continued, “We got one of them, a soldier—”
“Is it not Bethany?”
“It is not, sir.”
“Is it Jeremy Winters or Simo
n Kalispell?”
“N-no, sir.”
Karl thought he would have his trophies that day, right now, that he could play with them into the late hours. The feeling of loss was worse than expected. He turned to leave, discuss plans with Liam, when the young soldier flinched away at his sudden movement.
“What?” Karl asked. “You going to stand around all day?”
“N-no, sir.” The man turned to leave.
Karl eyed him as he left, the sweat mark down his back, the way his voice trembled and his body shook. Coward. The man couldn’t even address him without showing fear. He felt the cool handle of his sidearm in his palm, unholstered the dark metal revolver. He inspected the cylinder despite knowing that it was loaded. He could feel the hot stares of Liam and the Priest standing at his side. He reholstered the pistol.
I’m getting soft, he thought, and moved away from the line.
Chapter Sixteen
In the Night
Footfalls. Voices. The creaking of a lock turning. Dim light.
“Not hungry?” a voice said. Not the same voice as before. “Trust me, in due time you’ll be hungry enough to lick shit off a toilet.” He laughed and picked up the tray. Brian had stared at that tray for many hours, thought that maybe the plastic side could be ground against the cement to sharpen it. He thought about making a triumphant escape, slashing his way across an army of Red Hands. But common sense prevailed.
“You gonna kill me?” he asked from the cot.
“Me, personally?” the man shrugged. “Probably not. Maybe.”
If this was to be his end, Brian decided then and there that he was taking at least one of them out with him. He would not go quietly into the night. He would raise hell. He’d burn down the heavens.
“What do you all want with me?”
Again the man shrugged and turned to leave.
“I don’t know a damn thing. You gonna kill me, get on with it. Give it a fuckin’ try.”
The man paused and looked at him.
“Aren’t you fiery.” He laughed. “The only reason you’re still alive is ’cause we haven’t been ordered to kill you yet. Give it some time. Eventually Karl will remember that you were taken, and realize he has no need for you.”
“Where’s Beth? Why did you ask for her?”
“Not my job to know.”
“No? It’s just your job to clean my shit up, huh?”
“You got some spirit, I’ll give you that. Tell you what, if the cell doesn’t whittle that spirit down a notch, I’ll be sure and help out. See this here shit food you left on the floor to rot? You’ll be scraping it up with your teeth when we forget that we’re supposed to be feeding your sorry ass. We got a bad memory, all of us.”
The heat rose inside Brian’s chest, and for a moment he thought he might leap at the man, if not for his sore knee.
The man began closing the door. “I don’t know anything!” Brian called out. “There’s no use keeping me around!”
The man peered in one last time. “Ain’t that the truth. I know perfectly well we don’t need you. Hell, I probably know the layout of Alice better than you.”
The door shut, and Brian called out, “How’s that?”
The lock creaked shut. The guard’s voice came from the open slat: “I lived there long enough to know,” he said. “It’s a regular paradise you got going on there.”
The footfalls faded until they disappeared behind the sound of a closing door.
***
Brian guessed a full day went by, judging by his hunger. The dim light casting through the slat never changed, and the silence was near deafening. If Brian focused enough, he could just make out the low murmur of a mechanical buzzing coming from the hallway outside.
His mouth was so incredibly dry, and the deep bruise on his side throbbed in pain. The walls of the cell were damp to the touch, and Brian’s thoughts stirred madly thinking about how long he might be stuck in this horrible little room. Would he die here? What would happen to Carolanne? Would she fight against the Red Hands with the rest of the army? He hoped not.
The cold was so all-consuming that he no longer noticed his shaking, just felt a general sense of misery. He thought of the boy with the springy red hair that he’d killed all that time ago, when he had left Bethany and Carolanne’s bunker in Aurora. Brian had acted without thinking, out of pure adrenaline, and something else … a sense that after all of his travels, from Nelson, all throughout the Smoky Mountains, losing his best friend along the journey, that he’d hit a wall; he would rather die than accept Bethany was about to be taken to be raped, killed, perhaps boiled in a stew. After shooting two of the men, Brian lunged at the trembling, filthy boy holding Bethany with a vile blade pressed to her throat, and shoved that same blade into the boy’s neck, saw the shock and terror cross his eyes as blood gurgled to his lips. Death was inconceivable, impossible, even to the mortally wounded.
So, who was Brian at that moment? He wanted to muster the same strength as he had that day … but he felt more like the wide-eyed boy. He felt like the damned. Death was coming. It was inevitable. He’d done so much, survived for so long; to spend his remaining time going mad underground before dying was preposterous, absurd, impossible … a sure thing.
Footfalls returned and stopped before the door. The lock didn’t click, but a shadow cut across the dim slat of light. A tray was placed on the shelf below the opening and the footfalls grew distant. His water came in a cup this time, just a few sips of metallic-tasting fluid, which he drank in two gulps. He dipped his finger in the chunky porridge and licked the gravy-like substance off. Rancid. Sour. Brian was again reminded of his travels from years past. Despite Steven’s protests, they had stopped at a gathering where an old man and a mentally challenged younger man had set up camp. With some convincing, the old man ladled them both a heap of the stew he’d been stirring with a knife. The meat, raccoon meat, the old man had told them … fatty … tough … they found the remains of a girl in the woods the next day, butchered like a deer.
A wave of nausea returned, and Brian sat down before the little water he had in his system evacuated. It was that night, after finding the girl, that Steven went mad. That night the demons in his mind came out to play, and Brian kept them at bay with a large rock that he used to bash in his cousin’s head.
Brian lowered his head into his palms again and fought back tears.
The same demons that possessed his cousin—that made him go mad—they were never extinguished. They were not killed in the woods, or later when Steven died in Nick’s mansion. They resisted the pull of hell to walk the mortal earth and lay claim to humankind. The demons spread their venom-wings into the minds of men such as Karl Metzger and his malignant army. They existed wherever greed made men turn to murder. They thrived when a person was not repulsed by rape and torture. To witness an execution with delight. To spectate starvation with no trepidation. To feel delight when striking a child, abusing a child. These were the workings of demons with fire in their eyes. Evil spread its shadow over the frail earth. It existed in that cell, deep underground, just as it had infested the bunker in Nelson, when Steven had his first taste of insanity. Devils slept on the cot beside Brian, offering false shoulders to cry upon, for temptation is often most appealing when under true despair, and the only way to block the roots of evil from infesting the mind is by fighting back, no matter how unwinnable the battle.
***
The tray was taken away by a stout man with jet-black skin and a chipped front tooth.
“Not hungry?” the man said.
“I can starve a bit more.”
“I’m insulted.” The man smiled his broken smile, and his eyes sheened a yellowish hue from the hallway light. “Made it special for you and the others. Put some prime cuts in there.”
“There’s others here?”
“Of course. We don’t kill everyone we come up against. Shit. We ain’t monsters, now are we?”
The man left.
T
ime again slipped by. Brian walked in circles to keep his body temperature up and his muscles from atrophying, and fought the urge to speak to himself as he made his loops. All the quiet, the lack of contact, was making the conversations in his head want to escape his lips. He slept for minutes at a time on the thin mattress, hugging his knees into his chest.
He stood to walk, and as he did, his head felt like it was spinning out of control and he had to sit for a few moments before his balance returned. The empty pit in his stomach was to blame, Brian was sure of it. He couldn’t remember the last meal he’d eaten.
When the next guard arrived, it took a moment for Brian to realize it was the same guard who’d first brought him food.
“Hear you’re not eating,” the man said. “Shame-shame.”
“I’m a dead man anyway, so I might as well go out without that rotten slop in my belly.”
“Aw, come on now. You look plenty alive to me.” The man put the tray on the cot and turned to leave.
“You figure out what Karl wants with me?”
“Like I told you, I don’t think the man gives two shits about you. It was the other three he wanted: Jeremy, Simon, and the bitch. You’re just a bonus. He’s a tad busy at the moment getting ready to march to Alice, but I’m sure when he remembers you’re down here we’ll end your suffering mighty quick. Or maybe not. Maybe he has a plan for you. Maybe he wants to march into Alice with your head on a stick to show ’em the nature of our hospitality.”
Brian shook his head. “How do you live with yourself? Any of you—but you most of all. You lived in Alice, and yet you have no qualms murdering them all.”
“Murder?” The man paused at the door. “Is that what you think we’re doing? Murder? You got it all wrong; but that’s what they teach you in the academy, isn’t it, that the only ones permitted to do the killing are the soldiers.”
“I ain’t a soldier. Never been.”
Someday Soon Page 8