I surveyed the part of the basement I could see from the end of the hallway, an open room. There was a door into the unfinished part to my left, another door to the three-quarter bath to my left front, the walkout glass doors right front, and the door to the basement bedroom to my right.
The XD swung left automatically. A faint sound marked him in the bathroom. I crouched behind the end of my battered sofa, set the weapon comfortably on the armrest, and called out, “Come on out of there, you.” Not eloquent, but it got my message across.
A moment’s pause, then the door exploded from the inside. 12-gauge shot, a part of me said, the shooter hoping to catch me napping. Some kind of automatic, since he fired four rounds quick, bang-bang-bang-bang, and I didn’t hear the distinct chack-chack of a pump.
He swept the room from his left to right, firing blind through the thin hollow-core door, spraying clouds of splinters with each shot. The sound was deafening. The last blast struck the top of the sofa about a foot in front of me, sending pieces of cushion flying. I was already fading back and moving left, to avoid the next one that never came, low in a duck walk.
Cursing myself for not retrieving my shotgun from my bedroom, I realized I couldn’t expect to penetrate two thicknesses of wall at the corner and do any damage with a pistol. And I wasn’t stepping in front of that door.
But local knowledge is always a huge advantage, and this was my own house. I opened the door to my left into the unfinished section of the basement and slid in silently, pushing the door almost shut behind me. Now, immediately to my right, was a single thickness of drywall behind two-by-four studs. No insulation, and on the other side, that bathroom and the shooter.
From point-blank range I unloaded seven rounds through the wall, walking them diagonally left to right and slanting from low to high, knee to chest level. The expanding loads punched through the thin gypsum, leaving thumb-sized holes as they went, and I heard a grunt and the thud of a body falling.
The serpent cheered.
I was moving already, taking cover to my left behind my water heater, and finished firing off the magazine into the tiny bathroom at about calf level.
Reloaded. Waited.
No sounds, but I smelled blood and feces. That was a good sign, in this case. It usually meant death.
The serpent rejoiced.
I glided silently up to look through one of the holes in the drywall. Bright red splash, a jumble of flesh and dark clothing, the stink. I stood back up, weapon held in close to my sternum, pointed forty-five degrees down, still in a shooter’s grip. None of that aiming skyward Hollywood crap you see on TV.
I moved carefully back through the door, took my left hand off the weapon and pushed at the shattered bathroom door. The body blocked it, and as I was pretty sure the man was down and out, I moved to brace myself to shove it open when I heard something behind me.
Clap. Clap.
The serpent coiled, wary.
A slow, sarcastic clap.
Crap.
-2-
Hoping the clapping meant he held nothing in his hands, he had the drop on me anyway, so I didn’t do anything sudden. I turned around, smoothly, weapon still ready but pointed low.
He was a suit. Mid twenties, about five ten, dark hair cut short, straight and expensive, the five-o’clock shadow curse of the swarthy on his face and chin. He looked like Agency to me. You know, OGA, the Other Government Agency that everyone likes to talk about in those breathless hushed tones, like they think it’s so cool, like they’re in love with its very existence, they don't even actually use the acronym. C. I. A. I realized it was his cologne I’d smelled, not the dead shooter’s, though that had helped me anyway.
“Hello, suit,” I said. “What the f– …what do you want?” I’d promised God to try to curb my vulgarities after all the jams He got me out of, and I was a man that tried to keep his promises.
I took a breath. “Why are you in my house, and why did you just make me kill a man?” I hung on to the tension between us, because I could feel the post-kill nausea trying to make itself known, and if I started on that I’d get the shakes and I’d want a drink and I really needed to stay away from that dark hole. Pharms, I could control.
No, really.
But alcohol was a treacherous sneaky thing.
“Not a man, but don’t worry about her. She’ll keep.” Flippant. Cold son of a bitch. The kind that would expend people like cartridges, like the one on the floor in there dead.
She? Dammit, had I just killed a woman? I hadn’t had much choice, right?
“Let’s go upstairs,” he said, jauntily.
So we did go up, him first, my front sight fixed on his spine, center mass, just out of reach if he suddenly turned and made a grab. He angled right at the top of the stairs, walked through my kitchen, and sat down in my dining room. I reached over and pulled the curtains shut, flipped on the light.
The suit took out a silver cigarette case, a matching lighter, and lit one. “Smoke?” He took a deep drag.
“I don’t smoke,” I said automatically.
“Of course you do. You have a display case of Turkish meerschaum pipes right there, and some of them are used. And a humidor with some nice Cohiba. I was tempted to get one.” He gestured toward the case in my living room.
“Are you a liar?” I asked him.
His eyes widened, baffled by the conversational turn. “No. Not the way you mean.”
“But you’ve lied before?”
“Sure. Most people have.”
“I rest my case.”
He rubbed his eyes, the gesture condescending, like he was dealing with a child. “Okay, I get it,” he sighed theatrically. “Occasional user, no dependencies, right? You quit drinking, quit smoking cigarettes; you’re an exercise junkie now. Nothing but endorphins, meditation, yoga, martial arts, the Quantico Shooting Club, going to church, anything to keep the nightmares and the demons at bay.”
Showed how much he didn’t know, but that was good, since it meant my little chemical issues were well hidden.
“I’m surprised you don’t have a dog or a cat,” he went on.
“I have a serpent.” I barked laughter, a little too loud, on the edge of control. “And I had a dog. But my ex has him for now. I didn’t want to separate hers and mine. But to hell with all that. Start talking.” I sat down, because I was coming down. I really wanted a drink, but I clamped down on that desire.
I rested the XD on the table, still pointed at his chest, my finger off the trigger but close, very close. The serpent kept trying to wrap around my finger, make me squeeze it.
He took another drag, then looked at his cigarette, speculatively.
It occurred to me that he had no ashtray, so I got up, took a cereal bowl out of my cupboard and slid it across my dining room table to him. Since I was up anyway, I also filled a tall glass with orange juice from my fridge. After violent action, the next best thing to alcohol was sugar. I didn’t get the suit any. He had his smoke.
I sat back down and sipped, feeling the cold sweet run down my insides. It steadied me a bit. I took a deep breath. “Okay, talk.”
He smiled, smarmy, superior. “Just like that. The secrets of the universe?”
The serpent and I kicked him under the table, hard, somewhere near his left knee.
He convulsed forward, dropping the cigarette and clutching for the pain, and I reached over, put my left hand on his head and mashed his face into the table. With my right I used the magazine extension of the automatic to grind out the burning cigarette. “Now you owe me for a new tablecloth.”
With my weight still on his head, I put the pistol down out of his reach, picked up the still-smoking butt and dropped it in the bowl. I scooped up the gun again.
“You can’t play conversation control games with me, you stupid suit.” I made that word into an epithet. “I’ve been through every resistance training course, every combat psych and psy-ops and mind-freak exercise, and you are in my house now.” I
felt violated, and it fueled me, and what control I had left drained away like water through a colander of pasta.
The serpent egged me on.
“MY HOUSE!” The snake and the dexedrine seized control, the worm in my hindbrain that I prayed about and tried so hard to keep caged every day since the IED and the brain damage, my nemesis, that God-damned satanic serpent, forgive me Lord. This idiot, this suit, was a child playing with blasting caps and batteries in a toybox full of explosives and he might die, right here, right now, for that ignorance and stupidity. I was on the edge of a whiteout, and the snake longed for it, longed to throw itself and me into that bright hot place where all I had to do was destroy. Annihilate every threat, kill everyone that wasn’t on my side, and this fool, the serpent screamed, was NOT ON MY SIDE.
I wrapped my fingers into his hair and dragged him to his feet, moving around the table. I was a hair under six feet, 200 pounds and muscular, but the beserkergang closing in made me shake him like a rag doll, lifting him onto his toes with one hand. Nose to nose, the muzzle of the XD jammed hard into his solar plexus, I screamed into his face, “I just killed one person, and I just. Might. Kill. You. Too. So. TALK!”
I threw him into his chair. He almost went over backward, but caught himself, and I stood over him, shaking. We were both shaking, me with barely-suppressed chemical rage, him with dawning fear.
Finally afraid. “You can’t kill me,” he said, shuddering.
Wrong thing to say. Oh, so very, very wrong.
A silent explosion in my head, and the serpent took me, wrapped me up and dragged me under.
I watched my hand move of its own volition, watched myself as I shot him twice in the chest.
It felt so good.
The serpent writhed in ecstasy.
He gaped at me, then looked down. Touched the entry wounds. Tried to speak. Slumped and was still.
Crap.
-3-
The house was silent as I stood there, and I suddenly felt dizzy, ice cold, drenched in sweat. Numbly I reached over, bumped the thermostat up a couple of degrees, then leaned against the wall, sweating. Listened to the silence. Mostly silence. The serpent still gibbered in my hindbrain. Too many chemicals, I knew. Steroids and painkillers and speed, and they had betrayed me this time.
But I heard something else. A rushing sound, not the forced air of the heating system either. Water. It sounded like a shower. It sounded like the shower in the basement was on. Had a pipe broken? Did one of my rounds damage something?
I reloaded automatically, ensuring I had the full sixteen and one up the pipe, then retraced my steps back down to the basement. No way that guy – sorry, that girl – got up. No way, after the mess I made of her. The serpent slithered forward again.
I edged around the bottom of the stairs; I glided forward with all the stealth I could muster, and slipped back to my position in the unfinished part of the basement, behind the thin wall with its sixteen or so holes. Yes, the shower was running, and something moved within. Several of the rounds had gone right through the shower and now the water was soaking through, drizzling through the holes.
What on God’s green Earth?
I waited, took up a position behind the crack of the door, and waited some more. It took several minutes but finally a figure came out of the shower, out of the bathroom. It looked like she had showered with her clothes on, to get rid of the blood and filth, but she was up and walking around. Toweling off. Not fast; she moved haltingly, like an old woman, or a hurt one. She was holding an exotic-looking weapon by the barrel in one hand, with a Kevlar helmet under the same arm. She had mangled body armor on, too. I could see five or six scars where my rounds had hit the vest and helmet and not penetrated.
So I had tagged her, but not killed her after all? But I had fired sixteen rounds, and I had smelled the stink of the body letting go, which normally only happens at the moment of death. At least some of her legs and arms should be out of commission, but she was using all of them. One, two, three, four. Yup, all four limbs operating.
Weird.
I stepped out from behind the door while her back was still mostly to me. “Freeze, you.”
Like I said, I’m not that creative with my one-liners.
She dropped the gun and helmet onto my old blue basement rug, held her hands up away from her body. “Don’t shoot, please. It hurts.”
“I bet. Turn around. All the way around, keep turning.”
I inspected her. No visible weapons, and just that vest. Besides that, just torn up slacks and a ragged button-down blouse, business casual, holes and rips and still some blood, and angry red wounds on her arms and legs, at least five that I could see. Spreading purple bruises. But she was standing, she was walking. Somehow. Woman or not, she had fired a very deadly firearm at me. The gun didn’t care who used it, and dead was dead.
Wasn’t it?
The serpent was not pleased.
“Turn right, go up the stairs. Don’t think about it, just do it. Up, up!” I followed her up, déjà vu, just like with the suit. I marched her through my kitchen and told her to sit next to the suit’s body.
The woman looked at the dead man, at the entry wounds, and made a choking sound. Her hair was short and bloody, her face ugly with bruises and what looked like a shot through her cheek.
I snarled, “I tried to talk to him. He gave me the wrong answers. Take that vest off.”
She did, painfully slow.
It’s useful in a field interrogation for the subject to be afraid of you, to keep him or her from recovering composure. I needed to push her through that window. Besides, she had genuine reason to fear me. The serpent hovered on my shoulder, threatening to take over again at any moment.
“So tell me, and make it fast. I really want to shoot you again.” It came out in a croon, husky, like a lover.
The serpent danced in the dexe-codone fog.
“Okay, okay, please don’t. We’re here to help you. Recruit you! Come on, Daniel, throttle back!”
I had placed my finger on the trigger again.
“It’s true! You fit the profile, all the skills, high moral index, ruthless but not corruptible, the Company wants you. But it’s going to be harder now.” She hooked a thumb at the dead suit beside her, avoiding looking.
‘Company’ was what the Agency’s employees called it, like it wasn’t even part of the government.
Maybe it wasn’t, really.
She was settling down; I needed to keep her momentum going in the direction of explanations. I gestured with the gun. “Keep talking. What was the plan?”
She talked, trippingly. “Jenkins was in charge – I had no choice. I was just supposed to provide the demonstration, which I did, as you see. I couldn’t kill you anyway, even if I wanted to, but you were supposed to think so, to get your attention.”
I wondered what she meant by ‘couldn’t kill’ me. Seemed like she could have if I’d been in front of the shotgun .
She went on, “I tried to talk him out of it but he was an arrogant son of a bitch and he wouldn’t listen.” She reached across with her right hand to scratch vigorously at her left arm, where one of my bullets had taken out a chunk of flesh.
Which reminded me. “So how come you aren’t dead, or at least bleeding out on my bathroom floor? How come you’re on your feet?” This whole conversation was surreal, but I couldn’t argue with my own two eyes so I figured I might as well just go with it until I figured it out. “Are you a vampire? Werewolf? Immortal? Alien? Zombie?” I ran out of possibilities.
“It’s a new thing. A kind of healing booster. Do you have anything to eat?” I noticed she was looking sallow, white almost, and shivering. It seemed like she was getting sick, and her veins and muscle definition were showing through paper-thin skin. “I’m starving.”
My stimulated mind raced. I threw mental rocks and the serpent reluctantly slouched back toward his cave.
Healing booster, super-healing. When she said starving, she meant lit
erally starving. From my extensive medical training I figured that her body was already catabolizing itself, cannibalizing at the cellular level, trying to heal those wounds. Can’t outrun biology, healing takes energy and materials, no matter how advanced the drug or technique. And I needed this woman for answers, and maybe to keep me out of an Agency cell. I’d brushed up against the spooks Over There, and I had no desire to be ‘rendered.’
Funny, how similar the two meanings of that word ended up being. One, to be boiled down to fatty paste. Two, to be given over to a foreign country to be tortured.
So I got her some food. A big bag of lunchmeat, a package of cheese slices, mayo, mustard, a loaf of bread, apples, paper plates, and a plastic spoon. A plastic cup for orange juice. No metal. Dad didn’t raise no dummy. Used right, a metal spoon could kill a man.
“Make me a sandwich too,” I said. I didn’t want to put down the gun. “And keep talking. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Elise. Elise Wallis.” She lined up six pairs of bread slices with shaky hands and started to construct sandwiches, after stuffing a piece of the loaf into her mouth like a slumdog orphan. She took a moment to choke it down dry, then continued. “It was just supposed to be a demonstration. You were supposed to shoot me, of course. Not quite so many times. And I didn’t really shoot at you, did I? Those rounds I had were filled with salt. Not even rock salt, just table salt. Nasty within five feet, but after that it just stings.” She sounded whiny, defensive. Querulous.
I laughed tightly. “Well, that didn’t work out so well. And now some poor arrogant tailored-suit schmuck is dead. I guess he didn’t have the super-healing. Why not? Experimental? Some kind of side-effects? Doesn’t work on everyone?” My mind was racing now, the adrenaline and the problem keeping me on track. It felt good, to be firing on all cylinders again.
Outrunning the serpent.
“Yeah, there’s a downside, mostly for the Company.” She finished making the sandwiches, pushed one across the table to me, and demolished another in four bites.
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