“…had I been born in Germany…with this leg…there is a good chance I’d have been sterilized. Or far worse…”
The crowd swelled backward momentarily, as if it had drawn a deep breath, then pressed in again, contracting back into its original shape.
“…this place, this haven, where we can all coexist peacefully without fear of harm or judgment, would not exist for any of us…”
A lane in the crowd opened up, revealing the two members of the Black Cadre dragging an unconscious man by the underarms. Ben recognized the man as Mars, a young skinhead from Indiana with buckteeth and a bad complexion. There was already a knot swelling on the side of his lolled head and the toes of his combat boots left faint, twin trails in the grass behind him. Ben watched the guards drag Mars quickly out of sight to the low-slung building that served as their quarters, droplets of blood from a gash across the man’s temple speckling their wake. Ben’s stomach lurched and he shook his head, forcing himself to look back to the stage.
“I am not here to change your mind overnight, or at all, frankly, but this place will continue to draw people from different walks of life, different ideologies from your own…different races or ethnicities even…”
Just moments before, Ben might have expected a riot at this statement. Now, after the quiet, efficient dispatching of Mars, Drexler had the assemblage’s full attention. No one uttered a word. No murmurs rippled through the crowd. Still, an unease settled over the gathering, as if Drexler were a CEO revealing to his company that layoffs were imminent, and everyone hung on his next word.
“…although,” continued Drexler, “they’d be a hell of a lot crazier than me.”
At this, relieved laughter broke out in patches.
“Listen,” he continued, as the laughter settled down, “Välkommen means welcome, but it may as well mean ‘live and let live.’ But it’s not enough for us just to live. We’ve all been just living…alone, apart, alienated. I want to live well. And I want that for all of you too.”
Murmurs of assent at this. Ben even heard a “hell yeah.”
He pointed in the direction of the archway, where the wooden sign hung. “If someone comes to us, no matter who, no matter from where, if they are brave enough or desperate enough to enter this place, then they are my brother or sister. I make no demands other than peace.”
The frail old man on the stage looked out among the crowd and for a moment, despite his slightly stooped spine, Ben sensed there was real steel in it. There had to be. Granted, Ben sensed Drexler had no idea how venomous the snakes in his garden truly were, but he had to concede the scale and scope of the operation were impressive. That there weren’t more murders, or outright warfare among the varied cliques, crews, and gangs, each group’s racism more vehement or ideology more parochial than the last, was in itself a logistical miracle. Lindsay had confessed sympathy for Drexler, if not outright affection. Ben didn’t go that far, but the man had his grudging respect. And there had been no trace of monsters whatsoever, let alone Drexler commanding any. The real monsters were his son and his friends. And Ben could not wait another minute to leave this place, tell Severance, and shut Felix down. The old man would have to take care of himself in the interim.
But that was not his problem. It was time to go.
Lindsay, where on God’s green earth are you?
Ben pulled himself from his troubled thoughts to see several men with instruments swarming the stage. Drexler was gone. There were the discordant sounds of electric guitars tuning themselves before one began a familiar noodling, which signaled everyone onstage to launch into a sloppy, chunky version of “Sweet Home Alabama.” The crowd, which had been waiting to exhale, roared its approval. Even Breaux, his thick arms still folded against his chest, broke into a wide, wolfish grin. Then Breaux’s eyes fixed on Ben’s and he descended the steps, heading in his direction, before disappearing into the crowd.
It was now or never, but Lindsay was nowhere to be seen. Ben felt his panic rising. If he didn’t leave now, within the next few seconds, Breaux would reach him, and he felt certain that he wouldn’t be going anywhere that night, or maybe ever again. The thought of one more night in Välkommen and whatever fresh hell it had in store for him was too much to think about.
Another lane parted in the rear of the crowd. But instead of the Black Cadre or the chief of security, Ben saw Lindsay pass, unmolested, through the men as if they were loyal subjects. After Mars, the message was clear: If hecklers faced swift retaliation, then touching Drexler’s associates was most certainly off-limits.
At that moment, it didn’t matter. As soon as he saw her, a goofy smile broke across his face and his relief was so immediate, tears nearly sprang to his eyes. She saw him, smiled back, and broke into a jog toward him. He ran to her as well. He realized they had not spoken since Davis had snatched him. She didn’t know that it was time to go. To any bystanders watching them instead of the show, the pair looked like young lovers who had been separated for too long.
Ben held out his hands for her.
As she approached, he mouthed, “Davis.”
“Now?” she asked.
“Now,” he said.
She took his hand and together, they plunged into the woods.
Chapter 32
A little more than one hundred yards into the Pine Barrens, with sludgy guitar music still penetrating the trees, Ben and Lindsay ran hand in hand. A shaggy mass detached itself from the underbrush in front of them to intercept them. Lindsay stopped short.
“It’s okay,” said Ben.
Davis Holland, clad and camouflaged in his ghillie suit, said, “Follow me,” then turned his back on Välkommen and continued on the vector the pair had been traveling. Finally, they were outside of the camp. They were out of the ribbon. They were out of view of the game cameras. There was no more pretense. Galahad was leading them out and woe be unto anyone who barred him in his exfiltration, he thought.
He changed direction slightly until the tangled underbrush relented and they intersected an animal run. Davis had investigated it several times and was confident there were no trip wires or booby traps along the narrow path. With less interference, they picked up speed. With each new change in their direction, Davis glanced over his shoulder. Lindsay was behind him, Ben behind her. They were staying on him.
Good, he thought.
Like the mouth of a river, the animal run spilled them into a legitimate trail in the woods and Davis broke into a jog. The other two picked up their pace as well, Lindsay running dutifully behind him, Ben uncharacteristically silent. As they plowed ahead, he began to feel a certain lightness. Every step he took was a step away from Välkommen and its chief of security, who had been dogging those steps.
The easing of the tension did not mean he was relaxed. His nerves were on high alert yet not frayed, his senses receiving everything but not to the point of overload. His pupils were dilated, fully adjusted to the darkness, such that the moonlight dappling the ground through the pines was enough to navigate by. The smell of the pines was present and he could taste it in the back of his throat as he ran. Feeling as he did, in the zone, he felt like he could run them all the way back to D.C. Like he could run forever. But he would only need to go a few miles, and Severance would take care of the rest. Soon after, they’d all be speeding south on I-395. But until then, he was still operating.
He stopped short and held up his fist.
Lindsay froze and Ben ran into the back of her. They nearly tumbled over and Davis shushed them.
“Do you hear that?” he whispered.
“I think it’s the Allman Brothers,” said Ben.
“Not that. A bell. Like a cowbell maybe?”
“Farm,” whispered Lindsay.
“No farms near here. Stay close and look alive.”
They continued forward, no longer jogging. Davis pushed his primary, the MR556, in front of him and proceeded slowly. They hopped over a narrow ravine, one at a time, leaping free of the sucking
muck. First Davis, then Lindsay. When Ben landed on the far side, Davis proceeded forward. He smelled a heavy, damp smell then, almost sweet, like the smell of the earth itself. He stopped.
“Smell that?” asked Davis.
Ben was answering when Lindsay screamed. Davis wheeled to see a large, ghillie-suited operative crash from the trees and swing something into Ben’s face.
Lindsay’s scream saved Ben, who fell backward as Davis heard the loud crack of something solid smashing into the tree Ben had been next to.
“Jesus Christ!” yelled Ben.
The ghillie suit raised its weapon—a branch or a club, it was hard to tell—over its head and brought it down with frightening speed. Ben skittered backward like a crab and the club smashed the ground where his legs had been a split second before. The ghillie suit was pursuing him with such an explosive, single-minded fury, Davis knew Ben would not dodge another swing, but Lindsay was in his line of fire.
“Down!” he yelled.
Two things happened at once. Lindsay dove to the ground and Ben disappeared. One moment, Ben was slipping and sliding and crab-walking away from the ghillie suit’s advance, when his hand, seeking solid ground, found none. His feet went skyward and he pitched backward into the ravine with a splash. The club made a flat smacking sound as it hit the mud of the ravine’s bank.
It made no sense to Davis. One of Välkommen’s operatives had constructed a ghillie suit passable enough to get the drop on them and instead of lighting them up with rifle fire or slitting a throat, the shaggy man came crashing through the brush with a club? What kind of training was that? As his finger found the pressure-mounted switch to the tactical flashlight affixed to his rifle, the cone of light revealed the ghillie suit to be unlike any he had ever seen before. As Davis’s finger retuned to the trigger to squeeze out the slack, he noticed that the man, a hulking figure, wore some sort of stitched hood, and the suit itself looked like it was composed of wicker or rope, with different sizes of bells hanging from it.
None of these were conscious thoughts to Davis. It was more instinctive than that, flying shards of information in the dark giving him the uneasy sense that things weren’t adding up. But he knew enough. With Ben out of the way and Lindsay flattened, he opened fire. Light danced against the trees, but all was quiet. The barrel of his primary was suppressed for sound, so the only notable noise at that moment was the four bullets slamming into the shaggy man’s back. It sounded like the wet smacking of the man’s club on the bank.
The figure straightened, then turned slowly. For a moment, Davis thought the man was looking at him, but his hood had neither eyes nor a face, just a slash across its mouth filled with teeth.
Davis had just put two double-tapped bursts into the man and he was still on his feet, still moving. Davis’s sinking feeling accelerated rapidly like a plunging roller coaster. Between them, Lindsay was pressed to the ground. The shaggy man raised his club and advanced toward her.
Davis opened up again. The MR556 didn’t have full auto, but he squeezed the trigger as quickly as his finger would allow and sent enough rounds into the man’s center mass to stop a charging rhino. Whatever it is, thought Davis, it isn’t a man.
The hulking figure shrugged the bullets off and kept coming, raising the club still higher.
“Lindsay, go!”
She sprang up and sprinted past them. The thing turned and swung wildly, but Lindsay was still low and the club sailed over her head. Davis realized it wanted her. It wanted Ben. And Davis, filling it full of rounds, was merely a nuisance.
Lindsay darted across the ravine as Ben was still getting to his feet and they collapsed onto each other in the muck.
“Run!” yelled Davis.
Ben and Lindsay were too stunned to move. They simply stared at him from the other side of the ravine.
Davis fired his rifle into the water, sending spray into the air. “Go, God damn it, go now! It wants you!”
That got their attention. They rabbited.
Davis turned his attention back to the shaggy creature. He circled the thing—pulling as fast as possible, sending volleys into it, perforating it—until he stood between it and the ravine. His friends were on the other side of it, running back from where they had come, back toward Välkommen. The hulking thing finally seemed to take notice of him. It hefted its club high over its head. Davis sprang to the side as the club came down, and in one motion, dropped his rifle, letting his primary hang from his chest harness, and pulled his secondary, an STI 1911. It was a large pistol and the bite of the grip felt good in his hand. He tried not to think that his rifle had been useless. Still, nothing Davis had ever encountered—not in the sandbox, not along the border, not in the Northwoods—could put up much of a fight without a brain. Davis advanced smoothly and put four rounds into its head.
The backhand caught Davis in the temple. He saw stars. Nothing that moves that fast should hit that hard, thought Davis. It was like colliding with a telephone pole. He staggered back and when his vision cleared, the shaggy man loomed into his view. Davis tried to backpedal but the thing reached out and snatched him, grabbing him by the rifle, which still hung from the harness at his chest.
Trapped, thought Davis.
He put two more rounds into the jagged, stitched teeth of the hood, obliterating it.
The hulk charged forward then, lifting Davis off his feet and slamming him into a pine tree. The back of Davis’s head bounced off the trunk. The creature had Davis by the rifle and used it to pull him in, then slam him into the tree over and over.
There’s goes a rib, thought Davis.
Each time the creature brought him in, Davis smelled sweet rot, like an open grave. Each time he slammed into the tree, the bells on its hide tolled.
It’s too strong, he thought.
Davis cycled through his training by rote. There was nothing else to do. The guns were having no effect.
Tertiary.
He pulled his Randall Custom with GALAHAD etched into the blade and tried to slash at the harness, but the creature was shaking him and thrusting him too violently. It tumbled his thoughts like clothes in a dryer.
Am I going to die here?
Unable to free himself, he plunged the knife to the hilt into the thing’s neck, where a carotid artery would surely be. Despite the slamming and the pain, it was a perfect strike. It slid in with ease.
Too much ease. Like plunging the knife into clay. No resistance. The creature battered him into the tree once more. Its hood smoldered. The bite of gun smoke filled Davis’s nostrils.
He looked over the creature’s massive, rounded shoulders to see that Ben and Lindsay were gone. They had listened. That meant they had a head start. That meant they might survive, and he could live with that.
The beast slammed him into the tree again.
I am going to die here. I can’t believe it.
A second figure, large and dark, crashed through the underbrush toward him. No fair, thought Davis, as darkness crept around the edges of his vision. Overkill. But as the new figure ran toward him, Davis heard screaming over the roaring and thrashing in his ears. Not screaming, he thought, blacking out.
A war cry.
Alex Standingcloud charged, his own club raised.
Chapter 33
Alex Standingcloud did not comprehend what the mass was that was bludgeoning his friend and partner, but it had gotten the better of Galahad and that was enough for him. He took a running swing with the bikwaakwado-bagamaagan, his ball-headed war club, into the head of the creature like he was batting on his high school baseball team and swinging for the fences. It felt good to unleash like that. To swing away without restraint. For months he had been training with Davis and nothing could dispel his grief at losing the elders of his tribe, including his father, or the dread that worse was coming. Only tracking and rousting the remaining redmouths throughout the Northwoods brought him any sense of relief. Any sense of progress.
This, though, felt good.
The creature’s head, covered in its tattered hood, still smoldering where Davis had fired into it, came off its shoulders and disappeared into the trees.
The figure, either unaware or uncaring, rotated at the waist 180 degrees toward him.
Definitely not human, thought Alex.
It punched Alex square in the chest and he flew backward, tumbling and sliding on the fallen pine needles of the forest floor. He rolled to a stop and saw Davis weakly trying to pry himself free from the creature’s grip. Blood flowed from the back of his head.
Alex reached into the hip pocket of his pants until he found the attachment he was looking for, then found the small hole in the ball end of his war club. He quickly notched the attachment into the club, locking it into place. Traditional war clubs often featured spikes or blades in the ball end. Tradition was very important to Alex Standingcloud. There was power in it. He now carried an assortment of similar attachments on his person—different shapes and sizes and compositions—accessories for every situation. An upgrade to his father’s original design. Though he wasn’t quite sure what this situation was yet, he went with the hip pocket. When he stood to face the hulking thing, a hand-forged iron blade extended from the ball of his war club. It resembled the tooth of a great white shark, serrated on both sides.
Alex charged. The headless figure pitched Davis into Alex’s path. Davis went low, so Alex went high, rolling off Davis’s back, letting the momentum propel him forward. He gripped the club with both hands and when his feet found the earth again, he swung for all he was worth, a great swooping cut. The blade hit the creature in the midsection. Alex felt every muscle in his back strain, his vertebrae popping in succession. But the blade continued its jagged path through to the other side, cleaving the thing in two. Its upper half teetered for a second, then its torso slid off its legs and landed on the ground in a cloud of dust and pine needles.
“I…loosened it for you,” said Davis from the ground.
Alex ran over to Davis and helped him to his feet. Davis’s legs immediately gave out. Alex caught him. They heard the dull sound of ruined bells and turned to see the headless torso dragging itself toward its legs.
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