Cain's Blood: A Novel

by Girard, Geoffrey

  “You the guy who did John?” Al asked.

  “No way,” Jeffrey said. “It ain’t him.”

  “You’re a dead faggot,” Al shouted.

  Castillo checked the horizon again. These guys would probably run when the copters appeared. Run, he thought. They’ll get you easy. Jacobson shifted in front of him, muttering. Sounded Latin maybe. Castillo pulled the doctor still and shouted back at the boys. “You guys kill anyone today?”

  “Not yet,” the last boy spoke, finally. Ted. His voice had been deeper and more serious than the others. He’d meant it. He’d also drawn a gun.

  “Easy there, tough guy,” Castillo warned. “Put the gun down or I will end you.”

  “Do it,” the teen said, stepping forward. “You think I really give a fuck anymore?”

  Castillo reset his own pistol, aimed at the boy’s head. “No, I don’t,” he agreed. “I’ve read your files, asshole.” The kid stopped, smiled broadly. For a second, Castillo thought the skin might actually split open against the ever-widening jaw. Almost as quickly, the smile vanished.

  Ted turned, looking behind the other two into the ruined city. Castillo tensed, scanning the surrounding shadows. Jacobson had mumbled something again, then moaned.

  “What’s that, Doc?” Castillo crouched closer behind him.

  “He’s here,” Jacobson said.

  “Who—”

  Then Castillo knew, too.

  He twisted instinctively, reacted to the sudden movement from his right. One of the shadows had separated, leaped, away from the others. Castillo felt his entire body lift from the ground, weightless, reality suspended. He’d seen his attacker only a second, had felt the steel-fingered hand against his shoulder and rolled against the expected strike. Burning pain sank into his lower back, then he was slamming into the ground. Someone close was screaming. There were gunshots, not his own. Castillo knew he’d been cut, and deep. But he’d rolled with the blow, and the vest had taken the worst of it. He scrabbled to his knees, fought to pull himself back up.

  Someone stood directly between him and Jacobson. The man was small and lean, almost completely lost against the night. The same from the motel room. But, man? Not entirely . . .

  This guy held Jacobson by the throat, lifting him into the moonlight with one arm, studying him, while the geneticist’s feet kicked inches from the ground. A blade in the figure’s other hand was jammed in the doctor’s middle, lifting also. Jacobson’s screeches were pitched too high, like the wails of a ghostly widow.

  Castillo put five bullets into the killer’s back. The man stumbled forward with the impact but still did not drop Jacobson. Righting himself, he heaved his blade arm sideways. Blood sprayed across the distance between them and splashed hot across Castillo’s face as Jacobson split open from the middle, his intestines bursting free with a wet slurp.

  Jacobson’s killer turned now toward the three boys. The clones.

  This was an execution. Pure and simple. Stanforth, DSTI, had sent this man.

  Castillo watched the boys sprinting back through the deserted town. Do I just let it go? he wondered. Let this guy, whoever he is, kill again. Finish this.

  He felt the fresh wound burning in his back, straightaway thought of the basement full of dead kids he’d seen barely hours before.

  Castillo fired another burst of shots. Each hit its target, and their reports echoed through the canyon. Probably scared a shitload of ghosts. The thing—Castillo could think of it as nothing else now—turned back to Castillo.

  He emptied what little was left of the clip.

  It spun backwards, black mist spraying from the side of the head, and whirled to the ground with a screech. Yet as quickly as he’d appeared, he sprang back up and was now sprinting away from Castillo deeper into the old camp. Crouched and loping.

  Wounded. Dying.

  Has to be, Castillo told himself. I saw some of that damn head go POOF.

  He was suddenly fighting to keep conscious himself. Who’s the wounded one now? He’d lost a lot of blood already. His body racked with pain, he chased after the shape as fast as he could, feeding another clip into his 9mm.

  He looked for the others. The three teens were gone. Or well hidden. Jacobson’s killer moved more slowly, scarcely fifty yards ahead. The man tottered, stumbled, crawled on his knees into one of the half-collapsed cellars.

  Rounding the cellar’s corner, Castillo had to admit that if he hadn’t been looking, he never would have seen his quarry. The black-garbed figure was slumped against the far left corner of a shadow-filled cellar. He was twisted, misshapen, in his attempt to hide himself better. Like a giant spider or a bat that was only part human. And the long knife still glistened in the moonlight, like a single giant fang.

  Castillo shot five rounds.

  The man dropped from the corner, from the shadows, and onto the floor.

  Castillo climbed down into the small cellar, using the collapsed rubble as stairs. He looked back, wondering if the copters would ever show up. This guy has to be with Stanforth. How had he found them?

  He dared touch the body, to confirm what he already knew: The man was dead.

  And it was a man. Mostly.

  Castillo stared for a while. Tried to make sense of what he was looking at.

  The guy wore a modified ballistics vest. Additional armor down its arms and around the throat and jaw. Just above, the left cheek and ear had been shot off. He was charcoal-skinned, black as the darkest African, but otherwise the facial features seemed more European. But no racial heritage could account for the too-narrow head. Like a sideshow freak. Or the too-wide mouth overcrowded with uneven, slanted teeth, or maybe the two gaping holes where a nose should have been . . . and not from any recent gunshot wound. An old injury, then, or . . . was this just the fucking guy’s face?

  Castillo kept staring.

  Still so eerily familiar. A memory?

  From his nightmares. Is that it?

  Something about his nightmares. Something . . .

  But any forthcoming remembrance vanished with the next flare of pain.

  He winced. Cursed. Looked away. Climbed wanly out from the dark cellar, leery of the others: Ted, Al, and Jeffrey. They were probably still running, though. He couldn’t blame them.

  He touched his own side, wet and sticky with blood. Kept his hand against the wound and moved out of the canyon as fast as he could. It took forever. His breaths were long and slow by the time he reached the top.

  Two helicopters glided swiftly into the canyon from the west. He’d not heard them over his own ragged breathing. Along the railway again, toward his car. He felt light-headed, knew he’d lost too much damn blood. Knew well how close he was to collapsing.

  Castillo drew close to the car, tightening his hold on the pistol.

  “Jeff ?”

  The car’s windows were busted out. Front and back. All four windows on both sides. They’ve been having fun, Castillo thought. Teasing their prey. Anger crawled through him again. Familiar. Not some damned PTSD phantom anger. Something that suddenly felt more real.

  The shattered glass lay everywhere. There was blood on one of the back windows. His new books discarded in the backseat, Jeff’s duffel bag in a heap in the front. The tire tracks of a second car were furrowed deep in the dark ground.

  He checked the woods outlining both sides of the dirt road. “Jeff!”

  They’d taken him. Jeff’s “brothers.”

  Castillo rested against the front of the car, blew his breath against the chill. The ghosts of Winter Quarters mine whispered in the distance. Or maybe it was the helicopters.

  Castillo didn’t know which. Didn’t care.

  He just knew he had another boy to find.

  THE DARK MEN

  JUNE 13, MONDAY—MOUNT PLEASANT, UTAH

  Zahir likes to watch men die, specifically treasuring the precise moment when the doomed reaches that unique awareness of having nothing more to give, helpless, and then, in that very person
al and ultimate defeat, almost always a brief, final, futile, clench of life, a sudden gasp, optimistic, defiant, and the eyes almost always show it all because no man is ever as truly alive as during his very last breath and, by looking into their eyes, Zahir can truly see God and so runs his fingers along your face slick with sweat and blood, and you move your head into the touch. Well trained, Zahir thinks, and smiles. Where most would pull away from one who’d already brought so much pain, you’ve been taught to want the heft of reality against your cheek, something real to focus on. Zahir pats the cheek. Soon, he whispers again, promises, and moves again toward his bench of tools, the rusted kerosene lantern, fluid shadows along the cramped cave, the shadow twisted unnaturally under the low ceiling. Other men talking in the adjacent tunnels and holes, someone’s laughter . . .

  The first time Zahir sees a man die, he’s maybe eight, and maybe in Cairo when some car bomb shatters half of some market and, as he cowers on the ground with the others, a dark shape maybe stumbles toward him from out of the smoky wreckage and Zahir is still not sure if it was a man or a woman he sees that day, there was too much blood, and part of the head is missing as it lurches toward him as if every step might bring its final collapse, and the boy, the Zahir boy, has wiped the burn of the smoke from his eyes to watch it all. He sees half a face, the right side shards of bone and flesh and the skull behind almost completely lost. He sees the lone left eye glaring at him, yes, directly at him, with both amazement and resolve, the boy Zahir knows then that the bloody thing actually wants to kill him. That, even with half its face and brains splattered over the street behind, it has determined not to accept death alone. The man-woman lifts an arm at him, an accusing bloody stump that ends at the elbow, and then it collapses at your feet. Something wet and hot splashes on your face, Zahir’s face, beside him then, the shattered jaw and what was left of its teeth gnawing on a lolling tongue, and blood gurgles from the half mouth, the limbs twitching against Zahir’s legs. Still, the boy focuses on the eager and knowing eye watching him and the eyes shine like a star. The eye of God. He finds the same look again maybe six months later when he kills the old man with a brick. Then, maybe once more, when he strangled Ahmed’s baby sister. And the others. When he joins the Fatah al-Islam Jihad, it soon becomes his sacred duty to hurt, to kill, and one of the group, a wealthy girl who goes to Alexandria University, a Ph.D. candidate in some-or-other bullshitty subject, she suggests his violent nature is surely caused by the trauma of that first car bomb, or perhaps the frequent beatings his father gave him. And Zahir does not think so, and, as he rapes and kills her, he tells her as much. He simply enjoys it, he tells her, it’s not schtick, that was all. He’d enjoyed torturing the family in Herát, or the boy soldiers they’d kidnapped in Qal’at Dizah, or more recently, he’d enjoyed killing the people in Towraghondi. His team has captured the three Rangers outside of Towraghondi a week before and slipped them back across the border, no way the Americans come into Iran for them, says “John Penn” and “George Clooley” would never allow it, and chuckles. A good week after much pain, and much blood, he’d already seen God twice and he will enjoy this man’s death too. Already hurt him, peeled his flesh, cut down to the bone. The American’s so damn big he wants to see that muscle up close and, truth be told, he’d never been particularly interested in the politics, or in the spiritual matters of his effort, these secondary to his true passions, and in that regard, he is probably no different from this soldier that God has directly sent to him.

  Glance over to the two emptied chairs. Dark stains of torture pooled below each, memories of the broken bodies, only their heads remain each propped on the small wood table watching. Choosing his favorite scalpel, the two-inch carbon steel BD Bard-Parker lifted from the Red Cross tent, nice cutting control and strength, perfect to make some more shallow incisions along the chest and genitals. Start making garbled sounds, not words anymore. Havn’t been for almost a day now. A pity, as Zahir wants to learn more about this man, but these are not normal men, these “Rangers” never once beg for mercy like the others, they curse and grow angry. He never even learns their real names, no identification on men like these. No man. Oud-eis. Don’t do this. Not yet the true eye of God. Zahir steps closer and presses his thumb against your mouth to push back the upper lip. Writhe in the chair, the blood-speckled ropes holding tight. Scream as Zahir raises the blade, brings the scalpel once more to your gums. Then moves to the body again works quietly before the gunfire. The gunfire erupted in one of the tunnels. The sound echoes like thunder. Drops the wet scalpel onto the table beside the two heads and someone shouted somewhere, the sound of a man dying, and now Zahir reaches for his rifle. One of the others, Hasib you think, bursts into the cave, shouts something, and Zahir almost shoots him. Zahir grins at this thought. “What is it?” he asked. In reply, Hasib lifts into the air and, then, like a ghost, rises another full meter off the ground. Zahir stepping back in confusion and blood splashes across the cave’s rock. Something shiny now out of Hasib’s chest, then he is dropping to the floor. Something else moves in the shadows. A thin, dark shape that drifts like smoke directly toward Zahir who is firing his rifle. The strong hands at his throat and then something very cold sinking deep into his stomach. A large knife glinted in the dark cavern, stabbing. The man screams, Jacobson, opens at the middle, entrails spilling in a splash onto the cave floor. He feels the cold blade moving inside him and the shadow man stands before him and Zahir gazes into the pitch-black eyes that shimmer like oil, like a demonic jewel, but in their dark reflection he sees his own eyes, too, wide and shining, and recognizes the sensation of his body splitting apart as he screams, an almost joyful sound, and then, finally, in the reflection of the dark man’s eyes, his own eyes shine like stars, the eyes of God, he thinks, and then, nothing. The body cast aside, knocking the table and the two heads rolling slowly obscenely almost comically tumbling over. Watching you. The heads of Second Lieutenant Wissinger and Specialist Koster. Become, because this is the dream, the faces of Shaya and Jeff. The dark thing turns next toward you in the chair. Struggling against the ropes. Turning away. Zahir’s top half still squealing in a piercing sound that spreads and spreads until you wanted to explode from the pressure. The dark skeletal fingers digging under the chin now. Lifting your head. Blood trickling over one eye, you have no choice but to look straight into its face. The eyes . . .

  • • •

  Castillo lurched awake, a gasp caught halfway in his throat in the form of a lunatic’s high-pitched scream, the terrible sound going into him, not out. The nightmare vanished again, but the pain lingered, as it sometimes did. He dreamily touched his mouth, and then moved down to his chest, where his fingers easily found the thick scar tissue. Both familiar and still alien. His hands moved to the more-recent bandaging and wounds. Here too the bleeding had stopped. His vest had taken the bulk of things, the cut since cleaned and sutured. The motel room bathroom was still covered with stained towels and the fresh stench of alcohol and blood.

  It was the same man. . . .

  Castillo sat up painfully once more at the small desk over a closed laptop and his notes. A gooseneck lamp cast the only light in the motel room, and it glowed hotly, like a rusted kerosene lantern. He leaned forward and put the heels of his palms against his eyes to rub away the sleep, the memory. His fingers wrapped around the sides of his head, a familiar pose. From afar, Castillo often thought, it must look as if he were literally holding himself together. Maybe I am. He felt the fusty chill of the room’s AC move across his back and shoulders.

  The man in the cave . . .

  Castillo could hardly think anymore. He checked his watch. 0636. He couldn’t quite remember when he’d dozed off. He remembered noting 0500 clearly and then reading more of Jacobson’s damned notes. Time had become a damning factor. It had been less than four hours since he’d walked out of the Winter Quarters, but the pieces of his past were coming together, melding with the nightmares of his present.

  Jacobson had be
en murdered by, and Castillo himself had shot and killed—as unbelievable as it seemed—the man from his own nightmares. The “Dark Man” he’d seen in the cave two years before.

  Whether the same man or some sort of clone himself, Castillo didn’t know. And how had Stanforth . . . ? and What are these men? and so on, but none of this mattered now, he told himself.

  What mattered now was the boy.

  He picked up Jacobson’s opened notebook from the table and read. From the letters of Jack the Ripper: “You an me know the truth dont we. ha ha I love my work an I shant stop until I get buckled and even then watch out for your old pal Jacky. Ps Sorry about the blood still messy from the last one.”

  “Your old pal Jacky.”

  Castillo turned the page and reread the words of Ted Bundy: “We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.” Castillo ran the words through his head again. The boys truly had a whole country in which to hide. They had transportation, money. No ties anymore to real people beyond the files of the historic killers they’d been cloned from.

  We are everywhere.

  Castillo’s mouth went tight. How long does the boy truly have, left with them? And are there really any answers I can find in the notes of this madman? Any clues as to where Jacobson’s creations might have gone? Or is this only more of the same lunacy? The same which drove the eminent geneticist to such horrors in the first place?

  He closed the notebook. Stared at the dark wall over the desk. He felt he should get up and drive somewhere to do something. But where? And what? He was too alone now, and as wanted by the Defense Department, he suspected, as the psycho killers he’d been tasked with bringing in. And even if he’d had the full support of Command, there simply wasn’t time.

  Castillo pushed back from the table and rose for the first time in hours. Limply, painfully, he moved toward the mirror in the dim light. Then, he looked up.