by Derek Slaton
ELIMINATOR TIME FORCE
By Derek Slaton
© 2018
CHAPTER ONE
“Look man, I don’t care what you have to do. Either get me the stuff you owe me, or you are going to end up the same way Marco did.” Kevin Hauser sneered into his burner phone.
“I… I can get it to you on Monday. Yeah… Monday. I… I just need a little more time,” the frightened voice on the other end stuttered.
Kevin resisted the urge to throw the phone onto the dash of his 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. He had spent years and an ungodly amount of money retrofitting the classic from the ground up. Spinner rims, ground effects, and a fresh coat of jet black paint would have made the car stand out in the best of neighborhoods, let alone on Kevin’s street—which had more bars on the windows than the prison he spent eight months in for assault.
“You are really trying my patience man. I don’t like it when people waste my time, and I guaran-damn-tee you aren’t going to like me when I lose my patience,” Kevin said as he slowly pulled into his driveway. The volume of his voice resonated along the quiet street, causing his next door neighbor to draw the blinds shut.
“Okay, I hear you sir… and I promise-”
“Save your promises for someone who will believe them,” Kevin cut in, freezing in place at the sight of his front door hanging open.
He lowered the phone, the voice on the other end yammering empty platitudes. Incompetence was always something that angered him, but paled in comparison to someone breaking into his home.
He squeezed the cheap phone so tightly that audible cracks reverberated through the night air. “Just get it done or pay the price,” he said with finality and tossed it on the passenger seat.
Kevin rummaged around in the center console for his butterfly knife. The powder blue handled blade was a gift from his mother after he was released from prison. In his line of work, he needed protection, but carrying a gun was a risky prospect for someone with a parole officer who had an annoying habit of being thorough with the checkups.
He approached the door cautiously, juggling open the blade as he composed himself. He tried to assess the situation by peering through the curtains. There was a lamp illuminated in the front corner of the living room, highlighting the silhouette of someone sitting on the couch by the window.
After a short pause on the porch, Kevin burst into the front room blade first, letting out a battle cry in the process. He stomped through the middle of the room, pausing at the doorway to the kitchen before turning to face the trespasser. Kevin pointed the knife towards the floor when he saw a young woman in her early twenties sitting on the couch reading a magazine with one hand and drinking a beer with the other.
She looked like any one of a thousand other girls that might be found in a college town. Her athletic build fit her five foot six inch frame well; and made it pretty evident she was familiar with CrossFit. The shoulder length brown hair was pulled into a ponytail and showed she was more concerned with functionality rather than appearance. Her Iron Maiden Caught Somewhere in Time t-shirt, however, alerted the world she did in fact have great taste in music.
“Who the fuck are you?” Kevin asked with a mixture of bemusement and anger.
She kept her head down and continued to read her magazine, holding up her beer hand as a non-verbal hold on.
“Are you kidding me right now?” He snapped, the amusement gone from his voice. “You have to the count of five before I slice you up.”
She closed the magazine and gently set it beside her.
“One,” he warned.
She raised her chin. “My apologies, that was rude of me.”
“Two.” His voice rose ever-so-slightly.
“It was a great article on Bruce Dickinson and how he’s a certified airline pilot,” she continued casually.
“Three,” he snarled, cracking his neck in preparation for the assault.
“Imagine being that famous, touring eight months out of the year, and the way you relax is flying jumbo jets with hundreds of passengers,” she said before taking a long sip of beer. “Simply amazing.”
“Four!” he yelled, spittle flying off his bottom lip.
“You know, you may want to think long and hard about your next word,” she warned and finished off the beer. “You may not like what happens when you get there.”
“FIVE!” Kevin screamed before lunging at her.
The beer bottle hit him in the face, momentarily stunning him. Before he could recover, she leapt off the couch and disarmed him by grabbing his wrist with one hand and delivering a powerful uppercut to his elbow with the other.
He stumbled backwards with a high-pitched yelp in an octave typically audible only to dogs. “I’m gonna kill you!”
She swooped down to pick up the fallen blade, and flipped it around a couple times with her left hand like a seasoned pro. She raised two fingers in a come hither motion, smirking all the while.
He yelled and swung hard with a straight jab. She met his punch with the business end of the blade, imbedding it deep within his fist. Kevin staggered away from her, unable to even vocalize his pain. He stumbled about for a moment before regaining his footing, just in time for her to move in for the kill, launching herself knee-first into his chest.
The force of the blow sent Kevin flying backwards, hitting the floor hard. She followed him down, knees pressing into his biceps and effectively pinning him.
“Told you that you should have thought about your next word,” she teased, and tapped him on the forehead.
He tried in vain to swing at her with his knife hand. On the second attempt, she grabbed his wrist and pulled the blade out, sending a spatter of blood onto the wall. He continued to flail his arms until she pressed the knife into his trembling throat.
“Whoa whoa whoa, easy now honey, let’s talk about this,” Kevin begged.
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, so now you want to talk? What, no more counting?”
“Nope. No more counting,” he assured her. “Look, if you want the stash, it’s under a false bottom in the cabinet beside the stove.”
“Don’t care about your stash,” she said, pressing harder against his flesh. “I do, however, care about the keepsakes from the three women you’ve murdered. Not to mention the four other women you have on your hit list.”
He laughed nervously. “What in the world are you talking about? I never-”
She cut him off by smashing his nose with the butt of the knife. “Believe me when I say that I’m the last person you would ever be able to lie to,” she said.
“I’m telling you, you have the wrong person,” he pleaded.
She held three fingers in front of his face. “Marcie Davis, Elaine Woodman, Leigh Smith.”
Kevin’s face drained of all of its remaining color.
“You stalked all three of them for weeks before following them home from their bartender jobs on sixth street,” the woman said, voice a low husk. “Once they crashed out from a long night slinging drinks, you broke into their homes, raped them, then slit their throats and gleefully watched as they bled out.
“But you weren’t finished. Rather than let them die with dignity, you packed them into the trunk of your car and drove them out to Grant State Park. Once there you dumped the bodies in a secluded area known for its high concentration of feral hogs, which I have to admit is a great way to dispose of a corpse. Frankly I’m shocked that someone of your limited mental capacity could come up with an idea like that on your own.”
“Alright, so you think you know some things,” he replied shrilly. “But I know for a fact you ain’t got no proof. Because if you did this place would be swarming with cops, and I don’t see no blue lights!”
“It’s either that or you are with some rival gang trying to blackmail me to get in on my territory. In which case,” he said with a sneer, “they shoulda just sent your fine ass over as a peace offering—I would have been happy to share.”
“Wow, you sound really cocky for a man with no functioning hands and a knife to his throat,” she said. “Are you really such a deluded alpha male that you don’t realize your life is about to end?”
He scoffed. “Oh give me a break. Yeah you fucked me up pretty good, but I know lots of bitches like you that will throw down. We both know you ain’t got the balls to-”
She drove the knife into his throat and then pulled it out, leaving it on the floor beside him. His eyes filled with dread he gasped for air, gargling his words.
She wandered into the kitchen and popped another beer as his body went limp.
“Alright, time to get to work,” she said, and knelt down to rip his shirt. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a silver LED laser with a blue tip. “You know, you’re lucky I’m rusty, or else I would have left you alive for this. But legibility is more important than your suffering.”
As the smell of burning flesh filled the room, she made a series of hand motions and then sat back to admire her work. “Eh, not bad for freehand.”
CHAPTER TWO
Artemis headed into her small one-bedroom apartment and tossed her pack on the kitchen table. She made her way past the makeshift cot on the floor and over to a small desk that was buried in papers, electronic parts, and a laptop that had been outdated since the turn of the century. It took her a moment of searching before she was able to locate a black dry erase marker.
To an outside observer, the wall beside her desk was reminiscent of a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist’s wall depicting his latest attempt to connect Elvis to the JFK assassination. Maps, surveillance photos, and bits of string interconnecting them all covered virtually all of the space. The only exceptions were three dry erase boards hung in the corner just above the desk.
Artemis licked her thumb and reached over to a small white board marked SAVED. She erased a number three and replaced it with a seven. She took a moment to admire the new count of sixteen thousand, two hundred and forty seven.
On the next board—marked Most Wanted, she drew a large black line through the name Kevin Hauser, who had been a new entry on the board at position ten. He joined several other names who had been marked off in recent weeks, but not Anthony Duke, who was at the very top and written twice as large as anybody else.
She shook her head and pursed her lips before taking a seat and opening the computer.
The laptop took a moment to boot up, giving Artemis a brief reprieve from the world. The moment was a fleeting one, as the screen greeted her with a bright red Alert notification.
The headline read Child, Age 11, Found Strangled in Woods Behind Family Home. She quickly scrolled through the story until she found the name of the kid, Benjamin Kimble. As she had feared, it matched a name on the third board, labeled Prez. There were a list of names and numbers starting at forty-eight and going through sixty, five of which had already been marked out.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered.
She grabbed the marker and scratched out number fifty-eight, Benjamin Kimble. Upon replacing the cap, she threw it against the desk where it landed with a soft thud on the reams of paper.
Artemis slumped down in her chair for a moment before picking up her cell phone and dialing Robert.
“Well, this can’t be good,” he greeted. “You never just call to say hello.”
She shook her head. “Number fifty-eight just went down. Child strangled in the woods behind his house.”
“You think it’s the Duke again?” he asked.
“It matches his M-O, so it has to be. It’s also the third future President that’s been murdered in the last six weeks in the exact same way. That can’t be a coincidence.”
He clucked his tongue. “No, it can’t be. You still think he’s working with one of ours?”
“It’s the only way to explain it, but it still doesn’t entirely make sense,” Artemis mused. “If he was working with one of ours then why would he only be taking out the initial presidents while leaving their replacements alone?”
“Who knows? Maybe they have damaged equipment and aren’t getting updates. Or maybe they are just bored and want to remix the future. You know, get some different war movies and TV shows out of it,” Robert suggested.
She laughed. “While I hope that’s the case, I get the sense their motives are a bit more nefarious.”
“I agree wholeheartedly. So have you made contact with the agent yet?”
“Left the message for him tonight. If all goes as planned we’ll be having breakfast at your place in the morning,” Artemis replied.
“Just for the record, I’m still not completely sold on this plan.”
She sighed. “I understand, but desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Yeah, I know,” he agreed.
“See you in the morning.”
“I’ll be ready,” Robert assured her, and there was a click as he ended the call.
Artemis tossed her phone onto the pile of papers on the desk. She stared through the news article for a beat, and clenched her jaw.
“I’m going to get this bastard,” she hissed, and slammed the laptop closed.
CHAPTER THREE
A fleet of police vehicles congregated outside the late Kevin Hauser’s house. Blue lights illuminated the neighborhood, which was something of a regular occurrence in these parts. So regular that not a single neighbor left the comfort of their home to investigate. This made it a lot easier for Special Agent Hodge to get to the heart of the crime scene.
Hodge was a seasoned vet of the force, and one of the few plain-clothed officers in his precinct. He walked up to the front door with the swagger of an officer of the law. His faded jeans and untucked button down shirt made him more suited to be pulling up a stool in a dive bar than investigating a murder.
“Hey this is a crime scene pal, you can’t be in here,” the officer by the door barked.
He flashed his badge in return. “I’m Special Agent Hodge.”
“Really, you’re Hodge?” the officer asked. “You don’t look like much of a cop.”
“Well I am, they gave me a badge and everything. Even let me carry a gun, but then again this is Texas so I guess that part doesn’t make me so special,” Hodge replied.
The officer shook his head in disgust. “You know, my mother always said it’s important to take pride in the way one looks.”
“Well, your mother was a smart woman,” Hodge replied with a grin. “She knew you were an ugly child and couldn’t withstand any other outward facing flaws if you were ever going to see a naked woman without paying a cover charge first.”
The officer blinked at him in disbelief.
“Now are you going to tell me why I got called into this or would you like to continue discussing your mother’s fashion tips?” Hodge snapped.
The officer squinted his eyes in displeasure before pointing towards the kitchen door. “Dead guy over there has your name written all over him.”
The Special Agent walked over to Kevin’s body. “Well, he wasn’t wrong,” he muttered as he knelt down to look at the corpse’s mutilated chest. Special Agent Hodge had been burned into his upper torso, and a small arrow pointed down towards a USB stick resting on his stomach.
He took a plastic glove from his pocket and put it on before carefully picking up the USB stick to inspect it. “Somebody get me a laptop!” he called, and strode into the den.
The officer from the door dropped brought a laptop and slammed it down on the table in front of the couch with a little more force than was maybe necessary.
“Anything else, Special Agent Hodge?” he asked, voice dripping with disdain.
Hodge grinne
d. “Yeah, how about some coffee?”
“I’ll send your server right out,” came the snarky reply.
The Special Agent turned the USB stick over in his hands as the computer booted up.
“Alright, let’s see what we got,” he muttered as he plugged in the drive.
The desktop vanished, leaving on a black screen and a single line of white text that read What Name Did Your Dad Originally Want For You?
A blinking cursor awaited his answer.
“What the hell kind of question is that?” the officer asked, from over his shoulder.
Hodge pursed his lips. “It’s a question that nobody should know the answer to outside of me and my father.”
“So the killer is working with your father?”
“Only if they are psychic. My father has been dead for twenty years.”
“Your mother?”
“Ten years,” Hodge replied. He leaned back on the couch, stretching his hands out behind his head. “No, this… this is something else.”
He contemplated for a moment before taking a position at the keyboard. He carefully typed out Francis and hit enter. The black screen faded away to reveal a secondary desktop page. The grey gradient background was broken up by a single video file in the middle of the screen. The file name read For Special Agent Hodge ONLY.
“I’m going to need some privacy,” Hodge said, motioning for the officer to leave. Once the room was clear he double clicked the icon and the video began to play. There was a silhouette of a slender person with shoulder length hair in front of a dim orange glow.
“Special Agent Hodge.” It was a woman’s voice. “I realize that this isn’t the ideal way for us to meet, but I figured it would be the only way for you to take me seriously. I have information regarding the mass murderer Anthony Duke that would be beneficial to your investigation.”
Hodge nearly leapt out of his chair. What the hell? Did someone hack my computer? He had always been focused on Duke as the main suspect in those killings, but could never collect enough hard evidence to prove it. While he was one hundred percent convinced Duke was behind the murders, he never volunteered the name to anyone else in his department for fear of being kicked off the case. Did they break into my office? Have they been stalking me? How does this woman know that name?