All Souls: A Gatehouse Thriller

by Karin Kaufman

  While Nathan and Claude hit their targets, the rest of us would fire at an indoor Sack then aim for the floodlights. Nathan would flatten a tire or two on the rental SUV. I wanted Hall, badly, but she kept moving back and forth across the windows, like a metal duck in a shooting gallery, and I was better at stationary targets. Even with a scope I wasn’t confident of my marksmanship at our distance. I passed the word that I’d take the fool playing with his gun. We counted two Sacks outside and six inside. Even if all of us aimed with perfection, that left three Sacks alive—and probably a handful more elsewhere in the house.

  “Steady,” Nathan said. “On my word.”

  I readied my weapon, taking aim at the couch Sack.

  “Now.”

  I fired, hitting my Sack once in the upper chest. He jerked and slumped sideways. As I laid my rifle in the dirt, I caught sight of two bodies on the deck and a Sack flat on its face, dead—or pretending to be—between the couch and the windows. Someone had already knocked out the floodlights and Nathan had shot the SUV’s tires.

  We scrambled down the ridge in two lines, me following Claude and Nathan to the right, Zack following Phil to the left. Just over the back side of the ridgetop, the slope was so steep that I nearly fell face forward, gaining my balance only by dropping to my rear and sliding downhill until I hit a level patch and could stand again. Near the bottom, the slope leveled out and I ran to catch up with Nathan and Claude. How they’d managed to stay on their middle-aged feet, I had no idea.

  We moved as quickly as we could toward the now-dark house, checking the moonlit ground for trip wires or other surprises and the house for movement on the deck or at the windows. I hoped someone had hit Hall. I hoped she’d crawled from the window and was watching the blood leave her veins and turn the world around her red. We tracked you down, you monster. How does it feel to be standing one second and flat on your face the next?

  We stopped and crouched behind a downed tree, looking into the trees to our left for Phil and Zack. They would make the first dash toward the house—to the south side just around the corner from the deck—while we provided cover.

  I drew my 9mm from its holster. In the silence, even my breath stilled, I could hear someone moving in the trees to our right. Brushing branches, snapping twigs and pine needles. Nathan had heard it too. He gestured for us to keep our eyes toward Phil then darted into the woods. I shot an anxious glance over my right shoulder then looked back to my left, waiting.

  There. In my line of sight but out of view from anyone looking out the back windows, Phil waved a white T-shirt he’d taken from our house. A single wave. Claude gave me a nudge with his elbow. Phil and Zack were ready to go, trusting that one of us was in place to provide cover.

  I steadied my gun on the tree stump, looking for the faintest movement inside the house. Something was there, on the floor by the couch, on the opposite end from where my Sack still sat, his body leaning toward the cushions. From the corner of my eye I saw Zack and Phil make a move for the house and I fired into that something. Claude joined in, and glass shattered into pebbles as any window that hadn’t been struck before was hit.

  When we saw that Zack and Phil had made it safely to the side of the house, we ceased firing. I changed magazines then wheeled to my right, peering hard into the trees. “Where’s Nathan?” I whispered.

  “He’s coming,” Claude said. His certainty—to the extent that he remained focused on the house and not on any threat to his right, as I couldn’t help but do—was astonishing. Even as Nathan crept back to the fallen tree, Claude never turned or lost his concentration. “Problem fixed?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Ready?’

  “Now,” Nathan said.

  I rose and ran for the house with all the speed I could summon. My vision became a tunnel—at the boundaries of it, Zack and Phil firing into the great room and Nathan shooting straight ahead. A shadow behind the couch fell, and Zack cursed as he stumbled and fell into a field of tempered glass.

  Inside the darkened great room, we ducked in front of the couch and end table and froze. The Sack I’d shot had tipped sideways onto the cushions and seemed to be staring straight into Claude’s eyes. With the palm of his hand, Zack wiped nuggets of glass from his right forearm and elbow, streaking his arm with blood. Scanning the room and the flight of stairs ahead on my right, I could hear my own heart beating and feel sweat on my brow, even in the cold air. I was ready to shoot anyone who so much as twitched.

  The house was so quiet it seemed the remaining Sacks had fled upstairs or to the rooms at the front of the house. Maybe out the front door, though where they would go in the cold and on foot, I didn’t know. One or more of the Sacks could have made it to a car in the garage, I thought, but to escape, they would have to raise the garage door then knock our old rental SUV—two and a half tons on deflated tires—out of the way. All one of us would have to do is dash around the corner as the door slowly opened and pop them in their seats.

  Movement at the top of the stairs caught my eye. Not a Sack, but the shadow of one, a dark tongue sliding forward then back. Some fool Sack had left a light on somewhere, just bright enough to throw a shadow. Nathan and Claude had seen it too. We were heading up the stairs. The longer we waited, letting the Sacks regroup, the worse our chances.

  At the top of the stairs, Nathan burst right, firing twice. A Sack grunted and fell to the floor. Immediately another Sack appeared to our left, shouting his one-word name before Phil took him down. The Sack had barely raised his gun, taking Sack stupidity to a low that surprised even me.

  “This isn’t right,” Nathan said. He spun back, pushing me toward the stairs, shouting, “Everyone out!”

  I flew down the stairs, two steps at a time, then dove to my left, toward the kitchen. Zack fell on top of my legs, and I covered my head and braced for what I knew was coming. The blast wasn’t as loud as I’d feared, but I knew instantly the bomb had been packed with projectiles—nails, shards of glass, shaving razors. I heard picture frames and glass fronts in kitchen cabinets shatter, metal pepper the walls and ceiling.

  Still on the floor, I turned my head toward the stairs. Nathan and Claude were flat on their faces at the bottom of the last step, beginning to move, checking their limbs then turning to me and Zack. Cursing, Zack rolled off my legs and looked back at Nathan. Phil was sitting on the floor, his feet straight out in front of him, a hand clamped on his lower arm. Blood oozed through his fingers, but he gave Claude a thumbs-up with his other hand. The projectiles had flown 180 degrees from the source, but because the bomb was on the second floor, we’d been spared.

  We could have been cut in half, every single one of us—that’s all I could think—and so the sound I heard from the door farther to my left, at the end of a hallway, took a moment to register.

  “Garage!” I yelled. “They’re getting out!” Someone was ramming the rental SUV parked in front of the garage. I struggled to my feet, pain piercing my left ankle. I knew I’d twisted the damn thing lurching around the corner. Determined to hide it, I made for the door, my hand reaching for the knob.

  “No, out the back!” Nathan said, motioning toward the broken windows in the great room. Claude helped Phil to his feet and we made it outside and around the side of the house in time to see red taillights recede in the darkness.

  I wheeled on Nathan. “Why didn’t you let me go out the garage?”

  “And open the door on what?” he said. “A shotgun in your face? No one to cover you?”

  “Shit.” Hands on my bent knees, I took deep, calming breaths. He was right.

  “Is everyone OK?” he asked. “Phil?”

  “I’m good,” Phil replied.

  “Let’s check the rest of the house,” Nathan said. “Zack, Jane, you two keep watch down here. Don’t touch anything, eyes open.”

  I could hear the three men move methodically from room to room on the second floor, checking for other bombs in addition to Sacks. I moved about the great roo
m, careful not to set off any booby traps, though I doubted the mad Sack dash out of the room had left any trap unsprung. There were two dead Sacks on the floor, including the one I’d seen from outside, but neither was Hall or Lydia. At the couch I looked again at the Sack I’d hit. His features distorted, a fan of blood from a hole in his upper chest to his chin, there still was something familiar about his face.

  I couldn’t close his lids like they do in the movies—it doesn’t work, believe me—so I avoided his gaze as I grabbed onto his belt, pulled him forward, and stuck my fingers into his back jeans pockets, looking for some kind of ID. I extracted a slim black leather wallet and flipped it open to a Colorado driver’s license. Joseph Madden.

  When the men returned to the great room, Nathan held up a Cosmo’s Titans T-shirt. “One guess who was here,” he said.

  “Manifest Manifest,” I said.

  “Shame he skipped Fort Collins before his return,” Claude said.

  I handed Madden’s wallet to Nathan. “I think I know where they went.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “The treasurer of the Colorado LCA. Or at least that’s what Hall told me. She said the last she knew he was willing but hadn’t turned.” I tossed my head at the couch. “That’s him. And the LCA owns an office building two miles north of here on Route 550. A very secluded spot.”

  Nathan threw the wallet across the great room. “Let’s finish the job.”

  We made it back up the ridge—I was hauled up the last third by Nathan and Claude—then grabbed our rifles, piled into the SUV, and made our way to 550. Half a mile from the office building, I had Nathan slow down. I knew the building was on the west side of the road, but I’d only seen it from above, on the satellite map view. As we neared the only building we’d seen since getting back on the highway, he pulled to the shoulder, cut the headlights, and crept forward.

  “There’s a small parking lot in the back,” I said, remembering the satellite image. There were no lights on in the windows at the front of the one-story brick building, but an illuminated sign out front read “Land Conservation Alliance” and below that, in smaller letters, “Colorado Chapter.” Nathan drove past the building, looped around to the shoulder of the southbound lane, and shut off the ignition.

  We left the SUV and cut a path through a parcel of low junipers and winter-brittle sage to the north side of the parking lot, our eyes on the lot and the building for any sign of movement. At the edge of the lot, in the shelter of piñons, we waited. Lights shone in half a dozen of the back windows, and there was an SUV in the lot, but it was impossible to tell if it was the vehicle we had seen leaving the house.

  “Stay here,” Phil said. Taking a last glance at the windows overlooking the parking lot, he sprinted to the building and pressed his back to the brick, sliding along until he was in the shadow of an overhang, making it difficult for anyone inside to see him. He paused, looked back to us, then lunged for the vehicle and stuck out his hand, touching its hood. He withdrew to the building, turned his face our way, and gave us a long, slow nod. Bingo.

  His back still against the brick, Phil reached for his holster.

  “I think I should go around,” Claude whispered. “At least one of them is going to try for the front door.”

  “Right,” Nathan said. “Zack, Jane, you’re behind me. There’s only one car in the lot. No one else is here, no innocents.”

  I took my gun from its holster and gripped it with both hands. Zack tugged on my arm and stepped in front of me. “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Give me a chance to not be an asshole,” he said quietly. He would go in behind Nathan, ahead of me.

  Phil slid along the brick until he came to the glass-framed back door. Arching his neck, he peeked inside, down toward the handle, checking for our means of entrance. Rushing the door only to find ourselves trapped outside, unable to enter because the handle had been chained or otherwise blocked, would more than eliminate the element of surprise.

  Phil nodded again.

  In single file we shot across the parking lot. Just before Nathan reached the door, Phil fired his gun at the glass, reached inside for the handle, and opened the door. I heard glass breaking around the front—Claude had entered.

  By the time I made it in, Phil had already shot a Sack posted at the head of the hallway near the door. I glanced down at the male Sack as I passed him, checking for body armor, but it was obvious there was nothing between his sweater and his skin.

  We moved down the lighted hallway, Nathan and Phil side by side, Zack on their heels, and quickly came to the first two office doors, one on the left, the other on the right. Nathan and Phil cleared one, Zack and me the other, but as we moved farther up the hall, putting us in increasing danger, I covered our rear, walking backwards, staying aware of what lay ahead by glancing over my shoulder at Zack.

  A shriek—a woman’s voice—cut through the air, then two gunshots. Someone had made a run for the front door. Lydia? Hall? The terror in the voice colored it, making it unfamiliar.

  The room lights and overhead lights in the hallway went out one after the other, starting at our end and traveling away from us, a string of blackened dominoes. Someone had gotten to a circuit box. Still Nathan advanced. Now he shot into each office before entering, and Zack and Phil did the same. In the darkness, watching our rear, I worried I’d hit Claude, but I told myself he was smart enough to stay at the front of the building, not to creep up on us.

  When we reached a turn in the hallway, we split up, Nathan and me to the left, Phil and Zack retracing our steps back down the hallway to catch Sacks fleeing that way or running for the back door. Jesus, I wanted a blueprint of the damn building. It seemed to be an open square, larger inside than out. Would we meet Claude at the end of this turn?

  I jumped at the sound of gunfire behind me. A deep groan, not a scream or a declaration of name and level, came from the darkness, and I froze in horror. I didn’t know who, I didn’t know what. Nathan touched my arm to get my attention. He would enter the room to our left and I would stay outside, keeping a lookout, back to the wall. I peered into the room as he edged forward. A cafeteria? A meeting room? It was large and dark, that’s all I could tell before I sidestepped to the wall.

  I scanned the darkness to my left and right, panic rising, my ears and my nerves alive to every sound, every shadow. Hunting, I could do. But this? This? I wanted to live. I wanted to kill the monsters, but I wanted to live. I thought of Steven Lake, his teeth ground to spikes, and my mother, alone in her death with Sever.

  “Harbinger, where have you been?” a man said. Anything else he might have said was silenced by gunfire.

  “I’m OK,” Nathan said softly. He kicked something. A plastic chair?

  Harbinger. What the hell? What the hell did that mean?

  Then another sound came from within the room. Something being dragged. I was losing focus, listening hard for Claude, Zack, Phil. Where were they? Jesus, something’s wrong. I thought I heard shoes clap on the floor, but when I turned toward the sound, no one was there. Who do I trust? Myself and my senses. I trust my senses.

  Something else—a table?—scraped across the floor. Then again, and again. I heard a scream and a bang, like a fist on metal, then two shots. Harbinger. Why say that name? Why? I turned to the open door, my chest to the wall, and slid forward, peering into the room.

  Fire raked across my shoulder and I screamed in pain, instinctively turning to the figure in the hallway, shooting before my eyes could register the target.

  “Stupid hunter bitch!”

  I heard a shot from the room behind me and slid to the floor, still shooting. I knew how she’d move. She’d told me after I killed Kath. With all the training I possessed, and with a prayer to God, whose extraordinary angels I hoped were watching me, I fired three shots in rapid succession, striking Elizabeth Hall once in the throat and twice in the abdomen as she dropped and rolled.

  Nathan flew from the room, one of his shoes str
iking me in the back, knocking me flat and jolting the gun from my hands. He aimed toward Hall then swung his weapon in the other direction. When he looked down at me as I struggled to sit, I followed his eyes. Even in the dark I saw blood dribbling from my shoulder. The outer shoulder, near my upper arm, I said to myself. Not as serious as a gunshot toward the clavicle. I looked at him—it must have been in disgust and fear, fear at what I’d heard in that room, because he reared back before laying his gun at my feet to calm me.

  “I told you she’d be the death of you,” a woman’s voice called out.

  “God!” I screamed, flailing at the floor for my gun.

  Nathan cried out for Lydia to stop. Screaming my name, she fired twice as he threw his body in front of mine. Both bullets hit their mark. He groaned and dropped to the floor. Reaching desperately for my gun underneath his body, my eyes fixed on Lydia, I heard three shots and saw her slam into the wall.

  Chapter 23

  Nurses told me the hospital in Durango was busier than they had ever seen. What they were seeing tonight was unusual at any time, but more so considering it was nearly midnight on a Sunday. If I wore a sling at all times and returned in a few days for a checkup, the doctor said, I could go home. The injury to my shoulder was relatively superficial, and the hospital had more serious patients to attend to, one of them Nathan. Phil had been stitched up, the shrapnel in his arm removed, and he too was told to go home. Hall and Lydia were dead, but Manifest Manifest was still alive. He had escaped the house unharmed, if he’d been there at all.

  I talked to the Durango police and gave them the usual Gatehouse number to call. Eyebrows raised, they wondered at all the gunshot wounds tonight. More than that, why was there more blood than there were injuries? I don’t know who had found time to call for a clear-out of the house and office building, but I was glad someone had dealt with it. I was in a fog, numb from head to toe, sitting on a chair a few feet from Nathan’s hospital room. Claude was inside, saying over and over again how sorry he was. He had to do it, had to shoot her.