by Rick Soper
“Fuck you!” Tharon screamed as he pulled the trigger of the AK47.
The gun made a clicking noise, but didn’t fire: Aleksei never put the firing pins in his guns until the deal was done. While they had been speaking, Viktor had silently made his way behind Tharon’s men and at the sound of the click he sprang into action, wielding two, Siberian Sabers one in each hand. His first strike was up and through the hamstrings of the two men closest to him, and then he continued the slicing motion of the sabers as they rose up to a point, into the neck of the third man standing behind Tharon, nearly severing his head clean off. Not stopping or even slowing down, Viktor swung on his feet and slammed the sabers back down through the throats of the men who had fallen and were grasping at the back of their legs. Then he spun, took two steps forward and thrust the sabers through Tharon’s stomach. They exited through Tharon’s back, but Viktor twisted them anyway, before pulling them back out sideways, leaving a gaping wound through which Tharon’s intestines spilled onto the ground.
Aleksei had stood silently during the attack and he waited after it was over, watching Tharon and his men quiver, spasm, bleed, and die. Then he looked up at Viktor’s grinning, blood covered face and said in Russian, “go get Petr, meet Sergei and take care of the rest of them.” Viktor nodded and started to walk away.
“And Viktor," Aleksei said, "once you get done with that, go get Hektor! We need to have a discussion.” A discussion about why this opportunity had become a problem.
Chapter 4
The man who would call himself Gabriel wanted to be left alone. He wanted to be out in the wild, away from people, left to the hunt. He wanted to remain dead. He wanted to avoid his resurrection. But they’d brought the fight to him, they’d invaded his territory, they’d threatened his way of life, and now he had to react.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t have fun with it.
His body bristled with anticipation. He waited, in the mansion, by the second floor railing that overlooked the front door. Across his knees was a rifle. On the floor on either side of him rested two, loaded handguns. It was more firepower than he really needed, but better over prepared, than under armed.
Any hunt involved planning, preparation, and execution. But this was far beyond hunting an animal in the open wilderness. True, this prey lacked instincts he normally had to circumvent, but it was still beyond anything he had ever attempted. This was an equal, and when equals collide, anything could happen.
Outside, the sound of thumping music made its way down the driveway. It stopped in front of the doors, and a laughing group made its way in. As they entered, Gabriel let the breath flow out of his lungs, waited until the door shut, and began firing.
Ten people had walked through the door, four men and six women. Gabriel fired nine times, and within moments nine out of ten were lying on the floor. The only body that remained standing was that of five time NBA all-star T.J. Jones.
“What the fuck?” Jones said as he looked down at the bodies around him and fell back against the wall next to the front door.
Gabriel picked up the two handguns next to him, stepped forward, jumped over the rails of the balcony, flipped once in the air and landed gracefully on his feet. He pointed the guns at Jones, who cowered against the wall. Gabriel didn’t fire; instead, he dropped the guns on the hardwood floor under him and motioned for Jones to come at him.
Jones immediately went from being terrified to pissed off. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m going to kick your fucking ass!” he said as he jumped over the bodies towards Gabriel.
Under his black mask Gabriel smiled. Jones was known for his temper, and Gabriel had counted on him acting just like this. Jones was on him in a moment, throwing a wild, roundhouse punch that Gabriel easily ducked under as he popped past him and shot his elbow hard into Jones' ribs. Then he kicked his foot into the back of the larger man's knee, sending him sprawling onto the floor, just in time for Gabriel to slam his fist into Jones' kidneys.
Jones deserved this and a lot more. Gabriel let him struggle back to his feet and attempt another punch. This time Gabriel grabbed Jones' arm, pulled him over his shoulder and threw him into the nearest wall. When the big man hit, the plaster behind him cracked, and then rained down around him as he crumpled onto the floor. Jones tried to raise his head again, but this time Gabriel slammed his fist into the side of his jaw and knocked him dead cold out.
Gabriel shook his head. He had been expecting better. Jones was a world-class athlete, but Gabriel had taken him down in under a minute. With the amount of training he had put himself through he should have expected nothing less, but you never knew what could happen until it does.
Gabriel walked over to where he had dropped his guns, picked them up, holstered one, and then walked back with the other in his hand, pointed it down at Jones' chest and fired. Then he reached down, grabbed Jones' arm and lifted him up over his shoulder. Jones was nearly a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier but Gabriel carried him easily. It was time to punish Jones for his transgressions. After that it would be time to call an old friend.
Chapter 5
As Bernie Smith woke up, his hands shot to his pounding head. As well as the blinding pain at his temple, his muscles were sore, his bones ached, his stomach was in knots, and on top of everything he had a God-awful taste in his mouth. He tried to open his eyes but they were gummed up – he had to use his fingers to wrench them open. When he did, what he thought was overwhelming pain suddenly became secondary to the horror in front of him.
Blood was everywhere. It was on the fingers of the hands he had just used to pry open his eyes. It was on the stone floor beneath him. It was soaked into the white robe that he wore. For a moment, he thought he was the one who was injured, but a quick, panicked look revealed that he was unhurt. Why was he wearing the white robe? Why was he naked underneath it? Whose blood was he covered in? Where was he? Satisfied for the moment that he was unharmed, he looked around him, which only deepened his growing panic.
“Jesus!” he said.
Stone walls rose up twenty feet over his head, wrapping him in a huge circle. At the top of the room, a sculpture depicted a snake, twisting around to swallow its own tail. In the center of the circle a chain dropped a chandelier made completely of human bones and topped with black candles that had spilt centuries of wax down and over the bones. Thirteen ribs went from the floor to the snake sculpture in the ceiling. Each rib followed a pattern. It went up six feet to an altar of bones that held another black candle. Above the altar were paintings, each one depicting a gruesome scene: a human head being torn off by a wolf, a sword wielding savage standing on a tower of bodies, a devil staring out from a throne with fire in his eyes, and others just as horrible. On top of the paintings was a sculpted spur on top of which sat a series of stone figures, alternating between demons and snarling animals.
But it was between each of the ribs that the walls held their most horrifying treasure. Four feet up from the floor, shelves were carved in the walls, thirteen shelves high, longer on the bottom, shorter next to the sculpted snake. Each shelf was lined with bright, white, human skulls: single skulls on the top, two on the next one down, three below that, and on and on until there were thirteen on the bottom shelf. Each skull was placed on a wooden stand that had a carved name on it.
“Nice of you to rejoin us, Mr. Smith.” A skull-faced figure pulled away from the wall, dressed in a rough brown robe with a wide hood.
“What’s going on?” Bernie stammered.
The figure ignored his question and waved a robe-covered arm around the room. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”
“I... I…”
The skull-face figure walked around the carved stone table in the middle of the room opposite Bernie. “What you see above and around you represents over twenty-one hundred years of history. Seventy-two sets of thirteen members of this group are here on these walls looking down on us, guiding us to our own greater glory, pushing us to the limits of what we can
achieve through the power they have bestowed upon us.”
“But…why?” And what did this have to do with him?
The figure moved around the table and walked closer to Bernie.. “Mr. Smith, you made the wrong decision, you got in our way, and now you will become part of us.”
“What?” Bernie asked, baffled.
“What is simple.” The figure asked as he came to a towering stop over Bernie. “You do what we ask or face the consequences!”
“Okay?” He just wanted to be out of this nightmare.
The skull-faced figure laughed. “You're agreeing because you think that is what will get you out of here, but beyond these walls we are all around you. We surround you constantly. We see your every move. Right when you think we are gone we will be right there beside you.” The figure dropped a bloody mass on the ground in front of Bernie.
He leapt back away from it even before he saw that it was a human heart with a chunk bitten out of it; when he did he threw up, and kept throwing up until he thought there was nothing left. Then he saw the blood, and the bitten chunk that had come out of his own stomach and he threw up again, until there was only a burning bile flowing out through his mouth and nose and it felt like his eyes were about to pop out of his head.
The figure above him laughed and then spoke again, its voice rising to a scream. “Yes, you did that, as part of your initiation. Now you have to understand what will happen if you don’t do what we ask. We’ll take your children, your wife, your friends and your job, and then when you have nothing left and you’re begging us to kill you we’ll use all we have learned in our twenty-one hundred hears of history to stretch your death out for weeks, for months!"
Bernie had crawled up against the wall and pushed and pushed against it, trying to get away from the horrifying creature. “Please, no, no, no," he screamed. "I’ll do anything! Please…”
“Yes you will, yes you will,” the skull-faced figure said as another robed figure appeared and punched a needle into Bernie’s neck.
END Chapter 5
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Chapter 1
The Ice Queen looked out from under the wet tree limb at her target across the water with blood in her eyes. Reckoning was at hand. Her hand itched for the cold steel of the rifle. He finger twitched in anticipation of pulling the trigger. Her usual detachment was broken because this was personal…
“What do you think?” she asked as she finished typing and held the iPhone out in front of the dog.
She didn’t actually expect him to read it but still he tilted his massive white and black head, popped his ears up, and looked at her with his startling blue eyes as if to say, “A little over the top.”
She laughed as she reached out and rubbed her hands through the thick, wet hair around his ears, “Yeah you might be right, Jinx, but like the doc said, bad thoughts written down will go a long way to keeping me from bad actions.”
Before she’d saved Jinx, she’d always wondered how someone could talk to their dog. But then the doc had told her that talking to a dog was just an excuse to hear the words she needed to hear out loud. The dog didn’t have an intelligence like a person, but he definitely had a personality. When she spoke, the dog reacted, and that made her feel a little less insane talking to him.
She’d been developing a relationship with Jinx. She’d saved him, nursed him back to health, fed him, gave him a place to sleep, and spent nearly every waking moment of the day with him. In return, Jinx listened to her ramble, looked at the screen when she’d written more of her latest novel, and pushed his head up under her hand whenever he could.
They were connected, and that connection was new to her. Before, she could never be linked to anything. She’d always been instructed that there was an inherent risk in any type of relationship that could be exploited by an enemy.
Even a name was something she couldn’t be bound to. The identification and credit cards in her backpack had the name Zoe Jack on them. That had been taken recently, and would be lost soon. The hair sticking out from under her hat was the brown of the wig that covered her own strawberry blond, green contacts covered her blue eyes, cotton balls in her cheeks changed the shape of her face, and that would all change when she moved positions.
Identities and facial characteristics could be tracked and recognized, and if either of those things happened, she could be found. Bad things would happen if she was discovered.
The dog whimpered. She opened her eyes and found her hand gripping the skin on Jinx’s neck in a balled-up, white-knuckled fist.
“Oh boy, I’m so sorry,” she said as she popped her fist open and started petting him as gently and playfully as she could.
He pitched up from a sitting position and bowed his back under her hands as if to show her that he was forgiving her. The motion helped relax the tenseness that had pushed its way through her muscles. Even the briefest thought at what she would inflict upon anyone who found her was enough to send a quiver of fury through her body.
“Calm, calm, calm…” she repeated as she tried to cool herself down.
She wasn’t that person anymore.
She was going to change.
At that moment she was Zoe, and Zoe didn’t have those thoughts, because Zoe was a happy person, Zoe lived in the present, and never let her head drift into the past.
She held up her phone, about to try and flush those thoughts out by continuing to write her story, but movement behind razor-topped, seven-foot-high, chain link fence let her know that the shift change had started for the defense department contractor at the dock.
Looking down at her watch, Zoe saw that it was 5pm on the dot, just like it had been nearly every day for the months she’d been watching the shifts change. The only occasion the schedule changed was when there was a project deadline, or a larger container ship that pulled up to the dock needed to be turned around a little quicker. Even then, there was just a little overlap, because the contractor didn’t want to have to pay the unionized dock workers the exorbitant overtime rates they’d negotiated.
The contractor had multiple buildings, shifts, and duties. Inside, the workers were involved in research and development, manufacturing, and inventory. Outside, they were the crane operators, supervisors, and riggers who loaded and offloaded the ships that came in through the Puget Sound loaded with parts or maintenance projects, or were taking out finished inventory to the various naval bases for delivery. Inside, a large portion of the workers had security clearances; outside they mostly didn’t. Inside was the high tech kind of work that took intelligence and education. Outside they were doing the grunt work of moving big heavy stuff.
The facility had a similar structure to the military organizations they worked for. Security needed to be maintained because of the projects they were working on and the people they employed. It was the same as any military base or defense contractor she’d been tasked with infiltrating around the world. They tried to vary schedules, shifts, and procedures to avoid the kind of predictability that was in itself a vulnerability. But she’d found that if you watched any facility for long enough you could find the rhythms and weaknesses that could be exploited.
If her goal was to get into the facility, she would come through the water at night. If she needed to get out, she would have placed targeted charges on multiple points along the chain link fences. If she needed to disrupt or slow down the plant, she would have blown the motors on the cargo cranes that loaded and unloaded the ships. Or she would have blown the power lines going in. If she needed to put a bullet in the head of a specific individual, she’d just wait for the right shift change and do it from the exact position she was sitting in right now, on the other side of the fence across the water, up a hill, in a thick grove of trees. It
would be an easy shot.
Jinx pushed his head up under his hand as if he sensed that she was starting to get aggravated again. She bent down and rubbed her fingers roughly through his hair, up and down his back.
“Thanks, buddy.”
She couldn’t turn off the training, even as she was trying to change. It was rooted too deeply. No matter how much she wanted to leave it behind, she couldn’t help but see access points, escape routes, and kill boxes.
“I’m not doing that anymore. I’m a new person,” she said as she balled up her fists, closed her eyes and tried to push the thoughts away.
She wasn’t on an assignment, she wasn’t working for anyone else, this was personal. Her goal wasn’t elimination, it was modification.
Zoe opened her eyes and looked at past the fence to the rigger she wanted to find. He was easy to spot. The group of workers all seemed to be friends: joking, happy at the end of the day, talking to each other in groups.
He was the one man walking alone.
* * *
Richard Trollingham breathed a sigh of relief as he got into his truck and cranked up his stereo. His co-workers gave him looks, but he didn’t care, there wasn’t a one of them that he didn’t completely despise. He fought back his natural urge to flip them all off, because he was already in disciplinary review for what was called “confrontational behavior” in the workplace. Which was just another way of saying that he called them on their bullshit and wouldn’t back down from any one of them.
The sweet sounds of Metallica played loudly put him in a better state of mind. The speed and aggression of the band seeped into his body, getting him ready to take a few aggressions out as he drove home. Trollingham saw every trip behind the wheel as an opportunity to point out the stupidity of everyone on the road as he played his favorite auto-aggression game, Bumper or Brake.