The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  A long and loud sigh escaped him. It was much louder than he had expected it to be and it caused Father Vogel to glance up. In chagrin, Will dropped his head back down so quickly that his chin thumped against his chest. A few seconds later the priest wrapped it up crossing himself.

  "Amen," the five men said in chorus after crossing themselves.

  "Ok, fellas the plan's quite simple," Abe began with some authority. "Diamond formation, Timothy takes point until we bear up to about a hundred yards. Zeke on the left. I take the right, Jake in the rear. Mr. Jern are you still coming?"

  "Yeah." The word was a whisper. His nervousness was so pronounced that he didn't trust himself to speak and was glad that the dark hid his shaking hands.

  "In that case, I want you off to Zeke's left by at least thirty yards. Please, don't shoot over anyone's head. If you have to fire your weapon make sure you know where each of your squad mates are before you do. We'll be attacking what you have described as the family room first, and we know where the other men are arranged about the house, so if you see flashes coming from one of the other rooms, or if you see someone come out, don't be afraid to shoot. Just whatever you do, don't shoot south to north because you may be shooting at one of us. Know what you're aiming at, got it? And one more thing, check that your safety is on till you're ready to fire."

  Will nodded though no one could see it. "Yeah." His hand went to the butt of the gun that stuck in his waistband and he forced himself to pull it back without checking the load. "Can I get a moment, if you don't mind?" Will jogged over to the other car where Father Vogel stood and after giving the priest a quick tight smile he ducked in and kissed his wife on the lips. They were agreeably warm and soft. "Love you," he whispered, staring into her face.

  "I'm sorry I'm not much of an inspirational speaker."

  "Huh?" Will pulled his tall frame from the car. "What did you say, Father?"

  Father Vogel looked odd in his Easter vestments out there in the night desert, he also looked uncomfortable. "I was just apologizing for not being such an inspiration. I was never really such a good public speaker. I think it may be why I was shipped off to exorcism school."

  "There's such a thing?"

  Vogel laughed quiet and dry. "No. It was just a joke. I'm sorry. I'm just a little nervous."

  He wasn't nervous near enough, in Will's opinion. If Ba'al was there at the house, it would destroy the priest as soon as it could. "I think we all are, so don't sweat it. In fact, I could use some of that sacramental wine."

  The priest smiled at Will's half-joke and then the two stood looking at each other in embarrassed silence. Despite the cooling night, a small trickle of sweat ran down the side of Will's face, he reached up to wipe it away and it seemed to break the moment.

  "Good luck," the priest said with some solemnity.

  "You too." Somewhat stiffly, the two men shook hands.

  "Abraham? To whom should I give my stole to?"

  Jake came up out of the dark, giving the priest a little start. To add to his dark clothing, the soldier had painted his face black as well. "I'll take it." With some ceremony, the priest removed the stole kissed it once and after folding it neatly, handed it over. Jacob stored it away neatly, tucking it in his shirt. There was another heavy silence.

  "Ah we gonna do this, ah what?" Zeke called impatiently in his Boston accent.

  "Yes. Timothy, get going," Abraham spoke in a low tone. He was closer than Will realized. "Watch your spacing and keep your shots tight. Mr. Jern, if you don't mind..."

  "Please. It's Will remember? Not Mr. Jern."

  "Right. Will it is. Get going. Keep low. Stay abreast of Zeke. You don't want to get either in front or behind. Someone can get hurt that way."

  This, Will thought was actually supposed to be a joke since they were heading off to hurt all sorts of people and so he smiled in appreciation. However, Abe didn't. He just glared about with a hard face, making sure everyone was moving off into the right positions.

  As Will left him, trotting to the far left of the little formation, he heard Abe giving last minute instructions to the priest, "Keep the lights off and don't move until you hear shooting. Then creep up until you hear two shots and then a pause and a third. Bang, bang...bang. Like that, got it?"

  He assumed the priest got it since he moved too far away to hear the acknowledgement. "Zeke?" In the dark, the camouflaged man was impossible to see.

  "Over here."

  "How am I supposed to keep abreast of you when I can't see you from ten feet, let alone thirty?"

  "Every few seconds, I'll make this sound." Zeke let out a little chirping noise, sweeip. "Just orient on that. Good luck Will."

  "You too."

  Will, slinking low, walked out toward the road for about thirty paces and hunkered down. His breath came and went heavily, his sweat continued to trickle down his forehead and his eyes were wide, straining in the dark. The need for a drink was becoming a physical force within him. He could do this with half a bottle of whiskey in him, but he didn't know if he could, dry.

  Sweeip, sweeip. The noise was ahead of Will and to his right; Zeke was already fifteen to twenty paces in front of him.

  Hurrying forward, he stumbled and fell, cutting his hands and dropping his gun, "Damn!" This he said aloud, but wasn't worried about the noise; the house was still a way off. It was quite dark and had a sad gloom about it and if Talitha hadn't reported that there were men in it waiting with drawn guns, he would have very much considered it vacant.

  In haste, he picked himself up and after finding the gun a few feet in front of him, began again more carefully. A while later, perhaps two hundred yards, he realized he hadn't heard the chirp sound in some time. Did that mean he was too far in front of Zeke or too far behind? There was no way to know. A thrill of anxious panic swept him for a moment and he ducked down not wishing to be taken for one of Amy's men. For a long minute, he squatted, sweating beside a bush, and feeling altogether unlike himself.

  The cause of his puzzling anxiety was almost certainly the Wild Turkey, or rather the lack of it and he was very embarrassed to come to that conclusion. Forgetting completely the hidden bottle of vodka that Lisa had sipped from on Saturday nights when he was with his sister, Will worried what she would think if she knew that he was at least situationally an alcoholic. He was mentally upbraiding himself for his weakness when he heard a soft noise coming from the north, not at all the direction that any noise should be coming from.

  Closer it came and Will brought up the gun. Sweeip. Will practically deflated in relief.

  "Zeke?"

  "Yeah...sorry. I went too far to the right. I think you need to move back to the left."

  Will hurried away, not wanting Zeke to see him even in the dim light. There would be nothing but shame if any of the men could see how badly his hands shook. It was strange that they did, he wasn't even that scared. The men of the unit had assault weapons and training, while the thugs he had seen so far were pathetic, and really, Will didn't see that he would be much use other than to draw some fire his way.

  His only plan at the moment was to get in close and squiggle up to the border of the lawn that sloped upwards to the house. From there he could fire some shots into it, if he felt the need to distract some of Amy's men. If they fired back, they wouldn't likely hit him if he kept low, which he very much intended to do.

  At two hundred yards the chirping slowed in pace, meaning that Zeke was likely crawling from bush to bush and Will emulated the idea, moving on his hands and knees. With painstaking slowness the house drew closer, as it did his anxiety increased until at fifty yards, he couldn't go further. A barren swath of desert lay between him and the equally open yard. Sometime in the last few months, his father must have cleared the area of scrub and now there was half a football field of coverless exposed ground between him and the house.

  Slowly Will poked his head up and saw with further dismay that this openness extended as far around the house as he could see. What
were they to do? What was he to do? He had no clue; there had been no contingency plans for this sort of thing at least that he was aware of.

  Did he dare try slipping over to where Zeke was? He thought better of it. He was the least trained of them all and worried that he would give away their position. Instead, he would wait for them to come to him, which was something he fully...

  From the house, a long rattle of machine gun fire sent Will sprawling face first into the hard dirt. They had machine guns! The sound of guns firing off to his right sounded next. Suddenly gun blasts were coming from everywhere in the house and the din was amazing. For seconds he hugged the dirt, but then after a short time realized that no one was shooting anywhere near him, and he lifted his head to see.

  Two men in black were crouched in front of the family room, keeping low away from the shattered windows. They were men of the unit but he couldn't tell who they were. The man furthest to the right, crawled to the corner of the house and snuck a quick peek toward the wing of the ranch that held the bedrooms. He was rewarded with a burst of machine gun fire from one of the rooms. Off to Will's right a man from the unit was obviously training his gun in that direction and a short pop, pop, pop sounded and the machine gunner fell back firing his gun into the ceiling.

  Now for a minute, nothing happened except for a bit of sporadic firing from inside the house and Will wondered if he should move up on the left as he had planned, but only just then, a figure in black streaked diagonally across his vision. It was Zeke. The man sprinted and dropped a bare half second before bullets tore through the air. Will was back to lying as flat as possible since Zeke was almost directly in front of him and the bullets missing him were coming uncomfortably close to Will. More gunfire from his right silenced one of the gunmen shooting at Zeke. This caused almost every gun in the house to spray the desert out to his right, giving Will the opportunity to clear the area behind where Zeke lay. His only options were forward or to move to his right.

  Forward across no man's land seemed too crazy.

  He crawled along to his right, toward where shots still ranged out, but didn't get too close to whoever was shooting since intermittent gunfire zinged in every few seconds. Instead, he snugged up behind a cactus and watched as the men from the unit worked as a team, popping up here and there, taking a shot or two, and then dropping again. The fire from the house dwindled with each passing minute until there seemed to be maybe only a couple men left alive and it was Will's guess they were holed up in the kitchen.

  "Will?"

  The way his name was spoken sent a chill down his spine. The man on his right was hurt and badly too. Will crawled as quick as he could to the man, his fear for himself having disappeared in a second. It was Jake. He lay on his side and blood that seemed altogether too black spurted from a wound high up on his chest.

  "Will," the man repeated. "Is it bad?"

  The bullet had entered in the hollow on the left side of his neck between his throat and his collarbone. There wasn't an exit wound as far as Will could see. "What should I do, Jake? Tell me what to do?"

  "I'm not Jake. My real name is Tony...Tony." His voice faded as he spoke. "You have to find my wife...she's...she's." Will put his fingers over Tony's mouth, quieting him.

  "Hey look, it's going to be ok. We'll find your wife, no problem and I'll tell her what hospital you're at, ok?" Tony nodded in a small way and Will continued, "Now I need you to keep quiet." Will bent down looking into the wound and because of the dark was unable to see a thing, so he then reached in with his finger and right away, he felt a fine pulsing spray. It wasn't huge, but there was an artery nicked.

  This spelled trouble.

  "Cover fire!" Abe yelled from near the house.

  Will plucked Tony's knife from its sheath and cut a portion of his own shirt away. He then rolled it up and stuffed it rudely into the wound causing the injured man to groan weakly.

  "Cover fire!" Abe screamed again.

  "That's you," Tony whispered.

  "Me?" Will looked down at the CAR 15 lying on its side like a dead fish. He grabbed it up. "What does he mean by cover fire?"

  "Just shoot at the house. Don't hit any of our guys."

  Will sighted down the length of the barrel and fire purposely high to get an idea what the gun would feel like. It was fantastic. It was painfully loud, as if tremendous explosions were occurring right beside his ear and yet there was almost no kick to the thing whatsoever. He lowered his sights and fired down the length of the house raking it until the gun quite unexpectedly stopped firing. A small port on the side of the gun sat open where it hadn't before and Will guessed he had run out of bullets.

  "Do you have..."

  Tony's eyes were closed. Will reached out to feel for a pulse and discovered one that was light and thready. He wouldn't last much longer and unfortunately there was nothing more Will could do for him. Something whispered passed his head and he glanced back to the house and saw flashes of light twinkling from deep within it. Someone was shooting at him, but oddly, he couldn't hear the gunfire and he wondered briefly, as he searched the various pouches on Tony's belt for more ammo, whether the men in the house were using silenced weapons. It didn't much matter to Will if they were.

  Tony was out of ammo, which was neither here nor there with Will since he had no idea as to his efficacy with the CAR 15. With the dark, he had no clue whether he even hit the house, let alone shot through one of the windows.

  "Cover fire!"

  "I'm out of bullets," Will yelled back. As soon as he said it, he regretted that he had. It just wasn't something to announce to everyone. Feeling stupid at his error, Will grabbed the pistol that he had laid aside and charged forward stooping at the waist. It seemed like a very long run out in the open. Six seconds later, he came gasping up the side of the house and threw himself to the ground near Abe.

  "That was real stupid!" Abe growled. "Don't ever run in a straight line like that again. Is Jake ok?"

  Will shook his head. "No. He's hit and he'll die if he doesn't get to a hospital quick."

  Abe and Timothy shared a look and as usual, Timothy was quiet. Abe called out, "Zeke! Cover fire!" This was met with silence. "Damn it!" Abe took a deep breath, "Ok. Timothy, I'm going to lay down some fire you go around and enter through that other door. Keep your eyes peeled. After you're in, I'll come through the glass right here. Cool?"

  Timothy nodded affirming the plan, but Will wasn't in agreement. "What about me? What should I do?"

  "You stay right here, and don't do a thing till I give you an order."

  Abraham's terse reply angered Will, who was unaccustomed to being commanded about and who thought that waiting was a sure fire way to let Tony die. Besides, he knew the house better than the other two men and instead of waiting for who knows what, as soon as Abraham began shooting, he found the clearest area of the broken window and scrambled through it.

  Coming down into his parent's family room, he landed on a body and feeling squeamish, crawled over it. Two more bodies were to his left. He didn't look for long at them. Gaping holes raged out the back of their heads and it turned his stomach to see.

  The family room was full of blood and noise. Bullets zipped through the air back and forth above his head, striking walls and furniture and glass and nick-nacks. There was no other option for Will than to slither along as low as he could, and he did, making it to the half wall that divided the living room from the family room just as a lull in the firing came about. Only then did he realize how harsh and rapid his breathing came and went. For a moment he wondered if he were hyperventilating, but then he saw the body of a Hispanic man laying in the doorway of the adjoining rooms and all thoughts of his own breathing left him.

  The man, clearly and undeniably was dead. There was a small hole above his right eye and another hole, large enough for Will to put his fist through, on the side of his head. Head wounds seemed to be the order of the day in the house and the very thought kept Will from venturing to peek above t
he wall. Yet if he didn't, and just sat there what was his purpose to coming into the house at all? He would have to rise up eventually to fire his gun, but the dead man kept drawing Will's eyes to him. The death dealing injury was strange, and morbidly his mind pictured the bullet ricocheting around the inside of the man's head before exploding outwards. He ogled the man for a few more seconds before he realized that the man had about his neck a strange necklace of beaten disks of metal and entwined plant stems.

  Without hesitation, Will exposed himself to the possibility of gunfire from the kitchen and reached out to snatch the necklace. The second it broke a storm of light seared across his mind. Images flooded his consciousness and he reeled backwards, crying out in pain.

  And he knew.

  Yet at that moment, he didn't know what exactly. As before, the future and the present intermingled to such a degree that for long seconds where bullets tore the air and guns rattled back and forth, nothing made sense. Visions doubled over themselves until he squeezed his eyes down hard and only then was there the relief of darkness.

  But this was different than how it had been that afternoon; when he had closed his eyes then, the images still had come to him. Now there was only darkness, and the darkness worried him. It was an empty darkness, devoid of thought and feeling. Quickly he opened his eyes, but for a second the darkness hung with him. It was a coming darkness.

  Was he going to die? Is that what the darkness meant? He had known the possibility of his coming death all afternoon but possibilities were not the same as realities. Possibilities could be shrugged off and perhaps dealt with at another time. This was far more immediate. It would be soon.

  Unless.

  He could just sit there huddled behind the wall. Surely, he would be safe if he did and truly he didn't know Tony all that well. And the man could die either way no matter what he did. He could be dead already for all Will knew. And Zeke as well. Rationalizations came to him by the score and his desperate mind lapped them up without question. But then...