Dark Advent

by Brian Hodge

Stay put? Like hell I will.

  Jason hopped across the living room, nearly tripping over a mountain of Gil’s Field and Stream magazines on his way to the gun cabinet. He grabbed a pistol-grip riot gun from one corner, feeding twelve-gauge shells into the bottom loading port.

  Sons of bitches, why can’t they leave me alone?

  He followed Gil’s path out the door and around the rear of the house. The sun was warming up in a hurry, burning off the last traces of dew. Five houses stood between Gil’s and Molly’s, but the sounds from her place were loud enough to be coming from next door: the slamming of doors into walls, as if they were being kicked open during a search; shouting from room to room; very distinctly, the words “She’s right, he’s not here!”

  That voice. He would never forget that voice—harsh and raw, it conjured up the face of a devil with a broken nose.

  He heard someone else then, a high, wavering cry cut off before it could even be called a scream. Molly, oh no no no… A moment later her back screen door came flying off its hinges. Jason was halfway there by now, and saw the door skitter across the back walk.

  A man he’d never seen before came barreling out of the open doorway, tall and close-cropped and fishbelly white. Jason blasted with the riot gun, but the charge went wild, blowing out one of Molly’s back windows and ripping a hole in the screen. Jason staggered with the recoil, watching as the pale man did a tuck and roll coming out of the house, springing up with his own gun trained right back. There was two houses’ distance between them, and Jason had the feeling that the man’s aim was true.

  “Got him!” the pale man shouted. “Bring the truck around back!” He grinned over his rifle barrel, the grin of a carnival geek before biting off the bird’s head.

  From the front of Molly’s house erupted more gunfire. Five or six weapons, at least. Probably the rest of Travis’s stormtroopers battling their way out of the house.

  Jason looked down at the shotgun in his right hand, held awkwardly and aimed into the ground. The cane was in his left hand, and the gun needed another shell chambered. He’d never make it.

  “Don’t even think it,” the man called over, as if reading his mind.

  To his left were the backs of houses, and the man was shielded from the front except when passing from one yard to the next. And from the sound of things, everyone out front had their hands full, and he couldn’t count on a lucky shot that would pick this guy off. To the right were open fields, and beyond that, woodland.

  I’m all alone back here.

  His captor moved closer, sliding forward step by step, sighting him in the entire time. “You packed and ready to go?” he said, then, once he was in the next yard, “On second thought, fuck the luggage. You are the luggage.”

  Jason’s stomach squeezed like a clammy fist.

  He saw it first, a silent blur of gray and tan hurtling from around the back of a neighboring garage full of greasy bicycles and dead basketballs. The pale man, locked in over the sights of his rifle, never even saw it coming.

  T Rex.

  The dog moved as quietly as a phantom, and for the first time Jason truly understood what it meant to have around a group of dogs that had been trained to deal with terrorists. He thought he might have smiled, just a little, and hoped it left the man confused, wondering what he could possibly have to smile about.

  T Rex sprang, and went for the throat.

  The man never had a chance. His gun went flying to the side on impact, and he managed one lurching step before the dog had him on his back. T Rex planted all fours wide and lunged, primal and snarling, a hundred pounds of fury and teeth. The man kicked as if in a fit of seizure, arms flailing, a raspy choke coming from his throat as blood jetted to the lawn. His head thrashed from side to side—he might as well have been dragging his throat across a hacksaw—and a wet stain spread across the front of his pants. Jason watched as his struggles weakened, dwindled to twitches, and died.

  T Rex looked back at Jason, muzzle dripping, gauging him with thoughtful eyes (friend) before leaping from the dead man’s chest and racing between two houses, out of sight.

  Jason heard the truck’s engine roar as he stepped past the pale corpse with its mangled ruin of throat. Somebody out front was shouting, sounded like Gil, telling his men to sweep right, toward the end of the block.

  Jason was at Molly’s house when he heard someone else screaming from inside, this time a man. Through one of the windows, looking in on a bedroom Molly used for storage, Jason saw a fleeting shape charging toward the glass. Mouth wide and eyes to match, the man launched himself at the window. Another stranger to Jason’s eyes, he looked vaguely Mexican. He exploded through the window in a shower of glass, blood already streaming down his back, and a moment later Jason saw the reason why. Another of the dogs was right behind him, loping gracefully out of the window in pursuit.

  The Mexican landed on the lawn between the two houses, hands- and face-first in shards of glass, then he was on his feet again, up and shrieking. The dog went for the nearest forearm, clamping onto the meatiest part and shaking violently. And Jason had thought he’d screamed loudly when landing in the glass.

  Leaning heavily on the cane to take the weight off his throbbing leg, Jason stumped out of the background line of fire as one of Gil’s men popped out from beside Molly’s front porch. When he snapped up an assault rifle and shouted a command, the dog suddenly let go and dropped to the ground.

  The Mexican put his hands out in a futile plea.

  A quick staccato burst was all it took, a tight swarm of bullets that clustered in center mass. A red mist fogged the air behind him, and he did a jittery little dance before collapsing in a heap.

  Jason heard their truck rev, saw it cornering around the far side of Molly’s house, the wheels chewing up clots of earth as it straightened. The engine gunned again and the truck careened over her back walk, splintering the door that lay there and aiming for him.

  He pushed off with the cane, going for the gap between houses in a stiff-legged hop, diving for cover beside a honeysuckle bush when the truck passed by in back. He got a glimpse of the two men in the cab, faces he knew he would hate until the day he was dead.

  Lucas was driving, gripping the wheel as if it were the only thing keeping him alive. Hagar was crouching in the truck bed, wild red hair and beard flying, a pair of binoculars slung around his neck. Jason covered his head as he sprawled on the ground and held his breath, awaiting a burst of gunfire that never came.

  He heard the truck roar on by behind the houses, then got up again to hobble out to the street. At least a dozen guys were out here now, although a couple sat bleeding on the pavement, and one of the dogs lay panting on its side in Molly’s lawn. The black truck reappeared at Gil’s end of the block, and headed for the lake. A shortcut to the quickest way out of town.

  Gil yelled at someone running up the street with an olive-colored tube in his hand. The man stopped beside Gil, looked at him. Gil nodded, grim and tight-jawed. The soldier pulled a pin and telescoped the tube out longer, and a pair of sights popped up front and rear. Jason had seen enough movies to know what the thing was: a LAW rocket, a one-shot, disposable bazooka.

  “Light ’em up,” Gil said.

  A moment’s hush fell while the soldier lifted it to his shoulder and sighted in on the rolling truck. The LAW fired with a sound like the crack of doom, and a smoky trail jetted toward the tailgate.

  Lucas must have had good eyes and even better reflexes, because he bailed out through the driver’s door. Jason could no longer see Hagar, figuring he must have stretched out prone in the bed to make himself less of a target. With no idea what was headed his way.

  Lucas hit the ground in a spill of arms and legs as the truck bounced on without him, and an instant later it blasted apart in twin explosions—first the rocket, then the gas tank. A tire soared up and back to the ground, bouncing in
blooms of flame. Bits of wreckage rained down around the truck, starting little fires in the grass or hissing as they splashed along the shallow edge of the lake.

  Twenty feet behind the burning truck, Lucas pushed himself onto hands and knees, fell over, tried it again, got a yard along and fell over once more.

  Jason turned back to look at the men grouping in the street. Gil caught his attention and raised an eyebrow.

  “You know something about them?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Jason nodded, pointing at the floundering Lucas. “Give me a minute or two alone with this one.”

  With the cane for support and the riot gun for leverage, Jason limped down the street. He listened to the crackling fire, the only sound he would let himself hear now, on this windless morning. Old hurts, old grudges, old scores to settle…they surged up in him like a black tide: Memories of Lucas helping to massacre three men across from Union Station. Lucas wielding the lash that had forever left its mark on Jason’s back. For months it had all lain just below the surface, a Pandora’s box of hatred waiting for the right moment to spring open.

  This was the first moment he’d actually had to think since leaving Gil’s kitchen.

  Halfway there.

  And with the calm came time to wonder, in dread: How the hell did they know where to look for me?

  Lucas knew he was coming. Jason could read it in the strain on the man’s face and the fear in his eyes and the tension of those clenched teeth. Jason limped, pressing resolutely forward, never slowing no matter how much it hurt and finally speeding up, until he stood over this man who had come nearly 800 miles to find him.

  Resting on his left hip, Lucas was still trying to get a leg underneath him. His right leg was rigid, jutting stiffly away. A chunk of metal three inches wide protruded from his thigh, a jagged souvenir from the truck. Clenching his jaw, he lifted his head up to face Jason. What was he trying to accomplish with such a plaintive look? Trying to elicit a little pity?

  You’re looking to the wrong guy.

  Jason’s fingers flexed on the cane, squeezing the handle.

  “I never got to finish what I started,” Jason said.

  “Uh?” Lucas said with an uncomprehending look.

  Jason leaned his weight on his right leg, then whipped the cane in a vicious arc across Lucas’s face. He took it full force, the last thing he’d expected. He rolled onto his back, hands clutching his nose and catching a fistful of blood. Jason looped the cane into the air again and brought it whacking down against his ribs. Lucas’s hands went for his side, a diversion that Jason used to slash the cane across his face the opposite way, bringing a fresh spurt of blood onto his chest. Cartilage ripped, bone cracked. Jason thought he’d done a decent job of breaking Lucas’s nose before, though it paled by comparison to this job. It would never look remotely right again.

  “Why did you come down here?” Jason asked, shaking the point of the cane at him.

  Lucas looked miserably up at him, holding his nose as blood dribbled through his fingers. His mouth curled into a sneer.

  If he says fuck you again, he’s had it.

  Some guys never learn. It cost Lucas a heavy shot to the balls.

  “Talk to me, asshole. Or you’ll think I was just giving you a handjob then.” Jason lifted the cane again. “Why did you come after me?”

  “He wanted you back,” Lucas said, his breath hitching. His voice sounded thick and bubbly, as if he had the king of head colds.

  “Who did?”

  “Don’t act like you don’t know, man. Peter Solomon. Him.”

  It was the first time he’d heard the name, but from the reverential fear with which Lucas spoke it, Jason had no trouble putting the right face with it. “So how did you know where I was?”

  “Solomon just knew, is all.”

  “Oh bullshit!” Jason yelled. “Don’t jack me around!”

  Lucas scrabbled backward into a tuft of weeds, taking the next swipe of the cane on a knee. “Okay! Fuck! This guy coming up he caught. Some wild-looking Indian, they said.”

  Jason’s gut tightened. “What did Solomon want with him? Huh?”

  Lucas’s eyes were scrunched in anguish, and he was starting to go fetal. “Don’t ask me why he took him too. I thought he was gonna be happy when he got that girl.”

  His stomach was now a chasm. “What girl?”

  “I don’t know her name, just some cute piece of tail from Brannigan’s.”

  The world turned to crystal, shattering around him in mocking fragments. All those earlier hopes swirled away, the dreams of the two of them fixing up one of the houses here, living like normal human beings once more…all crumbling. He lifted the cane again and was on top of Lucas as if to batter him into the soil.

  “What did he do to her?” Jason screamed. “WHAT DID HE DO?”

  “He just keeps her in a room is all!” Lucas screamed back. His raw voice had climbed into a high raspy wheeze.

  Jason stopped, gave the cane a rest. His leg ached, his shoulder ached, his head felt peeled and pounding. When the wind shifted he caught a faceful of smoke from the burning truck. Get a grip, he told himself. Lucas was trying to hold everything at once, clutching his ribs and his groin, his nose mashed to a fat pulp and his face a mask of blood. Oh Jesus God he’s a mess. And I did that to him.

  The earlier sneer crossed Lucas’s face, as if he’d glimpsed a weakness in Jason and deplored it. He groaned, spat thick blood, grinned. “She’s got a nice ass. She had me up it twice a night. Not her idea.”

  Jason couldn’t think anymore, could only react. Acid tears in his eyes, he slammed the tip of the cane onto the metal poking from Lucas’s leg, as if driving a spike into wood. Lucas howled his loudest yet, drizzling blood and swearing, then pushing himself back up onto his hands. He looked up at Jason with all the hatred his blackened soul could find, with the resolve of a man who’s gone to the brink of agony and beyond. A man who will drag himself to the inevitable end because he knows he has nothing left to lose.

  “’Course your Indian friend was the one that sold you out.” Lucas laughed, blood and ropy snot stringing from the ruin of his nose. “Right before Solomon ripped him apart.”

  Jason was already unsteady, and this nearly killed his balance. His stomach was bottomless, his head ached to the core. As the walls caved in around him, he shrieked like a man from the first primal dawn.

  Jason let the cane fall to the ground, pumping another shell into the shotgun’s chamber and leveling it without aiming. Close enough. He tottered backward with the recoil as Lucas’s head dissolved from his shoulders in a thick burst that painted the shoreline and hurled fragments ten feet across the water.

  And then…a curious calm.

  He watched the body flop into the weeds, loose as a fallen scarecrow. One arm slowly unfolded along the ground, then was forever still.

  I don’t feel a thing, he thought dully. Not for him, I don’t.

  Moments later, thunder from the shotgun fading in his ears, sweating from the twin infernos of the sun and the burning truck, Jason stooped to retrieve his cane. Its length was shellacked with red.

  Gil and the others were silhouetted in the distance, and Jason turned his back on the body to make his weary way toward them. He battled back the tears that had wanted to come a minute earlier, a joyless victory. Erika, he thought. Tomahawk. Then he pushed their stricken images away. Sometimes it was better not to feel at all.

  6

  One thing became apparent from the outset: Travis made one surly prisoner of war.

  They’d marched him into Brannigan’s the night before, in all his naked glory, and while the hour was late and several people had already gone to bed, several more were still up to witness the sight. On the way in, Caleb, exhibiting a characteristic display of conscience, wondered if he shouldn’t go in and find a robe to cover Tra
vis.

  “Bad idea,” Diane had said, laughing. Then she’d reached over to the still-hopping Travis and playfully pinched his rump. “We don’t want anybody to get the idea that he’s carrying any concealed weapons.”

  Travis growled, Travis angrily jerked his shoulders around, Travis glared sullenly at everyone and everything. The reaction from the others ranged from awe to sudden attacks of jittery nerves. Juanita Morris promptly hustled Farrah, now thirteen, out of the main room, but not until after the girl had gotten a good look at the man’s dangling privates.

  After a brief debate they decided to keep him upstairs on the sixth floor, tied tightly to a chair, with an armed guard for company. For the time being, at least. Jack Mitchell opted for giving him a pair of gym trunks to slip on, and personally held a gun on the man while he stepped into them. They all went upstairs then, Travis settled into a chair, and on went the ropes. When they finally removed his gag, he shouted and cursed and made threats without end, and back down on the fifth floor, Nicholas began to cry. Travis thrashed in his chair, thudding up and down on the floor, until Diane finally quieted him by showing him the fish knife and musing about a vasectomy.

  “Bitch,” he said once again.

  She puckered a kiss at him. “Love you too.”

  He made no more noise that night.

  It wasn’t until Saturday morning that the ugly realities of the situation began to set in. At the same time that Jason was in Texas separating Lucas from his head, Diane approached Jack Mitchell and Rich Patton.

  “What are we going to do with him?” She flicked a quick glance at the ceiling. “I mean, I do feel a certain responsibility.”

  Jack and Rich looked at each other, at her, at each other again.

  “The floor’s open for suggestions,” Rich said.

  “You know, you’ve put us in a hell of a spot just by bringing him here,” Jack said. He dragged his fingers through his ever-thinning hair. He’d lost handfuls in the past several months. Give him another year and he’d be a cue ball.

  “I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter,” Diane said. “If I’d left him there in his room, he could have had the rest of Union Station down on us. If not before we were even away from the place, then for sure he’d’ve been found soon enough and they’d all be here. You wouldn’t be sitting there slurping your Bartlett pears out of a can, that’s for sure.”