Blood of the Masked God (Book 1): Red Wrath

by Gehrke, Gerhard

  “There’s still a few hours and more roads that cut through near Dogwood,” I said. “Let’s check them all out. That way we cross this off the list of things to do.”

  Carter made a seven-point U-turn, careful not to let any branches scratch his car, and we drove back until we found another small road that turned into another dead end. Backtracking took us once again into Dogwood. A couple of other locals were outside watching us, one a lean man with a pair of hedge clippers and a baseball cap and the other a heavyset man wearing overalls. These two didn’t wave as we drove past. The woman wasn’t in her garden. A third road went into the hills, but after thirty minutes of slow driving we found no way through that wouldn’t bottom out Carter’s car and leave us stranded.

  “It’s all dead ends,” Carter said. He was waiting for me to call it.

  I sighed. “No Fortress of Solitude or hidden military installations out here, I guess.”

  “It was a good idea and very observant. Chronos has to go someplace. It’s just a matter of tracking him down.”

  “This was a complete waste of time,” I said.

  “It got us out with something to do besides watching the news.”

  We stopped off in Concord late in the afternoon. I got us coffee while Carter found a bathroom. The morning’s baked goods were sitting out, and they looked heavenly. I bought a roll with a glistening cluster of pecans on it.

  “Goodbye, abs,” I said as I tucked into the pastry.

  The coffee shop was empty and the sole employee behind the counter was cleaning up. The place was closing but he didn’t appear to mind when I sat and waited for Carter. A radio was playing the news. It was too loud and the blaring voices made me want to step outside.

  What was taking Carter so long?

  Then I noticed it was Chronos speaking. It was an older interview, part of a story on Chronos and Slingshot. The Star Son’s penetrating voice was deep and unmistakable. He was commenting on their rescue of a dozen schoolchildren held hostage in a classroom by a family of serial criminals called the Hatchet Clan.

  “We knew they had explosives,” Chronos said. “And plenty of weapons and a past history that let us know they had no problem hurting children or anyone else. Slingshot went forward as a negotiator but they remained vague on their demands and were arguing among themselves on what to do. One wanted to kill all the hostages right then and there. I was up on the roof out of sight. With my hearing, I could tell we only had moments before they hurt the kids. That’s when I went in.”

  “You captured all five of them without any of the children getting hurt,” the interviewer said with the usual reverence. Was there even a question there?

  “I came in through an inside wall and neutralized three of the gang. Slingshot came in and took out the other two. He got the kids to safety while I dealt with the explosives.”

  “Had you detected the location of the bomb before you entered?”

  The question only made Chronos hesitate for a moment. “We knew we could get the children out before it could get triggered. I was confident in my ability to shield them from harm. Since we were out of time, we had to act, neh?”

  I almost choked on a pecan.

  “Excuse me, is this online or is this the radio?” I asked the man wiping down the pastry display.

  “CNBC news stream,” he said.

  I got out my phone and navigated to the CNBC website. Carter came out, wiping his wet hands on his pants.

  “Got our coffees?” he asked.

  “Yeah, let’s step outside so I can think. There’s something you need to hear.”

  We were out by his car. I found and played for him the excerpt from the interview I had just heard.

  “That’s…interesting,” he said, not getting it.

  “It’s what he added at the end. ‘Neh.’ Who talks like that?”

  He sipped the coffee and waited for me to tell him.

  “It was the woman we spoke with in Dogwood,” I said. “I don’t know if that’s a New Hampshire thing or what.”

  “I don’t think it is. I’ve never heard of it. Sounds like it could have been an ‘eh’ or a ‘huh’ at the end. But he’s never had any verbal tics that I’ve noticed.”

  “Maybe we haven’t been paying attention. He doesn’t talk like a New Yorker.”

  “His speech pattern is pretty well scoured of anything that would make him sound like he’s from anywhere more specific than the US. He certainly doesn’t have a New England twang.”

  “He doesn’t show up enough to give actual interviews. This was a repeat from a while back. What if he goes through the trouble to mask an accent but this is a case where he slipped up?” I did some more searching. God bless the Chronos fanboys and girls, because the day of the hostage rescue from the Hatchet Clan was well documented.

  “Here he was out for over ten hours,” I said. “Most days he’s active for about six. If he was tired, his vigilance with his speech could have slipped. I’ve always wondered if he’s like Cinderella and needs to get back home before he turns into a pumpkin or something.”

  “There’s plenty of days where he’s out for more.”

  “Yes, but that’s not ideal, not for him.”

  Carter screwed his mouth to one side. He wasn’t convinced. “This might be an area where the statistics just don’t mean anything. With his ability to rapidly take out any criminal, the crimes end and he gets to go home. I think this is a connection that isn’t working.”

  “When he fought Strongarm and killed my parents, he had been out for over ten hours,” I said.

  Carter studied my face. “What do you want to do?”

  “Leave no stone unturned. We’re all the way up here. Let’s go back to Dogwood one more time. Just for me. Just another look around, and then we can dismiss the whole thing and you can take me home.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I couldn’t help but start feeling paranoid. Could a city, county, or entire state hide Chronos from the rest of the world? But then I remembered Carter’s map. He had recorded sightings all over New Hampshire. There was only the one pocket that held no reports. The gap might only be a statistical anomaly, or maybe it was how Chronos flew, avoiding certain mountains and following some preferred flight pattern that was otherwise escaping our attention.

  The counterpoint remained that he went somewhere, be it a mountain, a rock, or a castle in the sky. Chronos clocked out after a hard day of busting heads, that was a certainty. Why not New Hampshire?

  We talked about returning to Dogwood and agreed to go back later in the evening. We had a few hours to kill but were both exhausted. Carter sprang for a pair of rooms at a motel. It was a nice place that catered to tourists, and as it was so late in the summer season and school was back in, it wasn’t very full. The two rooms Carter got us were next to each other but didn’t have a connecting door. Neither Carter nor I was up for making a move and complicating our weird relationship.

  I stripped the bed down to the fitted sheet and plopped down on it. The place had floral wallpaper, a popcorn ceiling, and old, dark fake-walnut furniture. But it was clean. I was dozing in minutes.

  And then I was awake again. What started as sinus pain bloomed through the rest of my brain and settled in behind my eyeballs. My head throbbed. Suddenly the irrational feeling that my previous night’s dream was lying in wait woke me up completely and sleeping was the last thing I wanted to do.

  The attached motel lobby had a sitting area where I could be alone but have other people nearby. One large family was huddled near the front desk, where a woman in a hotel uniform was helping them. Life here was normal. I felt the anxiety start to slowly unwind even as the bowling ball in my head continued to throb.

  I got on my phone to check the news.

  A couple of mass shootings had happened during the day, one in a Boston art gallery and the other inside a church down in Miami. I couldn’t bring myself to read beyond the headlines.

  A loud crash from just outsid
e startled me. A cargo van had plowed into a car turning out from the hotel. I ran outside in time to see the drivers extricating themselves from their damaged vehicles. The driver of the car, a tall woman with a head of red hair, looked like she had a broken nose. Blood gushed down her face. She was wobbling on her feet while trying unsuccessfully to stanch the flow of blood with her hand. I rushed to her and got her seated on the curb by the hotel sign. The driver of the van came over.

  “You pulled out right in front of me,” he said with a raspy voice.

  The hotel employee had followed me out and was on her cell.

  “I’m sorry…I’m sorry,” the redhead muttered.

  “Sorry?” the van driver screamed, growing shrill. “You almost killed me!”

  He was looming and the redhead looked dazed and scared. I got up. He was a head taller than me, and wide to boot.

  “She said she’s sorry,” I said. “I’m sure everyone here is insured. The cops will be here in a minute and the matter will be handled.”

  I could see it in his eyes. He was going to move me aside, push me, try to get to her. I waited, poised, balanced on my feet. But then he heaved a sigh and nodded and backed away. I sat down next to the woman.

  “Are you dizzy?” I asked. “Did you bang your head?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  I checked her head and saw no obvious lumps. Her airbag had absorbed most of the blow. But her hands were shaking now. The hotel employee handed her a cloth that the woman pressed on her nose. I put an arm around her shoulder.

  “You’re going to be okay. Someone will take care of you. Breathe deep, keep calm. Is there someone I can call?”

  She nodded. “My husband.” As she took her phone out of her purse it fell from her grip.

  “Take five minutes to collect yourself,” I said, picking up her phone and handing it back. “Then call. When the cops show up, you stay seated until the ambulance people check you out.”

  Within ten minutes, everyone was there and I left her to be tended to by the EMTs. They took the woman with them. By the front door of the lobby, Carter was standing and watching.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just while so many people are standing around, you went and helped.”

  “So?”

  He waited until we retreated to the outside hallway leading to our room. “It just makes me wonder if we’ll have second thoughts when we…”

  “Murder the greatest good Samaritan the world has ever known?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think the biggest monsters out there sometimes do good things when it’s convenient or makes them look human. Will I have second thoughts? Probably. But every time someone else gets hurt because of him, I feel guilty too. But if you’re having doubts, speak up.”

  “I’m okay. Just thinking out loud.”

  “Good,” I said, feeling impatient with the whole conversation. “Then let’s hit the road and go back to Dogwood. I want to take a look around that place.”

  ***

  We parked a quarter mile away from Dogwood. There was no good place to actually conceal our vehicle but at least it was off the only road that led into the small town. It was late evening and the last bits of blue were vanishing from the sky, leaving us to walk the road in darkness. Carter wanted to use a small flashlight he took from his car but I vetoed the idea.

  He seemed jumpy. In fact, during the drive it felt as if he wanted nothing more than to head home. His fingers had kept flipping through the radio stations and drumming on the steering wheel. When a Camaro rocketed past us on the right, he overcorrected and almost went into the median barrier. I told him to stay in the slow lane as more traffic sped past. People were in a hurry and driving crazier than normal.

  And now, as we started to walk down the busted asphalt and gravel road, he pulled out his phone and turned it on. I snatched it away from him.

  “We’re trying to be sneaky,” I hissed.

  “I just wanted to see if we had signal. And what time it was.”

  I sighed. “Look, I know you’re a little frazzled right now. I can go on and take a look around on my own.” I gave him his phone back. “I won’t take long, maybe an hour. Go sit in the car. And whatever you do, don’t come following me with the headlights on. I’ll be sneaking and I don’t want you spoiling that.”

  “I can’t let you go alone.”

  “Yes, you can. All you have to do is get back in the car and sit inside it. I don’t need your help with this. I’ll be fine.”

  I only felt a little bit bad leaving him in the car. But he wasn’t stealthy enough and would only slow me down if I had to run. However, now that I was alone on the dark road I realized it was nice having someone watch my back. I cleared my head. There would be nothing in Dogwood but a few New Hampshire hicks. If I could avoid the barking dogs and anyone shooting at me while I was sneaking around, tonight would be a non-event and I could take Carter home.

  Lights were on in several of the homes, but it wasn’t enough to make walking any less treacherous. As I got closer the aroma of roasting meat made my mouth water. Someone had a smoker going. The weird part of my mind worried that perhaps something more sinister was going on, but it wasn’t like we’d seen any mobiles or wind chimes made of bones when driving through earlier.

  I paused by the side of the road to scan ahead and watch for anyone moving. It was a nice night. Only reasonable that folks might be taking a late evening stroll or be out exercising or walking their dogs. But I didn’t see anyone.

  Flickering lights were visible through a downstairs window in a two-level farmhouse. Its yard looked clear of debris and weeds. Also, I saw no leashes or dog bowls. I needed to see that these people were real and normal and doing whatever it was regular people did after supper. If it meant a little invasion of privacy to check this place off the list, so be it.

  To my advantage, there wasn’t a moon. The large number of trees nearby made the darkness nearly complete. I walked slowly, carefully, choosing each step as best I could. To get a good look through the window meant treading through a garden replete with beanpoles and raised vegetable beds.

  The downstairs window of the elevated home was high enough that I couldn’t quite look inside while up on my toes. I grabbed a plastic milk crate and stepped up onto it.

  A lantern burned on a small table between a ring of chairs and an old sofa, throwing out weak warm light onto the open drapes. A man sat on a winged chair with a book in his lap. He wore what appeared to be an old army jacket. He was a large man, balding, with unkempt gray hair on the side of his head. How he could read in such bad light was a mystery. Except for the furniture the house looked well kept, even a bit bare. I didn’t see much in the way of pictures or artwork on the walls. Still, nothing about what I was seeing triggered any alarms.

  Then I saw a large dog wander into the room. I hadn’t moved, hadn’t made a sound, but the animal froze and its ears perked up as it looked in my direction. It let loose the smallest bark. I crouched down and stepped off the crate. But the ground wasn’t even. I fell flat on my face into the dirt with a small thump.

  The dog heard it. A string of deep barks followed. I got myself up and retreated away from the house towards the tree line. The row of larches and low-growing spruce trees were great cover, though the branches and needles poked at my face. The man in the army jacket was now standing at the window. He looked bigger than before, backlit by the lantern light. The dog kept up its low whoop. For some reason I felt like he could see me even though I was now well hidden.

  I waited.

  He didn’t move from the window. But there was no way he could actually see me. It was time to go. But as I was about to move towards the road, I saw a second figure standing at the front gate near where I had come onto the property. He wore a baseball cap and held something that looked like hedge clippers. It was one of the two men who had stared at us when we had left town.

  I began to back slowly through
the trees. Another property lay beyond, and the wall of trees gave way to a yard filled with junk. Old stoves and washing machines and a few antique water heaters occupied the side yard to the large red house I had seen when we first drove through. In the dim light it felt like I was navigating a graveyard. No lights were on inside the three-story home. It was all boarded up around the side and back.

  Here lay castaway birdcages, gardening tools, gas cans, and a leaning collection of rusting bicycles.

  Another house up ahead had bright lights on upstairs. The dog was still audible behind me. If I moved along into the next yard I could find a place to hide and wait it out. But as I made my way forward I discovered thick vines growing between the properties, and some of them had thorns. The last thing I wanted was to find a patch of poison ivy or burning nettles. I hadn’t prepared for crawling through foliage.

  Then I heard clomping footsteps coming out onto the high front porch of the next house and down the stairs.

  I froze.

  Voices followed, a woman’s and a man’s, but they were too soft to make out. Did one barking dog put the whole town on high alert? I couldn’t see the street, but the voices receded. The dog finally stopped making noise, too.

  I returned the way I came but saw bright flashlight beams pierce the night. I looked at the big red house and stepped up carefully to the boarded back door. No sounds came from inside. Both back windows had two-by-fours nailed across them. But a second-floor window right above me was not only free of boards but pushed open by a few inches. I grabbed hold of the lower window sill and pulled myself up. My fingers and arms were strong and I could do pull-ups and climbing walls with ease. As I perched on top of the lower window sill, the open window resisted my efforts to force it higher. I adjusted my footing, finding purchase on a board nailed to the outer wall. With the added leverage, I was able to push with all my might. The window inched upward and thankfully made only the slightest sound.