Nightwalker 3

by Frank Roderus

  He took a few moments with the dog, giving the four men a cursory glance. Three were dead. The one who had been closest to the door, the first one Wolfe hit, had a broken neck and seemed to have no control of his limbs and probably no feeling below the neck, either, but he was still alive.

  Wolfe took him by the shirt and lifted him up to eye level.

  “Did you have fun here tonight?” he asked in a soft, controlled whisper. “Is this what you had in mind? Do you really think your friends in Paradise will feed you and clean you and take care of a quadriplegic? Hm? Do you really think they will do that for you now that you’re of no use to them? Well, I’ll tell you what, bub. I’m going to let you find out. I’m going to leave you here, leave you alive, so you can think about all those things while you’re waiting for someone to come and find you.”

  Wolfe let go of the man’s shirt and let him drop onto the concrete floor. The back of his head hit with a loud thump and bounced. If the man was lucky, Wolfe thought, that would finish him off. It didn’t, though. Wolfe could still see a shallow rise and fall of the paralyzed man’s chest. Good. That would give him time to contemplate his sins.

  Wolfe reached down to scratch the dog’s ears. He glanced at his rucksack still propped in the corner of the gas station office. It, along with his bow and blowgun, could stay there a little longer. Before he gave thought to moving on, there were a few other things he wanted to do.

  He moved through the dark building, collecting rifles and pistols, and the magazines of ammunition to feed them. It was, he thought, a fine night to go hunting.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Following the Paradise caravan turned out to be no problem at all. They had to move slowly because of the Delaney prisoners who were on foot, and Wolfe caught up to them in well under an hour. He walked along the sides of the road, not out onto it, figuring that he would not be seen there in the dark, while he just might be spotted if he was out on the smooth highway surface.

  The dog trotted close at his heels, not seeming to mind in the least that its muzzle and chest were caked stiff with the dried blood of the man that the animal killed back in Delaney. The dog might not mind that, but Wolfe reminded himself to wash the animal down the next chance he got. Not too soon, though. There would be more blood flowing before that time was likely to arrive.

  Wolfe judged it was some time past midnight when the wagon train stopped—giving the pedestrians a rest, perhaps, or the horses?

  The truth turned out to be neither.

  The procession had been met by a very handsome carriage coming west out of Paradise. After a few moments, Mistress Alethia herself stepped daintily out of the carriage and was helped onto the driver’s seat a good six feet or more off the ground. She stood in the driving box like a grande dame—a queen surveying her subjects, and the human spoils of war who were now hers also.

  Wolfe crept closer, protected by the darkness. Finally, he had a good view. The dog, he noted, dropped to its belly and crawled beside him without him having to tell it to. Not that he would have known how to convey that command even if he’d thought of it. The dog whined a little once Wolfe was in position behind a clump of dry, sunbaked grass where he could not present a solid outline that might be spotted.

  “Hush,” he whispered.

  The dog dropped its chin onto its front paws and lay still, except for the occasional rise and fall of its eyebrows.

  Over on the highway, Kent Laffrey was brought before the queen bee. Wolfe wished he were close enough to overhear what was being said, but it was obvious that Laffrey was being praised. Wolfe wondered what the price of perfidy was in Paradise. Liquor? Women? Whatever it was, Kent Laffrey wanted it bad enough to betray his friends and neighbors in order to possess it.

  After the little ceremony, Alethia had the prisoners marched before her in single file. She stopped several of the men, mostly young and fit-looking specimens, and briefly spoke to them. Each responded with a shake of his head and was then permitted to join the others who had already made this passage for Alethia’s review.

  A half-dozen of the women, two who looked like teenage girls and four older to middle-aged women were returned to the wagons under guard. One woman with graying hair broke away from the others and came to fling herself at Kent Laffrey. At first, Wolfe thought she was attacking him. Instead, she threw her arms around his neck and wept. His wife, perhaps, Wolfe guessed. She was allowed to stay like that for only a moment, then Laffrey gently unwrapped her arms from his neck and spoke to her. Reluctantly, she returned to the crowd of prisoners who had already passed before Alethia.

  When Rebecca’s turn came, she stood proudly erect, chin high and shoulders firm. Alethia had the girl lifted up to the carriage box and slashed Becca across the face with a backhanded blow hard enough to twist her head to the side and bring blood streaming out of her nose. Alethia said something, and Becca was trussed in rope and tossed into the back of one of the wagons.

  The line moved quickly after that. In all, nine women and one man were held aside in the back of a wagon—nine, that is, not counting Rebecca. Finally, Alethia nodded. The guards barked loudly, “Move! Move! Over there!” Loudly enough for Wolfe to easily hear. They prodded the prisoners with the muzzles of their rifles, herding them off the road and out onto the dry, baked earth of the high desert land there.

  “Together! Group close together! That’s right, now down. Get down on your knees! Anyone who stands up or tries to run will be in big trouble,” ordered the guard who seemed to be in charge. Wolfe could not recognize him, but he thought the man’s voice sounded vaguely familiar. “Closer! Move in closer! No gaps! You there, and you! Tighten it up! That’s right. Shut that kid up, lady! No bawling there. I want quiet!”

  Eventually, the head guard had everyone situated the way he wanted them. He nodded. The other guards moved in to form a semicircle around what was virtually the entire population of Delaney. The head guard looked at Alethia, who nodded her approval of the arrangement.

  “All right!” the head guard said in a parade ground voice. “Now!”

  The muzzles of the M16 automatic rifles came up, and the guns began to clatter in quick, tearing bursts, sending swarms of small-caliber, high-velocity bullets into the helpless prisoners.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Wolfe blurted.

  He threw an arm across the dog and held it down. Sixty or seventy yards away, the merciless slaughter went on, and on, and on.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Wolfe lay motionless in the chill night air, stunned by the hammering noise of the automatic weapons and the screams of the dying. There must have been more than a hundred people there. Alethia and her murderers were killing all of them.

  Wolfe drew the dog closer to him. It was trembling violently, or so he thought. After a few moments he realized that he was the one who was shaking so badly. The dog whimpered and pressed close to him, but Wolfe did not know if he wished to take comfort from him or give comfort to him.

  The sustained rapid-fire petered out and eventually died away. Wolfe heard excited, happy voices and the occasional single shot, as men moving through the seas of bodies paused to dispatch someone who was wounded, but still living.

  So many. So very many.

  Wolfe felt a momentary impulse to weep for the dead. As quickly as that emotion came to him, though, it was wiped away by a quiet, deadly fury. They had to pay for this crime against all humanity. Alethia had to pay, and he knew of only one person who was able to do that. Possibly able, that is.

  He lay where he was, calmer now that he knew what he wanted to do, and watched while the Paradise killers finished their grisly chore and returned to the now lightly-loaded wagons. Of all the people from Delaney, only that handful survived. One young man and nine women.

  Wolfe guessed the young girls were destined to serve in Alethia’s brothel as rewards for her faithful heroes, while the older women would be taken as slaves and given housekeeping tasks to perform. Plus Rebecca. God knew what Aleth
ia had in mind for Becca’s fate. The only thing Wolfe felt reasonably sure of was it would be both ugly and painful. The girl had helped Wolfe escape and several of Alethia’s goons died because of that. He was sure the evil woman would not allow Becca’s thirst for freedom to go unpunished.

  So there were those ten who remained from the assault on Delaney. Those ten, and the much-honored Kent Laffrey. Wolfe wanted to spit just to get the taste of Laffrey’s name out of his mouth.

  “You bastard,” he whispered into the night as the Paradise caravan rolled eastward. “I want you, Laffrey. You and that evil bitch you chose to serve.”

  He waited for the wagons to continue out of sight, then went to look for a place where he could hole up and sleep through the day. It was late and would too quickly be dawn. He would wait until nightfall again before he made his approach to Paradise, for the night was his ally, and now, there was no longer a reason for him to hurry. The people he wanted to help were nearly all dead.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Wolfe woke late in the afternoon. There was still enough daylight that he needed the goggles, but the sun would soon be gone. He had spent the day in a fitful, sweltering sleep in the back seat of a wrecked Lincoln that had been stripped of valuables a long time ago. Even the battery and some of the engine parts were missing, which suggested to him that the Paradise people had taken them.

  He sat up and looked around, but could not see the dog. Alarmed, he came out of the car in a hurry, only to find the big dog sitting in the late afternoon sunlight with fresh blood on its muzzle and what looked like bits of rabbit fur strewn about on the ground.

  “Been hunting, boy?”

  The dog wagged its tail.

  “Well, we’re gonna do some more of it pretty soon.”

  The dog seemed to have taken care of its own supper. Wolfe was hungry now, too, and even more thirsty. Those things could wait, though.

  He picked up the pair of rifles he’d taken from the dead men back in Delaney, and checked the pistol shoved in the hip pocket of his jeans. He also had a nylon backpack of the sort schoolchildren used to carry, back when there were schools and a normal, civilized way of life. The bag was supposed to hold books and pencils and love notes passed among teenagers; now, it was heavy with the magazines of .223 cartridges he’d collected from the dead.

  He slung the spare M16 over his shoulder and carried the other ready in his hands. There might well be guards posted along the highway to intercept anyone the murderers might have missed back in Delaney. As a precaution against that, Wolfe moved a half-mile south of the highway before he turned east.

  Then he began to jog, moving at a steady pace that would quickly eat up the few remaining miles to Paradise. The dog trotted at his side with an easy, fluid gait that it could probably maintain for hours on end. If he timed it right, Wolfe thought, he should reach Mistress Alethia’s wicked burg just about the time full night fell. For Jim Wolfe, that should be just about right.

  Chapter Forty

  Paradise had electricity, but it was not wired into the streetlights that still lined the roads, so Wolfe had no trouble moving into the town and slipping, unseen, through its alleys. He knew good and well that one man—well, one man and a dog—cannot take on a small army of armed foes and expect to accomplish very much other than his own demise. And he was really not particularly interested in dying. Instead of trying to fight them all, he narrowed his goals to finding—and in somewhat different ways, taking care of—three particular people.

  Rebecca was his first priority, he decided; he owed her that. She had been brave and very helpful. She’d trusted him. Now, she was back in the hands of Mistress Alethia and the woman’s thugs. Wolfe intended to find Becca and take her out of harm’s way once and for all.

  Next on his list would have to be Alethia herself. She was evil in the oldest, truest sense of the word, he believed. She did not have the excuse of madness; Alethia was very simply a vile, evil person, and she had to be stopped.

  More, she had to be destroyed. Wolfe had no intention of staying here to supervise Alethia’s future behavior, and there was no competent legal authority capable of imprisoning or otherwise punishing her. For Alethia, the answer of necessity would be harsh and must take no account of the fact that she was a woman. Women can be as evil as anyone, and Alethia was much worse than anyone Wolfe had ever encountered before. Alethia, in short, had to die.

  That was the only way this cult of violence could be smashed forever. The leader had to be eliminated. What was that old saying? ‘Cut off the head, and the body will die’? It is a truism that applies equally to snakes and cults, Wolfe believed. It was his intention now to cut this snake’s head off.

  And finally, third and last in his order of priority, there was Kent Laffrey. The man betrayed the neighbors and friends who trusted him and placed him on their governing council. And then, having played Judas to his neighbors, he deliberately sent his own wife into that field to die with all the others. Laffrey, too, deserved to feel the sting of retribution’s lash. Wolfe intended to be the one to apply it. Silently, he and the dog moved into the town of Paradise.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Rebecca first, he told himself. If nothing and no one else, he had to take care of Rebecca first. The only place he knew to look for her was the old motel that Alethia used as a brothel to reward her faithful subjects. Becca was young and she was pretty, and she hated the humiliation of being forced to serve as a prostitute slave. Wolfe thought it entirely possible that she would suffer physical punishment now that she had been captured again, and then be returned to the sordid duties that she’d had to perform before.

  He made his way through the town to the outskirts where light showed business being conducted as usual at the motel. But, of course, now there were many heroes whose exploits had to be rewarded by the leader. How many men of Paradise earned praise and honor by slaughtering the helpless captives from Delaney? Wolfe was sure Alethia would have put extra slaves to work just to take care of all those deserving heroes. Thinking about that put a scowl on Wolfe’s face and made his mood bitter as he approached the back of the motel.

  Light showed in all the rooms, so he started at one end and worked his way toward the other, slipping quietly through the night and peeping into windows like a common criminal.

  The second room from the end was occupied by a girl he was sure he recognized from Delaney, already being pressed into service here. She was bleeding and her face streaked with tears. There were three Paradise men in the room with her; Wolfe guessed the idea was to so debase and humiliate her that her will would be broken, and she would offer no resistance in the future, regardless of what might be required of her.

  Wolfe was sorely tempted to break in and end the horror, but he dared not do that. None of the three appeared to be armed and Wolfe knew he could overpower them easily, but he could not do so instantly. There would be time for any of them to raise an outcry, and if they did that, Wolfe would become the hunted. He would have to hide from the armed warriors of Paradise and that would make it difficult, perhaps impossible, for him to carry out the things that he had to do here tonight.

  He felt terrible for the girl and felt all the worse that he was leaving her to the mercies of three men who had no mercy, but he simply had no choice about it. He had to move along.

  The fourth window he looked into gave him a surprise. Kent Laffrey was inside the room. He had two girls with him and a bottle of wine. Kent seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his reward. Wolfe made a note of which room Laffrey was occupying, then continued down the line in search of Becca. Rebecca had to come first. Regardless of Wolfe’s own personal feelings, Becca was at the top of his priority list.

  Except Rebecca was not in any of the motel rooms. Wolfe even looked inside the office where a heavyset young man had replaced the recently departed Andrew as manager of the establishment. Becca was nowhere to be seen.

  Wolfe paused in the deep shadows at the back of the motel to con
sider. Should he leave Laffrey there while he went on looking, or should he take care of Kent now and then continue his search?

  At the time, Wolfe happened to be standing close to the room where the innocent girl from Delaney was being introduced to the ugliness of her fate. Laffrey was responsible for that. The man was responsible for so very many deaths, so much pain, and now for this. There was no reason, Wolfe thought, why he should not take this opportunity to administer a little homemade justice to Mr. Laffrey now that he happened to be in the neighborhood. But quietly. Quietly.

  Wolfe set the rifles and backpack full of ammunition down in the shadows, and motioned for the dog to stay on guard with them. Then he silently went around to the front of the motel and counted the rooms to make sure he had the right one. Waiting would only make it all the more likely that someone could come along and see him there before Wolfe wanted to be seen.

  Without hesitation, he stepped to the motel room door, took hold of the knob, and twisted it until he heard the crunch that told him the lock broke. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “Oh, God!”

  “Nope,” Wolfe said quietly. “It’s just me. God will see you in a few minutes, though, I think.”

  “But, they told me…Th-they said--’’

  “That I’m dead?” Wolfe asked. He shook his head. “They were wrong, Kent. I have to tell you something, though. You weren’t wrong when you advised the good folks back home that they shouldn’t set that trap along Main Street. No, sir, you were right on the money about that. They went and did it anyway and look what happened. They lost. Imagine that! Why, it’s almost as if Alethia’s people knew what the plan was so they could adjust their plans accordingly. Don’t you think it looked like that, Kent? How do you think a thing like that could’ve happened, anyway?”