If he could show just one of them how wrong they were before they died, he would consider the entire battle a victory.
He saw himself reflected in the window bordered by the pillar of fire in the front yard that flashed orange and was consumed by black smoke fuming skyward. In the window he was serene, almost bored. A moment later he heard the first bursts of gunfire erupting and decided it was time to move.
He picked up a .9mm from the bed and a hunting knife. He ran his thumb along the blade to test its edge, smiling to himself. He closed the door to the room and walked out to the hallway. Whatever calm he felt tethering him was absent in his men. The house was a fury of uncertain motion. The men scrambled and ran into each other, building barricades against the doors and windows, turning over the kitchen table for a makeshift rampart.
That’s good boys, keep them out. Hold the fort. We’ll keep them a bay with blood, and bone, brick and steel. We’ll fight to the last man.
He came to the room with the padlock over the door, unlocked it and cast it aside. He wouldn’t be needing that anymore.
He pushed in the door to reveal the faces of the women inside, stark white and beyond terrified, their eyes bulging wide in the chrome reflection of the knife blade.
The sound of gunfire from outside was endless.
“Good evening, ladies,” Calisto said, closing the door behind him.
Moments later a deafening explosion rocked the house. Wood and plaster collapsed into burning rubble around the men. Windows shattered and some of the men were thrown across the room, their bodies bleeding and broken.
But Calisto and his captors were unaffected by the explosion, and the walls around them did not fall, though they could all smell the smoke and feel the beginnings of warmth from the ensuing conflagration.
SIXTY
Els came down the hill, a black figure in the newly bright night, as flames began to consume the house.
Blood was leaving her by the gallon it seemed, her whole left side was soaked in it and her arm hung down uselessly.
She regretted having to leave her M16 behind, but it was impossible to wield with only one hand. She would have to rely on the Desert Eagle and the multiple clips she had stored in her tactical vest.
She approached the house, the rocket had torn a smoking hole through the entire eastern half from front to back.
She stepped over smoldering rubble and suddenly a man, his body encased in flame like a human torch, ran wildly past her. She turned and put two rounds into his back, but he showed no sign of having felt them. He ran, lighting up the night and did not stop.
As she cleared the wrecked threshold and stepped into what used to be the kitchen, a quick succession of bullets thundered into her. Four shots slammed against her body, three in the chest, absorbed by Kevlar, and the last one finding the flesh near the top of her thigh and burrowing in.
Four men hiding behind an overturned table ducked down as she leveled her pistol at them. Splinters flew as she emptied her entire clip into the table. She dropped the empty magazine and awkwardly shoved in another, one-handed.
Two more men ran down the hallway at her, firing wildly. Bullets rushed past her, but none touched her. She fired a single shot into each of the men barreling down on her. The first hit the ground dead, but the other continued to run, legs pumping despite the gaping abscess she had blown into the top of his skull.
Three more men on the other side of the room, guns drawn and firing.
She let the dead man run into her and spun him around to shield herself. His back burst in a spray of blood and flesh as the bullets chewed through him. Still holding up the thug, she squeezed off three shots and the men dropped down.
She let the bullet-riddled body of the thug fall to the floor and she stood eying the remains of the house. She stepped down the hallway slowly and deliberately, feeling the muscle of her wounded leg protest with each step. Blood ran down her leg from the bullet hole, pooling in her boot. There were three bedroom doors, one with a padlock bolted to it. As she approached it, the door at the end of the hall flew open and for a split second she saw that it was full of Calisto’s men. Then her view was obscured as two men flew out, holding a twin mattress in front of them. They hit her hard, forcing her back with the mattress and she dropped her weapon. Els pulled a razor sharp tactical knife from a sheath on her leg and stabbed it into the mattress, pulling it down and ripping a hole through, but the men did not stop. They forced her back down to the beginning of the hallway where it opened up into the living room. As soon as she had room, she hit the floor, rolling over to the right as the men passed by her.
She scrambled to her feet and ducked down behind the splintered remains of the overturned table. She grabbed a handheld automatic that one of the dead men had dropped.
She came up from the table and let loose a spray of bullets into the back of one of the men as they hit the far wall with the mattress.
He fell down dead and his partner dodged to the far side of the living room, just inside the space where she had taken out the wall. He went for his gun.
Els depressed the automatic’s trigger again, aiming at the man’s chest, but nothing happened. The gun was out of ammo or jammed. An unsatisfying and audible click was all that came from the weapon.
The thug leveled his pistol at her, smiling while he relished the kill.
But before he could fire, the lion suddenly burst into the room from the gaping hole in the wall, a frenzy of pure rage and killing instinct.
It sunk its long, blade-like claws into the man’s shoulders and as it brought him down he fired uselessly at the ceiling.
With the thug beneath him, the lion deal the death blow, tearing through his spinal chord with his awesome jaws.
Els stood before the lion, unmoving save for her eyes as they darted across the floor, searching for a weapon.
She saw her own pistol, the Desert Eagle, lying near the edge of the hallway, between her and the lion. It was much too far away for her to reach. She had seen the lion move and knew that it would be impossible to get to her weapon.
But she still had her knife.
Els and the lion locked eyes and she could see its muscular hind legs coiling and tensing as it prepared to leap at her. She held the knife out, bracing for impact.
But before the lion could spring at her, Els saw a blur of motion tear across the room toward the big cat.
She stared in disbelief as something small and white launch into the lion and attack.
Karlstad!
The pit bull hit the lion at a full run, mouth open, flecks of slaver dripping from his mouth. The lion howled in pain and surprise as Karlstad clamped down on it with a vice-like grip.
The two animals rolled on the floor, the lion wrapping its massive forepaws around the dog, claws out. Its huge feet nearly covered Karlstad completely, but he did not relent.
Els shook off her disbelief and dove for the gun.
A second later she was aiming the pistol at the lion as it shook Karlstad’s lifeless body in its mouth.
Five hurried shots into the lion’s enormous head were enough to put it down.
“Elizabeth!” a shout from behind her.
She turned to see Seve, decked out in identical tactical gear as her, brandishing a shotgun.
“Seve!” She ran to him as quick as her wounded leg could carry her, threw her one good arm around his neck. “You came back. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“I had to. I couldn’t let you take this on by yourself, although it looks like you’ve already killed half the population of Mexico. I’m just glad I’m not too late.”
“You’re not, but they killed Neesha. And Karlstad.” They both looked at the corpse of the dog, still clamped between the lion’s teeth. “He saved my life.”
“It was worth it, I think, for him. He wanted to die a warrior’s death. He did. But you, Elizabeth. You’re hurt bad. You need medical attention right away. You’re going to bleed out.”
“No,” said Seve. “Not you. You’ve done enough. It’s my turn to fight.”
Seve moved her over to a couch and forced her to sit. She didn’t want to. She tried to protest, but she was weak. Her head was spinning from blood loss.
“Maybe I can rest here for a minute. I feel so tired.” And already there was a black border like a tunnel creeping around the edge of her vision.
“You sit still. Try to stay conscious. I’ll be back out here in a minute and we’ll walk out of this place together. This place will be nothing more than charred bone and ash when we’re through with it. Deal?”
“Deal.” Els agreed. She let herself sink into the couch, rested the back of her head on the cushion as more blood slowly trickled out of her.
She looked up, feebly, to see Seve walk down the hallway. Three closely grouped blasts into the door created a large enough hole to shoot two grenades from the launcher attached to his shotgun.
The door flew open as the grenades detonated and Seve entered the room in a hail of gunfire.
Amid the reports of gunshot, the curses and screams of dying men, Els could not retain consciousness and she was swallowed by a black fog of exhaustion.
She opened her eyes again, she could not say how much time longer, in a pool of her own dried blood.
The house was silent. A rolling pall of black smoke had settled over the room and it stung her eyes to keep them open. She struggled to stand, legs trembling beneath her. Whatever Seve had injected her with earlier had worn off and her breasts hummed with ululating pain, somehow more significant than the ache in her stiff leg or her shattered arm. She pulled her outer shirt over her head and fumbled with the Kevlar vest, unlatching the clasps one-handed. The vest was useless now, it had been hit with so many bullets it was only a cumbersome accessory.
She dropped the vest to the floor, the lack of weight was only a small relief to her painful breasts. The hallway in front of her was wreathed in flame, a smoking tunnel of fire. She paused to look back at the remains of Karlstad and his final battle with the lion. There was something puzzling: Karlstad was not there. His broken body should have been clinched between the jaws of the lion, but there was nothing save for the beast’s pale pink tongue hanging out of its mouth.
The smoke swam around her in a haze. Maybe Seve took him. Perhaps he wanted to give the dog a hero’s burial. He certainly deserved it, thought Els. He was a good dog.
She coughed once and the spasm was like her chest being ripped apart. When the pain had subsided to the sharp pulse she was growing accustomed to, she started to make her way down the hall. She limped slowly to the far door where Seve had disappeared, walls burning and smoking on every side of her. She pushed in the door and walked into the room. Countless bodies lay splayed on the floor and draped over the bed. The walls were streaked with bursts of black from where the grenades had exploded. All the men were dead. Charred flesh and gaping wounds exposed splintered bone and punctured organs, their faces, twisted in agony, preserved their dying screams.
She did not see Seve among the dead and that gave her hope. He was still alive somewhere. He had promised her that they would leave together. He must still be in the house. Or nearby. He would not abandon her, she knew that. But why would he leave her alone, unconscious on the couch? Had he mistaken her for dead and left? That seemed unlikely. Even if she had died and Seve left, he would have taken her body with him. No. He was still here somewhere. She would find him and they would leave together, just as he had promised.
She left the room and turned back down the hallway. There was only one door that had not been opened, the one with the padlock outside.
He must be in there.
She looked at the door, it was an odd rectangle of pristine white which the flame had not touched and the smoke had not darkened. The padlock hung open on the hinge and she reached to twist the knob.
She opened the door, feeling the last reserves of strength and consciousness waining.
When she looked inside she was struck by a wave shock so severe that every screaming nerve in her went cold. There was no pain, there was no misery for herself and for her life, there was only the stinging horror of what she was witnessing.
The walls of the room had been painted red with blood from ceiling to floor. Thick lines of viscera clung to the walls, impasto. There was no furniture in the room that once held her prisoner. There were only three figures, all lined against the far wall. On either side lay the corpse of some poor woman, both gutted like game with slits running from crotch to chest. The flaps of skin had both been peeled back to reveal the hollow concavity inside where their organs had been removed. Sickeningly, Els could see the curved bones of their rib cages, and further inside their empty bodies the jagged row of spine.
They sat on the floor with their legs splayed wide, heads hanging down slack. And between them, sitting on the floor in a similar posture was Calisto, four small packages of heroin before him. He was painted, like the walls of the room, in blood and he wore nothing else but a string of intestines draped over his neck like a feather boa. His wide white eyes staring out of the red confirmed that there was no sanity left in the man.
Els was too shocked to move even when he raised his pistol at her. “Hello, whore,” he spoke before pulling the trigger.
The shot hit Els square in the stomach and she stumbled back against the wall, slid down to a sitting position with her legs in front of her. Blood trickled up from Els’ throat and dribbled out the side of her mouth. Already she could feel the heat sink into her from the charred walls.
She looked through the open door. Calisto did not rise, he only stared back at her, setting his gun down at his side.
“Surprise!” he called out to her. “You should see the look on your face right now. I’ll bet you weren’t expecting that.”
Els had no response. She let her head drop to look the last of her life’s blood pouring out of the hole in her stomach.
“What’s the matter? Ain't you got nothing to say, baby?”
Darkness came at Els from all sides, closing in on her. She could barely hear Calisto talking.
He twirled the end of the length of intestines hanging around his shoulder and it slung wet gore across the already blood-covered room. “That’s alright.” White teeth split the awful red of his face. “I’ll bet you think you really accomplished something here, don’t you? You thought you would come in here, guns blazing, kill all the bad guys John Rambo-style and go out like a hero, huh?” Calisto laughed. “You thought you’d make it right for the underdog. The little guy. Strike a blow for the oppressed, and the Star-Spangled Banner would play as you drifted off in a dignified death. Maybe they’d place a flag over your coffin like in the movies? You stupid American twat. You want to know what you’ve actually done, besides widowing dozens of women and making three or four times as many fatherless children. You’ve done absolutely nothing. All you’ve done is murder a bunch of poor, dumb men with limited options. You didn’t even kill me. You think there’s a shortage of young men who want to get rich overnight and be bestowed with boundless power? Because if you do, I’ve got some harsh fucking news for you, bitch: the world is full of those men. I’d say its an overwhelming majority. Fuck, you dumb cunt. What have you accomplished? You’ve set me back a few months. Thats it. Even if you had killed me, do you think it would have changed anything? I’m the fucking Hydra. I’m fucking immortal. You can’t kill me. Right now theres a man raping a bitch somewhere. He’s doing it because he can, and she’s a stuck-up bitch who never noticed him. You think she notices now? Thats a single fucking head. Right now weak sluts like you are getting fucked to death, being forced to work in fields all day to harvest my drugs, they’re teaching their daughters to suck dick, they’re being forced across the border with drugs cause it’s fucking do or die, baby. They’re being forced because there is alwa
ys someone bigger and stronger than you, and if you want to live, you’ll do exactly what they want. What are you gonna do, put a bullet in all of them?”
Els raised her head, looking directly into Calisto’s eyes. “I would if I could.”
Calisto laughed again. “But you can’t. You’re weak. You’re dieing. And the last thing you’re going to think about is how fucking pointless everything you’ve done is. Because really and truly, it means nothing.”
Els gave a frail cough, bringing up another mouthful of blood. She smiled at Calisto, raw and bloody. “You don’t get it. I am weak. And that’s what makes me strong. There are billions of us aching to fight. And they’ll know what I’ve done. And they will hunt down every man like you and put them down like rabid dogs.”
Calisto shook his head and stood. He left the room and walked out to meet Els in the hall. He stood over her, his gore-streaked penis dangling in her eye line. “Bitch, in about five seconds, nobody will ever know you existed.”
Els laughed. She shook with spasms of insane exhilaration, blood streaming from her mouth. She reached down to the bottom of her undershirt and started to raise it, exposing her breasts.
“That’s right,” said Calisto looming over her. “Get those tits out. That’s all we really ever wanted. You’re starting to realize that’s about the sum of your worth. Too late, though. You’re just some little kid playing in a man’s world. And you’ll die knowing it.”
Mules:: A Novel Page 30