“Sure thing, Boss.”
“I also want a list of all the weapons and ammunition at our disposal. Make sure of it. And I want you to send out raiding parties for more. Hit up every likely spot you can find. Get that bitch Agatha to spill the beans. She must know of a few places. Kill her if you must.”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Because next week, we’re going back.” The glee in Hiran’s voice was evident even from a distance, and Michael’s brow furrowed in confusion. Back?
Fortunately, the same question had occurred to George, and he asked, “Back where, Boss?”
“To the site of our recent defeat. To a certain camp that dared to defy us.” Hiran fell silent, and Michael could hear only the crackle of the flames.
A creak sounded as if someone had shifted in their chair before George spoke again. “Are you sure, Boss? We’ve got it real good here. Why go back?”
“Why? I’ll tell you why.” Hiran’s voice was low and threatening. It spoke of utter conviction bordering on madness. “I’m going to destroy that place and its people, George. I’m going to raze it to the ground until there’s nothing left but death and decay. I’m going to kill their children in front of their eyes, and rape their women while they watch before crucifying each and every last one of them. That’s a promise.”
Michael blinked, and visions of all Hiran’s recent victims flooded his mind, causing him to doubt his current mission. Men, women, and children, all murdered in the most horrifying of ways. He’s going to kill them. Dr. Lange, Nombali, Max, Breytenbach, Kirstin…the children. He’s going to kill them all. I can’t let that happen. Not now, not ever.
He closed his eyes again and tried to focus on the task at hand. Kill Hiran. That’s all that matters. If he’s dead, the threat to your camp is gone too.
But that wasn’t true. Michael was no idiot. Even if he did manage to kill Hiran, there was no guarantee George wouldn’t do exactly as his precious boss had planned. Nor did it guarantee that they might not stumble across this place in the future and suffer a similar horrible fate.
Besides, the possibility remained that he would fail in his mission, and Hiran would live. As vaunted as his belief in his fighting abilities were, Michael was aware of the fact that life was never fair, and victory often lay in the hands of those who got in a lucky shot. Warn the camp first. Then you can get your revenge. It’s what Mpho would’ve wanted.
With a sigh, Michael gave in. He had no real choice. He had to warn his friends. It was the right thing to do. Moving with care, he eased his way back off the roof and through the perimeter of the camp with extreme caution. The last thing he needed now, was to get caught.
Along the way, he spied a figure lying prone in the dust. He paused before moving in for a closer inspection. It was Agatha, the previous leader. Her hands were zip-tied behind her back, and she lay motionless on her side. It appeared she was forgotten for the present.
Every inch of her body was bruised and bloody, her face swollen, and the fingers of her left hand dislocated. It was a wonder she still lived. George was a cruel taskmaster, a real sadist when it came to satisfying his appetites.
Michael watched her for a few seconds, noting the faint rise and fall of her chest. He couldn’t risk taking her with him; he might not make it out alive burdened with her care. He could, however, give her a chance, slight though it might be. Besides, if he did nothing, she would die for sure.
He slipped his spare knife from his boot and sidled over. With haste, he cut her bonds, freeing her arms. He pressed the knife into her uninjured hand, wrapping her fingers around the hilt. Into her ear, he breathed, “Take the knife and run. Escape.”
He felt her stir, felt the moment when his words took hold for her hand tightened around the weapon, and she slurred the words, “Thank you.”
“Good luck.” Michael ghosted away from her side and melted into the darkness, hoping she’d make it out alive. Her chances were slim but… She’s strong. She’s a survivor. She’ll make it.
Chapter 15 - Hiran
A series of knocks on the door pulled Hiran from a deep slumber, and he blinked into the grey light of a predawn morning. He frowned and pushed himself upright on one elbow. Who dared to disturb him this early in the day? Only a fool or a dead man.
“Who is it?” he roared.
“It’s me, Boss. George,” came the soft reply.
“You’d better have a good excuse for this!” Hiran said.
Beside Hiran, his latest concubine jerked awake with a frightened gasp. Her wide eyes fixed upon his angry visage. Immediately, she flinched, raising her hands to defend her already bruised face.
With muttered disgust, he shoved her out of the bed, and she landed on the floor with a thump. “Get my clothes. Now!”
She skittered around the room like a frightened mouse while he gathered his wits and got up. With swift strides, he crossed the floor and yanked the door open, coming face to face with an apologetic George. “What do you want?”
“I’m sorry, Boss. You know I wouldn’t bother you except for something important,” his second-in-command sputtered.
“Spit it out,” Hiran ground out between clenched teeth. “Before I kill you with my bare hands.”
“The uh, guards at the gate. They’re dead, Boss. All of them.” George wrung his hands together and eased backward.
“What?” Hiran said, his voice dropping to a low whisper. “They’re dead? How?”
“Shot, Boss. With a sniper rifle or something similar, I suspect,” George said, his Adam’s apple bobbing when he swallowed hard.
“You suspect? And what would you know, you idiot?” Hiran asked, still talking in that deceptively calm whisper. Icy anger rushed through his veins, washing away any remnants of sleep.
“Nothing, Boss. I don’t know anything,” George said, backtracking swiftly. “But…”
“But?” Hiran asked, his eyes narrowing to slits. “What else happened?”
“It’s…it’s Agatha, Boss. She escaped and stabbed two more guards on her way out. I’ve sent men to track her down, but they haven’t found her yet.” Now George looked truly frightened, his eyes wide and staring in his pointed face.
The cold anger inside Hiran’s chest burst into flame, and red spots flashed across his field of vision. “What? The bitch escaped? You let her go?”
“I…I didn’t…I’ll find her, Boss, and when I do I’ll―”
“You’ll do nothing but call me, you worthless worm. Do I have to do everything myself around here?” Hiran glared at the unfortunate George, tempted to kill him there and then. “Wait outside.”
“Yes, Boss.” George scurried away as fast as he could leaving Hiran to stew in the heat of his rage.
He slammed the door shut and turned on the girl, grabbing her by the arms. His emotions needed an outlet, and she was the closest thing at hand. With a growl, he pushed her against the wall, holding her wrists above her head.
Ignoring her cries of pain, he thrust into her, over and over again. Each move was harder than the last until he rammed her entire body into the plastered concrete with all the force he could muster.
All he could think of was that bitch Agatha. How dare she defy him? Just like that whore Mpho. A betraying lying snake who’d spurned what he’d thought to offer her. I’ll show her. I’ll show Agatha too. I’ll show all of them what happens to those who oppose me.
His stomach muscles clenched as he reached climax, and he thrust forward with a final brutal slam. With his head thrown back, he gloried in the release, only slowly regaining his senses.
The girl was silent against him, her soft, warm body suddenly a dead weight. He pulled back, letting go of her wrists. She slid down the wall to her haunches, leaving a thick smear of crimson behind. Her eyes were glassy, and her mouth worked as she slumped to the side.
Hiran prodded her with his foot, noting the blood that spread through her long blonde locks like a rusty stain. His lips twisted. “Another one. You’
re all useless to me. Useless.”
With his anger mostly under control, he dressed and left the room, striding to where George still waited outside. He jerked his head at another man who stood nearby. “Hey, you. Get rid of the girl in my room. She’s yours to do with as you want, but she won’t last long, so you’d better hurry.”
The man grinned, his eagerness palpable as he rushed to obey. “Yes, Sir! Thank you, Sir!”
With domestic matters taken care of, Hiran leveled a menacing stare at his George who fidgeted beneath his gaze. “Show me how she escaped.”
“Yes, Boss.”
George led him to a spot on the far side of the clearing. A small wooden hut peeked out of the bushes. It wasn’t much, just a single room, and had likely been used as a security outpost in the past.
Hiran knew his second-in-command had claimed the hut as his own and furnished it with a bed, footlocker, gas heater, and chair. Enough for one man to live in relative comfort and seclusion.
A fireplace smoldered in the small clearing in front of the door, and a flattened bed of grass indicated where Agatha had slept most of the time. George didn’t believe in sharing the warmth of his home, a tactic designed to break the mulish Agatha. Now Hiran wondered if they’d all underestimated her.
George bent down and picked up a set of zip ties, cut below the knot. “She had help. Likely from the same man who killed the gate guards.”
“How do you know it’s a man?”
“I found a boot print over there. It doesn’t match any of ours, and it’s a size twelve. Too big for a woman,” George replied, pointing to a footprint encircled by a line drawn in the sand.
“All right.” As an expert tracker, Hiran knew he could take George at his word if he said the print belonged to a stranger.
“He gave her a knife too. She stabbed two of the men on her way out and with the gate guards gone…”
“Escape was easy,” Hiran finished for him. “How do you know our mystery man didn’t stab them and help her escape?”
“Because they took different paths. He went down the side of the hill through the brush. She took the easy way out down the road and through the gate.”
“What I don’t get is how she could be in any shape to escape at all,” Hiran said, pinning George to the spot with a baleful glare.
George wriggled like an insect on a pin. “I…I don’t know, Boss. By rights, she should be dead already.”
“Either she’s stronger than you thought, or you’re losing your touch,” Hiran said. “However it may be, I don’t tolerate incompetence in my men.”
“I’m sorry, Boss. I’ll make it up to you,” George said, his face pale and sweaty. “I’ll find her, I swear it, and when I do―”
“You’ll bring her to me, and I’ll show you how it’s done. Got that?”
George blanched. “Yes, boss.”
Hiran studied the ground around him. It didn’t tell him much; he was no tracker. He didn’t think Agatha could’ve gotten far, though. Not in her condition. Whatever he might say out loud to the man, he knew George hadn’t gone easy on her. She was merely tougher than they’d reckoned.
“Where are the men she stabbed? Dead?” he asked.
“One lives. She got him in the side, and it’s more of a flesh wound than anything else.”
“You’re kidding me. A flesh wound? And he failed to report her escape until when?” Hiran asked.
“According to him, he passed out from blood loss,” George replied. “He only reported her escape an hour ago.”
“Do you believe him?”
“No. It’s one of her old followers. A new recruit,” George said. “I believe he aided her, and they tried to make it look like she stabbed him when he tried to stop her.”
“Ah, that’s interesting.” Hiran turned around and strode back the way he came. “George, have the women set up a breakfast table outside. I’d like to enjoy the sunlight. It promises to be a lovely morning.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Once the table was set, Hiran sat down with a satisfied smile. He sipped from a hot cup of coffee while the food was served, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the fear so evident in the women server’s faces. Life is good.
“George. It’s time to set an example.”
“The new recruit?”
“Yes. You know what we do to traitors.”
“I do,” George said, a glint in his eye.
With a snap of his fingers, two me dragged out the wounded recruit, his bandages stained with fresh blood from the struggle. He was bound and gagged, eyes rolling in terror.
A new cross had been made from two planks and planted in the ground. The prisoner renewed his efforts to escape when he saw it, screaming against the tape across his mouth. All in vain.
“Make sure everyone watches this time, George. We want to get our message across, don’t we?”
“Sure thing, Boss.”
Hiran smiled as they strung up the traitor, performing first the crucifixion then the disembowelment. He enjoyed a hot breakfast while he watched, the smell of cooked eggs mixing with the metallic tang of blood and guts.
When it was all over, he pushed his empty plate away and stood up. “Find Agatha, George. Find her, and bring her to me.”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Oh, and one last thing.” Hiran leveled a dead stare at his second-in-command. “Don’t ever fail me again.”
Chapter 16 - Agatha
Agatha stumbled toward the building ahead, knowing that within its confines lay safety and surcease from pain. Each step was harder than the last, each movement an extreme exercise of willpower. She didn’t want to keep going. All she really wanted to do, was curl up into a little ball and sob her heart out.
She shook her head and forced her legs to move despite the burning agony that consumed each particle of her body. She would never give up, never lie down and die. Not as long as that monster Hiran and his men lived.
Steps appeared in front of her, and she clung to the railing as she made her way to the front door of the small house. In the old days, it used to be a bed and breakfast. A tiny establishment owned by an elderly lady and friend of her mother’s. To Agatha, it was home.
The key was where it always was. Under a fake rock on the porch. With trembling fingers, she unlocked the painted white door with its ornate gold handle and pushed it open.
She fell more than stepped inside, and immediately closed and locked behind her. As quickly as she could, she moved from room to room closing the curtains. Dust clung to the flowery material, but to her, they were achingly familiar.
Porcelain figures sat silently in glass cabinets, remnants of the past, while stuffed maroon couches adorned with satin pillows lined the walls. It was just as she remembered it. Nothing had changed.
Nothing except that it was now an abandoned relic, its owner Mrs. Greene long gone the same way as the rest. Undead.
Agatha remembered the day they’d secured this house. Remembered with vivid detail how Mrs. Greene had attacked them with clawed hands and bared teeth, her vacant eyes showing no signs of the kind woman she once was. It was a terrible loss, one Agatha would never forget.
Right now, though, she needed to focus on herself, or she might not last the night. On unsteady legs, she headed toward the kitchen where she found a fully stocked first aid kit, kept by Mrs. Greene in the event of an accident. She also got a bottle of filtered water from the pantry.
She carried her treasures to the bathroom and opened the warm water tap. The house was fitted with a large capacity gas geyser, and if she was lucky, there might still be both water and gas left. Enough for a quick wash, at least.
For a few seconds, nothing happened, then the pipes in the roof groaned, and warm water flowed over her fingertips. Nearly crying with relief, she allowed the basin to fill after popping in the plug.
With shaking hands, Agatha opened the first aid kit, careful not to use the one with the dislocated fingers. She rummaged for painkill
ers and found a bottle of extra strength aspirin. She opened the bottled water with one arm and her teeth, wetting her parched tongue before upending the bottle of pills over her mouth. She swallowed at least four, ignoring the bitter taste, and prayed they would work their magic fast.
At last, she raised her left hand and stared at the damage. Three of the fingers were out of joint, dislocated and crooked, the knuckles inflamed and swollen. She lowered her hand into the warm water, allowing the heat to ease the pain.
Agatha took a firm grip on the first injured digit, quaking at the thought of what was to come. “Just do it. Quickly. Like ripping off a band-aid.”
With a hard yank, she pulled the finger straight. A loud scream tore loose from her lips, and her knees buckled as her muscles turned to water. Tears leaked down her cheeks, but she didn’t wait, pulling the other two into place as well.
She collapsed to the floor and lay prone on the cold tiles, holding her inflamed hand to her chest. Raw agony coursed through her nerve endings, and for a time, she could do nothing but cry until the worst passed.
Finally, she pulled herself upright using the basin as a prop and stared at her haggard face in the mirror. It didn’t look like her. The person in the reflection was a stranger, someone she didn’t know. “Agatha is gone. She doesn’t exist anymore.”
Agatha’s lips twisted, and she tipped the bottle of aspirin to her lips again, swallowing several more pills. The acrid taste didn’t even bother her anymore. Anything to still the pain.
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath before turning her attention toward her body and taking inventory of her injuries. Cuts and contusions crisscrossed her skin, every inch of her was bruised, her lip split and one eye swollen shut. Dried blood marred her thighs, and a deep ache in her womb indicated internal damage. “Maybe I’m dying. Maybe I’m dead already, and this is all a dream.”
She turned her head to stare at the tub, longing for nothing more than a hot bath. Would there be enough water left in the geyser to fill it? “Only one way to find out.”
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