Rummaging around noisily with one hand, Ritter pulled out a large screwdriver. He inspected it carefully, then held it in front of Brogan.
“Hmm, not sure. What do you think…no?” He chucked the screwdriver back in the box and a moment later pulled out a hacksaw.
“Getting warmer.” Looking around some more, Ritter pulled out another object. “Ah,” he said with a satisfied sigh, “perfect.”
In his hand was a pair of garden shears. He gazed over at Brogan. “This is just the thing to jog your memory.”
“You sick weasel,” Brogan said through gritted teeth. “Someday somebody’s going to put a shovel across the back of your head.”
“Frank, you’re not seeing this from where I’m standing. Somebody sent you to kill me and you won’t say who. What’s a guy to do?” The glint in Ritter’s eyes showed how much he was enjoying this. “Now let’s see,” he continued. “Fingers or toes? It’s so hard to know where to start. I think…fingers.” He turned to the brothers. “Untie his arms.”
Nooge got behind the chair and started to work off the cords around the back of Brogan’s biceps, then his wrists. After he had gotten them loose, he removed the plasticuffs and the brothers each took a hold of his arms and dragged them around to the front of the chair. Holding each arm by the elbow and wrist, they pushed his palms onto the tops of his thighs and held them down firmly.
Ritter hitched his chair in closer and wrapped his feet around either side of Brogan’s chair. “I’m guessing you’re right-handed, so let’s start with the least important digit and work our way up from there. Are you good with that?” Ritter said in a conversational tone, like a hairdresser might address a customer while planning what style to cut their hair.
“I can’t believe you’ve let things get this far. It’s impressive,” the bandit continued. He opened the shears and placed the steel blades over the little finger of Brogan’s left hand, just above the second knuckle. “I’ll say this for you, Brogan, you’re tough. But see, this is where we separate the men from the boys. Nooge, remind me. What’s the highest we’ve gotten up to?”
Nooge raised three fingers of one hand. Brogan struggled to move his arm away, but Brick’s grip on his wrist was too strong.
“Three. That’s right, I remember now. Shit, that was one tough motherfucker. He really didn’t want to tell us the whereabouts of his stash, did he?”
Nooge chuckled. “He sure didn’t. In the end he gave it up. They always do.”
“Maybe it’s got something to do with my interrogation technique,” Ritter said softly.
With a grunt, he used both his hands to squeeze hard on the shear’s handles. Brogan yelled out as the blades sliced right through the skin, cartilage, and bone of his little finger. He instantly broke out into a cold sweat from the intense pain, jerking forward in the chair as blood spurted onto the floor beside him.
Ritter chuckled. “Did that all happen too fast for you? I should have warned you, I don’t bother with any of that countdown shit like they do in the movies.” He leaned over and picked up the severed finger from off the floor and dangled it in front of Brogan’s face. “One down, nine to go.”
The pain in Brogan’s finger was excruciating. He swallowed hard to control it, his body limp and soaked in sweat.
“See, the way this works best is first you feel the pain, then you talk,” Ritter continued, observing Brogan carefully. “Do we need to move onto numero dos? You know once I start, I won’t stop, don’t you?”
Ritter moved forward in his chair again, reaching over toward Brogan’s hand with the shears, its blades thickly coated in blood, while Brick continued to keep his hand firmly clamped.
“Stop!” Brogan uttered hoarsely. “Wait…I’ll tell you.”
Ritter lowered the shears. He leaned forward and stared at him intently. “I’m listening,” he said. “Give it up now, Frank. The name of the motherfucker that sent you.”
Brogan leaned his head back, his breath rasping heavily. “This might come as a surprise to you, Haiden. It was me…I sent me.”
Ritter stared at him uncomprehendingly. With the cords around his chest now loose, with all his might, Brogan lunged forward in the chair and buried his head in Ritter’s face. The top of his forehead caught Ritter on the bridge of his nose, and there was a loud crack as the nasal bone snapped. Ritter yelped out in pain and rocked back in his chair.
The momentum had taken Brogan’s chair off its back legs. He jerked free his unharmed hand from Nooge’s grip and grabbed Ritter by his jacket collar. Pulling Ritter toward himself, he rammed his head into Ritter’s face once more.
Ritter howled out in pain. Still holding onto his jacket, Brogan threw back his head, ready to butt him for a third time. As his head came forward again, from the side, a huge brick of a hand landed squarely on his cheek. Its force turning his chair over sideways and he crashed to the floor.
Ritter staggered to his feet, sending his chair flying backward. Lying on the floor, Brogan watched with satisfaction as the blood gushed out from Ritter’s pulverized nose and poured down his chin.
“You motherfucker!” Ritter screamed at him. “I’ll kill you!”
He stumbled toward him and along with the two brothers began kicking Brogan viciously as he lay on the floor, his legs and torso still tied to the chair.
Big heavy boots came crunching into Brogan’s sides and face. Instinctively he raised both hands to his head as the three men competed to land their blows on him, and he felt himself being kicked across the floor. While his hands protected his head to some extent, the kicks were getting through, each one weakening him further. With his elbows tucked in close to his body, a boot landed under his ribcage and he felt something crack.
Brogan knew he was going to die. From somewhere inside him, he felt a deep calm envelop him. Let them kick him to death. He prayed they would kill him right now so that he would never have to reveal his secret.
Then the kicking petered out and he felt himself being dragged backward along the floor. Brick had grabbed hold of the two back legs of his chair and was dragging him around the room. His body lifted off the floor and started to plane and the next moment he was in the air. Around the room he went in a circle, gaining speed all the time. He heard laughter and the grinning face of Nooge flashed past him, then again as the huge giant continued to spin him faster and faster. Even Ritter, clutching his broken nose, managed to raise a smile.
Once more he went around, then Brick let him go and Brogan sailed through the air and crashed against the wall, tumbling to the floor in a twisted heap.
Downstairs the music had stopped. As he lay on his back breathing heavily, Brick and Nooge kneeled down beside him. Each brother grabbed an arm and pinned them to the ground.
Ritter strode across and stood above him, and Brogan got a better view of the bloody mess he’d made when Ritter wiped the sleeve of his jacket across his face. Without being able to help himself, Brogan laughed hysterically.
“You look good, Haiden. What a handsome little weasel you are!”
His laughter wouldn’t stop. Through the pain, his chest heaved up and down with uncontrollable mirth.
Ritter looked down at him with a murderous rage. “I’ll show you something funny!” he screeched.
With the Neanderthal Brothers holding him down, Ritter jumped on Brogan’s chest and began pummeling him in the face, arms flailing in a savage rage, and shouting at the top of his voice.
Though Ritter’s weak punches would have been ineffectual had he been able to protect himself, with his arms pinned, they quickly did damage. His left eye closed up, and as the punches continued to rain down on him, he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness.
From outside the door, Brogan heard footsteps. Plenty of them. Ritter heard them too. He lowered his arms and stopped shouting. Rolling his head to one side, Brogan managed to open one eye a crack.
The door flew open, and a man about the size of Brick, perhaps an inch taller, though not
the same girth, stepped into the room, a Beretta nine-millimeter pistol in his hand. Four other men, also with their pistols drawn, filed into the room after him to stand on either side of him.
The big man with the Beretta spoke in a low grating tone, “Motherfucker, best you get off my friend before I blow that ugly red mop right off your shoulders.”
Chapter 32
For a couple of seconds there was complete silence in the room. The Chief of the Black Eagles and his four braves stood by the doorway, their weapons pointing at Ritter and the two brothers. Through his blurred vision, Brogan looked up to see Ritter’s bloodied jaw drop in astonishment and the brothers both let go of his arms, staring across the room.
A startled Ritter said, “What the fu—”
“Shut it!” Stalking Bear’s bark rang out around the room. He aimed his pistol at Brick, who was the closest to him. “You. Up on your feet with your hands in the air. Nice and slow, or I’ll plug you full of holes.”
Outnumbered, and with his gun still in his holster, Brick did as he was ordered. He raised his hands and slowly stood up.
“Now reach for that pistol, thumb and forefinger on the grip, and lay it on the ground in front of you.”
Brick pulled back the strap of his leg holster and eased the Glock out, just the way the chief told him. He leaned over and placed it on the floor.
“Chief, this one’s carrying too,” Brogan called out, raising his head off the floor and pointing at Nooge. The right side of his jaw was badly swollen, and his voice sounded muffled.
Stalking Bear swiveled his pistol toward Nooge. “You next,” he said. “Get up.”
Stalking Bear turned to Ritter, still sitting on Brogan’s chest. “Tell me, asshole. How long you think I’m going to let you sit there before you’re a dead man?”
Ritter scrambled to his feet, looking across nervously at Nooge and then at Brick, who stood motionless like a giant statue, his arms stiffly by his sides. Standing directly in front of Nooge, Ritter blocked the view from where Stalking Bear stood.
“Watch out!” Brogan yelled.
From his position on the floor, he saw Nooge pull at the strap of his holster and Ritter leaped to one side as Nooge drew out the Glock. At the same moment, Brick threw himself to the floor. He made a tumbling roll, agilely plucking his pistol off the ground.
Across the room, Stalking Bear and his four braves started shooting. The crescendo of gunfire became deafening. When Nooge raised his Glock, the Black Eagles chief coolly trained his pistol at Nooge’s head and fired. The bullet caught him in the middle of his forehead and he staggered back against the wall. With a puzzled look on his face, like this was an outcome he never expected, he slid to the floor then slumped over onto his side.
Yards away, Brick never got to his feet again. From such a short distance, the warriors were never going to miss. Several rounds thudded into the big man’s frame from a barrage of rapid pistol fire and bullets caught him in the back, shoulder, and arms, a further one in his chest. He made one final roll onto his back, then stared up at the ceiling, his eyes blinking hard, gaping like a fish out of water.
Brogan cast his eyes around the room. Ritter had disappeared.
“Chief!” he shouted. “The other one got away.” He pointed to the office door, which had slammed shut during the shooting.
Stalking Bear had seen Ritter disappear too. “Chico, go check it out,” he said to a granite-faced Latino.
The warrior nodded, then tapped the shoulder of the young brave next to him, and the two ran to either side of the door. The one called Chico reached his hand out and pushed it open, cautiously poking his head around the door frame. With his pistol leveled, he stepped into the room, followed immediately by the second brave. Moments later they both reappeared.
Chico shook his head. “He’s gone, Bear. Out the back window.”
Stalking Bear grunted. He holstered his weapon, then walked over to where Brogan lay on the floor, trying to disentangle himself from the ropes around the chair. Leaning over him, the chief extended his hand. Brogan reached up and grabbed it, and the big man pulled him effortlessly to his feet, the chair still attached to the back of his legs. Stalking Bear took out his knife, knelt, and deftly cut through the ropes.
“You alright?” he asked, standing up and scrutinizing the damage to Brogan’s face.
“I’ll live,” Brogan replied. “I think my modeling career might be over though. How the hell did you find me?”
The chief glanced over at one of his men, a man with shoulder-length dark brown hair wearing a black bullhide hat with a white cow-bone band. “You have your friend over there to thank.”
“My friend?” Brogan echoed. He didn’t recognize the man.
The man in the cowboy hat caught Brogan’s eye and headed over to him. Stalking Bear waved him away. “We’ll get to that later,” he said. “Let’s finish up our business here first.”
“Okay, Chief.”
Nooge lay twisted on his side by the wall, where a dark pool of blood had collected on the floor by his head. Though both eyes remained open, he was stone cold dead.
Brogan knelt down beside him. He prized the Glock from out of his fingers, then unfastened the tactical belt from around his waist. He stood up. “Just collecting what’s mine,” he told the chief, putting on the belt.
Stalking Bear handed him the second Glock. One of the braves had taken it from Brick.
“You better take this too,” he said. “You had a matching pair, if I remember correct.”
Brogan took the gun, checked it quickly, then slid it into his holster.
“Which one of these animals did that to you?” Stalking Bear asked, nodding to the bloodied stump of Brogan’s little finger.
Brogan looked down at his hand. With everything that had been happening, he hadn’t paid any attention to it. Now that the adrenaline in his body was dissipating, he could feel the pain again, an acute, sharp throb. The wound continued bleeding too.
“Ritter,” he said. “The guy that ran out the back.”
“We better get that fixed up for you.”
“Thanks, Chief, but it’ll have to wait. I need to wrap things up here first.”
Brogan felt weak and groggy, his vision still blurred from all the kicks and punches he had taken. He didn’t know how much longer he could last.
Picking up the chair, he walked unsteadily over to where Brick now sat on the floor, leaning up against the wall where two of the braves had dragged him. He placed the chair beside him then sitting down, pulled out one of his Glocks, and slid back the rack to make sure a round was chambered.
Brick looked at him warily. “Listen, Brogan, whatever truck you got with Haiden, there’s no need to kill me,” he said, his breathing ragged from the bullet he’d taken in the chest. “That sonofabitch ran out, leaving us to face the music. My brother’s dead, and I’m bust up good. How about we call it quits?”
Brogan studied the big man’s wounds. Years of battlefield experience told him that, given medical assistance, he would probably survive them.
“Really?” Brogan raised a bloody hand. “How many fingers you think that’s going to cost you?”
“That’s up to you.” Brick lifted up his left hand. “You decide.”
Brogan gazed down at him, and for a moment couldn’t help but reflect on what a crazy world he lived in.
“An eye for any eye, a finger for a finger. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Sure, call it what you want.”
“How about for two innocent lives? What should I take for them?”
Brick looked at him uncomprehendingly. “What the hell you talking about?”
“See, the mistake you’re making is, you think I came only for Ritter. Truth is, I came for you all.”
A trickle of sweat ran down the side of Brick’s face, which had turned gray from the tremendous pain he was in. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What did any of us ever do to you? This makes no sense.”
The chief gazed down at Brogan. “Whatever you say stays within the tribe. I’ll vouch for that.”
“Thanks, Chief.” Brogan turned back to Brick. “Let me start by telling you who I am. Before I came to the Outzone, I spent seven years as a police lieutenant in New Haven’s Special Reaction Force. Before that, I was in special ops during the war. I’ve been a professional soldier or police officer most of my adult life. Two weeks ago, I quit my job and came to the Outzone—to kill the three of you.”
A weak smile came over Brick’s face. “I was right all along. You’re just plain crazy.”
Brogan shook his head. “No, I’m not.” He stared fiercely at the man. “It’s my turn to jog your memory. You remember a tunnel raid you made six weeks ago into the State…outside Providence?”
A look of surprise came over Brick’s face. “Th-the two women…?”
“My wife and daughter.”
Brogan placed the muzzle of the Glock to Brick’s temple. “When you murdered them, you killed a part of me too. The good part,” he whispered.
Looking into his eyes, Brogan squeezed the trigger. Brick’s head jerked to one side and blood sprayed over Brogan’s arm, the sound of the shot reverberating around the room. The bandit’s huge body twitched a couple of times, then was motionless.
Inside, Brogan felt nothing, save a hollow emptiness. As dead as the eyes he stared into. Lowering the pistol, a wave of fatigue swept over him and he slumped forward on the chair. Then once more, darkness overcame him.
Winter's Edge: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (Outzone Drifter Series Book 1) Page 23