Dawn of the Hunter

by Blake Banner

  Twenty Four

  I turned to look at her. She was holding a Glock she must have picked up from one of the corpses.

  “Marni, what the hell are you doing?”

  My father had lifted his tear-stained face from his folded arms and was frowning at her, uncomprehending. “You are alive…”

  “Yes, I’m alive. Why? Did you send a couple of your boys to kill me?”

  He shook his head, still frowning, “No…of course not…”

  “But you killed my father.”

  He turned to me. “You shouldn’t have told her.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  He smiled. It was an odd, sad smile. “To save her the pain…?”

  My voice was a rasp. “You could have done that, but not killing him.”

  Now he laughed, a dry, empty laugh. “You talk of killing! Look around you, at your handiwork.”

  “I would not kill my best friend on the orders of a fucking organization!”

  “But you would kill your own brother out of vengeance!”

  I shook my head, “No, Robert, he may have been your son, but he was no brother of mine.”

  He gestured at me and flopped back in his chair. “This! This is why I never inducted you. This is why I favored Bob. You have no clarity. You are like your mother. All passion and no brain.”

  Marni stepped closer and raised her gun in both her hands, aiming at his head. She was ice cold, and at that distance she could not miss. She spoke like an automaton.

  “But look where it has got you both. He is the one holding a gun, and you have accrued the hatred of everybody that matters to you.” She narrowed her eyes. “How? What kind of tortured, twisted emotional contortionism did you have to go through, to justify to yourself the murder of your best friend; the father of a small girl who adored him? How could you live with yourself?”

  He looked down at his open palms, as though he might still find blood there. “You think it was easy for me?”

  She gave a small laugh, as though she was astonished. “You want me to feel sorry for you?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I just wish I could explain, and that you both would understand. I had no choice.”

  She was incredulous. “No choice? No choice?” She repeated it, like the second time would have more meaning. “No choice but to murder your best friend?”

  “He understood. He entrusted your care to me.”

  She shook her head. “Enough. I won’t listen to anymore of your twisted, tortured madness.”

  He closed his eyes, accepting the inevitable shot that was to come. I shouted “No! Marni! No!”

  I leapt forward and struck the barrel of the gun up. It detonated and the shot went high over his head. She turned a face of pure rage on me and swung at me with the pistol. I blocked the blow with my forearm and grabbed hold of her shoulders, shaking her and shouting, “Marni! Snap out of it!”

  Then something that felt like a brick smashed into the back of my head. For a moment I blacked out and fell to the floor. It must only have been a couple of seconds, but it was enough for Tau to scramble across the drawing room and clatter down the stairs, with Rho close on his heels. I opened my eyes and saw my father standing, stooping, looking down at me. A couple of inches away Marni came into focus, lying on the floor, groping savagely for the pistol she had dropped. I looked my father in the eye and snarled, “Go!”

  He turned and hurried, old and bent, toward the stairwell. Marni’s fingers closed on the automatic and she raised it to fire. I shouted, “Marni! Stop!” and lunged at her. She fired but again the shot went wide. She screamed.

  “What are you doing? Let me get at him! I have the right!”

  As she screamed she thrashed, clawed at me and smashed the butt of the gun in my face. Then she was up and running, too. My head was reeling and splitting with pain. I struggled to my feet. As I stood, I saw my phone behind the plant pot where I had left it the night before. I recovered it and ran for the tree. I vaulted over the balustrade, grabbed the branch and swung down. Then I sprinted for the garage. I was too late.

  Tau was running cross-country toward the woodlands. I knew where he was going. He had figured that that was where I had put down the chopper. Rho was clambering into the Buick and my father was close behind him, headed for the Bentley. Within seconds, the engines were roaring and they were kicking up gravel and dust, speeding down the driveway. As they passed, I saw Marni fumbling with the keys I’d given her, as she slammed the door of the 911. I took off at a fast sprint after Tau.

  I made the distance to my Zombie in record time. My lungs felt like they were tearing apart, and my head had at least three invisible hatchets embedded in it. But none of that was important. What was vital, what was essential, was that I stop Marni from making a mistake that could have incalculable consequences for her, and for the world.

  I swung the beast around and gunned the silent engine. Across the field, I could see the three cars moving onto the 202. Between me and them, there was a mile of dirt track. I promised myself that if I got out alive, I would replace the entire suspension. Then I hit the pedal. I flew over the potholes, the ruts and the rocks by sheer inertia, and covered the mile in less than a minute. But in that minute, they had put almost two miles between me and them. I skidded onto the blacktop doing sixty.

  The Zombie will do naught to sixty in just over one and a half seconds. I floored the pedal and instantly sent one thousand eight-hundred foot-pounds of torque to the rear wheels. I saw the nose lift like a dragster and felt myself crushed into the seat as the needle rose in little more than a second from 60 to 170. In absolute silence. If they were doing 120 MPH, I was gaining on them at fifty.

  In less than a minute I saw the distinctive black shape of the Porsche 911 looming up ahead and I eased up on the pedal. She was right up Rho’s ass. The Buick was a nice car, but it was no match for the huge power and performance of the Porsche.

  I didn’t give a rat’s ass about Rho, but I knew Marni and I knew she had never killed anybody. That was not her and when her rage and madness had passed, I knew she could not live with a man’s death on her conscience. Not even a man like Rho.

  But what was just as important was that I had understood why my father—Gamma—could not die; why it was essential that he should live.

  I swerved and gunned the engine to overtake her, intending to place myself between the Porsche and the Bentley, but she pulled out, missing me by an inch and blocking the road. I hit the brakes and swerved right. She stayed ahead of me.

  The road had been long and straight heading west out of Salida. Now, as we approached Maysville, the road turned sharp left. As we closed on the bend, Marni clipped the Buick’s rear nearside fender. Its brakes screamed and it swerved. I floored the pedal and cut the corner, trying to get ahead of the Porsche. She hit the gas hard, heading me off to the side of the road. A loud blaring like an express train made me look ahead. A huge truck was bearing down on me at a combined speed of over 200 MPH. I braked hard and swerved, pulling in behind Marni and missing her by a couple of inches. The truck thundered by, still blaring its horn.

  In the confusion, the powerful Bentley had surged ahead. Marni was harrying the Buick like a whole pack of wolves all over a wounded caribou. Every move he made, she was on top of him, and he had neither the speed nor the performance to get away from her. But I knew her real interest was my father, up ahead in the Bentley. And I could not let her get to him.

  I floored the pedal again and tried to overtake. Again she swerved into my path, but now she drew level with the Buick. I heard two cracks and his rear left window shattered. She was shooting at him.

  Another left turn and we were climbing toward the mountains. The Buick rammed the side of Marni’s Porsche, sending her skidding off the side of the road, raising clouds of dust behind her. I slowed, thinking she might give up and I could talk to her, but she hit the gas and took off after them again. I followed, nosing into her side, trying to place myself
between her and my father. But once more she pulled alongside the Buick, and as he tried to side swipe her, she put three more rounds into the side of his car.

  Another truck appeared around the bed in the road up ahead and came thundering for a head-on collision with the Porsche. I slowed to give her space to pull in. She slammed on the brakes. The Buick pulled ahead and she swerved right. The truck skimmed past.

  I spun the wheel left and pulled alongside her, screaming through the window to pull over. She ignored me. She lined up right behind the Buick, a couple of inches from his fender. She was holding the Glock in her right hand and, leaning forward slightly, she rested the butt on the dash for stability. I hammered on the horn, screaming at her not to be stupid. But I saw the Glock kick four times, her windshield shattered, and I slammed on the brakes. Marni did the same as the Buick skidded and careened across the road, slamming into the bank and rolling over.

  As I stared at it, at what she had done, she took off with a squeal of hot rubber after my father. I accelerated past her in a couple of seconds and placed myself between her and the Bentley, then started weaving and slowing, allowing him to pull ahead of us. I was trying to think where the road led, where he could go. We were in the middle of nowhere, climbing into the mountains. All I could think was that a hundred and sixty miles west, at Grand Junction, he could pick up the I-70, to Denver or Utah. It didn’t seem like a hell of a plan, but as far as I could see, it was all he had.

  He had managed to put a couple of hundred yards between us and Marni was going crazy behind me, weaving back and forth across the road and leaning on her horn. We sped through Monarch and then the road started to climb steeply and the bends became sharper. It dawned on me that on each hairpin, for a few second, she had a clear line of fire at the Bentley.

  The road turned into a sharp bend ahead as it climbed. My father had taken the corner and was now accelerating up the hill across the gorge, only a hundred and fifty yards away. In my rear-view I saw Marni stop and get out. She took her time to go round the car and lean on the roof. She took careful aim. I started to reverse and as I did so she emptied her magazine, one shot after another in a steady hail of bullets. I stopped and stared at the Bentley. If she had missed, which at that range was very likely, he had got away.

  For a moment, he climbed steadily. But then I saw him swerve, careen across the road and go over the edge. I turned and stared back at her. She climbed in the Porsche, turned and sped back the way we had come. I floored the pedal and covered the distance in a few seconds. I screamed to a halt where his car had gone over and stared down into the gorge. I could see it, wedged between two trees, with the hood buckled and a trail of smoke rising out of the engine. If he had survived, it would be a miracle.

  I scrambled down, clutching at bushes and sliding on my ass as I went, wondering how the hell I was going to get him out of there if he was alive. Finally, I reached the trees where the car was wedged. The incline was steep, practically vertical, with the trees growing out at an almost horizontal angle.

  The car was on its side, leaning against a giant pine, with the hood mashed up against another. I placed my feet on the rear wing and tested it for stability. It seemed to be firm. Then I inched along until I came to the passenger door. I crouched down, grabbed the handle and heaved. The door was heavy and the position I was in was awkward, but I managed to raise it and peer in.

  The airbag had deployed, then deflated, and he was slumped against the side of the car, with blood oozing from a gash on his head. I lay on my belly and felt sick as I heard the car creak and felt it shift. I waited and let it settle, then leaned in and reached for his wrist. There was a pulse. It wasn’t strong, but it was steady.

  I sat up and looked up the slope. There was no way I was ever going to get him up there. I pulled out my cell and dialed 911.

  Twenty Five

  It took over three hours to extract him from the car and stabilize his condition enough to fly him by helicopter to the Penrose and St. Francis in Colorado Springs. Sheriff Mitch Hanafin made a brief appearance. He had looked at me, but hadn’t questioned me or even spoken to me. He had talked to the paramedics and left.

  Eventually, I asked them where they were going to take him. They told me and I had driven on ahead.

  By the time he’d arrived, dusk had fallen and night was closing in. I had assumed that he would be declared dead on arrival. But he wasn’t. He was in a coma, critical but stable, and going into surgery. I’d asked what the surgery was for, but was told only that a surgeon would speak to me as soon as he could.

  I spent the next six hours drinking black water that pretended to be coffee and trying to get some rest on waiting room chairs with hard seats and steel arms. At one AM, a doctor in surgical gear with bags under his eyes found me at the dispenser, getting another polystyrene cup of not-coffee and asked if I was Lacklan Walker. I said I was.

  He sighed and looked troubled, like he was being forced to deal with a problem he didn’t believe was his.

  “I am Dr. Fischer. Mr. Walker, the surgery we have just conducted on your father, was to remove a piece of a 9 mm bullet.”

  I frowned. “A piece of a bullet? Not the whole slug?”

  He made a face like he thought I should provide an explanation. “It was lodged in his chest. It damaged his right lung, but fortunately it did not cause irreparable harm. We are required to report cases like this to the police, you understand.”

  I nodded. “What is the prognosis?”

  He sighed again. “He is eighty years old. He is obviously a strong man and he is basically in good health. But major surgery at this age…”

  He left the words hanging. I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Basically good health? He told me he had terminal cancer of the liver.”

  Dr. Fischer raised an eyebrow at me. “I’m afraid he has either been misinformed by his own doctor, or he has lied to you, Mr. Walker. Apart from the damage caused by what I assume was a ricochet, he was in good health for his age. I assume the police will be in touch. Meanwhile, he has been transferred to a room, if you’d care to stay with him.”

  I said I would and he had a nurse show me where it was.

  The room was dark and quiet apart from the bleep of the heart monitor and the irregular rhythm of his slightly labored breathing. There was a reclining chair and I settled in it, aiming to sleep. Instead, I stared at the dead glow of the city in the black glass of the window and tried to make sense of everything that had happened over the last few days.

  I didn’t get very far. Eventually I fell into a stressful slumber marred by dreams that were too vivid and plagued with nightmares.

  I awoke suddenly to see gray light outside the window. I glanced at my father and saw that his eyes were open. He was staring at the wall. I said, “Dad?” and his eyes shifted to look at me.

  He gave something like a smile and said, “It’s been a few years since you called me that.”

  “Don’t get used to it. It slipped out. How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “You haven’t got cancer.”

  “I know.”

  “Why did you say you had?”

  “Because I thought it was the only way I could get you to talk to me.”

  I nodded and we sat in silence for a while. After a bit, he asked, “What happened to Marni?”

  “I don’t know. She emptied her magazine into your car, then turned around and drove back toward Salida. Dad, you have to explain to me what is going on.”

  He nodded. “This is probably the only chance we are going to get. For a few hours, we seem to have slipped through Omega’s fingers. Pretty soon Ben will be here, and then they will start organizing everything…” His attention seemed to drift. “I am so tired of them organizing everything, Lacklan.”

  “Why are you betraying Omega?”

  He grunted. “You want to be careful saying things like that, Lacklan. They have eyes and ears everywhere. But still, I don’
t think there is much they can do to me anymore. When they told me to kill Frank, it shook my faith. I had always believed in them. I believed that they were the only people who actually offered a solution to the catastrophe that was facing humanity. I believed that what they proposed, though it required ruthlessness, at least offered hope. A solution.” He sighed and tears began to flow again, down his cheeks. “But when they told me to kill Frank, I began to understand that the solution they offered was no solution at all. It was just a different kind of catastrophe; a different kind of hell.”

  I frowned. “Why did you do it?”

  “They don’t like insubordination, Lacklan. They require total obedience. They gave me an option. Kill him, or they would take him out along with Silvia and Marni. And they also told me that my own wife and children were at risk. I explained it to Frank and he understood. He was a good friend and that made it a lot worse.”

  He turned to stare into my face. He wasn’t sobbing, but the tears were flowing freely. “I am not a monster, Lacklan. I am not a good man and I have been a bad husband and a bad father, but I am not a monster. Killing Frank—having to kill Frank—having him ask me to care for his daughter…” He shook his head. “It twisted me. I thought I was going to go crazy. They promoted me. They gave me more power and more privileges. Your mother left me, you grew to hate me. I was in hell, Lacklan. And I had no way out, because I knew that if I tried, they would kill you and Marni.”

  He wiped his face with the sleeve of his pajamas.

  “Then when Marni started following her father’s research, and she went missing, I decided they had to be stopped, but I also saw an opportunity...”

  “What is it about Frank and Marni’s research that is so dangerous to Omega? Surely every climatologist in the world knows what is happening to the climate. And as far as population is concerned, there is Wilson and a host of others. What is so vital about Frank and Marni’s research?”