(2014) Dead End

by Jack Parker

  JACK PARKER

  Copyright © 2014 by Jack Parker

  Cover and internal design © 2014 by Jack Parker

  DEAD END

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  Astonishment

  October 31, 2005

  3:14 a.m.

  The driving rain felt arctic and damp on Ash Zaztep's wet and flushed face. His once dry clothes were now sodden from the downpour that had also washed away the beads of sweat on his brow as he ran as fast as his legs would allow him to go down the muddy, deserted road.

  He felt as though he had been running for hours when it had only been a mere ten minutes at most.

  The sound of the enemy chasing him was getting closer and stronger with each passing second, making Ash's heart beat all the faster.

  Soon the pounding of one set of foot prints turned to three and Ash chanced a quick glance behind him at his pursuers, but as he did so he felt himself fall through midair and then slid on his back down a long and mucky hill. Every rock and stick that hit his back sent a surge of pain throughout his body.

  Toward the end of the hill, a large root from a nearby tree was raised above the wet soil like a hand reaching for something too high to grasp. Ash's feet were first to hit the overgrown root, causing him to tumble forward, head first, and down the rest of the hill.

  He landed hard on his stomach, face down in a puddle of unsanitary water. He was almost too weak to lift his head out of the puddle before drowning, but managed to find just enough strength to roll over onto his badly wounded back.

  He felt something sharp cut deep into his backside and that's when he realized that a rock had been lodged itself painfully in his back.

  The rain was a light mist now, enabling Ash to see his surroundings a bit more clearly. It didn't help too much since it was pitch black and the only source of light he had came from his waterproof watch that glowed neon green in the dark.

  The sound of soft footsteps soon filled his ears and his heart began to race once again.

  He found me, Ash repeated over and over in his mind as the sound of the person approaching became stronger and stronger.

  Using what little strength he had left, Ash craned his neck to look in the direction of the newcomer. The only thing he saw was a blinding light before falling into a welcomed unconsciousness.

  30 Minutes Earlier

  A loud 'bang' had caused Ash to awake with a start to pure and total darkness. He placed is bare feet on the surprisingly warm hard wood floor then made his way to the hall outside his room. He stopped before a closed door, yawned, and then pushed it open.

  "Dom?" he called out to his friend who had crashed at his place for days now after his house had been burned down in a forest fire five days earlier along with several other homes.

  "Dom?" Ash asked again. Nothing. Just the sound of the pouring rain and ticking clocks answered him. He tried the lights but nothing happened.

  Storm probably killed the power. "Dom, are you awake?" He stepped further into the room in front of the king size bed just as a lighting bolt struck outside the window, shedding some light on the empty bed before him.

  Downstairs. Within seconds he was in the kitchen below the master bedroom still in complete darkness.

  "Dom?!" he yelled in annoyance to the darkness. Still nothing. Ash sighed and started up the stairs when the sound of glass breaking made him stop dead in his tracks.

  He tried the lights once more but to no avail. He walked silently into the kitchen once more and scanned the area for what had been broken.

  A window? A picture? In this house, the possibilities were endless.

  Lightning flashed again when he heard the sound of someone playing the piano in the other room, though what was being played was gibberish. He went directly through the kitchen to the living room when lightning flashed once more. There on the floor was a broken blue vase with is contents scattered all over the floor.

  Ash sighed with relief when he saw that on the piano was his tabby cat, Smokey.

  Ash laughed and shook his head as he went back through the kitchen and to the stairs once more. He stopped in mid-step again for the second time that night when a light turned on behind him.

  "Put your hands up and turn around!" demanded a man who, by the sound of his voice, was probably Greek.

  Ash was still.

  "Turn around!" the man repeated again. The sound of a gun being cocked was enough to make Ash obey the commands given to him.

  When he turned he was met by the blinding light of a flashlight pointed directly at his face. Ash held his right hand up as a shield against the light as he spoke. "Who are you and where is Dom?"

  "Do not worry yourself Mr. Zaztep. Your friend is safe...for the moment, and as for my identity, you will learn it soon enough." He lowered the flashlight to Ash's feet, "Now where is the map?"

  Ash furrowed his brow, "Map? What map?" The only maps that Ash owned were in the back of books.

  The intruder could sense that the man before him had no idea of what he spoke about.

  "The map your father sent you in the mail, where is it?"

  Ash was silent a moment, "It's in the safe behind the replica of the Mona Lisa." The light shifted from Ash to the numerous paintings behind the Greek man before stopping at the replica. Putting the flashlight down on the chair next to him, he pulled the painting off the wall and let it fall unceremoniously to the floor. He picked up the flashlight and pointed it at Ash once more who seemed frozen on the stairs.

  "Open it!" Ash hesitated at first but then walked calmly over to the large fireproof safe imbedded in the wall and began to unlock it.

  ...35...15...0...

  The intruder inched closer and closer, impatiently waiting for the safe to be opened and its contents revealed.

  Once the Greek was close enough, Ash swung open the door as hard as he could, causing it to collide with the man's face.

  The man dropped the gun almost immediately before cradling his bloody forehead and cursing in a rapid slur of Greek.

  Ash took no time to see if the blow to the mans head had left him unconscious and dashing out the open door, followed closely by the bloodied man. And so the chase began.

  Present

  4:56 a.m.

  Ash's eyes shot open after reliving the night's earlier events in his mind once again. Realization hit him when he awoke to find himself wrapped in several brown blankets on a plump green couch next to a roaring fire instead of being outside on the muddy road in the pouring rain practically freezing to death.

  I must be dreaming, he thought as he looked around the familiar room he was in. Some of the pictures on the mantle were of him and Dom.

  It's not possible.
The sound of the rare clock chimed in one of the other rooms signaling that a new hour had begun.

  It can't be. A young woman in her early twenties walked into the room wearing a plush white robe and brushing her damp burgundy hair.

  It is.

  "Lari..." he breathed in total disbelief at the woman before him.

  "Glad to see your 5-second memory wasn't affected by your little tumble over the hill." She said, her English accent barely noticeable. She sat down across from him in a chair identical in pattern to the sofa that Ash was on.

  "How exactly did I get here?" Silently wondering how someone so small could get him to her house without any help that he knew of.

  "Well, first I pulled you to my car, which thankfully was close by, then I somehow managed to get you in the car and drove you here before using an old wheelchair to get you into the house," Lari said all in one breath. "Oh, and I also cleaned your wounds as best I could, so you should be fine. Just be thankful I couldn't sleep."

  Ash smiled at her slightly and shook his head. Always liked to hear herself talk.

  Before she could speak again, her phone rang a high-pitched ring. Two, three times, before she finally answered.

  Ash barely paid attention to the one-ended conversation, instead he was thinking about what the man in his home had told him.

  "Now where is the map?"

  "The map your father sent you in the mail, where is it?"

  The map my father sent me... Ash mused.

  October 30, 2005

  2:42 p.m.

  "I believe I have a package for you Mr. Zaztep." The mailman said in his overly cheerful tone, barely minding the rain that soaked his jacket and cap. The mailman dug through his dark blue pack and searched for the package. "Oh, I must have forgotten it at the office. I'm sorry Mr. Zaztep."

  "It's quite alright, Frank. I'll go down to the post office and pick it up later."

  "All right then, here's the rest of your mail," Frank said giving him three bills and the new TIME magazine. "Have a nice day." Frank said, making his way back down the path from where he had come.

  "You too, Frank." Ash turned back into house and shut the door.

  Present

  The package!

  Lari hung up the almost antique looking phone and turned back to Ash. "So wha-" she was oddly cut off by the next three words that came out of Ash's mouth.

  "The post office..." he mumbled almost inaudible.

  "The post office? What about it?" Lari inquired.

  "I need to go there."

  "To the post office."

  "Yes."

  "But it's five a.m.! I very much doubt that the post office is even open at this hour." She exclaimed wondering just how hard he had fallen.

  "Lari I promise I will explain everything in the car. Now please, we need to go," Ash told her calmly.

  "Alright, alright." Ash started to head toward the door, "We're not very presentable at the moment though."

  Ash stared at his mud spattered clothing and then to Lari, wearing a luxurious bathrobe. "I suppose a short pit stop is in order."

  Ash's Home

  5:35 a.m.

  Ash causiously walked through the widely open door and glanced around. He tried the light switch again but still seemed out of order. He didn't bother looking for a flashlight since the sun had just began to rise making it a lot easier to see.

  The house had been ransacked. Every book had been pulled off of the many shelves and nearly ripped to shreds. Several of the chairs that were scattered about the room had been broken and thrown about. Ash fully entered the room followed closely by Lari.

  "What happened here?" She asked stepping past him and picking up a shredded dictionary.

  "I-" Smokey the cat jumped down from her hiding place at the top of the stainless steal refrigerator and landed flawlessly in front of Ash.

  Ash jumped back a bit in surprise, "That cat will be the death of me."

  "One of the reasons why I don't have one." Lari said then returned to sifting through the wreckage.

  "I'm going to go change. I'll just be a minute." Lari only nodded while going through another destroyed book.

  Lari stood and sighed. She looked around the room around stopped at the safe imbedded in the wall near the back of the room. The door was ajar and she saw something inside that looked wet. She strolled over, jumping over the bits of the chairs and books. When she opened the door fully she nearly paled at the sight.

  Ash came back down the winding staircase, buttoning the rest of his wine colored shirt as he did so.

  When he stepped off the last step, he noticed that Lari was nowhere in sight. Panic stuck him like a stampede. He ran farther into the room crying out her name. He found her in the corner of the room holding a paper covered in a dripping liquid.

  "It...it's blood," she stammered, turning the paper around so he could see it.

  In fresh scarlet blood a message had been written on the page. More like a word:

  NEVES

  Chapter Two

  Friend or Foe?

  The drying blood on the note which Lari held made Ash shudder. To think that one of his pursuers actually came back to write the note sent shivers down his spine. These people weren't just random burglars, they were hired to obtain something, something which, by the note in front of him, told Ash they did not get.

  And then there was the map- the map that his father allegedly sent him- the map that the Greek man had wanted- the map that was right outside his door…

  * * *

  Dara Mocter yawned softly before picking up her gold-tinted phone and putting it delicately to her right ear. "Do you have the item yet?" her voice was cold yet at the same time impeccably smooth, and sensual.

  "Not yet ma'am. We ran across a small problem while trying to retrieve it," The man on the other end replied in a stoic tone.

  "Well, solve it before I have you deported!" Dara slammed the phone down in its cradle on the table which shook violently. "I would really hate to have to resort to Plan B." she threatened.

  * * *

  "Seven…" Lari mutter in disbelief to no one in particular.

  "Where did that come from?" Ash questioned when she broke him out of his musings.

  "It's this NEVES word spelled backwards, see?" She flipped the page around where the blood had seeped through to form the word SEVEN.

  "Right when I was beginning to think you were a blonde at heart." Lari only rolled her electric green eyes at him.

  "Oh, by the way, where's Dom?" There was a soft knock at the door, and an elderly man who looked to be in his late sixties walked through the tall brown door.

  "Ash? What in God's name happened here!?" The man's face was a mask of concern and wonder.

  "Just a little spring cleaning, Tyler. Nothing to worry about." Ash told him with little amusement.

  "It's fall, now come on Ash, it looks like there was a hurricane in here." Tyler took another step, his old leather-bound shoes crunching the broken royal blue vase beyond any repair.

  "It was just a robbery." Lari said from her spot in the corner of the room.

  "A robbery!? Do you know who did it?"

  "Is there something you wanted, Tyler?"

  "Oh," He looked at the oversized manila envelope in his decrepit looking hands. "This was delivered to my house by mistake yesterday." Tyler handed the envelope to Ash."

  "Thank you." Tyler only nodded. He gave the house a second glance before walking out the same way he had come in.

  "Well it saves us a trip to the post office," Lari said, in a somewhat glad tone.

  Ash ripped open the end of the envelope and pulled out the contents.

  * * *

  "Mr. Zaztep, I will ask you this only one more time: where is the map?" A man, dressed from head to toe in black, asked. John Zaztep was sitting cuffed to a chair, bleeding from a cut on his lip from when the man behind him punched him so hard he could swear his neck cracked.

  "I already told you. It is with
my son."

  "Wrong answer." The man reached up and grabbed a handful of John's gray hair, threw his head back and then down onto the table in which John was seated in front of.

  John winced in pain, and soon a new trail of blood steadily streamed down the side of his face.

  "Soon I will get the truth from you." The darkly dressed man exited the room leaving the aged man alone.

  "Ash…" John whispered to no one but himself.

  * * *

  Ash cautiously pulled out two items. The first was a piece of cardboard with a random-looking hole in it. The second items the famous map. Torn and tattered, it was a map of the olden times. In big bold letters it had places like Asia Minor, the place now known as Turkey.

  "This is the map that they wanted?" Ash said with high skepticism in his words.

  "You have to explain this 'they' to me. I think I've been in the dark long enough," Lari complained.

  "I'll explain when I know." Lari took the map from him and examined it as best she could, trying not to break it since it seemed so fragile looking. She flipped it around expecting to find nothing but in old fashioned scrip, there was something.

  "Ash look at this," She handed him the map upside down so he could see the what she was pointing to.

  843-73836-9663377-63-843-2624368-96753

  "Is it some kind of code?" Ash asked, knowing that even she didn't have the answers.

  "Your guess is as good as mine," Lari went over possible answers to the code but couldn't think of one, "If it is a code there is only one person I can think of that can solve it."

  Dara Mocter's Home

  October 31, 2005