15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

  “I’m not leaving you, Jerry. I just can’t.”

  Jerry started to laugh as he took a few more timed shots with his rifle.

  “I’m touched, Abel, but you have to leave. You and I will be safer apart. It’s the reality that we find ourselves in. Now, don’t get me wrong. If you want to die, then stick around. I have enough room for another body bag right here.”

  I didn’t know if that was a threat or the reality of the situation we’d found ourselves in. Truth is, I knew we were fucked and he was right. We would stand a much better chance at surviving if both of us went our separate ways. So I grabbed him on the shoulder as a goodbye. He waved me off with what I thought was a smile. It was still too dark for me to see anything with any clarity.

  “Don’t get killed, Jew. The world needs people like you. People who stand up for what’s right. People who fight the evils of this world. The world needs all the Abel Brewers it can get,” Jerry said as he started hammering the trigger on his rifle.

  I smiled and went.

  I rushed up the embankment, leaving Jerry behind. I ran as fast as I could.

  I was making good ground, because the gunfire was sounding ever distant with every step I took. I ran for as long as I could, and then I heard that noise again. It made me freeze on the spot.

  My legs didn’t move; they couldn’t, I was so terrified. And then I heard it again, only this time I knew what it was. It was a roar. Like a bear was nearby or something. And then I realized that the gunshots were not fading — they had stopped. I turned my head slightly and saw the direction from which I’d come. It was doused in darkness and intrigue. My heart was flip-flopping as I stared into the bleakness. I could hear twigs snapping under my feet. I was making more noise than I wanted.

  “Hello, Jerry?” I said.

  Nothing. No noise, apart from my heaving breathing.

  And then I heard the roar again, and what sounded like a stampede of claws in the bush.

  Whatever it was, it was coming for me.

  I was just about to bolt when I saw some eyes glowing in the bush in front of me. Two pristinely golden eyes of a predator. The roar from its mouth was no longer distant, for it was right in front of me. Feet away from its claws, I turned on my heels and ran. I didn’t know if it was following me, because the next thing I knew, I had run into a tree head first, knocking myself out.

  “Better to flee from death than feel its grip.”

  HOMER, The Iliad

  Luis Samways

  Das Death:

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  On a Mountainside in New Germania

  It was dark by the time I opened my eyes. Darker than before. The sun had long gone, and all that remained was the constant erratic pounding of my heartbeat, coupled with the cold beads of sweat running down my face. I could feel my legs kick at the leaves beneath my feet. I could hear the wind crackle through the branches. And then everything became loud. I saw the big burly man standing over me with a snarling grin on his face. He was huge; he overshadowed the trees — that’s what it seemed like from my position on the ground. He gave me a wink, and beside him his beast roared at me a few times.

  “Ya, ya, ya!” he shouted. He held his hand out in a halt motion, stopping the beast from attacking me. He nodded his head at me, in complete control of the situation. He licked his lips in anticipation of what was about to happen.

  “Luckily for you, my pet mountain lion isn’t hungry. I fed him some German meat not so long ago. Looking at you, though, you don’t look at all that German. May I ask if you are what I think you are?” he said to me, still standing over me, still snarling. It was as if he was salivating at the sight of me down on the ground, succumbing to the headache that I was currently enduring. I suppose it was my fault, really. Running head first into a tree and knocking myself out had to be one of the dumbest things I had accomplished in my forty-odd years of existence. That, and trusting Jerry with my life. Since I left that damn hole I called home, nothing but evil had surrounded me. Nothing but fear had engulfed me. And there I was, staring at the man who was surely going to kill me. All because I was defenseless and incapable of defending myself.

  “My name is Abel,” I said, not sure of what else I could muster. My head was still hurting something fierce. I looked up at the night sky covering the forest like a seal of fate. A fate that lay ahead of me within the next few minutes. I was surely going to be as black as that sky. Death was all that awaited me. I was certain of that fact for sure.

  “Abel sounds like a Jewish name, would I be correct?” the big burly man asked. His lion had calmed down. It was a sight to behold. A savage beast resting at the feet of his tamer, not flinching one bit as it looked deep into my soul. I wondered if he could see my innocence, or if it even knew what I was. Maybe the lion was the only thing on this earth that didn’t recognize me as anything else but meat. The rest of the world was all too preoccupied with my race. They were all too wrapped up in my bloodline. The lion didn’t see me as a Jew. He saw me as a human. In that, I could take some comfort. At least dying at the hands of this lion wouldn’t be a prejudicial death at all. It would be clean and quick. Unflinching and un-humanized. The lion wouldn’t take joy in my death like the humans would. I knew that, and for some reason, it made me feel okay with my fate. For the first time I wasn’t scared. Was it safe to say that I had given up on life? No, it wasn’t. The only thing I had given up on was being scared 24/7. It was time to face my fate, like the many men who had died before me, all because of what I was.

  What I am.

  “I am a Jew. Yes, you are correct,” I said.

  The lion tamer’s eyes widened with joy. “That is good news. I’ll be able to get a good price for you. You will be safe with me. I don’t want to kill you, but I’m sure the people who will pay me will want nothing but your death on their hands. Your blood is worth more to me alive than coursing through the bowels of my mountain lion. Get up. You are coming with me.”

  I obeyed the command. As I got up, I could feel my head sway from left to right. I was feeling nauseous. I was unsteady on my feet. Something was going to give, and I didn’t know if it was my body or my mind. Being brave is all well and good when you aren’t faced with danger at every corner. But when the day comes that you realize you are as a good as dead, you’d be amazed at what it can make of you. Many brave men were made of less.

  “I have an ATV. You can hitch a ride on the back. Don’t you dare make a noise. You call out for anybody, and I’ll knock every single one of your teeth out. By the time we get back to my barn, I’ll pull your tongue out and make sure you can’t even beg for mercy when the Germans get a hold of you,” he said.

  I nodded my head. It hurt like hell to do so, but I didn’t want to risk upsetting this guy. Something was telling me that the man who stood in front of me was much more than a killer. He was a businessman in the field of killing, which made it even more imperative that I didn’t piss him off. There is one thing I have learnt about most men: most will kill for money, and many will torture for the lack of it. If I fucked him around, I could bet my ass that I would have preferred the death my brother Jacob got. So I immediately decided that I wouldn’t say another word. Not one. Not to him, anyway, unless he specifically asked something of me.

  I was just about to follow him off into the bushes when the lion’s ears perked up a little. The mountain lion leapt to his feet and roared. The look of uncertainty on my face was met by an excitement on my captor’s face. The lion turned around and leapt into the bush. I could hear a struggle and a few muffled screams. The lion dragged somebody out; it was dragging the person by his arm. It looked painful. It was then that I realized who it was.

  “Jerry?” I asked out loud, to the surprise of my captor.

  “You know this man?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I do,” I replied.

  “Don’t say anything to this man, Abel. He’s a goddamn bounty hunter for the Rei…”

  Before
Jerry could finish off what he was about to say, he had gotten a stiff kick to the face. He was unconscious before his head hit the ground.

  “That’s just wonderful. Not only do I have the famed Jew that everybody seems to be after, I have the fugitive Reich agent that the New Germania army are looking for. Looks like my payday has come early!”

  The man bundled us up onto his ATV. We were hog-tied and balanced on our fronts, leaning across the bike. I had one of the back wheels below my feet and the other wheel just below my face. Jerry was beside me as the ATV-driving mercenary rode up the hills. The mountain lion wasn’t far from us. He was keeping an eye on us as he roared up the hills. I thought I saw someone peering through the bushes as we left, but I couldn’t be too sure. The forest was winding farther and farther away as we accelerated up the hills and off into the unknown.

  Chapter Two

  Danni Mendez looked on in horror as the ATV disappeared into the distance. She couldn’t believe what she had just seen. A huge man had kidnapped both Jerry and Abel. Even though she didn’t think too highly of Jerry because of his actions toward her and her group, she still felt a connection to Abel. She didn’t know if it was an attraction or the simple fact that Abel was alone in this world. She couldn’t stand to see somebody so innocent be a victim of the world they lived in. That was why she’d decided to become a rebel, after all. To fight for the innocents of the world, and bring back humanity’s right to freedom. It was a long way off, but she believed it was possible.

  She didn’t fancy sticking around for much longer. Now that Jerry had been abducted along with Abel, she could bring her men together and get to safety. The rebels weren’t taking fire anymore, so it confirmed her previous suspicions that Jerry was the one firing at her team. He had managed to kill six of her men. All killed humanely enough, but the fact that they were picked off from afar and shot in the head with a high-powered rifle didn’t bring much solace to her already torn soul. She was in two minds as to what to do. She could get a move on and escape the advancing German forces that were surely making their way to them, or she could attempt to follow the ATV in which Abel and Jerry had been taken away.

  She decided that it was no use following the kidnapping ATV man. She noticed he was large and possessed a certain evil about himself. For many years she had seen many evil faces, but the man she’d just seen ride off into the brush was far more than evil alone. She’d seen something in his eyes that pointed to something more sinister than evil. The pet lion he toted next to him confirmed his presence to her. She wasn’t going to risk more of her men’s lives. Not for Jerry. Unfortunately, in her mind, Abel was now on his own once again.

  “Maybe Jerry will think of something,” she said to herself, still peering through the bushes.

  She knew Jerry was a good thinker. He had shown his resourceful thinking earlier that day when he escaped the arms of the German grip and decimated half her team. For all the hatred she felt toward him, she knew Abel had a good wingman next to him. Somebody who would assure his safety. He had risked his own life after all, trying to keep Abel with him. Maybe Jerry had a plan.

  Danni took one last look through the bushes and saw the ATV tracks that led up the hill. If she held her breath, she was able to hear the faint hum of the bike’s engines scrambling up the hills. The ATV was out of sight, but she knew it wasn’t more than a mile away now.

  She sighed and made her way out of the bushes, back toward her team on the hill. She came across one of her last infantrymen, a guy named Baston.

  “Where’s the prick, then, ay?” Baston asked as Danni approached him. He had a South African accent.

  Africa was one of Germany’s strongholds, but word was that the rebels in Africa were planning a large takeover of Cape Town in the south and Nairobi in the east. A lot of rebels from Africa had made their way to New Germania (formerly the United States) to help the rebel effort in the Americas. Danni was glad to have such a menacing rebel as Baston at her side. He was like a one-man army. He had big arms and sported a red aura to his skin. It was tinted brown, but he was what most would consider white. He had thick blond hair that fell to his shoulders and bounced off his wide neck. He spat on the floor, awaiting Danni’s response. Patience was, surprisingly, one of his strong points.

  “Jerry and Abel have been captured,” she found herself finally saying once she’d caught her breath. Traversing the mountainside had dug stitches into her abdomen akin to being stabbed with a bowie knife over and over again.

  “The pricks made it out, then?” he asked. For some reason, Baston liked using the word “prick” a lot.

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so. They were captured by a man who had some sort of wild animal as his companion. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but it looked like some sort of big cat,” Danni said.

  Baston’s cold eyes went dimmer at Danni’s comments.

  “Shit, we need to get out of here. I’ve heard about that guy before. The Germans use him as a hunter. He tracks fugitives down with his sniffer lions. The guy is a maniac. I actually feel sorry for Jerry and Abel now. They won’t be getting out of there anytime soon. The man’s gonna feed them to his zoo before that happens.”

  Danni nodded her head. She felt as if she needed to defend Abel from being mentioned in the same sentence as Jerry, but she refrained from saying anything at all. She just wanted to get to safety. That was all that mattered. She could figure something out at a later point. Maybe she could convince her men to go on a rescue mission. Maybe she could convince them that Abel was worth something to them. Even if she only wanted to rescue Abel out of sympathy, she was determined to arrange his safe rescue, whatever it took. And by the looks on the faces of her men, it was going to take a lot of convincing.

  “Okay, Baston, tell the others that we are a go. We’ll be heading west to a village just off the ridge. We should be safe there for the time being. The Germans can’t get there without crossing the river to the west. If the weather improves, they might do a flyover in their jets. If we hunker down inside the buildings, we might be able to evade such a maneuver.”

  Baston nodded his head and gave her a comforting smile. Baston never smiled, but when he did, he meant it. “We’ll be fine, Danni. You’re a strong woman. Stronger than most of these men. We’ll get through this.”

  Danni repaid the smile but didn’t feel as optimistic as Baston. She appreciated his candid affection, but her mind was elsewhere. Places she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. She couldn’t quite believe it, but she felt an uneasy emptiness at the thought of Abel being captured by a New Germania bounty hunter. She couldn’t quite imagine the things they would do to him. She decided she should focus on the task at hand. Thoughts of sorrow and despair would have to wait until her men were out of danger.

  Chapter Three

  On a train, in Germany

  Cindy Goldstein grabbed her daughter’s hand and got to her feet. Her daughter slid off the seat and looked up at her mommy with an excitement akin to Christmas Day on her face.

  “The duckies, Mommy! We’re going to feed the duckies!”

  Cindy nodded her head.

  “Yeah, we are!” she said, trying to muster the jovial tone needed for such a statement, but failing on the first syllable.

  Cindy could feel someone staring a hole into the back of her neck. She could hear the heavy breathing the man behind her was doing. With every breath he took, it sounded like the depths of hell were escaping through his lips. It was the sort of angry breathing someone does before they are about to explode.

  “Next stop coming up,” a voice said over the PA.

  “Okay, honey, we are going to get off at this stop now. We need to walk really fast. Is that okay?” Cindy asked her daughter.

  “Why do we have to walk really fast, Mommy?”

  “Because it’s cold outside, and the wind will make us colder if we don’t get a move on,” she said.

  Her daughter smiled. Cindy was glad she didn’t have one of those kids w
ho answered every question with another question. She could see the train was slowing down. The landscape was beginning to take shape through the window. Before, it was meshes of greens and blacks. She was certain they had spent most of their time hurtling through the countryside. She was happy that she could finally see buildings and traffic as they approached their stop. The man behind her got up as well. She could hear the springs underneath his seat flex as his behind left the seat and his feet touched the ground. He stood tall behind her but remained inconspicuous. He knew what he had to do, but he wasn’t going to broadcast his intentions to the whole train.

  In his mind, the only people who knew what was going on were himself and the lady in front of him. He knew she had clocked on to who he was. She’d finally realized who he was, and he was grateful for that. He didn’t have any pity for her, though. All that went out the window when she’d murdered his best friend, her husband, not more than four hours prior. He was determined to make her pay. Her little girl, however, was another issue. He was a policeman, after all. And children should not bear the sins of their parents. As to what he was going to do with her, he was undecided. But he was certain the girl would not come to any harm. He was certain of that for sure.

  “When will the train stop, Mommy?” Mary-Lou asked her mother.

  “Any minute now,” she replied.

  And she was right, because they were coming up to their stop. The stop in question was a little town by the name of Section 45. It was previously known as Helmstetd. The town itself was more of a fortress. It had grown quickly since the 1940s, adding around sixty thousand people to the Germania census. It was a dangerous place — an unlawful place. But Cindy knew that she would be safe in plain sight. She knew that she was in the perfect place. A place they wouldn’t dare look for her, because unfortunately for the Germania government, Helmstetd was also known for its high rebel numbers. The city belonged to New Germania, but the streets belonged to the rebels. She was sure she’d be just fine on those streets.