15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

He took a few steps toward her.

  She tried to scramble as best as she could, but the weight of impending death kept her firmly in place.

  “Please, my daughter,” she said.

  The man didn’t take any notice. He raised his gun and fired a shot, purposely missing her narrowly. He was a good shot; after all, he never missed, but he felt like playing a game.

  “Oh, gosh, I missed!” he said playfully, firing another shot and missing once again. Cindy squirmed as the shots came nearer. The man ended up firing three more shots. Before she knew it, the sticky tile floor of the bathroom was laced with bullet holes. Bits of debris flew through the air as the man kept missing on purpose. Until he didn’t miss. He shot her in the leg.

  “Ahhh,” she mumbled. “My daughter, please don’t kill her.” But the man fired another shot, this time into her other leg. She screamed once more.

  “Damn, I can’t seem to hit the kill shot,” the man said.

  Cindy dragged herself up to a sitting position and shielded her face from the bright light above her head. She looked down at her feet and saw two small holes in her shins, one on each side. Blood was trickling out of her legs; it mixed itself up with the water from the bath she was in before the killer had interrupted her freedom. The man with the gun raised it and pressed it against her wet forehead. Bits of long hair draped down her face. She started to sob.

  “Please, Matthias,” she said.

  The man lowered his gun for a split second. He looked at her in complete shock.

  “Don’t you dare say my name! Don’t you dare!” he said, raising it back up and pressing it even harder into her head. The pressure he was applying nearly toppled her over as she grimaced at the thought of being blown away.

  “Please, Matthias, don’t kill me,” she said.

  But the man didn’t care. He pressed the trigger, but nothing came out. He pressed it once again, and nothing came out.

  “FUCK!” he screamed, turning back around and walking up to his jacket, which was propped up on the edge of the door. He reached into the inside jacket pocket and pulled out a magazine. He replaced his spent mag with a new one and turned back around. He gave her the same look he’d donned before he ran out of ammo.

  This time he didn’t bother with any last words. He just wanted her dead. He was fed up with playing games with her. It was time to end it. He slowly walked up to Cindy, who was still sitting up, and gave her one last glance. He didn’t blink when he raised the gun; he just straightened out his arm. He was about to press down on the trigger when Cindy decided she wasn’t ready to go out without a fight. She kicked his left knee, making him buckle. He tripped on her kick and went flying over her. He couldn’t keep his balance and landed torso first over the bath. Cindy watched as it all seemed to unravel in slow motion. She then heard a massive pop and saw the man’s head explode. The back of his skull widened out, and half his brain matter hung off his spinal cord. She nearly passed out at the sight.

  She couldn’t believe what had just happened. She couldn’t comprehend the luck she must have for something so surreal like that to happen. She watched in awe as the blood-soaked man hung off her bath. His legs wobbled off the sides as they dangled a few centimeters off the floor. She then realized it was her doing that the man was dead. She was the one who had tripped him up. It was the bath that caught him in mid-fall, and his finger that pressed down on the trigger on impact.

  There wasn’t much else Cindy could do, other than scream at the top of her lungs. It was a delayed reaction, but a fitting one nonetheless. How often do people blow their own heads off in freak accidents like that? Not very often, but one thing was for certain — Cindy was ever so glad it wasn’t her head that had the massive hole in it.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  New Germania, Section 8

  Sebastian Faber was secured tightly to a metal folding chair in the middle of the Dark Room. He had metal chains around his midsection and a burlap sack over his head. He couldn’t see anything under the sack. He was completely blinded. He could hear the two guards next to him, though. They were standing at each side of the darkened room. One of them was whistling quietly under his breath, while the other was praying. It was an unusual mesh of sounds. Accompanied by the sobbing coming from the First Officer, the atmosphere of the room was quite audible.

  “You won’t get away with this!” the First Officer shouted from under his blindfolded restraints.

  There was no answer, just more whistling and even more praying. A while passed, and Faber grew tired. He didn’t have much strength left to voice his disdain at the brutality shown toward him. Normally the First Officer was a well-respected and feared individual, but somewhere down the line, his fearsome reputation left him, and he was left a quivering wreck in a darkened room. He pondered the reasons why the Commander had decided to use him as a show of force. He didn’t think it was possible for New Germania to split from the motherland, but some people had seen it coming.

  He remembered vividly that a few hours before he departed from Germany, he was told by an advisor that his life could be in danger in New Germania. He didn’t believe it and brushed it off as hogwash. He regretted that assumption and didn’t believe he had the strength to be a prisoner of war. He wanted his death to come quickly. He was fully aware of the brutality that his people were capable of and remembered watching the execution of the Jews on his television from Germany. He’d always admired Commander Klaus for his brutal executions. It was the Commander’s idea to broadcast them on TV. He liked the idea and kicked himself for not thinking of it first. In Germany there was no need for such broadcasts, as the Jews had been truly eradicated from the motherland, but New Germania was different. They were bigger, and the former USA was a good place to hide, and an even better place to get lost.

  So the executions were successful, and the likelihood was that the First Officer to the German Empire was going to get executed in one of those shows. He knew that Klaus meant business, and he could see that when the Commander had informed him of his intentions to cause a revolution and go against the Reich. He firmly believed that Klaus believed in his cause more than most would expect. He could relate to what Klaus was saying, because he too didn’t like the new direction the Reich was going in. He also thought the Reich and the Empire was looking weak, and what had started off as pure domination, along with inhumane brutality, soon became everything the German Empire fought against. It became impure and biased. It became business and trade. So he understood the Commander’s gripe with the Reich — he just didn’t want a war to break out between both German factions. He knew if the Commander went through with his plan, then it would open up attacks from the rebels both in New Germania and Germany. It could tear the German Empire apart and leave an opening for a new world order. That didn’t sit pretty with Faber, but he was more interested in finding out his fate.

  “Get me that damn cunt, Klaus,” he shouted from under the burlap sack on his head.

  The guard who was whistling stopped and walked up to the tied-up former First Officer. He clipped the man around the ear. “Shut up, you swine. You will speak when we tell you to, okay?” he said, and walked back to his post. He continued to whistle under his breath.

  “If you want to take over the world and demolish the old Reich, then you need brains as well as brawn. Your stupid Commander will do nothing but bring death upon this land! Get that asshole in here right now, and maybe, just maybe, I can convince him to do it the smart way,” Faber said, nearly choking on the loose threads under his restraints.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I couldn’t help but notice the darkness surrounding us. Everywhere I looked, there seemed to be even more darkness. The trees were rustling in the dark, and the road was winding down into even more darkness; it came to the point at which I started to feel a little frightened. I mean, it wasn’t like me to be that scared of the dark. When it’s dark, I tend to just accept it and go on about my life. I guess when you used to live under
a rubbish tip and only went out when it was midnight, darkness is a thing you tend to get used to. But this darkness was different. This darkness seemed to cling onto my bones and rattle at my ribcage, trying to summon up my soul. I felt shivers run down my back. The hairs on my neck stood on end. I looked at Jerry beside me as we continued down the winding, darkened road. I could tell he wasn’t feeling the atmosphere all that much, too. I could see he was a little shaken. I decided to make my fears known.

  “I don’t like this one bit. I don’t think we should be wallowing around in the night like this. If those bodies back there were ambushed during the day, then just imagine what could happen to us now!”

  “Don’t be such a baby,” Jerry said as both our feet kicked the stones underneath them as we walked down the dusty road. It was a wide road, which added to the sense of danger. They could come from any angle, and at the same time, the village lights at the bottom of the hill grew ever closer, like an ominous sign of the devil’s intent to make us suffer.

  “I’m not being a baby — I just feel as if this is stupid. We can’t just walk into a damn rebel stronghold and assume they’ll take us in. What if they heard about your sniping skills and how you killed some of the good guys? You reckon they won’t string your ass up just for knocking on their door?” I said while my feet were kicking up all sorts of dirt as we speed-walked down the mountain road.

  “I don’t really care what they do to me. It’s you I’m doing this for,” Jerry muttered.

  “Me? How in the hell do you work that one out?”

  Jerry didn’t answer me; he just continued to walk. I began to dart my eyes from left to right as I worried about a roadside attack on us.

  “Hello, anyone there?” I said.

  “Look, Abel, I promised I’d get you to safety, so just relax and heed my promise!”

  “My ass — since I met you, I’ve been anything but safe. Since we met, I’ve been shot at more times than I care to remember, and let’s not forget, you punched me in the face, tackled me out of a moving truck, and tackled me through a damn steel cage door! I don’t know about you, but my idea of safety is a nice warm meal and a friendly face, not a pissed-off Yank with a chip on his shoulder.”

  Jerry didn’t answer me; he just walked on, ignoring my rant. I guess he was used to it. I had ranted a lot, let’s not forget.

  “Fine, ignore me. I guess that’s the mature thing to do,” I said.

  And that was what he did. He ignored me.

  We continued to walk down the road until we got to the end of the incline. I saw that the village wasn’t far off from here. We were no more than a few hundred yards away. And then the leaves above us cracked and a few of them fell. Splinters of bark ricocheted off the trees, and the dirt beneath our feet kicked up as dust went flying over us. We were being shot at once again. I had grown accustomed to the sound of gunfire, so I was on the floor faster than you could say bang. Jerry, on the other hand, had been shot in the shoulder. He hit the floor in a matter of seconds, and we were both ducking for cover, rolling into the bushes. The people in the village were the ones firing at us. I guess it was stupid to assume that this whole trip to safety was going to be, well…anything but safe.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Can you see them? How many are there?” Danni asked as Baston knelt beside her. He was aiming a rifle down the field. He had seen two people, maybe three. He wasn’t sure; they had been walking down the dirt road toward the village.

  “I don’t know. I think I saw two, but I can’t be sure. Maybe there were three. I think I got one in the torso. He went down like a sack of shit,” Baston said, half laughing at his own remark.

  Quako had run into the chapel to alert the other men. A few were now at the windows of the chapel, aiming their rifles. A few more had come out and were ready to race down the field.

  “The Germans sent scouts!” Hanze said from the door. He was still drinking his liquor and smoking his cigarette.

  “We can’t be sure, ay,” Baston said.

  Suddenly Danni heard a familiar voice from afar. She scrunched her eyes as tightly as possible and narrowed her vision toward the two mysterious men they were shooting at.

  “I thought I heard something,” Danni said, half to herself, half out loud for confirmation.

  “Yeah, you’re damn right about hearing something, ay,” Baston said, loading his rifle with a full clip. “You’re hearing me shoot at these Krauts,” he said, aiming his gun.

  “Hold on,” Danni said, putting a firm hand on Baston’s shoulder. “I think that may be Abel,” she said.

  “Who’s Abel?” Hanze asked as he took a swig on his whiskey.

  “A Jew,” Baston said bluntly. He was still fiddling around with his rifle, aiming down its sights while trying to get a decent shot.

  “Not just any Jew — he is the last, according the Germans. I saw both him and Jerry get abducted by some madman on an ATV,” she said.

  There was a moment of silence, and then it was spoiled by a pinging shot from Baston’s rifle.

  “Jesus, hold on!” Danni said. “We can’t just kill them if it is Jerry and the Jew,” she continued.

  “Fuck Jerry — he killed half of our group,” Baston said unsympathetically. He cocked the bolt on his rifle and took another shot.

  “You guys were in possession of a Jew?” Hanze asked from the doorway. He didn’t seem that afraid; he was completely oblivious to the reality in which he stood. Most men would be ducking for cover, but Hanze was too loaded with whiskey to give a damn about such protocol.

  “We didn’t have possession of him — he just showed up, Jerry captured him, and…”

  She was interrupted by Baston.

  “Fuck Jerry and fuck the Jew,” he said, taking another shot.

  PING.

  He cocked the bolt once again. A man came rushing out of the chapel with a pair of binoculars. He gave them to Danni.

  “Check if they are known to you. If they are, we’ll go over there and capture them. If not, we’ll take them out from here,” the man said.

  Danni placed the binoculars to her face and peered through them. She heard another shot from Baston. She couldn’t let her disdain boil within her any longer — she had to let it all out.

  “For fuck’s sake, Baston, stop shooting for one damn second!” she shouted.

  Baston turned his head and looked a little embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry, Danni. I forgot my place,” he said, sounding like a depressed android remembering his prior programming.

  “In the future, though, listen to my orders. If Jerry and the Jew are still alive, I want them to stay that way. We’ll deal with Jerry and Abel on our terms.”

  There was another long pause as Danni looked through the binoculars some more. She couldn’t make out where the two figures were supposed to be.

  “Where are they?” she asked.

  “Two degrees north,” Baston chimed in.

  He was right; she saw them hunched down in the tree line. Jerry was wounded. It looked like a clean shot. It didn’t look fatal. Abel, on the other hand, had a rifle in his hands, similar to the one Baston had. He had it scoped, and it was pointing straight at Danni.

  “Shit,” she said.

  ***

  “Oh, my God, it’s Danni,” I said in disbelief.

  Jerry was reeling in pain just beside me. He didn’t look like he cared who it was — he just wanted revenge.

  “Shoot back. They fucking shot me!” he said angrily.

  I didn’t shoot back. I just watched as the beautiful Danni looked through her binoculars. She was transfixed on me, just staring and not moving. The big bastard beside her had stopped firing. Maybe they knew it was us. I wasn’t sure if she could see me all that well. I decided to get out of cover and make myself known. I got up to my feet. The sound of the leaves brushing against my arms as I did so caused Jerry alarm.

  “What the hell are you doing? You’re going to get shot if you’re not careful!�
��

  “Trust me, I won’t get shot. You might, though,” I said, and left the comfort of our cover. I stepped out of the tree line and planted my feet on the soggy marsh that stood in front of me. A hundred yards or so in front stood Danni and a whole lot of stick figures, or what looked like stick figures. Everyone was so still. The night sky was dark, and the moon became bright. I could hear the danger in the air as the wind seemed to suck itself out of the atmosphere and leave nothing but dead silence behind. I held my breath and put my hands up. I dropped the weapon I was holding, and it landed with a squelch on the floor.

  “I surrender!” I yelled as loudly as I could. The deathly silence was destroyed by my shrieking voice. “It’s me, ABEL!” I screamed once again.

  “For fuck’s sake,” I heard Jerry say from behind me. “I didn’t know Danni would be down here as well,” he said.

  Jerry was still in his makeshift trench, holding onto his shoulder. He looked defeated, and I could see that he knew he was in trouble. I didn’t think Danni would be all too pleased to see him again. But I could be wrong — stranger things have happened!

  “Everything will be just fine, Jerry. Don’t go shooting off your mouth or your damn gun, and you should survive with only a few cuts and bruises,” I said.

  “Whatever, kid, I’m as good as dead,” he responded.

  And then the stick figures from afar advanced on our position. I kept my hands up and fell to my knees, showing my complete submissiveness. Jerry, on the other hand, remained on his keister, mumbling about how we were done for.

  I didn’t know if Danni would forgive him for what he’d done to those rebels, but I was more interested in seeing her again. Maybe that was when I should have seen it coming.

  Lust is a sin, after all, and you know what they say — love is blind.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A Motel, Section 45, Germany

  Cindy Goldstein was trying not to pass out at the sight of the dead man in her bathtub. The guy’s brains were still spilling out of his head as she watched on in horror from the floor. She hadn’t managed to get up to her feet yet. The bullet holes in her shins were still stinging. The bleeding wasn’t bad; she knew she would survive those gunshot wounds. She wasn’t a doctor, but she knew that, based on the amount of blood escaping from her wounds, she’d be just fine. Usually, life-threatening wounds project blood out in arcs of red goo, spilling out at liters a minute, killing in a few. But the wounds she was suffering from were painful, but not dangerous. If she could wrap some bandages around her shins, then she could get out of the motel and catch another train or hitch a ride somewhere.