by Platt, Sean
John
John opened his eyes in a painful blur just in time to see the van barreling toward them.
It slammed into the men behind John, and the momentum hurled him forward into one of the soldiers. They fell to the ground, John on top of the man. When they came to a stop, John’s face was lover close to the soldier’s.
The soldier looked up, his eyes going wide at something he saw in John’s eyes.
Instinct kicked in.
John’s jaw snapped open. He sank hard on the man’s neck and pulled, ripping flesh in frayed chunks with a fluid, animalistic surge. The soldier screamed, flailing as John dug deeper like a hound refusing to loosen its grip. Blood rushed into his mouth, and then, as his jaw locked tighter around the man’s neck, the familiar current of energy coursed into him.
John inhaled deeply, his eyes rolling back in his head as a tidal wave of vitality rushed through his body. All at once, the panic, pain, and hunger that had ravaged him stopped, replaced with a calmness even as chaos erupted around them. For that moment, even as the van screeched and flipped before slamming into the motel, even as the remaining gunmen screamed and fired their weapons, there was nothing but John and the life force he was drinking in fully.
One of the men screamed, “Hold your fire!” repeatedly, but bullets continued to rip into John’s back, legs, and arms. Only when lead bit his shoulder did he consider the danger of a headshot.
John looked down at the withered corpse beneath him, paused, then lifted his gaze at the remaining men in black — four of them.
They stopped firing, staring at John like startled children caught by an angry parent. One man’s weapon shook in his hands.
John looked down at the jacket, concentrated on the belts and buckles that fastened his arms together. All at once, they unfastened, and he began to wriggle free.
“Holy shit!” One of the men fired.
The shot slammed into John’s chest and sent him, gasping for breath, to the ground. He glared up then leaped at the shooter, so fast that no man or bullet could stop him.
His hands found the man’s skin beneath his mask.
“Oh, God, no!”
John fed. Then, his body humming with power, he turned, glared at the three remaining men and barked, “Run!”
They did.
Brock
Brock watched John feed on his soldiers.
What the FUCK?
He took cover behind one of the armored vans the second shit went south.
He wanted to call Jacob and request instructions but was afraid to disappoint his boss. He knew all too well what happened when people let Jacob down. While he wasn’t a strong man, Brock’s boss had plenty of resources. Those he didn’t kill always wished themselves dead soon enough. Returning without John wasn’t an option.
Contemplating his next action, he saw her — the girl he and his squad had kidnapped earlier, sitting in a pickup across the street, head peeking over the dashboard. While she was seemingly staring straight at him, her eyes were more likely on the action.
Brock moved from his spot so he could circle the girl and approach from behind.
John might outpower him, but Brock would be damned if the freak would outsmart him.
Abigail
Abigail’s heart was a jackhammer, banging against the unlit truck’s thin metal walls. She stared at the chaos across the street, helpless, the gun quivering in her hand as her left knee bounced uncontrollably.
She couldn’t believe the ferocity of John’s attack as he bit, clawed, and burned the soldiers. She was paralyzed, horrified, fascinated. Though she’d witnessed the aftermath of John’s feeding, and had seen him in action on the televisions in Larry’s motel room, this was the first time she’d — seen it in person.
Pain crawled up her throat, eyes fighting tears. For the first time, Abigail wasn’t just afraid for John, but seeing his unbridled glee for the feast, she was afraid of him.
The gun in her hand felt suddenly powerless against the narrow-eyed juggernaut of fate.
Brock
Brock was now forty yards behind the girl. He lowered his mask’s night vision goggles, confirming that she was indeed alone, with her attention bolted on the old motel.
He bit his lower lip, raised the goggles, and crept slowly toward the pickup.
John
John stood over the two corpses, invigorated and oddly … euphoric.
He was surprised how much he was enjoying the hunt, though not enough to stop playing with his prey.
His hungry eyes wandered the parking lot for a moment before his ears pricked to the sound of a few gunmen approaching from behind. He raised his hands and turned slowly around, a predatory smile spreading across his face. John threw his head back and quietly dared them as if he, not they with their weapons, held all the cards.
“I’ll give you the same chance as the others,” he leaned forward, paused, and whispered, “run.”
One of the men barked into an unseen radio.
“Alpha Seven to Alpha One, do you copy?”
The radio’s silence washed the man’s face in worry. There was a small fissure in his cool voice as he repeated the call. Gunshots erupted behind the motel and echoed in the morning.
“He’s dead,” John said without emotion, though he had no idea if Alpha One was indeed one of the men he’d already fed on. One was named Sergei and the other Christian. Bits of their memories now intermingled with his, a too-confusing brew that had yet to settle. John tried not to think about them, certain he’d get lost if he did.
“I killed him,” John said, “And you’re next unless you run.”
Two of the men flanking Alpha Seven stepped forward. One yelled, “Hands behind your head, drop down to the ground!”
Part of John was still afraid, but his bloodlust thrust him forward without regard for his life. The gunmen were warm and appetizing, their fear intoxicating, fueling John’s desire to take their lives. Hunger, twisting like a dark parasite, coiled and expanded somewhere inside his guts. Wisps of blue and magenta surrounded the men, beckoning John to draw from their wells. His fingers tingled in anticipation.
He stepped forward, staring down Alpha Seven, almost daring the man to take a shot. The soldier refused to break his stare even as John stood just inches away.
A shot rang out. One of the two flankers was hit and fell to the ground screaming. The remaining gunmen spun around, each facing a different direction, weapons aimed into the fading darkness, searching for the shooter. They both flicked down goggles on their masks. Too late. Another two more shots rang out, and Alpha Seven’s mask shattered in a splash of blood, apparently no match for the bullets. The other man was hit in the leg and fell to the ground, still clutching his gun, looking for the gunman.
Larry appeared, climbing over the top of his overturned van. He jumped down, rifle slung over his shoulder, hair half as wild as his eyes. Apparently John wasn’t the only one invigorated by death.
“Hot damn, that was some fine-ass shooting,” Larry said as he ran forward, paused with a slight grin, then finished the two wounded gunmen with a matching set of head shots. “Don’t worry, I took care of the rest before they could get away.”
John dropped to the ground, laying hands on one of the men’s corpses to capture the last bit of fleeing life. The stream was different, weaker, not as satisfying as the others. It was also full of pain. John flinched as he felt the first gunshot that had hit the man in his leg. He tried pulling away but couldn’t break the connection as he fed. As the corpse burned, John twitched, pain splintering his entire body.
He relived the dead man’s final moments, seeing through the his eyes. He saw Larry barreling toward him, gun drawn, aimed and …
An explosion went off in John’s mind as he jumped back from the corpse and broke the connection.
But he was too late.
Pain twisted through John’s body as something else, far darker and lonelier, slithered around his mind. He felt himself
falling into a void, his body finding velocity as it crashed toward an unknown doom.
No, not again!
Suddenly, a tether snapped him back to reality — Larry’s hand on his shoulder, his voice in his ear, “Hey, buddy, you okay?”
John nodded as the real world slowly returned.
Yet now it seemed somehow darker. An overwhelming sense of doom had taken root in his mind, pressing on John from outside and within. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something awful was about to happen. He could feel it like a cold wind promising a dark storm on the horizon.
“Abigail?” Larry looked up and past John.
“Where’s Abigail?” John said, still groggy.
“Here,” said a voice from behind.
John turned to see one last gunman standing about ten yards away, one hand gripping her shoulder tightly, the other holding a pistol dug into Abigail’s temple.
Thirty-Two
John
“Leave her alone!” John growled, turning to face the gunman holding Abigail. Her eyes were wet and crimson, her face stained pink from tears. She opened her mouth to speak, but the masked man clamped his hand across it.
“You need to come with me,” the man said to John.
“No fucking way.” Larry lifted his rifle and aimed it at the man’s head. “Let her go.”
“If you shoot me,” the gunman said calmly, “my finger will twitch, this gun will go off, and she will die. It’s all very simple, really. Or … we can end this peacefully. John comes with me, you take the girl, and this never happened.”
The man was Brock, John recalled from stolen memories. A real badass. He wasn’t bluffing — he’d shoot Abigail without flinching if he thought all was lost. He had no compunctions about killing, and his past was littered with men, women, children he’d put in the ground.
Brock worked for the same man he saw in his vision. The one who took Abigail before letting her go. And now he had a name to match the bald man’s face.
Jacob.
“Put down the gun,” John told Larry.
Larry didn’t budge. “No way you’re going with him, John. Trust me, it won’t end well for you.”
Brock looked down at the girl. “Tell them, Abigail, do you want to die today?”
She looked up at John, eyes now soaking, and whimpered, “No.”
John, heartbroken, turned to Larry, stepping between him and Brock, directly into Larry’s line of fire. John looked his old friend in the eyes. They were wild and scared, but also angry. Sweat drenched his brow.
“Let me go with him. You take Abigail, and watch over her until I come back.”
“I can’t let you do that.” Larry shook his head, looking past John and at the gunman. “The minute you go, they get what they want. I can’t let that happen. YOU can’t let that happen. This is more important than one person’s life.”
John couldn’t believe what Larry was saying.
“Larry,” John said, hoping to influence any compassion that might be resting in the man’s core. “She’s only a child.”
Larry blinked sweat from his eyes, trying not to flinch from the gunman and Abigail.
“You don’t get it, John, you would choose the same thing. You chose burial to protect the secret, to keep it from them.”
John wished he could remember something from his past life. Anything. It was hell on earth wondering what was so important, so serious enough to swap for a child’s life. He couldn’t imagine anything important enough, except …
Hope!
“Is it … Hope?” he asked, mentioning his love’s name to Larry for the first time.
Larry’s eyes widened in recognition then froze on John as though trying to taste the right answer.
It is Hope.
Dark despair dug deeper into his brain. Something horrible was about to happen. He could feel it racing forward — a train off its tracks, and he, fate’s passenger, had no control.
“Doesn’t matter. Abigail needs me. Needs us. Now.” John turned to Brock. “What do you want me to do?”
“Get in the back of the van.” Brock pointed to one of the identical black-windowed black vans behind him. “There’s a special cell to ensure you won’t … well, you know.” He nodded in reference to the dead men between them. “Once you’re inside and I’m in the driver’s seat, I’ll let the girl go and bring you home. You’ll be perfectly safe. If we wanted you dead, we would’ve struck during daylight.” Brock glanced up at the sky. “The sun is going to rise any minute; we need to get on with it.”
“How do I know you’ll let her go?”
“If we wanted the girl dead, she would never have left our custody when we took her earlier,” Brock sighed, losing patience with the exchange. “Let’s do this.”
John glanced back at Larry, who almost imperceptibly nodded against the weight of reservation.
John tried to signal to his friend not to worry. He’d find a way out of this, he was certain, despite the overwhelming sense of dread pumping through his veins. Right now, this was their only card. Despite his powers, even if he could duplicate the energy blast he’d managed to hurl at Larry earlier, he doubted he could do it any faster than Larry firing a round at Brock. Either way, Abigail would end up taking a bullet.
John approached the van, glancing at Abigail, sucking back a small sea of tears and snot. He winked, as if to promise that all would be well. The lie made her smile, at least for a moment. The glint in her eyes made him smile back.
He prayed this wouldn’t be his last time seeing her. Without memories of his previous life, she was the only thing he had. Without her, he was adrift, reality’s compass broken and more alone than God.
Thirty-Three
Abigail And Larry
Abigail watched John approach the van. She should be brave and do something, but what? The soldier had already warned her that if she tried anything stupid, a team of twelve more men — unseen snipers, he’d said — would, on his command, kill everyone in sight. She didn’t know if he was lying, but couldn’t take any chances.
“He can die, you know,” the soldier told her as they walked toward the motel a few minutes earlier. “If they shoot him in the head enough times, he won’t come back.”
So Abigail stayed silent, her little bit of fight remaining dormant.
As John walked toward the van, she wondered if she’d made the right decision. Wondered if there was anything she could do to make a difference. They’d have him in moments. God only knew what they wanted, but she couldn’t see it ending well for her angel.
The gun tightened against her head, as if the man could read her thoughts and meant to dissuade her.
Larry
Larry watched as John approached the van. The fact that he trusted these men was further indication of how much of his memory remained blank. Larry could think of at least five different things the old John would’ve done to neutralize the situation. But Larry wasn’t about what could have been; he was about being prepared and making things happen.
He still had an ace up his sleeve, and was eager to play it.
Before getting out of the van, Larry reached into his pants pocket, retrieved a customized watch he’d kept as a last resort, and strapped it to his left wrist. While it looked and functioned like any other digital watch, it was also a trigger to detonate a nearby series of explosives.
The gunman briefly lifted his left hand from Abigail’s shoulder to retrieve something from his pants: a remote that opened the van’s side door. He ordered John to climb inside.
Larry saw something stirring in Abigail, like she had her own ace she was itching to play.
Shit.
He had one shot and couldn’t afford another variable in motion. He narrowed his glare, and when Abigail looked into his eyes, he shook his head.
John climbed into the van and looked back at Larry, a vow of I’ll figure something out written on his face. But the odds of that happening were much dimmer once they had him. John had no idea ab
out the power of the forces he was dealing with.
The van door slid shut, and the lock clicked into place.
“Okay,” the gunman said to Larry, “we’re walking back to the van. Once I’m inside, I’ll let her go. The inside is lined with lights, the kind that will burn him. You try anything, and I’ll end his life in an instant.”
Shit.
Larry figured the soldier had something up his sleeve, but hadn’t counted on the van doubling as a killing device. But he also knew they needed John alive and wouldn’t kill him — unless the guy was as reckless as he was desperate.
Larry’s window to act was about to slam shut.
Abigail
Abigail followed the soldier’s instructions carefully, creeping backward, his left hand — holding the remote — on her shoulder, the gun now at her back. She tried to keep her balance, her mind racing for an escape. She searched Larry’s face for another subtle glance or shake of the head to indicate direction, but it was a stone mask.
The soldier instructed her to turn with him as they drew closer to the van, navigated around the side toward the driver’s still-open door. Abigail’s nerves were frayed, waiting for whatever was about to unfold. Dread, fear, and hope waged war inside her, head dizzy and stomach swimming.
Abigail stumbled backward, her foot getting caught up with the soldier’s. Rather than breaking her fall, the soldier stepped back. Her arms instinctively reached out, trying to find some balance before hitting the ground hard. The soldier aimed his gun down at her, his eyes narrow slits.
The chance she’d been waiting for, a moment to help her beloved angel, happened amid an outburst of tangled noise and rolling waves of sudden heat.
The motel room door exploded open in a fiery blast behind them. A second door, farther back, detonated in a blazing echo. The soldier stumbled forward then spun around, diverted briefly by the eruptions. Abigail took her chance, scrambled to her feet and ran toward Larry as gunshots rang from behind.