by Ethan Cross
Ackerman raised Maggie’s gun and took aim at the propane tank that he had placed by the back door. He had draped a flaming towel over the tank, in order to ensure that the escaping gas found a spark.
He stood at the back corner of the Asherton Tap and prepared to run—not only to get out of the path of the explosion, but also so he could get to the front of the bar before the people began to pile out.
He squeezed the trigger and rounded the corner. He wished he could have seen the explosion, but that wasn’t part of the plan. He had to settle for auditory gratification in the form of the shocked screams emitted by the bar patrons.
He reached the front of the building and took aim. Here they come. Like lambs to the slaughter.
The first person out was a young, blonde woman, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two. He squeezed the trigger, and the woman’s head snapped back.
The next victim was a thirty-something man with wavy black hair, who had apparently never heard of “women and children first.” A squeeze and a pop, and the man joined the blonde on the pavement.
Apparently still in shock from the explosion and not comprehending what awaited them, the people kept coming.
He aimed and squeezed with cold, mechanical movements. Pop, pop, pop. A couple members of the group escaped and ran down the street, but he expected some stragglers. They weren’t important. He had plenty of playmates still within his grasp.
Finally, the herd seemed to realize that the act of stampeding carried them into the jaws of a predator, and they retreated away from the doorway. So far, everything had gone as anticipated. By now, he surmised that the fire from the explosion should have eaten its way through the back portion of the building. It wouldn’t be long before it reached the main part of the bar, but that was far from the only concern with which the establishment’s patrons would have to contend.
They also had to worry about the madman blocking any escape from the front. Unfortunately for those trapped inside, there were only two ways out. One was into the jaws of the fire, and the other was into the jaws of a wolf.
But he wasn’t satisfied with waiting for them to come to him or burn inside. That was just the beginning.
While keeping a watchful eye out for anyone trying to escape or be a hero, he walked over to where he had left the can of gasoline. He reached down to pick up the can but caught movement in the bar’s doorway.
A pale, young man with red hair tried to make a break for it. He raised the gun. A squeeze and a pop.
The terrified screams and shocked gasps were music to his ears. He wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else trying that again, at least not until they saw what he was about to do. By that time, they would be past the point of no return.
He retrieved the gas can, walked to the front door, and doused the front of the bar with gasoline. He almost emptied the large can but left just enough in reserve to run a trail of liquid to act as a fuse.
He tried to stay in the moment, but his true thoughts wandered away from the events taking place around him. His inner ponderings remained fixed upon the young man he had met earlier that night.
He wondered whether Marcus would show. Maybe his epiphanies of meaning and preordained purpose were only delusions conjured by a warped mind and a twisted perception? Maybe the grand ideas of meaning and destiny were only what he wanted to believe?
He reached into his pocket and retrieved a lighter. He fired a few shots into the building, just to let them know that he was still there, and flipped open the top of the Zippo held in his left hand.
He struck the flint and lowered the beautiful flame toward the trail of gasoline.
Then, he paused. The flame hovered less than a foot from the gas. A sound had come from behind him, and with it, all of his prior doubts faded away.
“Don’t you move,” the voice behind him repeated.
He had heard that voice earlier in the evening.
Marcus.
Maybe there is such a thing as destiny after all?
He turned to see two men standing about twenty feet from him. One of the men, the one with the sandy blonde hair, pointed an H&K 9mm pistol at his head. The other man wielded only a fierce look of determination. Given the choice between them, he would have rather gone up against the man with the gun.
He had outrun bullets and beaten armed gunmen in the past, but he had never faced someone that filled him with a sense of dread the way that Marcus did. He wondered if this was the same sensation that his victims felt when they met his gaze. He couldn’t explain from where the feeling stemmed, but when he looked into Marcus’s eyes, he saw death.
*
Marcus stared into Ackerman’s eyes and tried to anticipate the killer’s next move.
“Slowly close the lighter and drop the gun.” He saw the gas can and knew what Ackerman had been about to do. He also knew that, if Andrew fired, the lighter’s flame would fall into the stream of gasoline and burn everyone in the bar alive. Unfortunately, he didn’t know if Andrew had seen and realized all that he had.
“I knew you would come,” Ackerman said. “You were meant to come. Both of our lives up to this point have been leading to an inevitable confrontation. You’re one side of the coin, and I’m the other. It’s who we are, who we’re meant to be.”
He and Andrew moved closer and tried to slowly circle Ackerman. But he didn’t want to get too close. As long as Ackerman held the flame, they were at the killer’s mercy. “Just close the lighter, and then you can tell me all about our destinies and how we’re connected.”
“How about I keep the gun and the lighter, and I tell you about your friend, Maggie.”
Marcus shivered at the mention of her name.
“She’s a real sweet person, Marcus. Beautiful, of course, but she also possesses a certain undeniable charisma. Quite a catch. I’m sorry I had to take her from you. After you’re finished here, why don’t you come by the abandoned school down on the edge of town and see if you can stop me from turning her insides outside. Come alone … those are the rules. Just you and me. Dark and Light. Yin and Yang. If you break the rules, then she’ll die. I promise you that. And you had better hurry. Patience is not one of my virtues.”
On the last word, Ackerman dropped the lighter.
43
Within the blink of an eye, the flames quested along the line of liquid to the gasoline-soaked building. The sudden wave of heat nearly pushed Marcus and Andrew off of their feet.
As soon as the lighter left his hand, Ackerman dove toward the alley.
Andrew fired, but the wave of heat and a split second’s hesitation made all the difference. Ackerman was gone.
Marcus watched helplessly as the front of the bar transformed into a churning wall of fire.
The wailing from inside had become a deafening barrage of sound. He imagined that this was what hell would sound like. Two walls of flame ensnared the bar’s patrons and crept closer to their prey like a pair of hungry predators. The people trapped inside could do nothing more than wait to burn and pray for a quick death.
He thought about Ackerman, but at the moment, he had more pressing concerns. He stared into the blazing inferno, calculating. React. Adapt, Improvise, Overcome.
He glanced around, trying to find something that he could use to save them. He felt so helpless. He couldn’t allow those people to die, even if it cost his life. He scanned the area, and then inspiration struck.
He noticed that a car had stopped about a block away and its driver sat enthralled by the carnage. He had an idea. He had no clue if it would work. In fact, he had serious doubts that it would work, but he couldn’t sit by and watch as these people burned. I have to do something. I have to try.
He took off in a dead sprint toward the car. His footfalls on the pavement seemed to be coming not from his own feet but from somewhere far away. His heart raced, and his body ached from the abuse he had sustained over the course of the past few days. But his mind was clear. Instinct had tak
en over. There was a time to think and a time to react, and the time for thinking was long past.
When he reached the vehicle, he threw open the door and dragged out the driver. He caught the vehicle’s owner so off guard that the man didn’t even utter a word. The driver just fell to the ground and stared in disbelief as Marcus drove off.
He floored it. He wanted to be sure that his blow would have the desired effect. He had noticed the fire hydrant close to the front of the building, and as soon as he saw it, he knew what he had to do.
When he was about six years old, he had desperately wanted to be a fireman and had dreamed about saving people from a burning building. He always romanticized the experience in his mind, imagining the thrill of running into the flames as everyone else ran out—being the big hero.
Now that the moment he had fantasized about had finally come, feeling like a hero was the furthest thing from his mind. A horrible fear that permeated his whole body and twisted his stomach into knots came much closer to describing the experience. It was screaming and crying and the thought that one mistake could cost someone his or her life.
He hit the hydrant, and the car jerked back. His head smacked into the windshield.
The car’s owner wasn’t going to be very happy, but at this point, the only thing that concerned him was that the collision had accomplished its task. The geyser of water, which shot into the air next to the car, told him that it had.
He shook the stars from his vision and backed the car around into the proper alignment. Then, he swung the car door into the stream of water that shot out from the hole where the fire hydrant had recently sat. The pressure from the water wasn’t as great as the pressure from a fireman’s hose—since it was the fire truck that amplified the flow into a high-pressure stream—but even the reduced pressure combined with the slick pavement made the task difficult.
Andrew ran up next to him and helped to hold the door and angle the water flow toward the building.
The spray of the water stung his skin and fell everywhere like a cold December rain. It was hard to hold the water at one constant angle, and the curvature of the car door made it impossible to aim the stream directly at the building’s opening. But enough of the manmade rainstorm hit the door to quench the flames.
After a moment, the flames dissolved enough to afford those trapped inside a chance to escape.
The patrons fell over each other and knocked one another out of the way, clawing for a chance at freedom. Courtesy, consideration, and chivalry were long-forgotten concepts. People swarmed from the bar like a stampeding herd, resorting back to a primal state and acting on their most basic survival instincts.
When it appeared that everyone had been given the opportunity to escape, he and Andrew released the geyser they had been trying to wrangle and retreated into the street. Upon reaching a safe distance, Marcus turned back toward the carnage. He put his hands on his head and tried to slow his thundering heart.
Andrew hunched over next to him, hands on knees. “Where did you come up with that?”
He looked at Andrew and shrugged. “Haven’t you ever put your finger over the end of a garden hose?”
Andrew looked around at the people that Marcus had saved and nodded. “Time to go after Ackerman.”
“No. You’re going to stay here and help these people. I’m going after Ackerman alone.”
Andrew straightened. “Since when are you calling the shots? I’m the FBI agent, remember. You’re just a civilian, and there’s no way that I can let you face that psychopath without me. I would say the opposite and tell you to stay behind, but I’m not stupid enough to go after Ackerman alone.”
His expression didn’t waver. “Guess I am stupid enough, ’cause I am going alone. He said that if I don’t come by myself, he’d kill her. I don’t know much, but I know that he means to keep his promise if I break his rules. Besides, I can’t tell you how I know it, but I know that I have to do this by myself. Ackerman said that our destinies are connected. I didn’t realize it until now, but I’ve felt the same thing since the first moment I looked into his eyes. I have to face him. I’m meant to face him.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about your destiny. There’s no way—”
With a flash of movement, Marcus stripped the gun from Andrew’s hand and aimed it at the agent’s head. “This isn’t up for discussion.”
Andrew released a slow breath, narrowed his eyes, and gritted his teeth. “Fine.”
Marcus stepped out of reach, lowered the pistol, and twirled it like a gunslinger from the old west. He ejected the magazine and checked the number of rounds. He prayed that he wouldn’t have to use any of them. Satisfied, he thrust the magazine back into the gun and pulled back the slide, jacking a shell into the chamber. “Which way to the school?”
Andrew’s eyes still burned, but he pointed down the street. “Two blocks up. Take a right. Follow that all the way to the edge of town. You can’t miss it.”
He nodded. “I’ll meet you back at Maggie’s apartment. If I’m not there in an hour, don’t worry about me … ’cause I’m already dead.”
With those words, he turned and ran in the direction of the old school building. As he moved away, he clicked on the gun’s safety and placed it in the back of his pants.
He felt the rush of a thousand bad memories swirl around him. He hated guns, even though he had a certain talent for them. Once again, he wondered why all his talents involved violence and death. He wondered if he was really that different from Ackerman. Maybe Ackerman was merely farther along on the path to madness.
He wasn’t sure whether life, death, or insanity awaited him, but he knew that there was no turning back.
44
As Lewis Foster made his way to Maggie’s apartment, he changed course when he heard what sounded like an explosion. As far as he could tell, the noise had come from the direction of the Asherton Tap. When he reached the bar, he parked down the street and crept close to the commotion on foot. He arrived at “The Tap,” as the locals called it, just in time to see the confrontation between Marcus and Ackerman. He didn’t stay to see what happened with the fire. When Ackerman fled the scene, Lewis followed.
Ackerman was fast, but he stayed close enough to see Ackerman enter the abandoned middle school on the edge of town. He didn’t rush in behind the killer. He took his time and scouted the perimeter, analyzing all points of ingress and egress. When satisfied that he had the lay of the land and that Ackerman hadn’t set any obvious traps, he snuck into the building from the opposite side that Ackerman had entered.
He scanned the interior with cautious eyes. He half-expected Ackerman to pop around the corner wearing a wig and his dead mother’s dress. At that point, nothing would have surprised him regarding the depths of his adversary’s insanity.
He took out his military-issue 9mm Beretta and a Surefire 6P flashlight. He utilized the Harries flashlight technique—the back of his support hand, which held the flashlight, pressing against the back of his shooting hand. His particular model of flashlight had the on/off switch conveniently located on the tail cap. This would allow him to keep the light off until he needed it.
He also wore a standard bulletproof vest, which didn’t make him feel much safer when it came to Ackerman. The psychopath used firearms but could just as easily fillet him with a stabbing weapon or rip the life from him with bare hands. The vest provided little defense against these attacks, but it never hurt to be prepared.
He walked up the back stairs and into the main hallway. He paused to listen, but the only sounds were his own heartbeat and rhythmic breathing. The eerie calm made him feel uneasy. Ackerman could have been hiding anywhere. The killer could have been behind any door or lurking in any dark corner.
He walked down the corridor, stopping to look into each room. Ackerman couldn’t have known that he was even here. He had kept his distance during the pursuit, and Ackerman would have expected Marcus and Andrew to have their hands full with the bar fire for a
t least a little while. Despite these facts, he couldn’t help but feel that Ackerman was waiting for him and that he was playing right into the madman’s hands.
Being a man that didn’t scare easily, he hated himself for what he felt. He tried to push his emotions aside, but he couldn’t deny his fear.
A voice came from behind him.
He tensed and whirled around. The school intercom announced, “Paging Mr. Foster. Paging Mr. Foster. Mr. Foster, please report to the principal’s office. The last time I saw you, Lewis, I told you that I’d make you pay. Time to give the devil his due.”
The voice echoed down the dark hallways of the forgotten school and compounded in on itself. It made Lewis feel surrounded.
He tried to keep his emotions under control, but as he continued to check the rooms, he kicked in the doors with more fervor than necessary. He wanted to put an end to Ackerman once and for all. He wanted him to pay for all of the horrible things that he had done. He wanted him to pay for all of the pain he had caused and the innocent lives that he had cut short.
Lewis never had the chance to confront the man that had murdered his family, and he never would. He would never avenge their deaths, but he could avenge the deaths of other innocents. Ackerman hadn’t killed his family, but he would pay for it, nonetheless.
Over the intercom, Ackerman said, “I had hoped that your boss would come for Maggie, but I guess you’ll have to do. The farther I go down this path, the less I’m concerned with revenge anyway. I’ve been in a sporting mood as of late, so keeping in the spirit, I want to play a game. The rules are simple, but I believe that honesty is the best policy. So I want you to know up front that I cheat and that you’re probably going to die either way. At the end of this hallway, you’ll find stairs that lead to the second story. Take the stairs up. Then, a quarter of the way down the upstairs hallway, you’ll see two bathrooms on your left. One is a trap and leads to death. Maggie awaits rescue in the other. You have a fifty percent chance of being the hero and a fifty percent chance of dying. At the end of your miserable life, you’ll beg for a showing of compassion and mercy … of which I am not capable. And just to mess with your mind even further, I’m going to admit to you that death awaits in the girl’s bathroom.”