The Man on Little Sweden

by Sam Harding

  “Do you have a bathroom?”

  “What?” Gordon twisted his face at the question. “Son, I can hardly understand you when you cover your face like that.”

  “Do you have a bathroom?” David asked again, this time more loudly, not bothering to lower the scarf.

  “Uh, yeah. Sure do.” Gordon pointed to the far wall where the two doors bracketed in Christmas lights sat. A sly smile replaced his annoyed look and he said, “Red is for men, green is for ladies. Usually, though, it doesn’t matter because rarely do the ladies come in here – but you never know in today’s world, am I right or am I right?”

  David said nothing, he didn’t even nod, he just got up from the stool, passed Gordon as if he wasn’t there and headed for the men’s room. As he walked, he played out the plan in his head over and over again, and he was now so lost in the moment, he didn’t notice he was sweating even more than before underneath his winter jacket and the scarf covering his face. As he headed towards the bathroom, the old men at the bar no longer paid him any attention, but the two dancers on the stage suspiciously eyed him as they continued about their routine, totally defeated by the mysterious man with the silver eyes, neither of them having seen someone like him enter the club before.

  David could feel the eyes of the dancers upon him, even without actually seeing them, and it made his skin crawl. Mary had been a demon whore, but these two were on a whole different level. This entire place, David knew, was a cesspool for the works of Satan, a cesspool that needed to be cleaned out, gutted from the inside.

  When he made it to the bathroom, David quickly closed and locked the door behind him. Even through the thickness of the door, he could still feel the vibrations from the surround-sound bass, the obnoxious noise screwing into his head like some sort of drill. He gritted his teeth in an effort to fight the oncoming migraine and pulled the Karambit from his left pocket. Then, with his right hand, he reached to the small of his back and pulled a silver Ruger Mark IV pistol from his waistband. Normally, David preferred using a knife, but with the number of people inside the club he would have to resort to the use of a firearm. Besides, being that the weapon was only a .22 caliber, the noise of the music and the heavy snowstorm would easily drown out the sounds of gunshots from a passerby outside.

  David pulled back on the pistol’s slide and chambered one of ten rounds from the magazine. He took a deep breath, opened the bathroom door, and stepped outside. He was surprised to see Gordon was no longer at the front of the club, and was instead standing right in front of the bathroom door, waiting for David to reenter the club. David didn’t realize Gordon was intending to confront him about his suspicion of David using drugs in the bathroom, but it didn’t matter.

  Before Gordon could react or say a word, David lifted his left hand and swiped it across Gordon’s throat, just under where his handlebar mustache hung from his face. Gordon’s eyes went wide and his throat opened up in a spray of crimson. His burly frame fell to the floor and David stepped over him, continuing forward. The Demon Slayer lifted his pistol at the two dancers, who’d been watching at him in confusion, and fired one bullet into the forehead of the brunette on the right. Immediately, the blonde began to scream hysterically and tried to crouch behind the cover of her pole, but David fired two more rounds, one hitting her square in the throat and the other just above the bridge of her nose.

  “Fuck!” One of the old men at the bar screamed, his reaction time delayed by the effects of alcohol as he tried to fall from his chair and take cover. But it was too late; David shot him straight through the top of the skull the moment he landed on the red carpet, and then sent two more bullets into the face of his drinking buddy, dropping him out from his seat at the half-circle bar.

  In the corner of his left eye, David saw the muscular bartender drop behind the bar, and he instinctively knew the man would be coming back up with a gun, most likely a sawn-off shotgun. David lifted his pistol, fired two rounds into the front of the bar and then spun to cover behind a ruby-red support pillar in front of the bar. From there, he braced himself against the pillar, concealing most of his body, and held his pistol out in front of him. It took only five seconds for the bartender to reappear, and as David expected, he held a sawn-off 12-gauge in his hands. Before opening fire, David noticed a single blood spot on the bartender’s white shirt, and realized one of the rounds he’d fired into the bar had actually hit the man in the upper stomach. The low recoil of the .22 made it easy for David to shoot one handed, and he pressed the trigger of the Ruger until it ran out of ammunition, the bartender never getting a chance to fire his weapon in self-defense.

  David took in a deep breath and reassessed the club. Although the music was still on blast, nobody inside moved except for himself. Satisfied he’d completed another job for the Almighty, he shoved his empty pistol back into the waistband of his pants, put his bloody Karambit back into his pocket, and headed for the front door.

  Once he’d made it to the front, he did one final scan of the club, his eyes searching for anyone left standing, and then he exited the building, disappearing into the swirling white.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  2:40 P.M.

  THOMAS STUMBLED IN the thick snow, dropping to his soaking wet knees, his freezing hands once again sinking into the white to break his fall. He’d lost count of how many times he’d gone down and he’d definitely lost count of how many times he’d called out for help, for anyone to come save him from the frozen maze of the forest. He’d imagined his father emerging from the thick trees and picking him up off the ground as he did when they played together at home, but his imagination only led to more anguish because he knew that was not going to happen. Maybe not ever again.

  He was shivering so hard his teeth clicked together, making sounds like a miniature machine gun. When he stood up, snow clung onto him, making his clothing even wetter than it had been before. His torso wasn’t too bad, the thick winter coat was doing its job, but his jeans were soaked and his hiking shoes did little to protect his feet. Little did Thomas realize, had his kidnapper not have changed him out of his pajamas and into his current outfit, he would have certainly frozen to death already. On top of being wet and cold, Thomas was hungrier and thirstier than he could ever remember being in his entire life, and it took all the will-power he had to not eat the snow, but he’d been told by his father earlier in the winter that eating snow actually made thirst worse. How that was possible, Thomas had no idea, but he trusted his father.

  The seven-year-old put his little head down and stepped forward again, his leg sinking to the knee. The wind hadn’t let up at all, but the thickness of the trees had at least helped shelter him from the worst of it. There had been times when massive clumps of snow had fallen from a nearby tree, and if Thomas had been in the line of fire, he’d surely have been buried or hit hard enough to be injured.

  A raven’s caw forced Thomas to look skyward, his eyes searching for the bird that had tormented him since leaving the warehouse. He couldn’t find the bird, all he could see was the cotton-white bottom of the low clouds, the swirling snow, and the spider-web-like designs of the bare tree branches above him. It was almost like staring through a severely cracked windshield that had been propped up against an off-white wall and, for a brief moment, Thomas just stood there looking up, both simultaneously delirious and mesmerized. Another caw snapped Thomas from his trance and then, a shadow briefly covered his face as the large bird swept overhead, changing trees to get a better view of his hopeful future dinner.

  “Go away!” Thomas screamed at the coal-eyed beast. “Leave me alone!”

  Caw! The raven cocked his black head sideways, curious to be addressed after all this time.

  “Please just leave me alone.” Thomas’s voice was much quieter this time as his lip quivered and the tears once again started to flow. “Help me dad. Please, dad. Help me.”

  He tried to wipe the tears with his forearm, but all he did was smear the freezing water across his
face that had collected in the fabric of his jacket. He nearly wiped his face again, but stopped himself and forced his arm to keep down and away from his face. Instead of trying again, Thomas did the only thing he knew he could do, and that was take another step forward.

  He took another step.

  And then another.

  Thoughts of his father fueled the seven-year-old as he continued on through the storm, using every tree within arm’s reach as a brace or as a way to pull himself forward in an attempt to propel him through the snow and speed up his painfully slow trek.

  He kept moving, forcing himself forward, afraid to stop and be buried alive by the never-ending snowfall. The wind picked up a little harder and so he lowered his head and continued on, watching his legs instead of what was in front of him and holding his hands outwards like a cartoon zombie so that he wouldn’t run head-on into a tree.

  But his hands never hit a tree. He continued forward a few more steps, and although he was sickened by the uptick in windspeed, Thomas couldn’t understand why he could no longer feel any trees around him. He lifted his head and squinted as a icy gust smacked him in the face like the back of a frozen hand. He stumbled slightly, and then lifted his hands in an effort to shield himself from nature’s assault. He was having a hard time comprehending what he was seeing, the image not making any sense to him whatsoever.

  How could he be in a place where there was nothing but trees, only to look up and now see a wide-open spot with a farmhouse in the middle and the large Columbia river beyond? A part of him was afraid he’d fallen asleep in the snow and was now dreaming, but how could he be dreaming when his face hurt and his body shook from cold? No, Thomas decided, this was real.

  The farmhouse, with its white paint and chimney giving rise to gray smoke, reminded him of houses from some of the western movies his dad liked to watch, and an old 1970s Chevrolet pickup in the driveway reminded him of something Superman’s dad would have driven around the farm in the comic books.

  Feeling a sudden surge of excitement, Thomas took off for the house at as fast of a pace as he could muster—but then something happened. His vision began to blur, and black began to close in all around him. It was like someone put toilet paper rolls over both eyes, only the rolls were getting smaller and smaller, soon turning his vision into nothing more than two little white dots.

  Caw!

  The raven’s shriek echoed through the snowstorm and was the last thing Thomas heard before falling face first into the knee-deep snow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  3:01 P.M.

  WALLY AND DIANA Fitzgerald had been high-school sweethearts and got married only a few days after their graduation in 1965. They’d grown up together in the town of Cedar Falls, and had lived there their entire lives, occupying a little farmhouse Wally had built with his own two hands in 1967.

  When he’d gone off to fight in Vietnam in ’69, Diana had stayed true to the love of her life, and kept up with the chores on their little splash of land along the Columbia, waiting for her warrior to return home and finally settle down in a far more peaceful setting than the Mekong Delta.

  Neither Wally nor Diana had ever wanted kids of their own, and so, they’d lived happily enough with just each other, and that was more than enough for them. Both had gotten educations and jobs with the local school district, Wally teaching eighth grade and Diana working as a secretary for the superintendant.

  Their life together had been full, peaceful, loving, and mostly uneventful, which was just fine for Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald. However, as he was doing the dishes following a lunch of leftover homemade lasagna, Wally looked out the kitchen window towards the woods along the front edge of his property, unaware that what he saw lying facedown in the thick snow would be the beginning of the end of their uneventful life.

  His arthritic hands dropped the sponge into the sink and he shut off the faucet. Without drying his hands, he moved as fast as his body could take him, out of the kitchen and into the living room where his jacket and hat hung on a peg near the front door.

  “You’re not going to believe me,” he said, passing his wife who was seated on a recliner, knitting something in front of an episode of “The Brady Bunch.” If not for the generator in the shed near the river, the TV wouldn’t even have been working due to the storm knocking the power out only minutes ago.

  “I never do anymore,” Diana quipped, ready for one of her husband’s stupid jokes that she secretly loved to hear, even if she’d heard them all at least a million times.

  “There’s a person laying out in the snow!”

  “I don’t think I’ve heard this one before.” She stopped knitting and peered at him over her bifocals.

  “No, I mean an actual person!” Wally hurriedly shrugged his black and red plaid jacket on and grabbed a trucker-style ball cap from a separate peg. “I’m not kidding you, God as my witness.”

  The Fitzgeralds were a devout Christian couple and rarely even used the word damn, much less threw the Lord’s title around so freely. This caught Diana’s attention, causing her to realize that her husband was not joking at all. She sat her knitting project down on the armrest of her recliner, tossed the quilt from her lap and got to her feet as quickly as she could.

  Seeing her husband about to go out the front door, Diana called, “Grab the gun, Wally!” Her order came in a tone that projected, why would you go out there without a gun, dummy?

  Wally hesitated for a moment, but then had to concede that he was putting the cart before the horse, and quickly strode across the room to the Henry Lever-Action rifle hanging on the mantle above the fireplace. He grabbed the old antique weapon from its mounts on the brick wall and cranked the lever open part way to make sure a .44 caliber round was in its chamber as it very well should have been. Satisfied everything was exactly as he’d left it since last firing the weapon at a series of stationary clay pigeons, Wally shouldered the weapon and turned back towards the door.

  “You’re taking that old thing?” Diana asked, shrugging on her own Carhartt jacket near the door.

  “What’s wrong with it? These rifles have won more battles than . . .”

  “It’s older than we are!”

  “Well, it’s never jammed on me before, and I can promise you it’s better made than that bullcrap AR-nonsense they produce nowadays.” For a brief moment, Wally’s pride in the old rifle had caused him to forget why he’d grabbed it in the first place.

  “Language, Walter!”

  The old man blinked hard and said, “Are we going to stand here and bicker like a couple of old goats or are we going to see who the heck’s laying out in the snow?”

  “Well don’t just stand there then!”

  Wally rolled his eyes and opened the front door. He was greeted by a sudden and strong gust of cold air, the power of it nearly ripping the door from his hand. He held firm until Diana stepped onto the porch and then shut the door behind him with a grunt.

  “There’s no way anyone could survive long out here,” Wally said, more so to himself than to his wife as he made his way towards the dark lump near the edge of the forest, barely visible in the swirling whiteout.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, just keep your eyes open in case there’s a bear or something that was chasing him,” this time Wally yelled his reply in order to be heard over the storm.

  The lump was only about twenty yards from the porch of the house, but due to their age and the weather conditions, it took Wally and Diana considerable time to get to their destination. Once they got to within a few feet, both of them suddenly stopped, their eyes wide in horror.

  “Mary, mother of God, that’s a kid!” Wally exclaimed, lowering the repeater from his shoulder and picking up the pace.

  “Oh no!”

  Wally got to the motionless body first, and grabbed it by the back of the jacket. He pulled hard, barely managing to roll the kid over onto his back. The face was pale, and the lips were blueish, and Wally was nearly ce
rtain the boy was dead. As he’d been taught to do in the past, he placed two fingers on the neck of the boy in order to try and find a carotid pulse he doubted would be there, but, much to Wally’s surprise, the flesh of the boy’s neck was still warm and after a brief moment, he could feel the faint pulse of the artery under his index and middle finger.

  “He’s alive!” Wally exclaimed and then frantically started shaking the boy to get him to come to.

  “We need to get him inside, Wally,” Diana said. “It’s too cold out here!”

  “Can you help me lift him?”

  Diana wasn’t sure whether or not she could, but she nodded anyway.

  Wally slung the repeater onto his shoulder by its sling and pulled the little boy into a sitting position. He then went around behind him and put his own arms under the boy’s, firmly tucking them into his little armpits.

  “I need you to grab his ankles,” Wally said.

  Diana nodded again and did as she was told. On the count of three, both of the Fitzgeralds lifted the boy, Wally having the hardest time since he had most of the boy’s weight on his side. Once they got the boy settled in a grip they could work with, they started back for the farmhouse, this time, moving much more slowly than they had coming out.

  By the time they reached the front porch, both Wally and Diana were breathing so hard they thought their lungs and hearts would explode, but the dying little boy in their arms gave each of them just a little more strength to push the rest of the way into the shelter of the small house.

  As soon as they were through the front door, Diana said, “Get the door closed behind me, I’ll get his wet clothes off!”

  Wally helped Diana lay the boy down on a love seat near the recliner and went back to close the front door. He had to pull even harder this time than before in order to fight the wind, but once it was shut, he made a beeline for the loveseat so that he could help his wife with whatever she needed.