by Erik Carter
They scrambled to the backside of the credenza, combining their strength to drag Jonathan with them.
Behind the credenza, Dale threw himself over them again. More debris fell. The sound was relentless. And it had reached a point that time made no sense. It felt like an hour. But knowing how rapidly the MAC-10 fired, it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.
And then something changed.
He couldn’t tell if the sound had ended—his ears were ringing so loudly—but there was a different energy. He glanced up.
The firefight had ended.
And the floor was strewn with bodies.
Dale looked at Jane and mouthed, Stay here.
He kept his Model 36 tightly in his hand and stood—crouching low—then zigzagged through the bodies to the pony wall, ducking below it. He took one deep breath and cleared the top of the wall.
The kitchen was empty.
The assassin was gone.
Which meant Dale had to chase him.
He turned toward the front door.
It was only then that the gravity of the situation struck him.
Between him and the front door, the cabin’s living room was covered with bodies. Some moving. And groaning. But most completely dead. There were two metallic smells in the air—gunpowder and blood.
And that blood was everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Dale had never seen so much. And body parts. Entrails and brain matter. Dale had seen some very gruesome things during his time as a BEI agent. But this was absolutely horrendous. The front door was ahead of him, where he needed to go to chase after the person who had brought about this massacre, but for a moment Dale froze. His hands went to his knees. And his stomach turned.
Focus. Stay on track.
He stood back up and moved quickly through the bodies, his boots sloshing through the blood, and ran out the door.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Jane shook all over. And she couldn’t budge. Something wouldn’t let her move an inch from where she was.
Then she reminded herself of her purpose—something more important than selfishness—and she turned to John. He was still breathing. Still unconscious. She frantically inspected him, checking him all over.
No wounds.
She exhaled.
John’s chest rose and sank slowly. Blissfully unaware. If there was a silver lining to the terror Jane had just witnessed, it was that at least John hadn’t witnessed it too.
She made herself look over the top of the credenza and out into the room.
Bodies everywhere. People moaning. She heard men saying women’s names. One man quietly uttered, “Mamma.”
Jane’s mind flashed to memories, moments from childhood vacations in this cabin. Where the men had now died. Some of her best childhood memories. This had been her oasis. Her Land of Oz.
There was an awful smell in the air. Jane couldn’t even tell what it was, but it was natural, earthy, human.
Jane turned to the side and was sick.
She wiped her mouth. Then a strange impulse struck her.
She stood, gave one more protective glance to John, and slowly began walking through the bodies, stepping between and over the men—like dodging puddles in a rain-soaked path.
One man looked at her sadly as she walked past.
She saw her older brother.
Danny was on his stomach, head to the floor, and the part of his face that should have been visible was missing—just a bloody tangle of flesh and bone. His bright red hair was all that revealed his identity. Jane was surprised by how sad this made her. But she didn’t stop.
She kept searching. More bodies. Gallons of blood.
And there he was.
On the far wall. A huge, rounded mass. The highest peak in the mountain range of figures on the floor.
Jane moved quicker, dodging bodies, and as she came to her father, she saw Marco Alfonsi crouched behind his girth, using his body for cover, both hands on his stomach as he peered over him toward the kitchen.
Marco turned to her. Sheer dread on his face. “Is he gone?”
Fury swept over Jane. “Don’t touch him, you slime!”
She slapped him.
Marco scuttled to his feet and ran through the bodies—tripping and falling once—then out the door.
She looked down at her father.
His eyes were open. And they looked right back into hers.
Jane dropped to her knees.
“Daddy…”
Blood burst from the corner of his mouth. His body convulsed. There was a dark crater in his stomach. One hand was on the wound, and he brought his free hand to her face.
The hand was massive, like the rest of Big Paul. It engulfed the entire side of her face, making her feel tiny. The hand was warm, rough with calluses. Fingers the size of sausages.
His brown eyes remained on her. He opened his mouth. Small noises.
He was trying to speak.
“For…”
She put her hand on his. Tears fell from her eyes.
“Forg—… Forgive me.”
She squeezed his hand. “I forgive you, Daddy.”
Big Paul smiled. Tension fell from his face. A look of serenity. Then he closed his eyes and stopped breathing.
Jane collapsed onto his chest. She wept.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Marco grabbed the board and gave it a strong tug. There was a tearing sound from the wood as it pulled free from the nails.
Three boards removed from the base of the cabin’s front porch. The gap was now big enough.
He quickly dropped to his hands and knees and crawled under the porch. His fingers dug into clods of dirt. Weeds scratched at his arms. Rocks dug into his palms.
When he reached the front of the porch, he leaned forward and peered through a gap between two of the boards. All the gigantic tree trunks were before him, bathed in the blue moonlight. He held perfectly still.
And he heard them again.
Footsteps. Two sets. One closer, one farther away.
That’s why he’d stopped. Why he hadn’t run to his car. Because there were people out in the trees. Two people. And one of them was undoubtedly El Vacío.
Marco turned around, resting his back against the boards, and brought his knees to his chest. He put his elbows on his thighs, placed his hands together, and dropped his head.
He began to pray. For the first time in a really, really long time. He tried to remember any of his Latin. And couldn’t. English, then.
“God,” he said aloud, “if you spare me from this monster, I promise I can be a better man. A solemn oath.”
Footsteps again.
Closer.
Marco whipped around, stuck his eye to the crack again.
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.
He could see a figure among the trunks right on the other side of the gravel road.
But it wasn’t El Vacío.
It was the man who had been in the cabin when Marco and the others had arrived. The man who’d had his gun pointed toward the table.
He was evidently chasing El Vacío. He must have been a cop.
What luck!
Maybe this stranger would end up being Marco’s savior, his knight in shining armor.
Maybe Marco would make it through this after all.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Dale ran out into the pillar-like trunks, illuminated so ghostly in the bluish moonlight, massive black cylinders bolting up into the air and disappearing into the night.
It was quiet. And still. Dale thought about the Steinbeck quote again, and even in the midst of his current situation—chasing after a shadowy assassin who had just slaughtered a roomful of people—the echoes of the trees’ age weighed heavy on him. They truly were ambassadors from another time, as Steinbeck had called them. Some of these trees were 2,000 years old. That put them back to the time of Christ. They’d seen the Romans. They’d seen the Middle Ages. They’d seen Napoleon. They’d been around long before the United Stat
es. It made Dale’s current situation seem trivial—silly, even—and it made him feel rather small.
But that didn’t change the fact that there was a monster out in those trees. And right now, as Dale slipped in among the enormous trunks, he was the hunter, chasing down the assassin. But the roles could very quickly switch.
And Dale could end up being the hunted.
After all, the assassin could be waiting for him, ready to let loose of more bullets.
The forest floor was soft, flat, and smooth. No thorny undergrowth to tear at his jeans. No shrubs to trip him up. In the bright moonlight, everything seemed surreal, almost like some kind of mystical fairytale. And Dale felt the presence of the trees all around him. They had their own gravitational pulls.
Dale hadn’t heard an engine start, but he presumed that the assassin would be making his way toward a vehicle, an escape. So Dale’s best bet was to keep an eye toward the road, which was now clogged with an array of luxury vehicles and a beaten-up Cordoba.
He stopped, posted himself behind one of the trunks—which dwarfed him, making him look like a toy soldier—and listened. No footsteps. He had to be cautious, but he also had to hurry.
So he darted off.
And then there was a loud snap.
Gunfire. Rapid-fire.
From the MAC-10.
Dale bolted behind one of the gigantic trees. There were heavy, deep thunks as the bullets ripped into the trunk. Dale thought of the scarring that would happen to the tree and then quickly remembered that it was likely a thousand years old at least. This incident would be but a blip in its history. The marks would be gone soon enough.
The bullets stopped. There was a brief pause and then a metallic thud, the sound of the MAC-10 dropping to the ground.
Dale knew that the assassin had depleted his MAC-10. That weapon could run through a high-capacity magazine in a matter of seconds. Now the assassin was going to be using his custom sniper rifle. And from what Dale saw, it was likely a single-shot bolt-action. El Vacío would have to choose his shot carefully.
Dale angled his ear to the side of the trunk. Listened. More quiet all around him, the eerie stillness.
A small patter.
An animal, probably.
Then more sounds. Subtle. But just noticeable. El Vacío was about fifty feet away from him.
A world-class assassin. Only yards away. The same one who had just singlehandedly plowed through a small army of mobsters.
Dale could be precise and methodical, use his ample brain to its fullest. But he knew that wouldn’t be enough. This assassin was clearly intelligent as well, so if Dale were to try to match wits with him, he’d end up a piece of Swiss cheese like the people back in the cabin. Dale held no advantage over the assassin intellectually.
In addition to brainpower, Dale was known for his ingenuity, and in a situation like this, ingenuity was all that was going to keep him alive.
To win this round, Dale had to play a wildcard.
He began unbuttoning his shirt.
Chapter Fifty-Six
El Vacío concealed himself alongside an enormous fallen tree—the top curve of the trunk twelve feet in the air—and rested the barrel of his sniper rifle on a snapped branch. The scope’s crosshairs fell directly on the tree he’d fired upon, where the cop was hiding. There were wide stretches of open forest floor on either side of the tree.
Which meant the cop had nowhere to run.
El Vacío would make it a quick, clean kill. The man deserved as much. He’d earned an honorable, warrior’s death.
Any moment now, El Vacío would see movement. The man would dash out from behind the tree, make a run for it. El Vacío had his scope aimed directly dead-center on the trunk, waiting. He could quickly swing the rifle in either direction.
Any moment now…
And there it was. A flurry of movement to the left, the man’s arms flailing. El Vacío squeezed. He saw the impact, watched the man’s body twist in the air.
And he noticed something strange.
An extremely thin shaft from the bottom of the cop’s shirt. And he noticed that everything else about the man looked … wrong.
A split second. That’s all the time it took to figure out what had happened.
He hadn’t shot the cop.
He shot his shirt, affixed to the top of a branch that the cop had thrown like a javelin.
Clever. El Vacío respected him even more.
But there was no time for professional admiration. Because the cop would be upon him at any moment.
As if in response to El Vacío’s prophecy, he heard footsteps. Approaching. Rapidly. At a run.
He yanked the bolt back, cleared the empty cartridge, and was reaching into his pocket for another round, when the man was upon him, turning the corner and leveling his gun at him.
And for just a moment, El Vacío saw him in the moonlight before he fired his gun, a Smith & Wesson Model 36, nickel-plated, round-butt. The man was shirtless, and his eyes showed cold determination. He squeezed the trigger. The flash of the shot lit the cop’s face.
And then there was blinding pain.
A warm splatter of blood against El Vacío’s cheek and an eruption from his shoulder. El Vacío let out a scream that roared through the stillness of the trees. Somewhere, far, far above, there was the flapping of a bird’s wings.
El Vacío had no opportunity to register his destroyed right shoulder, because the man leapt upon him. Another jolt of pain in his shoulder. There was a flurry of movement, and El Vacío welcomed the action, as the adrenaline pulled his mind away from the pulsing destruction in his shoulder.
The cop got an arm around El Vacío’s neck and yanked. El Vacío swung his left elbow back into the man’s ribs, pushing him back. The cop threw his weight toward El Vacío, putting both hands forward, going for his neck. El Vacío tried to get his right arm to move in response. It wasn’t listening. So he took a swing with his left, missing, but then was able to knee the man in the side.
From the corner of his eye, El Vacío saw his sniper rifle, only a couple feet away, angled against the trunk. He reached for it. His fingers touched the stock before the cop yanked him back. El Vacío ducked a roundhouse then kicked his foot toward the gun. He smashed his heel down, and teetered the rifle up, grabbed it by the stock, and swung it up like a golf club, hitting the cop squarely under the jaw.
The cop stumbled back, and when the two men looked at each other, El Vacío knew he had gotten a winning shot. The man’s eyes had that bizarre look a person gets when they’ve been truly rattled. That look a boxer gets after a devastating hook, the look that makes the referee call the fight. A stunned look. Completely senseless. He stumbled about aimlessly, like a plastered wino.
Normally this would give El Vacío a chance to finish a person off. But now he had an opportunity to flee, and he also knew that this man was one of the most ingenious people he’d ever met. If he didn’t take advantage of this opportunity, El Vacío might not get out at all.
As the cop staggered about the forest, that shellshocked look on his face, El Vacío scuttled forward, his right arm dangling painfully. The Cordoba was in front of him. He was on the gravel road. He dug into his pocket. Retrieved the keys. Got in. Fired it up.
He did a quick three-point turn—awkwardly with one arm—then gunned the gas. Tires sprayed gravel, and then he was off, barreling down the road.
El Vacío looked to the rear view mirror. The cop stumbled out onto the road, looking toward him. And he fired his gun. Twice. Missing badly.
Jesus, this guy really was a survivor.
As he watched in the mirror, El Vacío could see that the cop was still uneven, but not as wobbly as he had been. His senses were starting to return. He stumbled toward the Pantera.
And El Vacío floored the gas pedal.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Dale lumbered toward Arancia. She was only a few feet away, swinging about violently in his vision. With each step, he tried to put o
ne foot carefully in front of the other, but he kept teetering to either side. Dizziness. Off-balance. The branches and mighty trunks surrounding him moved and swirled. His boots shuffled in the gravel. He felt badly inebriated. Dale wasn’t a drinker and had only been drunk a handful of times in his life. It wasn’t a sensation he enjoyed. And he didn’t like this either. Not at all.
As he got to Arancia, he stumbled over, whacked into her fender. Put his hands on the hood. Hoped he hadn’t dented her. He quickly looked. He hadn’t.
He breathed heavily and looked up to the road. The Cordoba was nowhere to be seen. He could just hear it in the distance.
He shuffled forward. To the door. He reached for the handle. Missed. Reached. Missed again. Got his hand on it. And stumbled. He fell over. Onto the road.
If he could just catch his breath.
He swung his back around to Arancia. The metal of the door felt ice-cold against his bare back. He let his head rest against the door as well. His hair was sweaty. He breathed in, trying to gather himself. Reached up for the handle. His hand dropped down, hit him in the side.
It was then he knew. He wasn’t going to be able to chase after the assassin. He was in no way going to be safe enough to drive.
But there was the cabin.
And Jane and Jonathan.
So he could at least try to walk. He put his hands to the gravel and pushed up.
Back on his feet. Left foot forward. Then the right. He was feeling a little bit steadier.
The cabin was before him. He picked up the pace. The road twisted and wavered, but he was at least walking steadily now.
Ahead, the cabin’s windows were still alight. One of them was busted. And Dale could see movement. At the door. A figure. He put both hands on his gun.
But as he drew closer, he saw that it was Jane. And she was struggling. She was pulling at Jonathan—still unconscious and tied to the chair—trying to get him out of the cabin.
Dale picked up the pace even more. To help her.
