by Tom Clarke
“What about the Deacon” Nico asked as we ran back towards Darrel’s SUV.
“Bring him with us” I said, “We will need to question him some more.”
As we rounded the building I heard the crack of a rifle being fired. The Deacon, who had just been shot one time in the chest, slumped over forward, his face in the dirt.
“Sniper, wood line!” Darrel yelled pointing at the wooded area to the rear of the hospital.
The Deacon started to sit up, the second shot from the wood line hit him in the head, knocking him back to the ground, killing him instantly.
Keith, Darrel, Nico, and I reversed our course and ran back to the corner of the building using it as a position of cover. The three of us had our handguns out, I looked at Nico who was unarmed.
“Here” I said as I handed him my folding knife. Nico looked at the knife, then at me, “Better than nothing” I said.
Nico nodded his head in agreement as he opened the knife. “Can you see him” I asked Keith who was lying down on the ground and peering around the corner of the building. “No. I’m not sure that he was able to see us though.”
When we had sat the Deacon down we had sat him in such a manner that the headlights from Darrel’s SUV were shinning in his face.
There were no other lights in the parking lot so our movements would have been obscured by the darkness while the Deacon was lit up.
“Got him!” Keith said. “Moving out of the tree line, single shooter approaching Darrel’s SUV. Jim, he’s staring at the headlights on the SUV and the Deacon.”
“Keith” I whispered, “you stay here, cover the tree line, Nico stay with him. Darrel you and I will move, you go left I will roll right, you cover I’ll hit him.” Keith, Darrel and Nico all nodded in agreement.
Keith, who was lying on his stomach, slowly shuffled back and out from the building, improving his line of sight, while still remaining under the cover of darkness.
He then spread his legs, bent his left knee to about a 45-degree angle, and rotated his ankles so they were flat against the ground. He extended his right arm out, rolling just slightly onto his right shoulder allowing for a better shooting position.
Keith knew that he would have a hard time hitting any specific targets in the woods from his location, but he would be able to put some shots onto any muzzle flashes he saw.
As soon as Keith was set, he quietly said “Ready.” I looked at Nico, he had taken a position so that he could act as a spotter for Keith while still being in a position that he could maintain coverage behind them. I looked at Darrel, he nodded and we stepped from behind the cover of the building.
Darrel moved to the left across the front of the building staying in the darkness, I moved out to the right. We moved quickly, taking deep heel to toe steps being very careful not to drag our feet.
As we approached the person with the rifle who had just killed the Deacon our position was almost like a pyramid. Darrel and I moving as the bottom and our target as the tip.
As we got close Darrel said “Hey”, our target looked up from the Deacon and into the darkness, they started to raise their rifle when I fired twice, both of my rounds hitting center mass. The person with the rifle winced in pain and started to rotate, Darrel then fired twice, also hitting center mass in the upper chest area. The person dropped their rifle, went to their knees, and then fell over onto the ground. Darrel and I both ran over and took cover behind his SUV.
Darrel reached into the cab and turned the headlights off, he then crawled into the back of the SUV and retrieved his body armor. Darrel slid the body armor on and grabbed a bag from the back seat that contained extra magazines, a flashlight, and some other supplies.
“I’m going to grab the rifle” I said. Darrel nodded and then moved so that he was now using the back quarter-panel of the SUV as cover as he pointed his handgun in the direction that the original rifle shots had come from.
I quickly ran out from behind the cover of the SUV and grabbed the rifle that the shooter had used. I then dropped to the ground next to the body of the shooter, reached up and pulled back the hood on the black sweatshirt that they were wearing to try and see who it was that Darrel and I had just shot.
As soon as I saw their face I became physically ill, it was Sylvia, Danny’s wife. “Oh my God!” I said,
“Jim what is it?” Darrel said from behind the SUV.
“No, no, no….please, come on Syl, please” I pleaded as I checked her for a pulse. She was gone, our shots had done the damage that we had intended them to do, I had just killed my friend’s wife.
It came crashing home hard! It felt like I had just got hit in the head, I could hear that low hum between my ears, my ability to focus started to fade. All I could think was that I had given that Deacon the address for Danny’s house, they went there and took what was left of Syl and then made me kill her.
I was just sitting there, trying to breathe, oblivious to what was happening around me. I could hear Darrel yelling for me to get into the SUV, but it was just white noise that made no sense to me.
I could then hear Darrel yelling for Keith, yelling for support and that I had been hit. I had not been hit by gunfire, but that was the only thing that Darrel’s brain could come up with. As Keith and Abegg ran from their position I started to come back into focus, I could hear Darrel yelling at me from behind the cover of his SUV.
It took a few seconds but the sound of Darrel’s voice became recognizable to me, then it was replaced with laughter.
A low giggle that started getting louder and more pronounced, it was the laugh of a carnival clown that was soaked in evil. The laugh started to drown out everything else, my ability to focus started fading again and I suddenly felt very cold.
I looked up and saw Keith running towards me, he seemed to be running in slow motion, he was yelling and pointing at something behind me.
It was almost like a dream, I was trying to make out what Keith was yelling, but it just did not make any sense to me. All I could hear was that low giggling, almost guttural laugh. I turned and looked back at Syl, seeing her lifeless body there, and the mental image I had of my friend Danny jumping in front of a truck and being killed started to well an anger inside me that made the laughing just a little less intense.
From my kneeling position, I turned and looked behind me at the body of the Deacon and immediately realized where the laughing was coming from. Grergedes dead body was now sitting up and laughing.
I just sat there, on my knees, looking at the Deacon as he giggled, then looked right at me and smiled. “He’s waiting for you Jimmy” the Deacon said as he raised an arm and pointed right at my forehead.
“He’s waiting for” and that was all that the Deacon could get out again before Keith, using his department issued Glock 27 handgun, delivered three, .40 caliber, close proximity head shots to the Deacon.
The laughter in my head stopped as the Deacon went back to being even more dead than he already was.
Darrel grabbed me and pulled me to my feet as Keith moved up, covering the Deacon’s body as he got closer.
Once I was back up on my feet Keith said “Cover!”
Darrel and I covered the body of the Deacon as Keith holstered his handgun then walked up and kicked the Deacon in the groin in an effort to ensure that he was really dead this time.
The Deacon didn’t move. That and the fact that the majority of his head had been removed by Keith’s handgun shots told us that he was not getting up. I looked at Keith and said, “Thanks bro” Keith looked at me, and then at Syl’s body.
“Jesus Jimmy, is that Sylvia?” Keith said.
Before I could respond Abegg started yelling something in what I could only assume was Swedish. “English Nico!” Darrel yelled, still looking at the bodies of Sylvia and the Deacon.
“Contact wood line!” Abegg yelled again in broken English.
Darrel and Keith both turned and joined Abegg behind the SUV. I holstered my handgun, reached down and put m
y hand on Syl’s face. “I’m sorry Syl” I said trying hard not to choke up.
I picked up the M-4 rifle she had been armed with, I dropped the magazine looking to see how many more rounds were left. I then pulled the charging handle just slightly to the rear exposing the round still in the chamber. I let the charging handle go forward, reseated the mostly full magazine, and put the rifle on safe.
I quickly checked Syl’s pockets for any additional magazines, finding none I joined the others behind the SUV looking towards the wood line on the far side of the parking lot.
As I looked at the tree line I could see two, then three, and then several more people start to slowly walk from the trees and into the far side of the parking lot.
“Keith” I said, “Those are the same people that were with Syl at her house the other night.”
“Yeah they are” Keith replied.
“They are his servants” Abegg said. “They are under his influence and will kill us if they have the chance.”
“Let’s not give them the chance” Darrel said as he got into the driver’s seat of the SUV.
Abegg looked right at me and said, “Yes, let’s leave….now!”
I nodded in agreement, then said “Wait, you guys load up.” I ran over to the body of Deacon Grergedes and picked up the cell phone that I had missed during my initial search, the one I assumed had allowed them to track us to the hospital in the first place.
I grabbed the phone, which was lying on the ground next to the Deacon’s body and then ran back to the SUV which Darrel already had running and in gear to haul ass out of there.
As I got into the front passenger seat Darrel was already pulling out of the parking lot and around towards the front of the hospital.
As we pulled to the front of the hospital we saw that there were three members of the LW’s on their motorcycles blocking the exit from the front lot to the main street. Darrel stopped and we could see a figure walk around to the front of the bikes….it was Sylvia.
I couldn’t speak, all I could do was just stare at her. she started yelling, “Jimmy, why did you abandon us? Why did you abandon Danny when he needed you the most? Why Jim!”
“Jim?” Darrel asked as he grabbed my jacket and tried to shake some sense back into me.
I clenched my teeth, balled my hands into a fist and said, “Syl’s dead! I don’t know what that is, but it’s not Sylvia.”
“Ram those fuckers!” Keith yelled from the back seat.
Darrel hit the gas and sped towards the three motorcycles, his SUV had just become an instrument of our vengeance, and there was no stopping.
Then at the last second, we saw one of the bikers pull a young child he had sitting on the back of his bike into the path of the SUV.
In an attempt to keep from hitting the kid Darrel cranked the wheel hard, turned away from the bikes. He drove into the ditch and crashed through a fence. The SUV then hit a second ditch and went flying onto the roadway completely out of control. We hit hard! Bounced again and slid sideways. The tires of the SUV did what they were supposed to do and gripped the pavement, causing the vehicle to roll.
The SUV tumbled along its length axis, throwing us around inside the vehicle like ragdolls. After rolling several times we came to a rest. I was now in the very back, stunned to the point that I couldn’t move or speak. Abegg, the only one of us that had the smarts to put a seatbelt on was strapped in the back seat, I could see Keith crawling out the front passenger side window, but I couldn’t see Darrel.
As I looked out the broken front windshield of the SUV I could see Darrel helping Keith to his feet. I could hear Keith yelling and pointing back at the SUV, then I saw Darrel start shooting back towards the hospital parking lot.
I looked over and saw Abegg hanging limp in his seatbelt, then everything started to go black.
I couldn’t move, as my field of vision started to collapse in on itself I started hearing that giggle style laugh again.
I looked up and through the blood that was now running down my face and into my eyes from a pretty good head wound, I saw a black form moving towards the SUV. I then heard a voice, a raspy, almost sinister voice that I had not heard since I was a small child having repeating nightmares about a large wolf. The voice said, “Hello Jimmy, remember me?” Then the lights went out. Darkness, darkness and laughter.
12. The Wolf
I don’t know how long I was unconscious for. I do remember that as the darkness started to fade it gave way to voices. I heard my mother’s voice telling me to wake up, that I was having a nightmare. Out of the darkness I could see my bedroom from my childhood, the room where I had nightmares of a large wolf that spoke to me. A large wolf that terrified me as a child so much that I would wake up unable to move.
Sometimes after waking I would still see its face and eyes staring back at me from the dark corners of my room. Smiling, showing me his teeth and whispering in that voice, “Soon Jimmy, soon I am going to kill you….soon.” But then one day it just stopped and I didn’t see the wolf in my dreams again for several years.
I was 17 when I had another dream, the wolf smiled at me, smiling wide, showing me his teeth. I remember in my dream reliving the fear of my childhood, terrifying, immobilizing fear.
All brought on by the same monster that had haunted me, dominating my nightmares. But then, instead of being paralyzed by terror I started feeling something else. At 17, I wasn’t a child anymore, instead of feeling that fear I years before, I felt something else.
I remember in my dream that as the darkness spread all around me I peered back at the wolf through the shadows, looking for his dark eyes, searching for him. And when I found him, there in the shadows, I stared deep into his eyes, and I smiled back. That was the last time that I had seen the monster in my dreams.
As the darkness of my unconsciousness started to clear I began to feel pain. The pain of injuries sustained in the SUV crash compounded by an emotional pain that was deep in my soul. My vision had not completely cleared yet, but I could see the image of Sylvia dead in that parking lot clear as day.
Then that thing that we saw as we drove out of there, asking me why I had abandoned Danny, I knew it wasn’t real, but the idea still stung me hard.
The more that I thought about it more the anger inside me started to well up. My entire body tensed and as I started to raise my hands and I felt another pain. The pain of the handcuffs that were binding my hands to the metal chair I was sitting in.
My vision became clearer and I was able to see where I was, and it did not fill me with warm fuzzy feelings. I could see that I was in an empty room, poorly lit by a lamp in the corner. I was sitting in an old metal military style office chair, both of my hands secured to the arms of the chair with handcuffs.
As I looked around the room I could see Nico sitting in another chair also handcuffed in the same fashion, he was not moving but I could see him breathing. The air in the room was heavy and oppressive, much like in the basement where I had first encountered that circular symbol that had started all this stupidity.
I continued to look around the room, I could see a door with light coming in from underneath. The light under the door was dim, much like in the room.
Over in the corner of the room I saw what looked to be a large puddle of blood. As I focused in on the puddle I could see chip marks in the floor. Chip marks that looked to have been made by a large edged tool of some sort, possibly an ax. I could feel the panic starting to roll up through my body as I realized that the chips in the floor were created as they had been cutting people’s heads off.
I looked back over at Nico, his breathing was getting heavier and he started to move his head a little. I slid my chair close to his and tried to talk him back into consciousness, “Nico” I said quietly, “Nico, wake up!”
Nico muttered something in Swedish, so I gently moved my chair in front of his and then kicked him in the shin….hard. The pain of being kicked in the shin did the trick and as he started to clear from his
fog he started to respond to being kicked with a rant in Swedish that I am sure was not meant for young ears.
Nico looked up at me and I said, “Hey, shut the hell up, we are in trouble!” Nico looked around the room and again started muttering something in Swedish, “English Nico” I said.
“FUCK!” Nico replied, in English.
“No shit” I said. “Are you hurt, can you move?”
Nico looked at me and said, “I’m okay I think, Jim, I’m handcuffed to this chair.”
I looked at Nico and again said, “No shit. Listen Nico we got to get the hell out of here” just then we both could hear what sounded like someone screaming. They were crying out in pain, pleading, screaming, and then silence. “We got to get out of here right now” I said with a sense of panic in my voice.
“Jim, we are cuffed to these chairs” Nico said.
“Look at me!” I replied. “We are dealing with some full speed, violent shit that I cannot explain, but these fuckers are stupid! They have no clue who they are dealing with.”
