by Schow, Ryan
Now they were talking war.
The classroom was long and narrow with lots of windows for natural light and enough room to butt together several long tables. They took up most of the length of the classroom, packing the room with bodies and body heat. The windows were open, allowing fresh air inside, but it still looked stuffy, what with all the talking and interrupting and menial banter.
She found Rider, zeroed in on him. He finally looked up at her, which is when she made eyes at him and gave a little head nod in her own direction.
Nodding with understanding, he cleared his throat then excused himself for a few moments. Only a few people even noticed, and when he got up and headed over to Sarah, hardly anyone seemed to care.
“You have a look,” he said, complimenting her with his words, his eyes, and his close proximity to her. He adored her, but what she loved about him most was that he made sure she knew it.
“What look?” she asked, coy.
“It’s not just that gorgeous face of yours...”
“Is it the anxiety tearing through me right now?” she asked, a bit breathless. “Because I’m told I look sexy when I’m scared.”
The flirty air of him fell off, almost like it stepped off a cliff.
“Yeah,” she said, patently unsettled. “It may be nothing, but I think we might have a problem.”
She told him what she saw then watched the color drain from his face. He turned, looked inside the War Room where a couple of eyes turned to him. One of those concerned glances came from Indigo. He waved her over.
“What’s going on?” Indigo asked. Sarah told the girl what she’d seen, which caused in Indigo a long moment of contemplation.
“I brought him here,” Indigo said, seemingly unmoved. “I’ll handle it.”
“What are you going to do?” Rider asked.
“Whatever’s necessary,” she said, determined eyes on Rider. “Same as always.”
“What if he’s not truly a threat?” Sarah asked. “What if he’s just another sad casualty, another rat that fell off his side of the boat and landed in the surf?”
“Then we listen to what he has to say and we look into his eyes. If anything stinks, we step on him, break his back.”
“You can’t kill someone inside the school,” Sarah said, concerned.
Rider and Indigo both looked at her, incredulous.
“I’m not killing anyone, Sarah. Not in here, and not out there. And certainly not him. The Ophidian Horde is gone. Whatever happened to them, they’re gone and this guy clearly isn’t with them.”
“But he said he was an enforcer. The guy is pretty scary.”
“Scary how?” Rider asked.
“Scary like you can look into his eyes and there is nothing. Not life. Not love or hate or anxiousness. He’d dead inside. Soulless by the look of him.”
“That’s what a broken man looks like,” Indigo said, her eyes flat.
“It’s different,” Sarah replied. “He had that look like he could just as soon tear out your heart as give you the time of day. I swear, I’ve never seen anyone so dead while being alive.”
“Let me see for myself,” Indigo said. “But it’s probably nothing.”
“No,” Sarah said, panic infiltrating her eyes. “This guy is the devil.”
“I’ll get Rex just in case,” Indigo said to Rider. “You grab Jagger. We need to handle this. Especially if Sarah’s right, and I trust her judgement.”
Rider nodded, his arms flexed, his silver hair slicked back. He looked at Indigo but she was already heading down the hallway looking to fetch Rex. Rider looked in the War Room at Jagger, the younger military man. He caught the man’s eye and signaled for him to come over. Jagger stood and joined them.
Sarah stayed close to Rider, clearly shaken.
“We have a problem,” Rider said to Jagger. The younger man showed no apprehension. After what he survived to get here, while picking up Elizabeth on the way, Rider knew the guy had a rock solid constitution. “I need back up, just in case we have a situation.”
“Sure thing,” Jagger said. “Just give me the lowdown first.”
Rider filled Jagger in on what Sarah had seen, then Sarah told him she was going to their room and she would lock the door until the matter was handled.
“It’ll be okay,” Rider said, taking her hand and giving it a reassuring pump. “He’s just one man. And we’re…well, we’re all of us. Which means together, even the devil himself would be soiling his britches.”
She nodded then said, “Okay, but come and get me when it’s safe.” He gave her hand another squeeze, then leaned down and kissed her. Jagger turned away to give them their privacy.
“Like I said,” Rider told her once more, “it’ll all be fine.”
Just as Sarah was leaving, Lena appeared with Elizabeth, both of them looking for Cincinnati. Jagger smiled at Elizabeth, their connection even stronger than when he found her being held hostage at that old farmhouse outside Davis.
“She’s in the meeting,” Jagger said, clearly pleased to see Elizabeth not only with his wife but integrating so smoothly into the community.
“When she’s out,” Lena said, not wanting any part of the security end of the community, “will you tell her we’re all waiting for her back in the game room?”
Jagger frowned, then broke into a knowing grin.
“Card night, right?”
“Skip Bo,” Elizabeth said. This was her favorite game, and it wasn’t any wonder, the girl mopped up half the time.
“Go easy on ‘em,” Jagger told Elizabeth, eliciting bright eyes and a smile from the girl.
When he’d first found her, Elizabeth had long sandy blonde hair that Lenna had since cut into a bob just below her chin. If it was possible, she was even cuter than before. Seeing this little angel, she was the daughter he never had, the daughter Lenna always wanted. She still spoke very little, but the girl had an infectious laugh when she let loose, and when she got into a game of cards, parts of her she kept hidden began to open up.
Glancing back up at Lenna, he said, “I’ll let Cincinnati know you’re looking for her. We’re about to call a break anyway.”
When Rider and Jagger returned to the meeting, they waited for the person speaking to finish, then Jagger politely said, “Indigo, Rider and I have a matter requiring our attention. Does anyone have a problem with us stepping out for awhile?”
“Everything okay?” Cincinnati asked.
“Yeah, fine,” Jagger said. “Just…it’s nothing serious. It’s game night, by the way, so your presence has been requested.”
Cincinnati smiled.
“Something I can help you guys with?” Stanton asked. “The other thing, not the card thing?” He was sitting next to Cincinnati who was now looking at him with the same alert look.
This is some family, Jagger thought. Always ready to go…
“No, we should be good,” Rider said. “It’s more of an in-house thing anyway.”
Rider and Jagger left the room, met up with Rex and Indigo outside Gunderson’s door, then gave a knock. A moment later, a bare chested Gunderson answered the door, looking at all the faces. It was hard to ignore the mapping of ink all over his body.
Or how skinny he was.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “Please come in.”
His ribs seemed to be protruding, and there was a patchwork of scarred abuse all over his back when he walked them inside.
Indigo and Rider exchanged glances, but it was Rex who said, “You said that you were expecting us?”
“Not you four in particular, but yeah, I expected company,” he said, showing them his bandaged arm. “It was the tattoo. And perhaps the honesty as well. At first I suspected I might have startled the doctor. Now I’m certain of it.”
“Honesty is a funny thing,” Indigo said, leaving the sentence wide open.
“You’re her, aren’t you?” he said, looking at Indigo. “I knew it the first time Rex said your name.”
�
�How do you know me?” she asked.
“You carved up Blood Pig’s body. Indigo. That’s what you cut into his chest before you stabbed him about a thousand times.”
“That man’s death was a tag-team effort, and more than deserved,” she said, remembering the firefight in the elementary school. Blood Pig must have been the name of the man who shot and killed all those people. The same man who almost killed Macy.
“You know Macy, right? Sixteen years old? The cute little blonde? Rex’s niece?”
“I met her.”
“She almost died from multiple gunshot wounds, but those particular injuries came after your man killed dozens of innocent lives. He mowed down men, women and children alike. Not a single care in the world for the value of human life, or the fact that a community had come together to see if they could get the pieces of their lives back in order.”
“They wasn’t my doing,” he said. “I didn’t agree with that.”
“What are you doing here?” Rider asked, his big hands now bigger fists. There was an edge to him you could feel in your bones if you were standing close enough to the man.
“I don’t know. I was rescued by Indigo and Rex, then offered a chance to stay. To be a part of something bigger than myself. A part of me hoped I could make a fresh start, but that might have been presumptive, perhaps even a bit too hopeful considering my past affiliations.”
“What happened to The Ophidian Horde?” Rex asked. “Why’d they just disappear?”
“They didn’t disappear. They’re all back at a half destroyed hospital not far from here. Every last one of them. Well, except for me. I haven’t been there in months.”
“Hagan and I were there once, a couple of months back,” Rider said, capturing his attention. “I didn’t know that was your HQ.”
“It’s a big building, even half destroyed. No one expects a gang to use a damaged building for their HQ, as you say. But we had everything we needed, including the anonymity we so desperately sought.”
“You talk in the past tense,” Indigo said, clearly not as angry as Rider, but suspicious never-the-less. Jagger crossed his arms, but loosely, just in case the guy got unruly.
“I speak in the past tense for a reason,” he said, looking directly at her.
“Stop being so damn cryptic,” Rider growled. For all his blustering, for all his barrel-chested intimidation, Rider failed to unnerve the damn near emaciated man.
Turning back to Indigo, Gunderson said, “I hear you’re an archer.”
“I am,” she said, not an ounce of emotion on her face.
Jagger had heard about her, that her nerves were braided steel, but this…facing this guy down the way she was, this was something else. Did this girl have a death wish?
Rumors alluded to that.
Even he was concerned about this guy, especially how unconcerned he seemed to be with all of them, and that gave Jagger significant pause.
“But you’re so young.”
“If you knew how many of your men I put down with my bow and arrows, you wouldn’t say I’m an archer, you’d call me an assassin with a bow. And you’d probably take this meeting between us a little more serious.”
At this point, the air in the room was getting stuffy, and the candles were beginning to flicker. The shadows cast over Gunderson’s face played tricks on the group, making him look both good and evil at differing times.
“I’m taking you serious,” he said, pacifying her. “You got one of my guys in the poop-chute with an arrow for God’s sake.”
“He was trying to rape my friend.”
“Yeah,” he mused, looking away finally, “some of those guys, they had…problems.”
“I was their last problem,” Indigo said, countering his movements to stay in his direct view. She’d stepped past Rider, right into what Jagger thought of as a no-go zone on guys like this, then said, “Tell me why we should let you live, and I won’t kill you personally.”
Rex drew a deep breath, started to respond, but Indigo put her hand up, not looking at him yet somehow knowing he’d come to her defenses.
“Because all those same members of the Horde are still there. In their beds. Decomposing.”
“They’re dead?” Rider said.
“Yes.”
“How?” Indigo asked.
“I killed them,” he replied, turning those sick black eyes on Rider. “When I saw what they did at the school, when I thought about this life I’ve lived, how I lost everything—my family, my soul, my sense of right and wrong—I decided to make a break from those people. From that life. But you can’t just leave gangs, not without becoming their prey, and this was a very twisted pack of criminals. Like an All-Star group of degenerates, albeit competent ones.”
“So you killed them?” Rider asked.
“I already said that.”
“Because you had a change of conscience,” Indigo said through narrowed eyes. “Is that right? Is that what we’re supposed to believe?”
Jagger stepped forward just enough to get in range of Indigo and the former enforcer. Rider was already there. If this guy so much as flinched, he’d have all hell to pay.
“Yes,” he said, looking at the convergence of these people upon him. He swallowed hard, then said, “I didn’t mean for you to save me back at the park. I didn’t want you to save me.”
“Well we did,” Rex said, crossing his arms. “That’s because we’re not like you. We don’t kill innocents.”
“You’re right,” he said, now realizing he was in the direct center of all of them. “I’m not a good person. I’ve killed innocents. Dozens of them, maybe more. But I’m not that person anymore.”
“Killing your own only proves you’re a murderer and a turncoat,” Rider said, flexing his fists, egging on a fight.
Jagger looked at his silver-haired friend, at those fists, and then he turned his eyes on Gunderson. He couldn’t help wondering how this was going to end.
“That’s the thanks I get?” he hissed at Rider. “You sanctimonious prick!”
“Careful,” Indigo said, still standing dangerously close to him.
She moved in between Gunderson and Rider, constantly putting herself in the worst spot possible. Did she want him to engage her? Was she prepared to kill him with her bare hands? It’s always the ones you least expect who come to claim your life, Jagger thought. He took another step forward when all eyes were off him. Rex did the same.
The two of them traded looks.
If he hadn’t seen Indigo in action, Jagger would be more worried, but Indigo fought out of self-defense, and this Gunderson character was a man who fought to kill. This was a man who looked like he was once a bloodthirsty vampire, preying upon his enemies and the weak. Jagger disliked his look immensely.
There was something…vile in his appearance.
Now he understood Sarah’s concern.
“If you want me to leave, I’ll leave,” Gunderson said, strangely apathetic. “You’ve been very kind up to this point, and though you’re not being unreasonable now, I must admit, part of me wants to club this little baby seal in front of me just so the three of you will put me out of my misery—”
“This baby seal clubs back,” Indigo said, the air around her getting dark, turning cold. A slight, almost sinister grin cut through the stone cold look she’d had since she first heard about Gunderson’s gang affiliation. Now Jagger was sure she was spoiling for a fight.
“But that is not my intention,” Gunderson continued, ignoring the threat. “So I’ll just leave.”
“We didn’t say you could leave,” Jagger finally said, breaking his silence. In a lightening quick move, Gunderson was in Jagger’s face, hissing at the man.
“If you’re going to do it, if you want to kill me, then take me!”
Just then Gunderson was grabbed by the back of his hair, had his head yanked back and realized there was a blade at his throat. “If we wanted you dead,” Indigo whispered into his ear through gritted teeth, “th
en you’d already be dead.”
“Then what do you want?” he barked, eyes wild, yet working hard not to flex so much as a single muscle against a very sharp blade.
“To see how you’d react to this situation,” Rex said.
“And?”
“You failed,” Rider said. “Pack your things, I’ll escort you out.”
Indigo pulled the blade back, a thin line of blood trickling down Gunderson’s neck. She then let go of his hair, pushed his head away and said “I’ll grab you a bottle of water and some food.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he replied, coolly, touching the spot where she’d traced him. He looked at the blood on his finger, then at her, as if he couldn’t believe it.
“If you’re wondering whether or not that was an accident,” Indigo said, “it wasn’t.”
Ten minutes later, they were escorting the ex-enforcer out of the building. Indigo handed him his food and said, “If you turned on your own people when they were most like you, then what’s to say you wouldn’t turn on us when we’re nothing like you?”
“Do you believe a person can change?” he asked, standing out in the street, a backpack, a bag of food and a bottle of water in his hand.
“I think circumstances like these only shine the light on a person’s true nature, and your true nature is murder.”
“You’ve killed, too,” he said. “Don’t act like some saint with me.”
“In self-defense.”
“My ass.”
She grinned but her eyes stayed dead. This sinister smile caused Gunderson to take an involuntary step backwards.
“Jesus,” he said, a tad bit rattled. “You’re just a kid, but you’re like me.”
“We’re the same weapon,” she agreed, “just pointed in different directions.”
Standing up a little straighter, drawing a deep breath then releasing it audibly through his nostrils, he said, “Well I appreciate your hospitality while it lasted.”
“Godspeed, friend,” Indigo said.
“He’s not your friend,” Rider said. “He’s no one’s friend.”
And with that, Gunderson turned and walked away. To Jagger and Rex, Rider said, “I want to check out that hospital. See if he’s telling the truth.”
