by mike Evans
The other three men all smiled. Not one of them had a problem with having too much money, especially with the slum childhoods they’d all had to endure. James said, “So, Moon, given that info now, what do you think we ought to do with the poor bastard over yonder?”
Moon smiled, pulling out his knife and pretending to take it across his throat. “Yep, you got it, guys. You want me to go up and do it?”
Ramsey shook his head no. “The four of us can find him and go up there. Best we all got a secret we need to keep. Besides, your luck, your dumbass will go on up in there and not see the guy pulling a gun, and then we need to kill him, replace you, and start this process all over again. I’d rather see who they are with my own eyes, anyways.”
Moon puffed up his chest. “You saying you don’t trust me?”
“I wouldn’t trust you to go get my fast food picked up more than once a week without fucking it up. No, I don’t think that you are very high on the genetic chain,” Ramsey said.
“Well then, why am I one of the four out here?” Moon barked.
“Oh, well that is simple as can be, dipshit. It just means the others that I got employed here don’t seem to be any fucking smarter than you. The only thing that you got going for you is that your daddy or granddaddy was smart enough to teach you how to use a gun, and that is the one thing I’m okay with relying on you for. Which was it who taught you?”
“The Marines taught me how to shoot. I can’t die and I’ll always keep an eye on your guy’s backs, so it's probably a good idea to keep me around. Nothing better in life than having one less thing to worry about.”
“Why can’t you die?” Ramsey asked.
“Because my corps never gave me permission to. Just happens that they don’t have some of the same beliefs that I do when it comes down to behaving and following other people's orders.”
“Just to be clear, you know that I’m in charge and there ain’t any question about that, right?” He nodded and Ramsey led the way up the hill slowly. “You boys keep quiet and keep low. Moon you get your ass up there and check out what’s going on first. If he looks like he sees you, drill one of those rounds through his fucking skull. We came in with this number, and we leave with it.”
Moon dropped to the ground and crawled up the hill until he could see Paul through the scope. The windows in the small cabin were not big. Paul had not been big on the idea of losing heat in the winter, but over his dead body would he be okay with not having a way to let some of the scorching heat out of the small cabin in the warmer weather. Leaving a door wide open with the windows both open all the way on a good day would give them a draft coming in and out that made it almost bearable, more for him than Matt, as he spent his days in the hills hunting and doing God knows what with his prey.
Moon motioned for the men to come up; they ignored his Marine ways and walked up the small path, keeping well hid behind trees.
“Now, I’m going to bet on Schmidt’s life that we can go right in through that front door and it's going to be unlocked.”
“Why are you betting on my life? I don’t understand.”
“I like you the least. Now, you open the door and aim down on that man in there. You need a big yell, and tell him to get the fuck down and do it now, or you’re going to put a new hole in his fucking head,” Ramsey said.
“You know, I don’t think I’m going to say it as good as you. You sure ya’ll don’t want to just come on in there with me all at once? I bet having four guys pointing guns at him is going to be more than enough to scare the shit out of him.”
Moon was still looking in his scope; when he spun around he looked sick to his stomach. He handed his rifle to Ramsey pointing at the house. “Ramsey, look there through the east window. You tell me what you see will you?”
“I see a fireplace, Moon, thank you very much for pointing that out. Oh shit, would you boys look at that, there’s wood next to the house! Moon, do you think that is what they place in the fireplace?”
“Okay smartass. No, that isn’t what I’m talking about, damn it. It’s been years, but I remember seeing more god damn documentaries on this than anything I’ve probably ever seen. They had it all over the news how this psycho cop went crooked—or always had been, I’m not sure—but just fucking listen. This guy was out killing people in the woods, blew a bitch up, killed both of her parents, killed everything he touched. The only time he refrained from killing someone was when he went home to get a go bag. But after that, there weren’t witnesses left if it could be helped. He almost killed this FBI dude, but he lived and…”
“Oh for god sakes, Moon, would you fucking spit it out, you blubbering fuck. Christ, thank the Lord for you that you can shoot. I’d say the longer we sit out here holding our dicks, the better the chance we got that this fuck’s going to notice four guys with guns sitting all creepy-like in the damn woods outside of his house. Now, do you think he’s going to be friendly about that, or that we just might have an issue because of it?” Ramsey asked.
“You see that white thing on the top of the fireplace?” Moon asked.
“Sure, and what about it?” Ramsey said.
“Oh damn, none of you watch the news, I mean, ever, huh? Okay, that white mask means that there’s a damn good chance that guy is a bad guy—like, a real fucking bad guy. He might be The Stranger. There’s like, a two hundred-thousand-dollar reward for this guy. We could cash it in and split it. That’d be like, fifty grand a piece.”
“Sure, Moon, that’s a wonderful idea. We can just go right on ahead and take him in. When we ruin this cookspot for what we’ll make the first week, we can say, ‘well, we was doing our civic duty.’ Is that what you were thinking? Maybe we should just burn this spot, so we can take in some fucking crazy man? Seems even more important now, that we go in and take him out, or at least find out who he is. Wouldn’t be too bad an idea to know if anyone is going to be coming this way checking on him or looking for him,” Ramsey said.
“So you don’t care about the reward?” Moon asked.
“I wouldn’t trade a half a million dollars for the North Woods. We can go as deep as we want to. Laughlin’s just hitting his thirties; good God, we’ll be able to cook for so long out here that, by the time we are done, this will be the meth cook capital in the world. Hell, working out of that cabin don’t seem like too shitty of an idea, if you ask me about it. Seems like that old man did half the work for us.”
“I thought that guy that did all the killing was younger though?”
“I don't know the fucking specifics. If you’d like to go and walk for a few hours back to the trucks, I'm sure that we can go and get the info we need off of Google. I’m thinking maybe we could figure out for ourselves. Maybe we can help him remember some of the things that he did to his victims. We will be doing a nice, good deed for humanity. Hell, if we could've told Laughlin about this guy, he’d probably deputize us,” Ramsey said.
Schmidt looked at the three of them shaking his head. “I ain’t fucking going in there without someone else, and some back up, there ain’t no way. I can’t take that money to hell with me.”
“I don’t know why I keep you around, Schmidt. Fine we’ll all go in there. You need me to hold your hand?” Ramsey asked.
“No, you just get my back and we’ll call it good.”
Ramsey nodded, and the four rushed the door. Paul spun in his chair, dropping his bowl. The four did not expect him to react like he did, and within a second, as Schmidt made his way through, he was already rushing him. He held the gun up to fire, but Paul came up quick, grabbing the barrel and pointing it to the sky, where firing it would do no good. Schmidt screamed, “Lil’ fucking help boys!”
Moon came around, keeping a safe distance from Paul. His teeth were exposed, and he was snarling. The frail old man he’d seen through the window looked instantly twenty years younger, and on top of that, he realized very well, this could actually be the man; the one that had been killing across America like their actions woul
d never need to be answered for.
Paul had one hand on the rifle, which almost wrapped around the AR stock, and one on Schmidt’s throat, squeezing with everything that he could. Moon brought down the butt of his rifle into the back of his head, and everything went dark.
Schmidt dropped to a knee, looking up to see a glassy-eyed Paul staring back at him. He fell on his ass and crab walked backwards away from the man. He said, “Gonna be awful fucking hard to question him, now that he ain’t awake, isn’t it? What if he doesn’t wake up?”
Ramsey pulled out a knife examining it. “Then we don’t have to worry about wasting a bullet. Hell, I guess either way, we don’t have to worry about it.”
Paul was aware that he wasn’t knocked out, but at the same time, was not completely aware of what was going on. He could hear feet walking around, and could feel nudges into his side, but the ability to say something or do anything or to scream for them to leave—to leave now—was gone. He knew what would happen when Matt came back; it would be a bloodbath, and even if these men were here for bad intentions, he knew they didn’t deserve what Matt would do to them. It would be much harder getting rid of the trucks this time around, not having Zeke there to assist with finding a spot to dump them where they would never be found again.
Ramsey said, “Get the rope, and get his mask, we’ll see if he remembers it. There’s a dead tree outside, tie him around that. Let's see how much he remembers about his past.”
Paul tried to speak but still wasn’t back and able to. He could feel the cold, wet leaves under him, soaking through his shirt until all he felt was cold and wetness, and he’d realized his shirt had dragged itself up under his neck. His arms felt it also, and he could feel goosebumps growing on him. When he stopped, he started to come back around, and ropes wound around his wrists, tightening them until the point that he knew they would be purple when he removed them, given they ever came off.
A bucket worth of freezing cold water splashed into Paul’s face, filling his open mouth and nostrils. He began to gag until he could turn his head and spit it out, and could finally feel the air coming back and filling them the way it was supposed to be, minus the burning.
He tried to rise, but the rope kept him firmly in place. As the blood began to flow in his body and it came back to life, he could tell his head was going to hurt for some time. Paul looked at the four men standing and smiling, holding Matt’s mask, and a sick feeling rose in the back of his throat. “What do you four want? Why are you in my home?”
“You ain’t supposed to be here, old man,” Ramsey said. “This here is closed and off limits. Sheriff Zeke closed this place off a long-ass time ago, almost as long as some of these boys have been alive. Looks to me like you either built this place recently, or you’ve been in it for quite a while. Aren’t you scared of the boogeyman in these woods?”
Paul laughed as he spat some blood out, shaking his head slowly and looking up with eyes that had every confidence that he knew something terrible was coming. “Son, I am the boogeyman. Now, let me go now and we can just chalk this up to a bad decision.”
“You ever seen this mask before, sir? I mean, you probably have, given it was found in your cabin. You got any idea what this mask means?” Moon asked.
“No, never seen it before in my life,” Paul said.
“Oh, you a lying, cheating type, old man?” Schmidt said, holding it for him to see and pointing at it.
Ramsey gave him a firm eye fucking, letting him know to shut up. Ramsey pointed at the speckles that covered the entire mask, as well as many spots that looked like smileys had been drawn on in someone's blood and guts. “You see this here, old man? This is probably DNA; that would be enough to get you either a life sentence or a death penalty in any state they extradite you back to.”
Paul laughed and said, “Boy, if you was going to take me in, you wouldn’t have me sitting around with the four of you and my hands tied to a damn tree. I'm never leaving these woods, why don’t you just admit it now, and quit trying to be tough about it. It’s going to take more than the four of you to run a chill up my back.”
Moon knelt down in front of him. “You realize that you’ve done some pretty horrific shit. You don’t know me, but I’ve watched everything there is about you. I thought you were going to be a lot younger though, Matt.”
Paul knew they were confused as to which Hardin they had, because of the simple fact no one had ever known him to be here except for Zeke. “You just wait; you’re going to be old one day too, if you live to have that chance.”
“Corp. ain’t given me permission to die; got a good feeling they never will,” Moon declared.
Paul smiled and said, “So what’s it going to be? I don’t have all day, boys.”
Ramsey, who did not enjoy being disrespected, circled around Paul, looking at his frail body tied to the stump. “Moon, can you tell me some of the shit that this sick fuck did to those innocent people?”
“Shit, he had this one farm bitch in Iowa tied up in a pig trailer with her guts cut open. He filled her full of pig feed and let them piggy’s come on in and eat her intestines out. When he was done, he stuck her up next to her husband on a post. He’d fucked up his eyes electrocuting them.”
Ramsey pulled out his knife, shaking his head while looking at Paul. He smiled as he bent down, cutting Paul’s shirt. “Well, seeing as we don’t have any way to feed him to the pigs or electrocute him, I guess we’re going to have to do it the hard way, what do you think?”
Paul said, “You know, it won’t be today. Well, I guess it could be, but you are going to regret this. If I were you, I’d just slice my throat and get the fuck out of here. I think it’s going to come back with karma like you’ve never quite experienced before, if you continue. Now, I could tell you exactly what I mean, but I have a feeling even four stupid fucks like you are going to know exactly when hell is raining down on your head. You see if the Corp. gives a fuck if you live then, boy.”
Moon pushed Ramsey out of the way, showing little respect. He dug the knife an inch deep into Paul's stomach and pulled it across slowly. Paul tried to scream, but Schmidt put his belt in his mouth and sat on his head, keeping him from yelling. The screams would have echoed across the hills had he been able to. Moon said, “I don’t appreciate people talking ill of my family, and that’s the only family I’ve ever cared about, motherfucker.”
Moon wiped the blade on his shirt, smiling at Paul, who was doing his best to stay calm. He could feel the warm blood spilling down onto his pants. He was sitting upright and keeping his guts from spilling out onto himself. Moon said, “You know, I heard that he cut a guy’s finger and cock off once; burned another guy; strangulation, mutilation, peeling skin… Shit, I don’t know if there’s enough to this guy to be able to show him just how much all that shit hurts.”
Ramsey took a handful of arm fat from beneath his tricep and started to carve off inches at a time. This time, he was allowed to scream, but he kept his mouth shut, squinting until he couldn’t see anything but colors. He didn’t focus on the pain; he thought of what was going to happen to these monsters when Matt came back. If he was allowed to do what he wanted, these men would all pray to find death and would not be shy about begging for it. Ramsey slapped Paul in the face with his own skin. “You like that, old man? Did that hurt, or do you want more?”
Paul wanted to answer, but refused to give these men a scream or the satisfaction. He was beginning to feel faint from the blood loss. He refused to give them the satisfaction of knowing just how much pain he was in.
When Paul would not answer, Ramsey tossed the slice of skin off into the distance and took hold of Paul’s ear, pulling hard enough to nearly tear it from his head. When it did not tear, of course, he brought up the same knife and began carving into his ear. Paul did the opposite of what Ramsey wanted to have happen.
James was looking around, keeping an eye out—worried about something coming, but unsure what. Ramsey said, “You don’t seem to
be listening too well, so you ain’t gonna miss an ear, now, are you? What are you laughing at, mother fucker? You ain’t got much time left on this Earth, I don’t think that you understand that.”
“I understand that I'm dying, you fucking idiot,” Paul said. “Even if you did change your mind, then I would still be a dead man. Other than your Marine washout there, you probably wouldn’t know enough to save me, the way it is. I just think you should get on with it, because the Devil’s on his way, and he’s not going to be kind when he gets here, that I can promise you.”
