Mandy moved over to Max, putting a comforting hand on his arm. “We’re all worried about them, Max,” said Mandy. “But don’t you think it’d be better to wait until morning? You’re too cold to fight effectively. Wait an hour or so, warm up, and when the sun rises, we’ll go together.”
Max nodded. “Fine,” he said. “But I’m going alone.”
John shot an angry look at Max. Why was he willing to take Mandy’s advice, but not the advice of his own brother?
24
Marshal
It was colder, but the cold didn’t bother Marshal the way it did other people. Sure, his body responded to it the same way as anyone else’s would. He wasn’t a superhero. He could get frostbite and hypothermia as easily as anyone.
But his mind was stronger than most.
Without the emotional toil, the baggage that common people carried, Marshal was free to do what he wished with his body. He could push himself harder and longer than he should have been able to. He’d learned this at an early age on the playground and in gym class at school. He’d been able to outrun anyone when it came to distance, even though he wasn’t the fastest, and hadn’t been the strongest.
But he was strong now. Prison life had given him the time he’d needed, as well as the resources, to sculpt his body. He’d done so unemotionally, as if he were designing a machine. He’d quickly gained a reputation as the prisoner who wouldn’t quit in the gym. He’d pushed through injuries like they were nothing. When others would have taken a step back, let themselves recover, Marshal had just kept going.
It hadn’t been devoid of drawbacks. Marshal’s shoulder still clicked when he raised his arm, and his knee flared up on him occasionally. But he simply didn’t care. He thought of his body only as a machine that he could use. He thought of his body the way he thought of everything, with no emotional attachment whatsoever.
Marshal’s only drive now was to find himself pleasure. He needed a victim. He needed to inflict pain. Lots of it.
And he wasn’t going to stop at just one.
No, he was going to pick them off one by one.
Marshal’s “comrades,” if you could call them that, were all dead. That was fine with him. They’d done their job. They’d weakened those at the camp, making them perfect prey for Marshal.
Marshal had been spying on the camp from a distance with his binoculars. Now he retreated, pushing his position farther away from the camp. He didn’t want to be discovered. He needed his time. He needed to let them think they were safe.
It was almost dawn, and Marshal was hungry. But he didn’t eat, even though he had food with him in his pack. Plenty of it. He did this often, not giving into hunger. He liked to have complete control over his body. Or at least feel like he did.
From behind him, Marshal heard something. It sounded like a woman’s voice.
Marshal turned.
There, in the semi-darkness of pre-dawn, a young woman was wandering through the snow. A dog walked in front of her, turning back. It was as if the dog was trying to guide her, trying to show her the way.
But the woman wasn’t acting normally. She didn’t seem to be in her right mind.
She walked in large zigzags, ambling slowly through the snow, talking to herself.
“Almost there, Jake,” she was saying, her voice now reaching Marshal clearly as she got closer. “Just a little ways to go.”
Her words were muffled, as if her lips were too cold to speak properly.
She was probably suffering from hypothermia. The bitter cold had gotten to her.
Had those at the camp abandoned one of their own, left her to wander and freeze to death in the woods?
Although she didn’t know it, the young woman was almost back at camp. If she continued in the direction she was aimlessly headed, guided by the dog, she’d soon be recovering from her hypothermia.
But Marshal had different plans for her.
She was perfect.
She’d be the first.
Marshal felt the excitement rising inside him. It was rare to feel this. To feel anything. These were special feelings, rare and hard to find. He craved these moments. He’d remember this.
When they’d locked him up, the prosecutors had called him a serial killer. But that wasn’t how Marshal thought of himself. To him, he was just a killer. It was what he did, and what he would always do. The numbers didn’t matter. Not to him, anyway.
Marshal kept his gun slung over his back as he walked towards the woman.
“Who… are… you?” she said, speaking slowly, her voice slurred.
“I’m going to help you,” said Marshal, looking her right in the eye. Her eyes were a brilliant blue.
The dog, which was up ahead, turned back. It was a German Shepherd. A big one. In another time, it would have been good material for Marshal. But those times were over. He had better victims now.
“Who….” The woman started to speak again.
The dog started barking, and she stopped, letting her words trail off into the cold air.
Marshal ignored the dog’s bark, continuing to stare into her eyes. She looked delirious.
The woman had stopped in her tracks, standing still, looking back and forth between the barking dog and the Marshal, swaying slightly from side to side.
“It’s going to be OK,” said Marshal, his voice soothing.
The dog kept barking.
“Come with me,” said Marshal, offering his arm out to the woman.
But she didn’t take it. She looked again at the dog.
That stupid dog. Why wouldn’t it stop barking?
“Shut up!” shouted Marshal.
The dog just barked louder.
Marshal had his handgun out in a flash. He squeezed the trigger. Three times in rapid succession.
His aim was good. The dog fell to the ground, blood oozing around the wounds.
Good. That was taken care of. And he’d felt briefly good while doing it. Not enough to satisfy him. Just enough to further whet his appetite.
The woman, now behind him, seeing the dog die, let out a scream.
Marshal spun around, letting his gun arm swing with him. He hit her in the shoulder with the butt of the gun. He’d decided against her head as a target. He didn’t want to her to lose consciousness. It wouldn’t give him the same feeling.
The woman screamed again. She was moving, but too slowly, reaching for a gun. Or trying to. She barely knew what she was doing. It was just pure instinct on her part.
Marshal was too fast for her. He took the gun from her hands easily. She was weak, like a child. Marshal tossed the gun aside, and punched her in the head. Not as hard as he could, but good enough to give her some pain, enough to knock some more of the fight out of her.
Marshal had been planning on dragging her away, to some safe spot, farther away from the camp.
She’d seemed so disoriented, Marshal hadn’t thought she’d fight back.
But she was.
She was screaming, trying to claw at his face. One of her nails caught him, drawing a long line of blood along his cheek.
Marshal was beyond annoyed. She was supposed to go easily. Sure, some struggle sometimes made it more fun. But not this time. He was too eager for it. Too eager for the kill. He’d wanted to enjoy this one, savor it in his own way, on his own time.
The woman threw her body towards him, trying to attack him, trying to throw him off balance. There was a wild look of instinctual desperation on her face.
But she’d gotten hit too hard with hypothermia. She was off balance, and she didn’t even reach Marshal. She ended up just throwing herself into the snow, falling face first and crying out in pain as the icy snow cut into her.
Marshal was on top of her in a flash. He dug his knees into her back, putting all of his weight onto her.
“You’re not making this easy enough for me,” said Marshal, his voice deadpan. “Nor hard enough.”
She flailed at him with the one hand that wasn’t stuck und
erneath her body. But she could barely reach him.
Marshal laughed. He was starting to feel something, that happiness that seemed to come surging back to him.
Marshal holstered his gun.
The gun was too fast. He glanced over at the dog carcass. Sure, he could injure her with a gun. He could intentionally aim for the non-vital areas.
But that wouldn’t be as much fun as his knife.
He needed to get out of this what he could. She was already ruining the whole thing, mainly by being half-comatose, unable to really pose a serious challenge.
Marshal felt for the sheath at his belt, lifting up his parka to do so. He unbuttoned the single strap that kept the knife in place. It was a good one, a carbon steel survival knife issued to some European country’s military. Marshal didn’t know the details. He didn’t care.
The knife had been liberated from some dead idiot out in the suburbs by another militia member, who hadn’t shut up about the knife’s advantages. He and Marshal had been on a scouting mission when they’d killed the man. Marshal had gotten so fed up listening to the story about the knife that he’d simply shot his scouting partner in the face and taken the knife for himself.
That had been back in the early days, in the early weeks after the EMP. The militia had been young. It was still young now, relatively speaking, but things had gotten more orderly. Now, there was an official roster of all members. Marshal simply couldn’t go around shooting whoever he wanted, especially not other militia members. The good days were gone.
Marshal was making his own good days.
“Don’t ruin this for me,” muttered Marshal, as he got the knife into position. He himself wasn’t quite sure what he meant.
With his free hand, Marshal grabbed the back of the woman’s head. His grip was strong. He cupped the back of her skull easily. He turned her head, so she was face down in the snow and pushed. Hard. Her cries were muffled by the snow.
Marshal waited patiently, counting the seconds.
He didn’t want her to pass out. Not yet.
When she was almost there, Marshal let up the pressure. She raised her face above the snow, sputtering, spitting snow from her mouth.
At that moment, right when she thought she was free from the suffering, Marshal seized her ear in one hand. He pinched the top of her ear hard, squeezing with his fingers. Pulling the ear back with one hand, he used his knife to slice slowly and carefully.
She screamed.
Blood spurted.
The ear was gone.
Marshal held the bloodied severed ear up close to his face, examining it impassively.
He was starting to feel the swell of that elusive happiness. It was working.
The woman was thrashing harder now, like some wild animal, doing everything she could to fight off Marshal, to save herself.
Marshal stayed in position, his knees still digging into her, as he considered his options.
The ideal situation would have been to take her away somewhere. Cut her up slowly and steadily, without fear of distractions. Give her as much pain as possible.
Marshal knew he was out of earshot of the camp. No matter how loudly she screamed, they wouldn’t hear her.
But he was still too close to the camp to fully enjoy himself. He wouldn’t be able to take his time. Someone could come along. There was that chance, no matter how unlikely, and Marshal had to be wary of it.
He’d learned his lesson once before. He’d gotten too greedy, too carless. That was back when he’d been living in the city, preying on the weak. That was how he’d gotten caught.
He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
Marshal looked down at her thrashing body. He longed to slash it and mutilate it. Maybe even burn it. Or parts of it, at least.
But he’d have to wait.
He’d have to take what enjoyment he could from this brief encounter.
After all, there’d be others. Soon enough, too. There were plenty of men and women at the camp. Marshal would pick them off one by one. He’d take his time. They’d be easier. They’d be better victims.
“Sorry this is going to be so quick,” said Marshal.
The woman screamed.
Marshal brought his knife down swiftly, stabbing her in the back, through her coat. He pulled the knife out, blood dripping off the steel. He stabbed again. And again, until she was silent, until the life had completely left her.
Marshal felt the swelling of emotion in his solar plexus. This was good, but it had only whet his taste for more. Much more.
Marshal stood up calmly and slowly. But not before wiping the carbon steel blade carefully on the dead woman’s jacket.
He looked to the sun, which had just appeared on the horizon, bringing warmth and light to the snow-covered landscape.
25
Max
“You feeling better?” said Mandy.
Max nodded. His whole body had been stiff with cold, but a few hours by the fire, and some venison, had made him feel limber once again. Not that he wasn’t exhausted. They all were.
“You weren’t serious about going out alone, were you?”
Max shook his head. “No,” he said.
“Why’d you say that?”
“I was serious at the time,” said Max. “The cold must have gotten to me… the adrenaline from the fight. It’s better to wait until there’s daylight.”
Max was glad he hadn’t rushed out into the night looking for Jake and Rose. He still thought there could easily be more enemies out there. And, frankly, the probability that Jake and Rose had died was high.
“Good,” said Mandy. “Because you know it doesn’t make sense to go all cowboy and try to do everything yourself. You’ll just get killed. You’re the one who’s always advising caution, after all. It wouldn’t look very good if you got killed by not following your own advice.”
Max let out a brief, muted laugh. Then he fell into silence again. Mandy too. There was, after all, nothing funny about the situation. Jake and Rose were missing. Probably dead.
“It’s weird,” said Mandy, speaking slowly. “It’s almost like I’ve gotten used to this.”
“To what?”
“To people going missing, turning up dead.”
Max nodded. “It’s tough, but…”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Mandy, cutting him off. “We’ve got to keep going.”
Max laughed again. This time, it was more of a real laugh. “I guess I say that a lot?”
Mandy’s eyes twinkled. “Sometimes.”
They were sitting close together, away from the fire, facing north. Most of the others were sitting by the fire.
Their guns lay beside them. The sun was rising slowly, making everything once again seem possible, giving them hope when they’d had no hope before.
Mandy leaned in, her mouth approaching Max’s.
Max, for a moment, didn’t move. He just stared into Mandy’s eyes, which seemed to be sparkling. They were deep and beautiful. He hadn’t had much time to look into her eyes in the last weeks.
This was a rare moment, one that Max promised himself he’d remember in the future, once things got rough again. They always seemed to, chaos coming rumbling in like a freight train, disrupting all their carefully calculated plans and schemes.
Max leaned in, his lips meeting hers. They kept their eyes open. For some reason, it seemed more natural that way.
“Hey!” came a gruff voice.
It was John. His boots tread heavily across the ground.
Mandy pulled quickly away from Max, quickly becoming busy removing her cap and rearranging her hair, which was had been a permanent mess for the last week. That was fine with Max. He happened to like that look.
“What is it?” said Max, turning to his brother.
John looked angry. Max could tell just by the way he moved, the way he walked. Sure, it had been a lot of years since they’d spent time together, but people didn’t change that much. At least not their “tells,”
and the way they expressed their emotions.
“I thought you were going to strike out on your own, hunt down Jake and Rose all by yourself?”
“I thought you didn’t want me to go,” said Max.
“He’s not going alone,” said Mandy. “He just told me.”
“That’s right,” said Max. “We need to go out in groups. I wasn’t thinking clearly before.”
“I’m not sure you’ve been thinking clearly for a while,” muttered John.
“What was that?” said Max.
“You heard me.”
Max stood up, facing his brother. He didn’t have time for this. Whatever was bothering John probably had more to do with him than it did with Max.
“There isn’t time for this,” said Max. “We’ve got to get going.”
“But there was plenty of time to sit around, waiting until dawn?”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“What I’m getting at is that I don’t think you’re such a great leader,” said John, his nostrils flaring, his eyebrows narrowing. “Every decision you’ve made…”
“Every decision he’s made has been the right one,” said Mandy, interrupting him and standing up beside Max.
Max put his hand up, gesturing to Mandy that that was enough.
“I don’t always make the right decisions,” said Max, speaking slowly. “Sometimes there aren’t any right decisions. And when I’ve been wrong, when I’m way off, at least I admit it. I was wrong to want to go after them myself. There, I said it.”
John didn’t seem to know what to say.
“Now that it’s light,” said Max, “we’re heading out. Mandy, we’ll go together. John, you take Cynthia. Everyone else will guard the camp. That is, if you’re up for it.”
He stared his brother right in the eyes. John didn’t blink.
Finally, John nodded. Whatever his problem with Max was, he was willing to recognize a plan that made sense.
“Good,” said Max. “We’ll head that way, cutting a wide arc. You two can take the other direction.” He pointed as he spoke. “Keep an eye out for footprints. And tell Georgia what’s going on.”
Fighting Rough Page 13
