The End The Beginning (Humanity's New Dawn Book 1)

by Ryan Horvath

  He was in a holding pattern and he didn’t like it. Shepherd had slipped away and Art had not heard anything yet from his CIA contact. How could the doctor have evaded the best intelligence agency in the world? They should have just had him killed by one of their operatives before the man even left Hawaii. Now he could be anywhere.

  Art was also bothered that he had not gotten to kill anyone since the super slutty and sleazy Celia early Tuesday morning. With his new strength and youth, it seemed that his hunger for torture and slaughter had been jacked up, acting like an itch beneath his skin that required continuous satisfaction. Additionally, his sexual appetite appeared to be changing and he more deeply craved the carnal humiliation and degradation of women at his disposal. Had Shepherd been where he was supposed to be, Art could have slaughtered the man and scratched the itch and craving by going directly to the abandoned farm and beginning the torture and rape of the bitch woman there. He could go kill her now to satisfy his yearning but he never practiced engaging in a personal kill while on an assigned one; he might become distracted by the personal and fuck up on the assigned. And he was going to take his time with the bitch woman, going to make her experience pains that no one had ever before experienced. She would be pleading with every fiber of her being for him to end her life long before he would and when he finally did snuff out the woman, he would make it a slow death. And perhaps afterwards, he would return to DC and get the bitch woman’s sister and put her out of her misery as well.

  Art finished his meal and paid his bill with one of his magic credit cards. He left the diner and headed back to his apartment building. He arrived and took the elevator down to the parking garage and got in his car and started it. He exited the building and followed the surface streets to I-394 and traveled out to the abandoned Orono farm. Traffic going east into the city was jammed and moving slowly but Art’s westbound traffic was moving at a quick sixty miles per hour. In less than thirty minutes, Art was pulling up to the decrepit farm house.

  He turned the car off, pulled the keys, and got out. From the trunk of the car he removed a bottle of water and another IV bag, in case his prey was still unconscious. He walked up the dusty path, its edges lined with overgrown weeds, and let himself in through the front door. He walked through the main level of the house and arrived at the basement door. There, he listened for any sounds of whimpering or crying coming from the bitch woman down below. He heard none. He used his key and disengaged the padlock on the basement door. He walked down the creaky stairs into the dim dankness below.

  Downstairs, he found Miss Amanda Breck as he had left her.

  “Fuck,” he said to no one. I must have really fucked up her head.

  He walked over to his captive and looked down at her. He leaned in close, tilted his head, and listened to her breathing. An erection started to form in his pants at the sight of her plump, firm, bare breasts with their erect nipples and he wanted to bite them but he could not deal with sex right now. Her breathing was easy and regular. Art pressed his fore and middle fingers to the woman’s jugular looking for her life force. He found her pulse had improved over the last time he had checked it. She was probably just in a light coma and he suspected she would wake up and he would get to begin working on her soon. Looking down at her half naked body Art confirmed that he would definitely cross the rape line with this woman, just to see that new and exciting look of dire fear and horrific violation in someone’s eyes.

  Art moved to the other side of the woman, the side the IV was on. He’d apparently done a less than perfect job with the venipuncture and the skin around the injection site was slightly bruised. He thought if she got some kind of infection, that might make things more fun for him because the effects of the infectious fever she would have would make the torture that much more intense for her. He changed the nearly empty bag for the new full one from his car. This bag was larger and would cover the woman until this evening. Hopefully he would have the Shepherd assignment done by then and he could come back and wake this woman up; if, that is, the dipshit doctor was still in the country. He leaned down to the bitch woman again and looked at the bruise he’d inflicted on her when he’d flicked her. It was still an ugly welt but it looked to be improving some.

  After his examination of her was complete, Art decided that he might not have hurt her as bad as he had earlier thought. The throbbing in his briefs told him he would more than make up for that.

  Art walked over to a workbench a few feet away and surveyed the tools he planned to use on the woman strewn on it: a sharpened screwdriver, a hacksaw, vice grip pliers, tin snips, a small blowtorch, wooden and metal spikes of various sizes, and a flask of hydrochloric acid.

  Oh yes Art thought. She’s going to get cut, pinched, stabbed, poked, burned, and seared. And probably raped. Yes, definitely raped. He’d read once that the more it happened to a woman, the worse it was for her mental stability. Given the prone position he had her in on the table, he decided he would exploit that and force her to endure him multiple times.

  While Art studied the implements before him and tried to stifle his sexual appetite, he did not feel the gaze of the eyes boring into him from behind. The eyes studied him with fear and curiosity.

  Art’s smart phone buzzed in his left pants pocket. He retrieved it and turned his back on his torture tools to be facing the woman just as she closed her eyes. He leaned on the workbench gently, being careful not to topple it with an unexpected output of strength.

  The text message gave Art some good news, although not the best he could have hoped for.

  SHEPHERD IN MINNEAPOLIS. TOOK AN EARLIER FLIGHT. NO INDICATION OF LEAVING THE CITY VIA RENTAL CAR, TRAIN, BUS, OR AIR. NO LODGING RECORDS FOUND YET. CONTINUING TO TRY TO LOCATE.

  So the little fuck was close still after all.

  But where? Art wondered.

  He closed his phone and looked back at the topless bitch woman on the slab. Her breasts taunted him and the hard-on he’d just about gotten rid of started to grow once again. He decided he better leave.

  He left the bitch woman in her poorly lit dying place with the spiders and rats and worms. Upstairs, he locked the basement door and left the house. He got in his car and started it when a peculiar feeling came over him. He peered back at the house with uneasiness that was unfamiliar to him. He turned the car off and quickly reentered the house. He unlocked the basement again and rattled down the stairs. He looked at the woman again. Had she moved? Was her hair lying differently? Art couldn’t be certain. He leaned in and checked her breathing again. It was the same. He checked her shackled wrists and ankles. They were all secure.

  “Are you awake and trying to fool me?” Art said in a maniacal voice with a devilish grin.

  No reaction from the woman.

  Art was still not sure.

  He leaned over and aggressively lashed his tongue across the woman’s right nipple. He thought he felt her flinch so he stood back up, reached out, and pinched the woman’s right nipple between his thumb and forefinger, not too hard but it should have been hard enough to get a reaction. Art studied her face, looking for anything.

  She didn’t stir.

  “Damn,” Art spat.

  He left the basement and house again and got back in his car. The peculiar feeling did not return. He started his car and returned to the interstate spur, eastbound this time.

  Art arrived at his apartment building downtown just before 11:00 AM. He parked his car in the underground garage and decided to eat again.

  On the street, he started to walk. He got about half a block from his building’s lobby doors when he glanced to his right. A man was getting in a taxi at the cab stand across the street. The cab stand served The Hyatt and the Carlton Hotels right across the street from Art’s building.

  The man getting in the cab across the street could have been Simon Shepherd’s teenage son.

  Does Shepherd have any kids? A wife even? Art thought. He leaned over, trying to get a better look at the man in the cab
. The resemblance was beyond uncanny.

  Suddenly it occurred to Art that Shepherd may have experienced a little age regression of his own. The cab pulled out from the curb and headed down the street away from Art, leaving him staring after it.

  Art knew he had no chance of getting to his car in time to pursue the cab and the cab stand was currently vacant of additional cabs. By the time one arrived, the suspicious man’s cab would be out of sight.

  Art wasn’t worried though. The man was probably staying at one of the two hotels across the street.

  All Art had to do was wait for him to come back.

  40

  AMANDA

  Darkness.

  Darkness.

  Darkness.

  Haze.

  Darkness.

  Haze.

  Drip… drip… drip…drip…

  Darkness.

  Haze.

  Drip… drip…

  Light.

  Dank light, but light nonetheless.

  Amanda Breck slowly opened her eyes for the first time since the grocery store parking lot.

  How long have I been out? she asked herself. Amanda had no idea what time or day it was. She was cold. A damp and musty smell tickled her nostrils. From somewhere above her head, what must have been a small lamp was providing some illumination to the space. There was a dripping sound coming from somewhere to her left. She looked straight forward and saw pine plank boards of various shades of wear nailed in place and she realized she was lying down. Her elbow ached and she looked at it and discovered that she had an IV line running into her arm. The injection site looked bruised. She followed the IV tube to its source and read that the bag contained saline solution. The bag was about one quarter full, probably a little less.

  Suddenly a sharp headache came to Amanda and it was accompanied by a vision. It was of the maniacal green eyed man again and things regarding her situation started to come back to her.

  She remembered being grabbed by someone, struggling with him, and getting carried to a car while her legs flailed helplessly in the air. Her heart had raced like never before in her life during her capture and her body had been washed with adrenaline but she had not been able to break free of the crushing grasp of her attacker who, it seemed, was made of solid steel.

  And when he threw her into the car, she was stunned by the force of the blow but after a moment she was able to face her assailant and recognized the murderer who had killed her sister’s husband. A second later, he’d struck her with a malicious look in his eyes and she was out until a few minutes ago.

  Her vision showed the heinous man standing over her half nude body which was chained to a wooden table or work bench. A quick look around at her surroundings after the vision confirmed that her vision had been of this detestable location. Back in the vision, the green eyed man left her, then returned a few moments later. He said something to her but she did not know what, then he leaned over her, stood back up, reached out, and pinched her nipple, seeming to test for a reaction. When nothing happened, he left her alone again and the vision ended.

  Amanda lay on the table processing this, even though her head was throbbing. She looked around and in the poorly lit space she could not see much of anything. The drip to her left was endless and she thought she could hear some rustling coming from the area where the light was located. A faint squeaking sound from the same area told her it was probably rats and she shuddered.

  As the minutes ticked by Amanda wondered how she was going to get out of this. She was bound to the table and had no idea where she was. She looked around the room for any sign of her purse and could not see it. She could not find her shirt and bra anywhere within sight either and she felt a ridiculous shame having her breasts exposed, even though there was no one but her around.

  And just then she was no longer alone.

  A round, plump, red-black spider was descending from above on a strand of web just above her abdomen.

  Amanda hated and feared spiders more than anything. Arachnophobia had been with her since she was a little girl when one of the boys threw a daddy long leg on her in the second grade. She watched with dread as the eight legged creature hovered over her body.

  Please don’t land on me. Please don’t land on me she silently willed the arachnid. She struggled and the chains rattled against the table.

  The spider slowly continued its decent toward her and in seconds, it came to land on her stomach, just above her navel. Amanda yelped, hating the feeling of its legs touching down on her bare flesh and eyeing the creature through her cleavage. She breathed heavily, pumping her diaphragm in hopes that the spider would take this as unsteady ground and make a quick departure; preferably back up the strand of web it had used to access her body.

  But the spider stood fast, not agitated by the seismic activity beneath it.

  Tears brewed in Amanda’s eyes and she subsided her heavy breathing. While the spider was no bigger than a quarter and no heavier than a few grams, to Amanda, it was as big as a tarantula and as heavy as a house cat. Sweat broke out on Amanda’s forehead.

  When the spider landed, it had been facing Amanda but now, in a motion that rocked Amanda with panic, it turned toward her feet. The tickle its legs induced felt so alien to Amanda and she whimpered as the spider walked down her naked flesh toward her waist. Once there, the spider encountered the change in material beneath its feet and paused at the waistband of her pants. The animal pressed its legs on the outside of her clothing and Amanda silently prayed that the hateful thing would go on to the material and from there directly to the table and away from her.

  Instead, the spider then tested the inside of the fabric with its two front legs. Amanda tried desperately hard not to pee herself. The spider’s legs felt like sharp pins pressing against her.

  The arachnid had apparently decided against either of its proposed paths and it turned again to be facing her. It started to walk slowly up her body, angling to the right. Amanda wanted to struggle but abject terror had seized her. Every footstep of the spider was like a degrading violation of her very core. Soon the spider disappeared beneath her right breast. Then, to Amanda’s continued dread, the creature was on her breast and climbing steadily up its swell. Her body started to tremble. The spider came back into view and stopped and regarded Amanda from its position on her nipple. Amanda tried to cry out but her voice had escaped her. The animal’s trespass on one of the most sensitive parts of her body was like an infraction she had never hoped to experience and somewhere deep in the back of her mind she wondered Will I ever let a man kiss me there again? Would I ever let my infant child suckle from there?

  The spider stood on her, surveying the mighty high ground of this human terrain. Amanda could see four of its eyes easily and she felt they were burning up her soul with their gaze. Her heart pounded heavily in her ribcage. Tears flowed freely from her eyes. Her trembling seemed like it would never end. Her breaths were coming in quick silent hitches. In the deep recess of her mind, Amanda tried to imagine the nipple was cast in hard steel and could not be penetrated or molested by anything.

  A moment later, though to Amanda it felt like an eternity, the spider moved. It walked down the side of her breast, then the side of her thorax and then onto the table. It moved away from her.

  As soon as the arachnid left her skin, Amanda let out a heavy sigh of relief and then her breaths were in labored gasps.

  Don’t hyperventilate she told herself. Relax.

  But the memory of the encounter felt like a tattoo made with acid. The encounter with the daddy long leg when she was a child had been massively trumped by the meeting with that red-black monstrosity that had just emulated a lover or a feeding newborn.

  Besides, it could come back a different part of her mind said.

  Relax, damn it!

  Amanda tried hard to relax and then she thought about her conversation with Karen and about their previous visions. She was supposed to get out of here. She didn’t know how the hell she w
as going to do that but if she was going to hold to the theory that her and her sister’s visions were of upcoming events, then she would get off this table and see her sister and the remarkable dog, Blaze, again.

  Of course, you all might not survive the chase afterwards a negative part of her mind said.

  Shut up! a rational part retorted.

  Although Amanda didn’t know how much time elapsed, about an hour later, she was finally calmed down, well, calmed down in relative to her situation of being shackled half naked to a table. Her tears and sweat had dried. She fell asleep a few moments later.

  Two hours after that she awoke, half hoping she’d been in a nightmare and thinking she would find herself home in bed but when she didn’t, she tried not to get worked up.

  You’re supposed to get out of this she reminded herself.

  Then, from overhead she heard a single floor board creak lightly. It was the first sound she had heard from above. She heard some rattling and then the room brightened a bit as light from above came down into this space below.

  Okay, I’m in a basement she told herself.

  Just as a pair of men’s legs appeared on a staircase, Amanda closed her eyes and tried to remain as still as possible.

  She listened as the man reached the ground level and crossed the room.

  “Fuck,” she heard him mutter.

  She felt him approach and lean over her. Had her eyes been open and had she the desire, she could have tried to bite his ear off. Instead, she focused on remaining calm. The man touched her neck, checking her pulse. Amanda loathed the feeling his clammy fingers left on her flesh almost as much as the wretched spider.

  She heard the man walking away, she deduced, toward the work bench she had seen earlier and she risked opening her eyes. The man’s back was to her. But from the shade of his hair, she knew it was the green eyed assassin. As she studied him, Amanda didn’t know that the man was planning to do horrible, disturbing, and disgusting things to her at that very moment. Then she heard the faint buzz of a cell phone. The man extracted one from his pocket and read something on the screen. Just as he turned back to her, she closed her eyes. He returned to her side for a moment and then left the basement. As he was leaving, Amanda recognized this view as her most recent vision beginning.