“He said that you’re a bad man, and that you’re insane.”
“Correct on both accounts. Do you know what makes me insane, Abby?”
“No.”
“You see, bunny rabbit, insane doesn’t necessarily mean ‘crazy’. I’m not crazy because crazy people have sick or broken minds, but not I. My mind is razor fucking sharp. Did you know that years ago, when I was still in college, I studied medicine at the University of Chicago? I was the top student in my whole fucking class.”
“So what happened?” Abby asked, unintentionally getting drawn into Edmund’s life story.
Edmund shrugged his shoulders and said, “That was too fucking boring. I dropped out and started to run the streets in my neighborhood. I became a gangster, spent a decade moving up the ranks, but then the Crisis started. I’ve had my own gang ever since.”
“Getting back on track, insane is not crazy. In my case, I am insane because I act contrary to what is normal. But I do not do this because of a broken mind, I do this because it’s fucking fun and I want to. And that’s why I’m bad. I know better; I’m not stupid, nor do I try to justify myself as some kind of vigilante. I know better, but I don’t change because I don’t fucking want to. And if I ever do want to change, then I will, but I like doing insane things, and being bad. That’s just who I am.”
“So you’re like…an anarchist?” Abby asked.
“Sure, whatever. I don’t know. I fucking hate labels. I’m just me. I was born to raise hell, and there is no label for that. What about you? What were you born to do, me little bunny rabbit?”
Abby pondered his question for a minute. She could not believe that she was actually having this kind of philosophical discussion with such a man as Edmund. But, as she recalled from Zach’s stories of him, it seemed like appeasing him and answering his questions was the best way to deal with him.
“I believe that I was born to be a light in darkness,” she said, hoping the vague, almost prophetic tone of her answer would intrigue Edmund.
“Ah, that is poetic. Elaborate, if you please.”
“Well, look at my relationship with Zach. When the Crisis first started, he lost his wife, and for the next few days he was just a drifter. His soul was lost and he couldn’t find any purpose for himself. But then he saved me from a pack of zombies and took me under his wing. I became the rock that he anchored his life to, and once I was old enough to understand that, I did everything I could to show him nothing but love, trying to fill the hole in his heart that his wife left. See, he was lost in the dark, but finding me gave him a small light.”
“So you believe that you can do this for the entire world? You believe that you can help everybody?” Edmund asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure going to try. I just want to help anyone that I can, in any way that I can.”
Edmund nodded his head while looking down at the ground, absorbing everything that Abby said. “That sounds very nice. I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be a good person and want to do good things. But I suppose I’ll never know.”
Abby was unsure if she should say anything, but Edmund remained silent for so long that she finally said, “So do you know where my father is?”
“Aye, I do,” Edmund said. “He is a prisoner here, too. But he is not one of my mine.”
Abby bolted upright and said, “He’s a prisoner here?! Where?! I have to get to him!”
“He is in that barn you were looking at when I captured you. But as I said, he is not my prisoner.”
“Whose is he then?”
“He belongs to this fat fuck named Henry. He’s a big motherfucker who got to us barely two months ago, but he kissed the Boss’ arse so he got his own crew and runs half the show here.”
Abby’s mouth dropped open when Edmund said Henry’s name, and the vibrant color drained from her cheeks. Edmund noticed the change in her demeanor and said, “What is wrong? Do you know the bastard?”
Abby tried to talk, but no words came out. She took a deep breath to compose herself and then said, “He…he tried to kill us…Zach and I. We’ve run into him more than once. He just won’t go away.”
Edmund scoffed and said, “Yeah, that sounds like him. I fucking hate him and I want to kill him, but I’d never get away with it.”
Thinking quickly, Abby said, “Let me do it! Let me save my dad and kill Henry! That way, it’s a win-win situation for both of us!”
Edmund laughed and said, “You think you can kill Henry? Lass, you are a little bunny rabbit and he is a fucking mountain. You couldn’t kill him in your wildest dr-”
Edmund suddenly stopped talking and the smile on his face changed to a contemplative frown. He sat in silence in front of Abby for a long while, barely even breathing and staring at the ground. Finally, he slowly lifted his head and looked into Abby’s eyes.
Poking her right under her eye, he said, “Eyes like silver.”
He cupped the side of her head in his hand and said, “You fit perfectly in the palm of my hand…and Henry is indeed a mountain.”
He then lapsed back into silence. Abby was growing more frightened as the seconds ticked by, wondering what insane musings he was rambling on about now.
“Turn around,” Edmund said quietly.
“What?” Abby asked, not sure of what he intended to do to her.
“Turn. Around,” Edmund repeated as he flicked a knife out of his pocket.
Trembling slightly, Abby did as she was told, expecting at any moment to feel that sharp blade pierce her skin. But it did not. Instead, Edmund grabbed her hands and then cut her free. He then stood up, walked over to a short table next to his cot, and retrieved a pistol, an extra magazine, and a knife.
“These are yours. I release you,” he said, handing Abby her things.
“You’re letting me go? Why?” she asked as she slid her knife back into the sheath on her belt.
“Have you ever been told not to look a gift horse in the mouth, lass?”
Abby took the hint. She stood up, tucked her pistol into the back of her trousers and the spare magazine into her back pocket, and then headed towards the flap of the tent, but she stopped at the entrance. She looked back at Edmund and said, “Just so you know, this doesn’t change anything. I still don’t like you. You killed Diane, and you’ve killed others too. One day, you’ll pay for your crimes.”
“I figured you would still hate me, but that’s okay. I already told you that I’m just a bad man, and that’s all I’ll ever be.”
But Abby did not leave yet. The images of Diane’s death suddenly came back to her, and so did the loss of Al and Amber. She became very angry at Edmund, a man who had a hand in all of these things, and her hand instinctively moved towards her pistol. Thunder boomed overhead as she did; a storm was coming.
“You want to kill me, don’t you?” Edmund said. “Do it. I won’t stop you.” He turned his back to Abby and stood with his hands casually in his pockets. Abby could now see the artwork on Edmund’s back: a large skull with the word ‘chaos’ etched into the forehead had its mouth hanging open, and the inside of it glowed like a furnace. Several documents were being sucked into the open mouth: Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution, the Ten Commandments, and a thick tome titled ‘Rules’. Beneath this image, taking up the lower half of his back, was a silhouette of a modern skyline wreathed in flames. And above all of this, just below his shoulders, were two lines from a poem entitled The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
Abby did want to kill him and make him pay for Diane’s death. But of course she could not do it. It would not be the right thing to do, Abby knew. She turned away, shaking her head in disgust, and said, “You’re a terrible man, Edmund, and the world would be better off without you, but I won’t kill you. Not yet, at least. You need to change, or the next time I see you…” She left her threat unspoken and then exited Edmund’s tent.
After she left, Edmund
chuckled and whispered, “I love that fucking kid.” He then called in a man who had been waiting outside. “Tell the boys to meet me here right now. All of them,” he said. “We’ve got some work to do.” The man left and Edmund retrieved a briefcase that was under his cot and opened it. He pulled out a stick of C4, blasting caps, and a detonator. Sitting down on his cot, he began to mold the plastic explosive into little pieces and fixed each one with a blasting cap, whistling as he did.
Chapter Nineteen
When Zach came to, he found himself sitting in what appeared to be a barn or stable of some kind. He was in the small, open area near the main entrance to the building, which was made up of two large doors that swung inward and could be locked from the inside (though they were not secured at this time). The floor was simply packed dirt with errant clumps of straw strewn about. The rest of the barn-like structure was lined with stalls of varying sizes. It stank of animals, and Zach could hear what sounded like subtle movements in the stalls, but he could not see what animals were in them. His hands were cuffed behind him, binding him to a wooden beam that formed one of the corners of the closest stall. Outside, Zach could still hear the sounds of a celebration party going on. It looked like they intended to party on until sunrise.
Ross was across from Zach, bound in a similar fashion to the other stall, and he looked badly hurt. Zach groaned as he realized that if Ross was captured, then Abby was alone somewhere. Hopefully she had just left the prison, Zach thought.
“Ross! Ross!” he hissed, but Ross was completely unresponsive. Zach sat back and blew out a sigh of frustration. His head ached badly and he couldn’t help but wonder where Abby was. He wanted to think she was safe, but he knew Abby. She wouldn’t leave Zach without at least trying to save him. She had proved that at the Air Force Base.
An hour after Zach woke up, one of the barn doors opened up a little and a man wearing a red do-rag poked his head in. He noticed that Zach was awake, so he closed the door again and Zach could hear him say something to someone outside. A minute or two later, Zach heard Henry’s voice outside.
“Thank you, boys. I can take it from here.”
The door opened again and Zach glared at Henry as he walked in, leaving the door cracked open. Was Henry even human, Zach wondered, or closer to a demon? How did he keep finding ways back into Zach and Abby’s lives? Henry smiled and said, “You don’t look too happy to see me, Zach. Say, where’s Abby?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Zach muttered.
“I may have to if I can’t find Abby. I’ve had my men looking for her, but they haven’t found anything. I doubt you’d have come here without her, so that means she’s either dead or is very adept at hiding. So which is it?”
Zach said nothing, so Henry just laughed and said, “Well, we’ll find her eventually. And then she and I can get reacquainted. But until then, I thought I’d have some fun with you.”
“In case you didn’t hear it the first time, go fuck yourself,” Zach said.
“Oh, are you angry? You sound angry. How about a story to calm you down? It’s a great story. It’s all about how I beat you.”
“You see, Zach, after you got me exiled from Little America, the second time you ruined my life, I headed north. There’d been rumors about this powerful warlord in the area, so I wanted to find him. Well, I ran into a patrol from his Red Army (that’s who these fellas are) about a week later and joined up with them. At first they tried to make me just another gun-hand, but the Boss bumped into me on my first day. I guess he recognized a kindred spirit in me, because the very next day I became one of his right hand men.”
“They had just raided a small settlement nearby and had left behind an ambush for a posse sent by Little America, hoping to get some insider knowledge about the place. But that psycho Irish asshole the Boss put in charge of the mission botched it all to Hell.”
“Edmund,” Zach said.
“You know him?” Henry asked, genuinely surprised. “So you were on that search and rescue mission from Little America? Edmund said you all resisted and he was forced to kill you.”
“We escaped.”
“That lying motherfucker. The Boss will definitely hear about this, as soon as I’m finished with you. Anyway, I didn’t know they had been planning a strike against Little America until after Edmund came back, so I went to the Boss and gave him all kinds of information. Naturally, he was thrilled and even gave me the honor of leading the raid. And it’s a good thing he did that, or else we might not have succeeded so brilliantly.”
“’Why do you say that?’ you ask?” Henry said, even though Zach had said nothing. Thunder boomed overhead, and Henry paused for a second before going on. “Well, have you ever heard of the Trojan horse? See, when the military tried to quarantine Chicago but failed, they left behind a lot of their things, including those big troop transport vehicles, so the Boss acquired those, allowing him to move hundreds of guys around easily. Plus, that prison garage over there had four,” Henry said, pointing past Zach, and Zach did recall seeing a tall concrete building just outside the main prison building.
“We took three of those four and loaded em up with as many guys as we could, and then left ahead of the main convoy. I led this little group of guys all the way to Little America, and we rolled up on one of the gates just ahead of the others.”
“The guards were told to arrest you on sight,” Zach said.
“I bet they were, but I like to think of myself as a pretty charismatic guy. I convinced those nincompoops at the gate that I had been sent on a top-secret reconnaissance mission and had managed to steal these trucks full of supplies from a local gang to weaken them and make the Army’s job easier when they rolled through here eventually. So they let us in, we initiated the attack, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Zach said nothing, silently cursing Henry and his damnable surviving skills. The man had a strong but terribly misleading charm about him, and despite his country bumpkin looks, his charisma seemed sufficient to deceive all but the most discerning of people. Henry had his hands on his hips, looking down at Zach with a wicked, arrogant grin. He looked so smug and it absolutely infuriated Zach.
“So now I have to ask what you’re doing here,” Henry said.
“I came here to kill your bitch ass,” Zach replied.
Henry chuckled as he walked up to Zach and then kicked him hard in the side. Zach grunted and bent over in pain. Henry crouched down in front of him and said, “I already told you that you can’t beat me, Zach. I won. Again. And now you and your friend over there are gonna die slow, painful deaths.”
Without another word, Henry got up and walked over to a small table pushed against the wall next to Zach. He picked up a knife from the table and began to sharpen it, humming a tune as he did so. Zach could still hear the sounds of the victory party, but he heard another crack of thunder, louder than the one earlier, and guessed that as soon as the rain started falling that it would be declared over. Henry paused his work for a moment at the sound of thunder, then resumed after clumsily shifting his stance.
Zach worked at his cuffs, trying to slip them, but they were clamped down tightly around his wrists. Starting to despair, he leaned his head back against the post and looked towards the barn doors. But what he saw almost made him cry out. Abby!
“Run,” Zach mouthed, remaining silent, but Abby shook her head. Zach looked to Henry, who was completely unaware of Abby’s presence, then looked back to her and mouthed, “Save yourself.”
“I won’t leave you,” she mouthed back. Zach saw the knife in her hand, and he knew what she planned on doing: she was going to kill Henry, but not with a gun. She was smart enough to realize that a gunshot would be too loud and would just get them recaptured. She would have to kill Henry silently with her knife. To do that, she’d certainly need all the help she could get, so Zach decided to finally make that distraction for her.
“Hey Henry, how does it feel knowing that you hit like a bitch?” Zach said.
> Henry grinned and said, “Are you trying to be funny, Zach?”
“No. Are you trying to be a bitch?”
Henry scowled and turned towards Zach, so his back faced Abby. He slowly stalked towards Zach, knife in hand, and Abby sensed that this was her cue. With agonizing slowness and caution, Abby stepped inside and crept forward. Henry was a mere twenty feet away.
“You wanna run that by me again?” Henry said.
“Why? Are you ugly and deaf?”
Abby tip-toed across the dirt floor as carefully as she possibly could, hardly even daring to breathe, clutching her knife in her right hand. Henry’s back was still to her, and he still seemed to be completely oblivious of his approaching doom. Abby was less than fifteen feet away now.
“Is this supposed to be some kind of hero’s bravado? You must want to die real slowly, Zach.”
“You’re already killing me slowly, motherfucker. You ever look in a mirror without breaking it?”
Abby’s knuckles began to turn white as she tightly gripped her knife, planning her strike. Zach had once taught her how to make a completely silent kill by stabbing someone in the kidney, but that was long ago and Abby’s mind raced as she struggled to recall how exactly this strike was done and where Henry’s kidneys would be. Only a few more feet to go.
“It’s about to get real fun in here, Zach.”
Zach smiled and said, “Oh, you have no idea.” Abby was now right behind Henry!
Abby had forgotten how big Henry was up close. Her head didn’t even reach his shoulders! She thought she knew where to stab Henry and so she brought her arm back and-
Boom! A loud report of thunder exploded overhead, and a heavy rainfall immediately accompanied it. The sound frightened Henry and he straightened up suddenly, twisting his torso a bit, and just in time. Abby’s knife had been coming forward, but instead of plunging deep into Henry’s back, it sliced into his side, hurting him but certainly not killing him. He roared in pain and turned around, coming face to face with Abby, who was wide-eyed with fear! She gasped and jumped back, holding her bloody knife out in front of her.
His Name Was Zach Page 35
