by Nick Cole
“Do we even know how to make one?” asked Candace, getting right down to the mid-level manager business of organizing the use of explosives.
No one said anything. Then...
“Yeah... I do,” said Frank. “I know how.”
***
Malloy gave the bartender a fistful of cash and told him to lock himself in the curing shed out near the cliff. Night was coming on. Behind the bar, he found an old sawed-off hunting shotgun and a baton. He poured himself two fingers of Lagavulin and then set up two more glasses for Frank and the redhead.
“Jordana,” Malloy said, indicating the redhead should come and drink. Then he solemnly nodded at Frank. The bar was dark and quiet. Outside, the wind roared and buffeted the side of the building and the old wooden roof above.
“I’ve surveyed the situation,” began Malloy. “And it’s pretty grim. We’ve got this,” he nodded at the antique cut-down shotgun on the bar top next to the bottle of Lagavulin. “And the pistol from the job. And this baton.”
No one said anything. Jordana picked up the glass of whiskey and took a small, steady sip. If it affected it her, it didn’t show. Her perfect face was far away and somewhere else.
“But here’s what we can do. Outside, there’s an old propane tank I’m guessing they use for heating. If we can turn that into a bomb and get them inside here... we can set it off.”
“How do we do that?” asked Frank, who realized from the frog in his throat that he hadn’t spoken for much of the day.
“We make them think we’re all in the hotel across the way when they show up. Then we retreat back here and blow it up once they come in after us. Y’know... thinking we’re cornered and all.”
“But...” began Frank.
“Obviously we misdirect them,” whispered Jordana in a husky drawl.
“But how?” asked Malloy, and seemed on the verge of picking up the Lagavulin one more time. He didn’t for a second, but then finally reached for it. He drank again and looked off at something unseen.
When he came back, this is what he had.
“Frank, move the car around to the rear of the bar, about twenty meters behind the back door. You and Jordana will engage them here.” He shifted a shot glass to his left. “This is the road we came in on.” He moved the bottle of Lagavulin to the side of the bar, near Frank, after hitting from it directly. “This fine whiskey is the bar. And this,” he shifted Frank’s glass closer to himself. “This is the hotel. There’re three more buildings, all closed up for the night. All farther down the road, heading out of town toward the beach. We’ll put up a fight from the hotel. I’ll go over and take a room. We’ll shoot from there when they come into town and pull over to get out of their car. Before they head for the bar. You two will shoot from a downstairs window. Then go out the back and head toward the far edge of town. Toward the beach. Down the road... here at the edge of town.”
Malloy picked up the Lagavulin for a quick nip and set it down again, licking his thin lips. “Once they take cover behind their car, I’ll use the shotgun to keep their heads down. Meanwhile you’ve reached the car, you’ve got about three minutes to get there. I’ve got enough shells to keep them pinned while you move, but be quick about it. Start the car and be ready to go. I’ll act like I’m hit and then make for the bar. They’ll think I was gonna run down the street like you two, but once they think I’m hit, they’ll come in after me because that’s how they are, right Jordana?”
“Si,” she murmured.
“Right. Meanwhile, the bar is a deathtrap. I’ll break up all this booze and then once I’m out the door, I’ll shoot the propane tank which should explode. I’ll make sure there’s enough booze to reach the bar and then it’ll catch fire, hopefully just after they try to come in and get me. Then we scoot down toward the coast and leave them in our trap. Got it?”
Except it didn’t go that way, thinks Frank now as he tries to make a bomb on a hot day, surrounded by people he does not want to blow up, and monsters he does.
There are barbeques galore, thinks Frank, as he scrambles to come up with an improvised explosive. Many townhomes had propane tank grills for “chillin’ and grillin’” as everyone had once liked to proclaim. But how to get it to explode? How to rig up some sort of fuse or timing device? All his training on the Island never included that.
He’d learned guns and judo chops on the Island. He was the trigger man. That’s what they’d wanted him for.
“Dante, go find a propane tank in one of the backyard barbeques. You’ll need an adjustable wrench. In fact, get as many as you can and bring them back here.”
Dante runs off and Candace is looking at Frank.
“What are you going to use to make it explode?”
Road flares, thinks Frank. Trying not to see Malloy’s stupid grin when the propane tank finally did explode. The permanent grin someone somewhere had probably buried him with. Someone with a black hand tattoo most likely.
In an unmarked grave. Or dumped out to sea.
A black sedan. It had been a black sedan that came into the little French, or Spanish, town along the rocky coast after dark. A Zil. A Russian car straight from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. Diplomatic plates. Three men. Trench coats and black hats, sheltering themselves against the buffeting wind as they came out of the car. They stood in the empty street at twilight of the town Frank couldn’t remember the name of. They just stood there for a moment, casting about. Almost as though they were sniffing the wind, or so it had seemed to Frank as he watched from behind lacy curtains in the old hotel. The men dressed all in black just stood there for a moment before Malloy opened up with the ineffective shotgun. There was only the sound of the wind careening across the high cliffs on the southern edge of Europe and the wild dark beyond. Frank moved the curtain aside the barest of inches. Ever so slightly. It was lace, yellowed with time, and smelled of dust. He remembered that all these years later. The hotel owner, an old woman, had gone to bed an hour ago. Frank and Jordana had sat downstairs in the small parlor that passed for a lobby. Near a fireplace. Its calmness and tranquility, the close cozy aspect, and the vintage turn-of-the-century brass and furniture, the opposite of all the day and night before, and the promise of the night ahead. Like the contrast of most people’s ordinary, safe lives, as opposed to the two of them in a big wide world that was harsh and cruel.
A world of killers.
A world of shadows within shadows. A tireless world of sleepless anxiety.
“You should get out while you can,” she said suddenly.
Frank said nothing. He’d been thinking the same thing.
“You’re nice,” she continued. “A good singer.”
There was a long pause.
“All that... is the opposite of what you’re getting into.” She paused again and then added, “If we survive tonight.”
“And you?” he asked. “Why don’t you get out?”
She gave a small, sad smile and then returned her stare to the fireplace.
“Not everyone has a choice.”
And...
“You should leave. While you still can. That’s all.”
In that tiny hotel in that lost village, as Frank thinks about it now, on this hot end-of-the-world zombies-piling-up under the “battlements” day, Frank remembers barely shifting the curtain aside and seeing the three in black on the dark street in the gray twilight. A lone streetlight barely caught them, making them seem somehow even darker. More shadowy. And the one who remained in the car. The one Frank knew got away. The one smoking.
The Black Hand.
Before he even really knew who, or what, they were.
Upstairs, Malloy opens up with the shotgun. It’s a sudden explosion that makes him and Jordana jump, though they are expecting it. Announcing that everything is now very real. As it real as it gets sometimes.
It’s on. It�
�s time. This is happening now.
The men on the street scatter, coats flapping like capes. Or like vampires in bad black and white movies. Or nightmares. Frank smashes the tiny window in the parlor and pulls a shot on one that’s already fleeing around the side of the house. He uses the rest of the magazine, silencer removed because it’s all really for show, on the Zil. Malloy is firing, breaking the shotgun, inserting two shells and firing again. Frank feels Jordana’s hand on his shoulder. It’s long and slender and cool... and electric. When he turns to her, he forgets he’s in the middle of a gunfight. He’s somewhere else. Somewhere with her.
Her eyes are wild with terror. But not fright.
She leads the way down a narrow one bulb-lit hall leading out the back of the old hotel. The ancient hotel owner is screaming upstairs. Somewhere beyond the repeated and almost perfectly timed blasts of Malloy’s tiny double-barreled hand-cannon, Frank also hears the scream of the wind howling from off the coast.
They make the back door and descend rickety wooden steps that groan like the dying must groan when they die. The intense coastal wind almost sweeps the two of them away with a sudden strong blast from along the cliffs. A man in black makes a grab from the shadows and Frank is too busy putting in the spare magazine to either shoot, or hit him with the butt of the forty-five. Jordana swipes like a samurai making one deadly perfect cut. The baton is a flashing shadow in the charcoal dark, and it connects with the stranger’s jaw.
A crunch so final, nothing more is needed as the wraith falls, lights out for sure, onto the ground in a sudden heap.
They are running.
Running for the edge of the village with no name as Malloy’s blasts somehow shield them. Somehow keep those dark others busy. Like a wall. Like a cloak. Like a past that can never be entered.
A secret that cannot be told.
Frank thinks, Just keep running. Because he’s holding her hand. Just keep leading her away from all this because everyone can choose. No one is a prisoner. And he does. They make the edge of the village, and it’s so easy to find a country lane in the wind and the dark and just disappear into the southern French night. Africa even. The darkness of the world will hide them even if Malloy gets left holding the bag tonight. And when he goes ten more steps than he should, he realizes she’s not pulling him back. Not stopping him. She’s going with him and they are leaving Malloy, and whatever all this is.
Except.
I’m not that guy, thinks Frank.
I stick.
And Frank stops without saying why, or anything, and leads her across the small road out of town and back toward the gunfire. They time their crossing with two of Malloy’s successive blasts that must still be keeping these night men pinned. A minute later they reach the tiny car and slide in. Frank watches the rearview mirror he’s angled to observe the back of the small bar. A lone lamp hangs above the door, its yellowish light somehow a pauper in the overwhelming gloom of the darkness and the storm.
Malloy will come out that back door in less than thirty seconds. The bar is soaked in flammable alcohol, and gas siphoned from the Citroen. One blast as Malloy passes beyond the propane tank... as Malloy runs from the back of the bar, through which these night wraiths will swarm, one blast and all inside the bar will be engulfed in sudden flames.
That was the moment, really, thinks Frank now as he rifles yet another car in this never-ending summer of death and heat within the castle. That was the moment when you could never turn back.
That was the moment.
Malloy appeared beneath the poverty-stricken light by the back door. Running. A wild, weird, almost drunken smile. Like he was having all the fun in the world. Like he was having the time of his life.
He’d taken the bottle of Lagavulin to wait with him up in the tiny corner bedroom with the lace curtains and the lumpy bed.
So of course he’s drunk.
Smiling, he runs and fires a little too soon. A little too close to the propane tank.
It exploded and Frank winces. When he can see again... flames are racing and then licking the structure of the old tavern and the ancient wooden roof despite the wind and the rain. Malloy is down on the wet grass and mud. Frank exits, swearing, and runs to him with the pistol in his hand. But it only takes a few steps to see the massive shard of metal from the ruptured propane tank that has destroyed Malloy’s skull.
The body is still twitching though.
Frank had seen enough dead bodies in ‘Nam to know what that means. And that now is not the time.
He returns to the car and drives away. In the night, shifting down into low gear to reach the lonely track that will take them to the cove, Jordana’s electric touch falls across his hand atop the shift selector.
That was the moment when you could never go back, thinks Frank, as he finds three road flares in the trunk of an old Volkswagen bug in one of the garages.
That was the moment.
Chapter Twenty-Two
They were going sixty down the side road away from the shipping yard, when they TC’d after hitting a crowd of dead and losing control of the Humvee. Braddock fought to get the Humvee under control, but it felt like they were sliding on ice. Which was strange, because they were in the middle of the desert.
That’s what it feels like, Braddock heard some distant part of his mind inform him. That’s what it feels like to slide on bodies as they tear apart and turn to little more than guts and jelly beneath the wheels. It feels like sliding on ice.
Brees stopped firing, grabbing onto the sides of the turret as the vehicle went out of control, his face a mask of fear, hoping they didn’t flip because that would be it for him.
Instead, they slammed into the abutment wall of a small bridge that crossed over a dry ravine and led to the on ramp of the freeway.
Their own dust consumed them while zombies groaned beneath the wheels, somehow still horribly alive.
Braddock’s helmeted head cracked the side of the door on impact and rang his bell, but he shook it off as the dust swallowed everything.
“Get out of the vehicle, Brees!” He could see they’d somehow smashed the engine when they hit the concrete barrier, though he couldn’t remember the vehicle being at that angle.
Brees laid down more covering fire as zombies swarmed out of the dust from down the road. Thousands of rounds ventilated their withered frames, literally disintegrating them in some cases.
“Brees! Out now!”
Braddock crawled across to the passenger door and flung himself out, turning back to grab his rifle.
“Ribs ‘er busted, Cap,” groaned Brees in pain.
He must’ve hit the side of the turret on impact, thought Braddock as he engaged the closing zekes. He listened as Brees hollered in pain while climbing out of the hatch. Then Brees turned back to the vehicle and grabbed the sixty he’d brought as a backup. He draped a couple of ammo belts across his shoulders and grunted with pain at each movement.
Braddock gave the other operator a look that said, “Sure about that?”
“Hells yeah!” groaned Brees. “It’s all good, Cap.”
They could hear other mounted miniguns near and distant, cascading off the walls of the pass and the tiny high desert gas station town all around. Everyone was fighting their way out of a situation. It was like a battle with no fixed lines. Gunfire everywhere. Zekes everywhere too.
“This is Paladin Six,” shouted Braddock into the walkie-talkie on his chest. “We’re TC’d by the river bed. Continuing on foot.” He shot three more zekes. “Coming up the embankment to the freeway. Wait for us, Warlord.”
Below the bridge lay a dusty wash that led off to a large steep embankment upon which the Fifteen continued west.
“What the hell’s this...” asked Brees. Braddock put two bullets in a zeke that came at them from across the road. There were at least fifty surrounding their wrecked
Humvee. “Same stuff we found on those MRAPs!” announced Brees. Braddock turned back to look at what Brees was talking about. “This stuff’s just like it... Arabic. I know that ‘cause I took it at DLI. But the other stuff makes no sense. There’s more math and... other really weird stuff.”
Braddock saw more of the rust-colored scribblings drawn on their vehicle. Down near the door where he’d dragged Watt out and left him on the floor of the warehouse. Drawn in drying blood. Watt’s blood probably, thought Braddock.
“No time. Move,” replied Braddock, and headed toward the far end of the small bridge at a dead run.
Brees battle-rattled after Braddock who pounded across the hot pavement and then down into the dry brush along the ravine.
“Stuff I can read goes...” huffed Brees, who seemed almost breathless behind Braddock. “Goes on about an ancient hunter coming to feast. Something about some sistahs. It’s crazy stuff, Cap. Cray-cray fo’ sho.”
They ran along the stifling chalky bottom of the wash. The dead were now careening down the side of the rocky hill from which they’d come, threatening to cut them off ahead.
Braddock engaged two on the fly, hitting them both in the legs. It wasn’t enough to stop the impending avalanche of them, but it was something. The dead went down in dusty heaps, tumbling toward the bottom of the dry ravine.
Brees was groaning. He had a lot more wrong than busted ribs. Braddock knew it. But this was the wrong time and the wrong place for anything other than exiting the situation.
Remember, Darling... Get Mr. Steele. Exterminate with Extreme Prejudice.
That was only ever the mission.
Kill Steele and stop whatever was going on.
But could all this be about him? Everything that had happened seemed bigger than just any one man.
He’s no man, Braddock. Even you’re not stupid enough to believe that for long. That other voice from his past. The critical one. The friend. Sorta.
Brees cut loose with the sixty, his barely aimed firing ripping through waves of oncoming corpses, shredding them before he’d burned through his first belt.
