by Mike Leon
“I will burn you alive,” Ivan says.
“BURN!! BURN!!!” Blood Drinker says, parroting Ivan’s comment in peculiar fashion. “They are all wrong, of course. We will retake our place as the rulers of this world, and do you know why?”
Ivan says nothing.
“The answer is longevity. We will outlive you. Even taking no action against you, we will have our empire back. The reason is plain as day. You will destroy yourselves.”
“That may happen one day. I will make sure you don’t live to see it.”
“Tough talk, kill team, but you are powerless to stop it. See, you humans are a chaotic and disjointed race. Each of you has a mind unable to correlate all its contents, much less organize and interpret the ideas of the whole collective. You go to war for imagined gods and kill one another on the basis of hearsay. You stuff the faces of the poor until they are fat in some places, yet you leave others to famish in their own filth in others. You kill your unborn young and argue that your most heinous criminals should be kept alive. You poison yourselves for recreation until your bodies are destroyed. You are brash and irrational creatures, and yet you advance into the darkness of unknown knowledge with no regard for what you might bring light. It cannot be much longer before your ignorance leads to annihilation. We only need to ensure you don’t take our planet with you.”
“You finished yet?” Ivan grunts.
“Yes,” Sid answers, holding the packet of papers out to meet him. Ivan snatches the papers away and steps over to the room’s only window. He holds the test up in the light. Outside, it is overcast and he still has trouble reading the words. He is farsighted, and Sid’s terrible hand writing does not make things any easier. Still, the boy was trained to be a perfect killing machine, not a calligrapher. If he had shown an early affinity toward such girlishly stupid nonsense the old man would have killed him. Better this way.
“You missed one,” Ivan snorts.
“Victor missed two,” Sid replies. Ivan does not like it when the boy takes this tone with him. Victor did, in fact, miss two. He remembers: werewolf and kelpie. Ivan has never seen a kelpie before, but he knows for a fact that werewolves do exist.
“For bunyip you put thermobaric explosive,” the old man says, looking down at Sid curiously for a response.
“I wanted to be sure,” Sid says. He is not wrong. Not technically. No one has ever killed a bunyip before, and there may not even be a bunyip to kill for all Ivan knows. In any case, the old man is all but certain a thermobaric weapon would finish the thing if it did exist. Such weapons are very nasty business. Ivan saw one dropped on a fortified position in Belgrade once. The bodies on the outskirts of the blast had their lungs sucked up through their mouths and looked like they were blowing bloody purple bubble gum bubbles. Further in, the bodies were terribly burned. At the center of the blast there were no bodies at all.
Still, answering these stupid questions is not proof of the boy’s competence. Sid has always been the one he worries about. The child is too introspective, too forgiving, too complacent. He does not fully embrace the bloody nature of the thing that he does.
“I see,” Ivan answers. He scrunches the test in his hand. “You are younger than your brother when he went to the kill team. Slower. Weaker. Dumber too. What makes you think you can do this?”
“I’m bored. The hardest exercises are easy now. I’m better with a knife than you even...”
“Watch it now, boy,” the old man interjects.
“...alright. But I know I’m ready. I’m ready and I want it more than anything.”
The eagerness he hears is cause for worry. Sid is not better than him with a knife. He can’t even compete with Victor. More troubling is the impression that the boy seeks to prove himself somehow by way of these contests. Even after all this time, he maintains a boyish sense of what war is, black and white, us against them, great warriors locked in glorious combat. Ivan has no doubt the boy can win such contests, but it is another battle which concerns him. It is an internal struggle.
“You missed tikbalang,” Ivan says.
“There’s no such thing as a tikbalang.”
“I think you’d be surprised what you run into if you spend enough time out there.”
He must test the boy. But how? A test of his combat prowess would hardly be a challenge and would prove nothing. Sid’s will, his conscience, is far more likely to fail him before his aim or his knife technique. He can kill soldiers. He can kill prisoners of war. These things Ivan knows. But can he kill a woman? A child? Can he commit true atrocities if he is called upon to commit them?
Perhaps a test of those limits is in order.
ZAP
“AAGGGHHH, STOP IT! STOP!” screams General Novak.
The General is naked and tied to a chair in a basement cell of the Graveyard building. His feet sit in a bucket of water, to which Zap has alligator clipped the negative end of a pair of jumper cables. Zap holds the positive end in his hands and the other two ends are clipped to a series of car batteries that sit on the floor next to them. He extends his gloved hand to touch the bare copper of the positive alligator clip to the General’s bald testicles. They singed away the hairs long ago. The electrical current arcs and the General screams again.
“Adams! Adams told me to scramble the gunships!”
This is why they call him Zap.
Of course, his talents are not limited to electrical torture, nor did electrical torture alone break General Novak. Zap already flayed all the flesh from the General’s left hand and pulled the fingernails from his right. He pulled out several teeth with pliers. He poured Tabasco sauce in the General’s eyes. He cigarette burned the tip of the General’s penis. It is amazing what the man could endure, and yet this is not the worst Walter has seen from Zap.
In 1998, Walter watched Zap put a curling iron in a man’s rectum and demand to be told the location of a bomb while the iron heated up. In 2004, Zap put a woman’s newly augmented breasts in a bench vice and cranked the lever while asking for the name of her lover at the Joint Intelligence Committee. In 2006, Zap set a man’s legs knee deep in quick drying concrete and then slid an automotive jack under his groin and slowly jacked his legs out of the sockets while asking for a missile launch code. These are just some of the images that keep Walter up at night.
Walter watches from a chair in the corner of the room. One bare light bulb dangles from a cable over the General’s head. The two operators stationed by the door are obviously uncomfortable. One of them keeps his head turned to the side, choosing to focus on the wall rather than the torture. The other tries to watch, but averts his eyes during the more disturbing moments. Technical Tom was present at the beginning, but he threw up after the hand flaying and had to leave the room. The guards only stay because he ordered them to. Walter thinks he only stays because he hates himself.
“He said Krupp needed some roaches stepped on,” the general cries. Tears stream down his cheeks and bloody drool collects in his growing white beard. “Didn’t count on there being so many of you…”
Damn right they didn’t. Walter brought the entire company on that raid – an unprecedented move for Graveyard. They have never operated on such a scale before. They may never again.
“I’ve heard enough,” Walter says. “Hose this son of a bitch off and throw him in a holding cell.”
Two operators drag the whimpering general away, his bare feet scraping against the cement floor as they take him from the room.
“And send Tom in here,” Walter shouts after them.
Now only Walter and Zap remain.
“Looks like we’re taking to the skies,” Walter says, as he watches Zap rinse his hands in the bucket.
“I’ve done some research,” Zap says. “The Condor is in flight nearly always. It refuels in-flight and stops only for routine maintenance and Krupp’s rare personal meetings. Tracking it down will not be easy.”
“Can I ask you something, Zap?”
“Yes.”
“Am I the only one who thinks he looks like Nosferatu?”
“Count Orlok, you mean? From the silent movie?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Maybe a passing resemblance.”
Technical Tom enters the room cautiously, as if uncertain what grotesque scene of terror awaits him. Walter wastes no time letting him acclimate.
“Tom, I want to hit the Condor,” Walter says. “How do we do it?”
“Assuming we can find it, it can be destroyed with any number of surface to air missiles,” the nerd answers.
“MANPADS. Good. Now how do we find it?”
“There are ways. We could pick up the flight control transponder, or ping Damien Adams’ phone.”
“How long will that take?”
“Hours, if even that.”
“Good. Good. I want to get a location and position a fire team with five or ten stingers right in its path. Blast the god damned thing out of the sky.”
“The Condor has a crew of twenty, not counting Krupp’s security team, and, according to most accounts, a large number of courtesans,” Zap says.
“Yeah? Your point?” Walter snaps back.
“If we destroy the ship, you do understand there will be significant human collateral damage.”
“Fuck ’em, Zap. They’re with the lizard bastard.”
“Understood,” Zap nods. The man has no reservations about what they’re planning. Walter knows that. He only brought up the civilians for Walter’s sake, because he knows Walter still fancies himself a not-quite-soulless monster. “I’ll start getting something together.”
Walter walks from the room and takes the elevator upstairs for cell phone reception. He has four bars in the lobby and he stands leaning over the second floor railing overlooking the security checkpoint Sid Hansen made into a mockery only a few short days ago. The kid gives Walter the creeps, but he fights like Bruce Lee and a terminator robot had a baby and the baby was possessed by the ghost of the three hundred Spartans. They need more guys like that right now.
Walter is about to make his call when Operator Morgan dashes by wearing a beach towel around his shoulders like a cape. Frank Overton and two other operators chase after him. One of them leaps and tackles him. They slide along the waxed tile flooring.
“I am the night! I am the night!” Morgan screams.
He continues screaming it in their faces as they drag him away. The kid is a mess.
He scrolls through his phone contacts for Victoria Russell’s number and mashes the send key. Rather than ringing, her phone plays a selection of classical music. Walter hates crap like that. Enjoy the music while your party is reached? Couldn’t it just ring like a normal phone? He has to talk to someone, not start a dance-off.
“Hello?” Victoria’s voice interrupts Walter’s internal diatribe against ringback tones. With the sound of her voice comes a whirring noise, like a machine or an engine in the background.
“I have the proof we need.”
“Proof? What proof?” That noise on the line…It sounds like…
“Victoria, where are you?” Walter asks, changing the subject entirely.
“I’m on Henry Krupp’s plane, dear,” she answers.
Walter closes his eyes. He throws his special forces beret against the floor and shakes his fists with silent rage. He stomps his foot on the floor. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it!
“You really should see it sometime,” she says. “It’s quite extravagant.”
NUB GIRL
Megan Van Duyn is bored. Megan. Her name is Megan. Why can’t anyone remember that? Everyone calls her the Van Duyn girl, or just the girl. She has a fucking name. Too bad she can’t say it.
She’s lying on the green cot in the room they gave her, looking up at her mangled left hand. The three fingers beside the forefinger are gone, each cut off just below the first knuckle. She has a nub. That’s what people will call it. Her nub. When she goes back to school, the boys will make fun of her and the girls will whisper behind her back. Nub girl, they will call her. At parties people will point. Did you see the nub girl in the corner? That thing is gross. Was she born that way or was it an accident? Dude, you should try to get a handie from the nub girl.
At least they didn’t take her nose. One of the doctors talked about it. He said it would be best if they did, but Shelly argued with them. She remembers parts of that. Thank God for Shelly. If any of these other Graveyard ogres was left by her bedside that night they would have let it happen without saying a word. She knows they would have. Then she would look like a fucking troll.
She can at least wear a glove to cover her hand, but she could never hide her nose. She would have to kill herself. Yes. She would rather die than live like that. She wonders how she would do it. Pills, for sure. Susan Oliver’s older sister took pills and died. She ate a bottle of aspirin and there was nothing anyone could do. That would be best if she had no nose. But she has a nose, so she won’t have to worry about that right now.
Megan sits up on the bed. The thing is tiny compared to the king size mattress she slept on at home. The room is about as drab as they come. The walls are devoid of decorations and there is only one set of drawers. It is still far better than the accommodations Kill Team One provided. That man lives like an animal. He had her sleeping on a dirt floor in some basement somewhere and eating scraps most of the time. At best, he gave her pieces of barely cooked steak, dripping blood. He would say something like “makes you strong for fighting.” What an asshat.
Here she has a stack of books and a TV with like seven thousand channels. Judy told her it is hooked into Graveyard’s satellite and they get channels from all over the world. That’s sort of cool, except that two thirds of them are in weird languages and finding the decent ones is a pain in the ass. Megan found a South Park marathon this morning and settled on that for the rest of the day. It’s easier than surfing for anything else.
Megan picks up the copy of Mockingjay she has been trying to read all morning and turns it over in her hand. Science fiction was never her thing. Her father liked it, but Megan is more like her mother in her taste of reading material. Celebrity magazines, style guides and Nicholas Sparks novels are mainstays in her bedroom – a far cry from the young adult fiction Judy brought her in a pile.
Megan doesn’t want to read anyway. What she really wants is some company her own age. She wishes she had a phone to text her friends, but the soldiers wouldn’t let her have one. Judy said it was too dangerous. People might find her. So here she is, in the Graveyard building, wherever that is, with nobody. Well, not quite nobody. There are lots of soldiers here, but no one to talk to her. Sid Hansen is about her age, but he doesn’t seem to notice her. He doesn’t seem to notice anything he can’t shoot or stab. The soldiers talk about him sometimes. They say he spends most of his time training, lifting weights and throwing knives, and the rest of the time he hides in the basement. No one knows what he does down there, but the soldiers are afraid.
She stands up and goes to the drawers to root through the clothes Judy brought her. Judy is Walter Stedman’s secretary. She stops in once a day to check and see if Megan needs anything. Judy is a frumpy disaster with frizzled hair and giant glasses, but she managed to find some clothes in Megan’s size that don’t look totally awful. Most of them came from a mall store; American Eagle or Aeropostale or something like that. They are not the custom tailored designer outfits she has back home, but these clothes will do. Megan finds a pink tee shirt that says “Aber” line break “crom” line break “bie” and stretches it over her head to wear.
She looks at herself in the little picture frame mirror propped on top of the drawers. She could probably use a haircut. Her shiny sandy-colored hair is almost to her shoulders now and she doesn’t like it that long. That and she can find split ends, but that’s okay. He won’t notice split ends. She turns to the side and wishes she had boobs. If she had boobs he would definitely notice her, but she doesn’t. She has annoying little mosq
uito bites that she hates. She hates how they tease her really. Like they came in just a little bit of the way and then stopped to let her wonder if they would ever get bigger or just stay that way. There is still time. She’s only twelve. Her mother used to tell her that. That woman her father married was less timid. “Just get them done, dear. It’s not a big deal,” she would say. Stupid slut.
She takes that back right away. The way Tori died was horrible. That’s what Megan suspects anyway. She remembers almost nothing about that night and the soldiers don’t talk to her about it. Sometimes she sees little pieces in her nightmares. Just flashes like movie stills. Hideous teeth. Blood. So much blood. Running through snow. She always wakes up saying the same thing she was saying when they found her. “…the bad man…the bad man…the bad man…” Those are the only words she has spoken since that night – the night the bad man came.
Walter asked her questions about that night and about the bad man. That’s what she calls him, because that’s all she knows about him. Kill Team One asked her questions too. They showed her pictures and asked her to point if she saw him. She tried to tell them she can’t remember what the bad man looks like, but she couldn’t speak. She might never speak to anyone again.
She puts that out of her mind. That is all behind her. It’s a bright sunny day now. Well, she imagines it is. Her room has no windows.
Megan journeys out into the hallway and waves to Tom, one of the guards assigned to watch her door. The other one is Savon and he won’t be in for a few hours. They work in shifts, one at a time, sitting in a little chair outside her room. She has worked out a sort of understanding with the two of them for when she needs to go down the hall to the bathroom. It is only a short distance, and at first, they harassed her each time, wanting to know where she was going and then insisting on going with her, but they became more and more lax over days without incident. Now they let her go without an escort. She always returns in a few minutes and they wave to her again as she enters her little room, the whole exchange having taken place without a word spoken by either party. But this time, she has something different in mind.
