by Adam Ingle
“All right everyone, about face and not a word until our Viking friends join us. I’d hate it if you spoiled the surprise for them,” said Father Mike.
Everyone looked to Mestoph, who nodded and then slowly turned to face Father Mike and the SUV. Before they fully turned, Stephanie tried to catch Mestoph and Leviticus’s attention by discretely pointing at herself and then making her thumb and index finger like a gun, going so far as to pull the imaginary trigger of her imaginary gun. Mestoph’s eyes widened briefly and he mouthed “You?” to which Stephanie nodded. She had never given the gun back that Mestoph had given her during her watch and still had it in her coat pocket, which she patted to show him where it was. He quickly mouthed “Wait,” and they all turned to face the smiling padre.
“What do you want?” asked Mestoph.
A smile that had previously been warm and reassuring now took a sinister turn as it spread across the Father’s face. “I want to know what you two are up to,” he said. He waved the gun back and forth at Mestoph and Leviticus, directing the question at them.
“Us? We're just saving humanity,” said Leviticus.
Father Mike burst out laughing, though never took his eyes off his captives.
“You two? No, you've never done anything for anyone but yourselves. And from what I've heard, you're not even very good at that.”
Marcus pushed past Mestoph and Leviticus and stood at the front of the group. “They've saved our lives several times, so if you have a problem with them, you have a problem with us.”
The smile on Father Mike's face stayed plastered there. “Saved your lives? It's their fault your lives are in danger to begin with. You two,” he said, now pointing the gun at Marcus and Stephanie, “don't even know the kind of people you're keeping company with. That one right there,” he continued, gesturing at Mestoph, “is a damned—”
A loud, cracking report interrupted Father Mike midsentence, and the smile slowly faded from his face. His pupils widened as he looked down at his chest where blood, human blood, was flowering from a bullet wound. He looked up and saw Stephanie standing with a gun pointed at him, the barrel smoking still. Father Mike coughed, blood coming out in faint specks, and then the cough turned to choking as he fell to the ground.
“Problem solved,” said Stephanie as she dropped the gun, shaking visibly. “Now let's get the Hell out of here.”
Magnus and Fenrir ran from the gas station, panic on their faces. They ran up to the group but stopped short when they saw the body of Father Mike lying on the ground, twitching and gasping. The two Vikings just stood there, mouths agape.
Father Mike suddenly jerked upright in a loud, explosive cough. A glob of squashed metal flew from his mouth, and the bullet that had just killed him fell to the asphalt. He did one of those kung-fu undulations that sent him springing to his feet. At the same time, he grabbed the gun that Stephanie had dropped so that he now held a weapon in each hand. He pointed one at the main group and the other at the two Vikings. Everyone took an involuntary step back.
“Did you know they could do that?” asked Leviticus.
Mestoph just shrugged.
“Now climb into the car; we’re finishing our trip. Stephanie, you’re driving. I’m calling shotgun. Any more funny shit, and I plug little missy here,” said Father Mike as he kept one gun on Stephanie and motioned the others into the SUV with the other.
“Keys?” asked Father Mike.
Magnus reached into his pocket, which made Father Mike give him a stern look of warning, and slowly extended his hand toward the padre. At the last moment, Magnus tossed the keys over Father Mike’s head. It didn’t have the desired effect. No doubt he had expected the Father to automatically grab at the keys or turn to follow them, but instead he pulled the trigger, shooting Magnus in the shoulder. The Viking screamed in pain.
By now the gunshots had finally gotten the attention of the gas station clerk. The short, pudgy man waddled out of the store with an indignant look and began shouting in Icelandic. Father Mike turned sideways so he could point one of his guns toward the attendant while keeping the other on his hostages. He fired a round. It missed the attendant by several feet, but shattered a window and sent the appropriate message. The clerk dropped, covering his head with his hands, and duck-waddled back inside the store.
“Now come out here and get those fucking keys and hand them to me properly,” Father Mike said calmly.
Magnus looked at Father Mike in disbelief for a moment and then looked at the others. They all motioned their heads and mouthed words along the lines that he should do what the crazy bastard told him to. Magnus sighed and climbed back out of the SUV, holding his shoulder and keeping his useless arm close to his chest. It wasn’t bleeding as much as he would have expected, but it hurt like Hell nonetheless. He began to reach down with his good arm when Father Mike glanced down and tutted.
Magnus looked up at him, confused.
“The other hand. The other hand,” said the priest.
Magnus reached down, obediently using the arm in which he had been shot. Leaning over sent pains shooting up and down his arm and into his neck. Despite the intense pain he managed to keep from screaming or crying, but the pain was evident in his face. He handed the keys gently to Father Mike, who took them with equal gentleness.
“Good dog. Now back in the truck,” he said.
Magnus walked back to the SUV, clearly angry and in pain, but what struck Mestoph was the way he cowered and wouldn’t look anyone else in the eye. He wasn’t going to be putting up a fight against Father Mike; the priest might as well have shot him in the head.
“Alright now kids, let’s get back on the road. The sooner we leave, the sooner all this will be over. You don’t want me to have to stop this car to discipline anyone,” said Father Mike.
They drove on down the highland road towards the center of the storm. The closer they got, the worse the rain got, which meant the already rudimentary road got worse as well. The failing light made the pentagram at the center of the storm look even more eerie as its darkness seemed to glow in the dark. Stephanie slowed down, squinting through the sheets of rain.
“We won’t make it at all if we keep going like this,” she said.
“Floor it, missy,” said Father Mike, poking her in the ribs with the barrel of the gun.
“I think we should stop,” said Marcus.
“We’ll stop when we get there and not before,” said Father Mike.
“No, you don’t under—”
Father Mike pressed the other gun against Marcus’s forehead.
“I said we’ll stop when we get there,” said Father Mike, a dangerous edge coming into his voice.
Marcus remained calm as the gun dug into his skin, not shaking, sweating, or breathing heavily. Instead he very slowly raised his hand and pointed at the windshield. Up ahead at a slight bend in the road there was a roadblock of three vehicles sitting abreast with their headlights shining in their direction. Stephanie slammed on the brakes. As they slid to a halt, a figure climbed out of the middle vehicle and walked to the front, standing there patiently.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Stephanie.
Father Mike looked out to the roadblock and then back at his little group of hostages. He repeated this process several times.
“Well?” asked Stephanie.
“Give me a minute to think, damn it.”
Father Mike briefly lifted the gun he had pointed at Stephanie and took steady aim. She tensed and started to cry. He let the gun fall back to his lap again, but then flexed to aim once more. Before he could make a decision, Stephanie slammed her foot on the gas. It was the moment everyone had been waiting for. Marcus grabbed the wrist of the arm with the gun pointed at him, using both hands to push Father Mike’s hand up to the ceiling of the SUV. At the same time Leviticus, who had been sitting directly behind Father Mike, grabbed Father Mike’s right arm. The gun went off and shot a hole through the win
dshield, directly at the middle vehicle of the roadblock. It was hard to tell if the person standing in front of the truck actually took the bullet or just ducked at the sound of gunfire, but either way he dropped to the ground.
“Seatbelts!” Stephanie shouted above the noise of the jostling SUV, gunfire, and struggling passengers. She kept her foot on the gas, intending to ram the roadblock. Another figure climbed out of the truck at the center of the roadblock, hoisting something on his shoulder. The stance and silhouette was all too familiar to all of them—it was another RPG. Leviticus tried to shake the gun out of Father Mike’s hand, which caused another shot to go off. The shot was high and wide, but it startled the man with the RPG and he fired slightly prematurely.
The next seconds went by in slow motion. Everyone stopped struggling as the SUV sped toward the roadblock and the RPG flew toward the SUV. Its familiar, erratic trajectory teetered and spiraled slowly across the distance between them. It flew low, getting lower in the painfully slow seconds that passed like honey. Finally the RPG struck just a few feet in front of them. The explosion rocked the SUV and made a deep crater. They had so much speed at that point that instead of careening headfirst into the hole, the SUV slammed into the rim and then flipped. The first spin sent the tail end of the SUV onto the ground, which then catapulted them high into the air.
The SUV soared for a moment, but the front-heaviness caused it to angle down, and they were looking at the ground coming directly at them through the windshield. Staring up at them, confused and terrified, were the two rebels who had been standing in front of the truck, one still holding the empty rocket launcher on his shoulder. The SUV smashed down deep into the earth, causing all the airbags in the vehicle to inflate simultaneously, and flipped over a half turn, top down onto the center truck. At last, it slid back down to the ground, nose first.
Then there was stillness, and silence.
Chapter 15
The City of Your Final Destination
At first, there was the sound of shifting glass shards, creaking metal, and the ticking of the cooling engine. Then other sounds broke through the veil of dulled consciousness, and Stephanie heard raindrops pattering on the chassis of the SUV. There was the sound of someone moving, but her vision was still a bit fuzzy. There was light coming from somewhere outside the vehicle, but inside it was near dark and she was having a hard time focusing.
She tried to move, and it was then that she realized she was hanging upside down, strapped into the driver’s seat. Just as that knowledge sunk in, her body jerked and then tumbled to the floor, which was actually the ceiling of the SUV. She tried to sit up but couldn’t; she then tried to roll over onto her knees but felt herself being restrained. Then she was pulled free and suddenly she was outside, rain falling on her face and the lights from a truck in her eyes.
The others regained consciousness over the next few minutes and made the same realizations in roughly the same order Stephanie had, but no one came to pull them out. Marcus regained mobility first and struggled out of his seatbelt, falling shoulder first onto the ceiling with a groan and sliding toward the shattered windshield of the SUV. It was hard to tell in the dimness, but he could see the outlines of what looked like Magnus and Fenrir laying in a depression of the roof near the back end of the vehicle. He climbed up and checked both for a pulse. Once he confirmed they were both still alive, he slid back down toward the front of the vehicle. He made similar cursory checks of Mestoph and Leviticus, noticing but cataloging away for now the fact that they had drastically different pulses from each other and from any human heartbeat he had ever felt.
Then he scrambled up toward where Stephanie was—only she wasn’t. Even in the dimness, he could see that both front seats were empty and the passenger door was open. It was hard to tell, but it looked like the driver side door was creased and probably jammed.
“Stephanie?” he yelled, but there was no reply.
Panic hit him and he felt his aches and pains dull away to nothing. Before he realized it, he was standing in the rain outside. In front of him, silhouetted in the headlights of the truck, were Father Mike and Stephanie. He was holding a gun to her head.
“That’s far enough lover boy,” said Father Mike.
Marcus couldn’t see it, but he could feel that cold smile beaming out from the man’s face. Just the thought of it made him feel sick. He looked around, hoping one of the rebels might have survived, but if they had they were still unconscious or hiding. He saw that Father Mike was only holding one gun and cursed himself for not checking the vehicle before he came out.
“So now what?” asked Marcus.
“We wait for the others. Nothing has changed. We’re all going to the center of that storm together,” said Father Mike.
Marcus heard noises coming from the SUV and saw the glint off of a pair of eyes peeking out of the driver’s side window. He chose then to speak up, hoping someone inside heard him.
“So what happened to the other gun?” asked Marcus, a little louder than necessary.
Father Mike laughed mirthlessly and pulled the second gun from his coat pocket and raised it high, pointing it up at the sky. Even in silhouette there was no denying it was the real thing.
“Nice try. Warning your friends isn’t going to do any good. I hold all the cards here,” said Father Mike.
He lowered the second gun and aimed it at the SUV, near the rear, and fired off two quick shots. By Marcus’s count that was the eighth shot from that gun, though he couldn’t remember any being fired from the padre’s personal gun. He didn’t know exactly what the capacity of the Sky Marshal’s .40 was but he had played enough video games to recognize it as a subcompact, probably the Glock 27, and he figured it could only be nine or ten, depending on whether one had been chambered and assuming the clip had been full. If they were lucky and Father Mike wasn’t paying attention to his ammo the second gun could quickly be made useless.
“Alright, everyone out,” said Father Mike.
Both Mestoph and Leviticus climbed out of wreckage, Mestoph through a shattered side window and Leviticus from the passenger side. A few moments later Sir Regi dropped out through the busted out rear window, whimpering a bit as he put weight on one of his legs. The dog was covered in blood, but it didn’t seem to be his own. All of them were dirty and covered in scratches, and the headlights glinted off of pieces of glass in their hair and falling from the creases of their clothes.
“What about the other two?” asked Father Mike.
“Magnus is out cold. I think he might be in a coma. Between being shot and the wreck his body has been through a lot,” said Leviticus.
“And Fenrir?”
Leviticus shook his head somberly. Mestoph spoke up. “You, um, warning shot him in the head.”
Father Mike turned and looked at the SUV. Half of his face was lit by headlights, and they could see that his twisted smile was gone. He harrumphed and shrugged his shoulders.
“No matter. I’ve got who I need. They were dead weight anyway,” he said.
Father Mike moved sideways, keeping Stephanie as a shield in front of him, and pointed at the remains of the roadblock.
“Alright, why don’t you guys start checking vehicles and find me one that works. Just start them long enough to see if they run and cut them off. If any of you make like you’re going to take off I won’t hesitate to shoot her,” he said as he pulled Stephanie closer, pressing the gun harder against her temple. She made a strained face but didn’t make a noise. Sir Regi growled, and Father Mike pointed the second gun at the dog.
“Listen you little furry bastard. I don’t know what your deal is, but I’ll take you out just for fun if you don’t shut up,” he said.
Sir Regi’s growl went low and deep into his stomach. Father Mike threw him a warning look and adjusted the gun in his hand to emphasize his point. Sir Regi let out a muffled half-bark as he lowered his head, his tail going down as well.
“Now who’s a goo
d boy?”
Marcus, Mestoph, and Leviticus walked past Father Mike, who put the second gun down by his side but not back into his coat, and kept himself turned so that Stephanie stayed facing them. He had almost turned his back to Sir Regi, whose head had suddenly shot to attention and had begun to crouch, but Father Mike saw his error before the dog could do anything. Father Mike backed up a bit until he was near Sir Regi, kicked at him, and motioned toward the others with a nod. The dog hesitated for a moment but finally moved closer to the rest of his comrades, reluctantly going submissive again. By now everyone had pretty much traded places with Father Mike now facing into the headlights of the roadblock vehicles and the flipped SUV at his right only a few feet away.
Something changed in Sir Regi’s demeanor, and he began growling and making gruff little chirrups that sounded as much like barks as bullfrog croaks. The Scottie got louder and started bucking forward with each bark in the aggressive stance of a larger dog defying an attempt to invade onto his territory. Father Mike began to lift his gun, and then things got confusing. Sir Regi lurched forward as fast as he could. At the same time, a blur came from the top of the flipped SUV and landed on Father Mike. The gun went off, and there were the simultaneous screams and yelps of two men, a dog, and a woman.
Mestoph, Leviticus, and Marcus ran over but stopped short when they suddenly made sense of what was happening. Stephanie was on her back and propped up by her hands behind her watching the scene along with them. What they saw was Father Mike’s vacant eyes staring up, laying on top of a body that had an arm wrapped around the padre’s chest. That arm was gripping the handle of a pocket knife shoved deep into his chest somewhere close to where his heart should be. There was also a large chunk of the Father’s throat missing. It was hanging from Sir Regi’s mouth, who was shaking like a nervous Chihuahua. There was blood all over Father Mike, pouring from the gaping hole in his neck and from around the blade in his chest. The body suddenly lifted and rolled over, revealing Fenrir with a slightly unnerving grin on his face.
