Pack
Page 24
He was right, but he had sustained a nasty cut along the palm of his right hand in the process, giving one final push so the plastic would give way. He had bandaged his hand the best he could with spare scraps of uniform, figuring the worst thing he could do is leave a bloody trail straight to wherever he decided to hide. A few minutes later, with his hand pulsing and stinging like crazy, Stu realized “hiding” was a relative term. He couldn’t go out onto the street because most of Stander’s men were that direction. The office had no “back way” leaving “up” as his only option.
Before he made his way to the roof, he grabbed a spare revolver he knew was in the desk. The occupiers hadn’t thought to look through the desk, so in theory, Stu was armed. After making his way up on the roof, staying low and moving as quietly as he could, he tried testing out his firing hand only to find the cut was giving him a lot of trouble, throbbing and weak as it was. He could shoot, but it wouldn’t be accurate, it would hurt like hell and he was not good enough with his left hand to make any sort of go of it. He had tried shooting left handed on a dare once at the shooting range in Detroit and was met with laughter and derision by his fellow officers, plus a sore shoulder the next morning to boot.
From his perch on the roof, Stu was able to listen and mark the moment they knew he was gone from the office. A few minutes later he heard screaming from down below and figured punishment had been meted out for his escape. No one thought to check the roof because, he reasoned, it was a stupid place to go – no escape, no utility, no real threat. He had even left the hatch to the roof partially open so he didn’t get locked up there. Stu wasn’t sure what he would do if they did check, but it was a cool day, he was armed, and the bleeding was under control. As far as murderous bands of cut throat occupiers went, things could be going a lot worse, plan or not.
As he sat and reflected on his relative good fortune, he realized the yelling from below had changed. It was higher now and as he focused, Stu realized the man had stopped screaming and a woman had started. And the screaming sounded familiar.
“You assholes!” the woman said between screams. “Damn it, you know I can’t tell you …”
The words turned abruptly to a howl Stu recognized as Dana, his sister. His heart panicked while his brain reasoned that, of course they would go after Dana. He was lucky it had taken them this long. As her yelling sustained, the brain shut down and despair mixed with the panic as two extremely potent urges collided. He couldn’t let them continue to hurt his sister, but there was nothing substantial he could do without getting recaptured and likely killed. The sounds of Dana’s suffering did not abate.
“Damn you!” she had started chanting when words were possible between bouts of screaming. Over and over she said “damn you, damn you,” until it started to sound like a prayer. After a while, she started crying, a high whimper Stu had only heard on rare occasions as a child and only then when extreme pain was involved. Dana had been in a car crash as a teen and had shattered a bone in her arm. The recovery was long and intense and she would whimper during the physical therapy that was part of “getting better”. Now Stu heard it again and before his mind could tell him not to, he was on his feet.
He carefully lifted the hatch to the roof and eased his body down the ladder, painstakingly avoiding any sudden movements or unnecessary sound. The hatch was at the end of the back hallway of the Sheriff’s Office with the bathroom and breakroom on either side. The corridor was long enough to conceal him from view, and as he crept closer, his movements hidden by the sound of torture, he gripped the pistol with both hands, down low, muzzle down like he had been taught as a young recruit.
The plan, as it was, was to grab a quick glance of the room and then come out blazing. He had seven shots with the pistol (he had checked the bullets while on the roof), and after he cleared the room, he would get Dana out of there. Past that, there was no plan. Dana could not keep suffering, Stu thought, even if the consequences were a bit hazy. Whatever they were doing to Dana was winding down as Stu peered around the corner, and the screams gave way to heavy breathing, which still masked the other sounds in the room well enough.
When he finally worked up the courage to look around the corner, Stu saw three men standing around his sister, two of which were very intently listening to the radio. The crackling, electronic tinged voice wasn’t audible to Stu, in fact he hadn’t heard it at all until his head was around the corner of the hallway wall, but whatever was being said had the men’s full attention. Stu waited, getting a good sense of the room and hid back behind the wall.
“We gotta go,” one of the men said. “You watch her, keep on her if you want to, but she stays here. Under no circumstances does she move from this chair. You get me?”
“Yeah,” another man said. “I got it.”
“If you lose her, we’re both up shit creek, man,” the first man said. “You saw what happened to Chris.”
“Chris was an asshole,” the first man said.
“You’re an asshole,” Dana said, weakly, followed by a spitting sound.
This brought a good chuckle from the three men, a few choice comments and a few seconds later Stu heard the bell on the door ding, meaning the door had opened and one or more men had left. This was a stroke of improbably luck, Stu thought, but then he remembered he had been attacked by a werewolf the day before. Probability was relative at this point.
Given his new found luck, Stu waited to see if he could determine how many men were now holding Dana. He figured two men had left, but he wanted to be sure. His answer came soon enough.
“How long you think they’ll be gone?” Stu heard a man say.
“I want to light you on fire,” Dana replied. Stu grinned despite himself.
“See, that’s just it,” the man said, taking a conversational tone. “You don’t know how this thing works, lady. You think being tough is going to accomplish something. Torture always works. No one lasts forever, no matter how tough they are. We’re going to hurt you until you tell us anything and everything about your piece of shit brother and then we’ll be done with you. I don’t know what happens to you then.”
“I get to fuck your mother?” Dana shot back.
“No, probably not that,” the man said. “I’m thinking they’ll make you vanish, along with the rest of this town.”
There was a creak as the man sat down in Stu’s chair, an ancient rolling metal deal with a green cracked plastic seat covering. The first time Stu had sat in it, he had almost fallen out but hadn’t replaced it as there was no furniture store for over 50 miles, but because of the squeak and noises that accompanied it, Stu suddenly knew exactly where the man was – on the side of the desk closest to the hallway, facing the door. And he wasn’t paying attention.
“How about I cut you?” the man said. “I mean, have you ever been cut? A lot of people have accidentally cut themselves or had surgery or whatever but have you ever watched your own flesh get split with a knife, feel the blood? You kinky like that? That sound like fun?
“Untie me and give it a shot,” Dana said.
“Or I could go get Robin, is that her name? I could go get her and bring her in here and cut into her while you watch. Maybe there’s this moment, right …”
The chair squeaked as the man leaned forward, really getting in to his story. Stu crept very slowly from around the corner and raised the pistol.
“ …I’ve cut into her a few times, arms or legs maybe and then I make a cut that won’t heal. That won’t get better. I cut a little too deep or a little too far and all of a sudden there’s more blood than you know what to do this and you know she’s not coming back from it. You know she’s either going bleed to death or lose a limb or something.
Stu was clear of his cover and crept slowly toward the man, the pistol outstretched, awestruck by his luck. Dana had seen him and, to her credit, had kept the same look on her face. She didn’t flinch or give up anything happening behind the man, whose rape fantasy was about at an end.
The man suddenly bolted out of the chair and right in to Dana’s face, his back still to Stu. The sudden movement sent a jolt through all of Stu’s nervous system, that warm uncomfortable tingle that starts in the chest and goes all the way down, but he didn’t jump or move, continuing his slow creep toward the man. Given his position, leaning right in to Dana, Stu wasn’t sure how he could shoot the man and not hurt his sister as well.
“Do you suppose you’d talk after that?”
“I know where my brother is,” Dana said, a wide grin spreading across her face.
The admission caused the man to stand up.
“You do? Then why in the …”
The pistol went off and the bullet clearing the man’s head and lodging in the wood paneling of the wall near the window. It was a lucky shot that it didn’t break the window, drawing even more attention than a gun going off. The man fell forward, but his smooth angle of descent was interrupted by his legs completely crumpling. From the back, his fall looked like a rubber mannequin had been thrown across the room, and there was nothing graceful or cinematic about the way he fell, or the way he twitched once he had hit the floor. After his face hit the ground, the man was able to turn part way on his side and begin kicking his top leg in a spasmic rhythm. Of course, his eyes were open and Stu immediately flashed back to the kid and the stains on his shirt and the screaming and the look on his face that said “I want to take it back.”
Only, this man didn’t look like that. There was no emotion in his face, just spasms in his muscles as the brain quit working because Stu had put a bullet where vital matter had once been. While part of Stu’s brain flashed back and brought up all the old pain, there was a small part of him that thought “this is not as bad.”The blood, the dead eyes, the sick dance …it wasn’t that bad.
He held on to that, for what seemed like minutes, but in reality was just a second or two. He held on to the man’s face not as a horror or a fault in himself but as just a moment, a terrible moment but one that was not part of him but part of his experience. It’s a big difference, he would later think.
Plus, the guy was an asshole who had beaten and threatened his sister. So there was that.
While this psychodrama only took a second or so to play out in real time, it didn’t take Dana nearly as long to react.
“THAT’S RIGHT!” she yelled. “DIE!”
Stu snapped to attention and gave his sister a quick hug.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he grabbed on to her.
“Yeah, but you’re a good shot,” she said, quickly, stifling a quick sob. “Get me the hell out of here.”
One quick snap of a utility knife later and Dana was right behind Stu as they headed toward the back. The gun shot hadn’t appeared to draw much attention and no one had come storming in to the Sheriff’s Office. The radio on the man’s hip was silent, and Stu quickly snagged it, hoping it would come in handy later. Dana grabbed his gun. It struck Stu as lucky, and being lucky has an expiration date.
As they went down the hall toward the back, Dana attempted to grab Stu’s right hand and he yelped in pain. Her hand came away bloody and Stu shook it as the pain came rushing in. After a few shakes, blood was dripping from the bandage.
“What’d you do?”
“Cut it escaping the first time,” Stu said. “It hurts but it’s OK.”
“We are going to go out this door and to the left to the abandon tire store, you know the one?”
Stu shook his head as Dana disappeared into the break room for a second and came back with a first aid kit he hadn’t known was there.
‘Then I’m going to fix that hand and we’ll figure out our next move.”
“Where the hell …”
“You do the cop lookout thing. I’m behind you. Ready?”
“ …where was it?”
“STU!” Dana said, snapping her fingers. “Head in the game, bud.”
He held up the pistol and felt a stream of blood slide down his sleeve to his elbow.
“How are we getting in the abandoned tire shop?”
“Through the front door,” Dana said. “Well, there used to be a front door. There’s no door there but there are rooms and places to hide.”
“OK,” Stu said. “Dana for the win.”
Luck held a little longer as they made it to the abandoned building and a few minutes later, Stu had a fresh bandage, a grateful sister, and absolutely no idea about what to do next.
•••
Stander had received another call.
This time there was progress to report. They had captured William Rhodes and while the others were in the wind, this result made the operation a rousing success of historic proportion. Hartman Corp had samples of blood and tissue, they had basic physiology, but it had all proved fruitless and frustrating. The goal was to discover what made transformation happen as the possible applications were astounding – tissue regeneration and transformation, instantaneous healing, weaponization. But all the samples they had added up to exactly nothing. Dead tissue went far, but not nearly far enough. They needed a live sample for the work to begin.
And they’d gotten close. There was the live subject who committed suicide in Helsinki, the live subject from Vladivostok who actually made it to the lab before succumbing to alcohol poisoning, the wolf who turned out to be something completely different all together. Then there was Byron Matzen.
It had all happened through deep, back channels through simple pharmaceutical reps. There wasn’t a doctor’s office in the nation that didn’t deal with pharmaceutical reps and those reps were overseen by companies who had members of Hartman Corp. on their boards and in their administrative offices. Their network was vast and so when Mr. Matzen went only one step above the rep who dealt with the small clinic 45 miles East of town, the news made its way up the ranks quickly. The strategy had been to treat this contact, the first of its kind in the storied history of the organization, as a Faberge egg, the slightest sudden movement might send the entire thing shattering into pieces that could not be salvaged.
There were negotiations. Mr. Matzen was one of the “affected” but he would deliver other subjects. He would deliver one subject to them, he would be substantially rewarded and he and his friends and community were to be spared. The company was OK with this. The information had remained proprietary, the terms were generous and if things went wrong they had the firepower to erase this man and everyone he had ever met from the face of the planet.
Then, Byron Matzen was killed.
In the aftermath of this development, two camps within Hartman Corp had fiercely competed for their point of view to win the day. The first wanted to continue to handle things delicately. There were obviously “affected” in this small community that the larger groups of “affected” were unaware of their existence. They were also sure none of their competitors had this information and that none of the other various groups of interest were anywhere near this part of the world. They didn’t have to hurry, the argument went. This could be handled.
The other school of thought wanted to go in with guns blazing. Yes, there was time, but that wouldn’t last. They would go in with a paramilitary strike team, get the necessary intel and lay waste to anyone who could bear witness. There was no one in the vicinity to stop them (or even notice, as the argument went) so why not? Get the prize and get out.
It was Stander who had bridged the gap and won the position of lead on the operation. His argument had been to combine the two ideas – go in soft then go in hard but most importantly, do it quickly. Two weeks was the window of time, he had argued. The board, desperate for a compromise between warring factions, agreed. And they were on the phone.
”How soon will the subject be ready for transport?” the voice on the other end of the phone aske
d. It was not “Simmons” as before, but someone different.
“Two hours,” Stander said. “I received word that the medical transport vehicle is on the road as we speak. We can’t load him into the back of a truck in case there are any incidents during transport.”
“Good,” the voice said. “They are transporting him to our facility in Kansas City and from there he will be secure. What’s the status of the town?”
“Taken care of,” Stander said. “As soon as Mr. Rhodes is out of town, we will take care of the witnesses.”
“Any word from the others?”
“No, sir.”
“Be advised things are happening around you,” the voice said.
Stander blinked.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” he said.
“An outside group is working to block our resources and cut off routes for Mr. Rhodes to leave the area,” the voice said. “We don’t know who they are but they are quite effective. We are losing resources but all this is happening over 100 miles away. Continue to do your job.”
“Yes, sir,” Stander said.
“I will call ever hour for progress reports,” the voice said. “Answer the phone.”
“Yes, sir,” Stander said. The line went dead.
The implications were huge – a group attacking the resources of Hartman Corp? That meant they had knowledge of the operations, had engaged in industrial espionage and, most importantly, were highly organized. It’s one thing to learn there is an enemy you didn’t know existed. It was another to know they were bad asses.
Stander’s phone rang again.
“This is Stander,” he said.
“This is Dave Rhodes.”
It was a red letter day for surprising phone calls, Stander thought.