Ghosts

by Matt Rogers

  The nose strike broke his nose.

  The human body is strangely susceptible, strangely weak. She knew if he hit her once she’d crumple, crack, break, give up completely. Or if he got a shot off with the rifle aimed in her direction — that’d be that.

  So she didn’t let it happen.

  The barrel drifted down slightly on its trajectory. He was weakening. He’d been in the room for less than two seconds, but—

  She went on autopilot.

  She skirted to the right, looping around behind him so she filled the doorway, avoiding the line of fire.

  He fired again, blind, wild.

  She elbowed him in the face twice.

  Pop-pop.

  He went down to his knees.

  She elbowed him in the forehead. Her strike had the aid of gravity this time, and it was charged with mortal fear.

  His face was covered in blood, and she didn’t realise half of it was from the torn skin on her elbow.

  She hit him one final time.

  He dropped the gun and pitched forward, semi-conscious.

  83

  She stood over him, panting, completely overwhelmed. Her arms were lead. She could barely lift them.

  She’d never been in a fight before.

  She’d never laid a finger on another human being in anger.

  She looked down at the guy’s broken nose, broken face, broken skin.

  She picked up his weapon — a fully automatic assault rifle.

  It was so heavy.

  She couldn’t do it.

  She couldn’t imagine snuffing his life out, ending the existence of a fellow human being. She couldn’t even begin to get her head around it.

  Then he woke up, reached out, and grabbed hold of her ankle. His grip was iron. Her calves were smooth and small. He’d wrench her off her feet with one tug, and then he’d beat her to death.

  No choice.

  Kill or die.

  She aimed the rifle at the top of his head and fired.

  The gun leapt in her hands, sending her stumbling back, and she reached out a hand and caught herself in the doorway, gripping the frame with white knuckles.

  The rest of the world fell away.

  The corpse on the floor was all that remained.

  She stood there, shaking, eyes wide, until a hand seized her shoulder. She didn’t have the energy to turn around. She didn’t have the energy to resist anymore.

  She wasn’t a killer.

  Yes, you are.

  Violetta said, ‘Are you hurt?’

  Alexis dropped the gun, relief flooding her. She looked over. Violetta’s eyes blazed. So cool, so calm, so collected.

  Alexis shrugged.

  Violetta looked past her, through the doorway, and her eyes went wide.

  She spun Alexis around to properly face her. Took her cheeks in her hands. Made sure they were staring each other in the eyes.

  She said, ‘Are you okay?’

  Alexis said, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You or him. Remember that.’

  Alexis pulled away from her grip. She wanted to look at the body. She needed to see it, make sure it was real. Blood pooled around his head, soaked the carpet.

  Violetta said, ‘How does it feel?’

  Alexis didn’t have the words to describe it.

  ‘Me or him,’ she said.

  Violetta patted her on the cheek. ‘Congrats on popping your cherry.’

  ‘Are … are there others?’

  ‘I took care of them.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Four,’ Violetta said. ‘I think.’

  ‘How are you so … nonchalant?’

  ‘Them or us.’

  Alexis nodded.

  ‘Where’s the girl?’ Violetta said.

  A different fear gripped Alexis’ chest.

  Fear for others, not just herself.

  She remembered the two shots ripping into the mattress.

  She said, ‘Oh, God.’

  It couldn’t be like this. Not after how hard they’d fought. Not this late.

  She forgot about the corpse entirely and took three bounding steps into the room. Flattened herself to the carpet right near the bloodstains and looked under the bed.

  She expected the worst.

  She found Melanie staring back at her, wide eyes unblinking in the shadows.

  Unhurt.

  Alexis breathed out. She didn’t have the energy to get back up. She pressed her face to the floor and sighed.

  ‘We’re okay,’ she whispered to herself. ‘It’s all okay.’

  Violetta said, ‘King needs to know about this.’

  Alexis heard her pull out her phone and fire off another text.

  84

  Slater couldn’t walk anymore.

  Standing in one place for too long was his kryptonite, and the ankle ballooned beyond comprehension. He felt it swelling, the bones grinding, the pain held at bay by tension. He’d feel all of it soon, when the stress cocktail wore off. It was a ticking time bomb threatening to incapacitate him at any moment. Sooner or later he’d have to sit down.

  Icke said, ‘Now let’s talk.’

  King got another text.

  He looked down at his phone.

  He started to shake.

  His aim drifted down. He didn’t care about the standoff anymore.

  Slater thought, If Violetta’s still texting, and it’s bad news, then that means…

  Oh, fuck.

  He wanted to react, wanted to scream, wanted to make any sort of sound to convey the horror in his chest, but he didn’t.

  Icke smiled.

  Soaked in the defeat, the loss of their loved ones, the crushing weight pressing down on them. This was a man who wouldn’t know what that felt like. Who was close to no one but money. Whose life was as empty as the grave he’d eventually wind up in.

  The judge sensed a window of opportunity.

  Aimed the gun at King.

  But King wasn’t destroyed anymore. In those milliseconds the pain vanished, replaced by unnerving coldness, and he whipped the gun back up and shot Icke before the judge could depress his own trigger. Icke fell away, and blood sprayed, and Elsa fell forward. King caught her and spun her around and shielded her with his body, the Kevlar vest beneath his tactical gear like a great medieval shield.

  In all that madness Slater had caught the briefest of glimpses of King’s phone screen.

  A message from Violetta.

  We handled it.

  Emotion makes you weak, but emotion makes you human, too. Slater needed a half-second to process what had happened. He’d experienced the death of Alexis and the revelation that she was fine in the same instant. It reset his brain for that crucial window of time — unnoticeable to any observer — that he needed.

  When he turned to search for Icke, the man was gone.

  The judge had caught some ungodly second wind and all Slater caught of him was a flash of his big frame disappearing through a door right beside him. Blood pumped from the man’s collar bone. King hadn’t hit him in the head.

  Darkness swallowed the old man, and Slater saw the space beyond wasn’t another office but a stairwell, spiralling down.

  King still had his back turned, shielding Elsa from harm, unaware that Icke was no longer there.

  Before he could get up, Slater growled, ‘He’s all mine.’

  His leg didn’t hurt anymore.

  He didn’t feel a thing.

  Only rage.

  He ran for the stairwell on a broken ankle and pursued Icke into the abyss.

  85

  King cradled Elsa until Slater vanished, then released her.

  The corridor was empty.

  The complex was a ghost town.

  Literally.

  He said, ‘Are you okay?’

  She hyperventilated, but her head was clear. She said, ‘I think so.’

  ‘Go back in the office. Lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone other than us.’

  ‘Plea
se don’t make me go back in there.’

  He turned her around so she could look him in the eyes. ‘Icke’s all that’s left. There’s no one else.’

  ‘He got away. He’s still here.’

  King made sure she was watching his eyes.

  He said, ‘He’s nothing.’

  She believed him.

  She ran back into the office and he heard the snap of a lock bolting.

  He bolted, too.

  For the stairs.

  Followed them down into darkness, taking them three at a time, on and on, down and down…

  He burst out into a glaringly bright loading bay, and realised he’d caught them already.

  Icke was fat and old and slow, and Slater was impeded by broken bones. King found his partner rooted in place, both legs skewered into the ground in the mouth of the stairwell door, taking aim at the bloodied judge wobbling for his life across the cavernous space.

  King pulled up alongside Slater.

  Slater said, ‘Good to see you again.’

  King said, ‘You, too.’

  Icke kept stumbling. The revolver in his hand forgotten, his fear mortal, his focus directed entirely toward the semi-trailers on the other side of the loading bay. Cover he’d never reach.

  Slater asked, ‘Head?’

  King said, ‘Legs.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Slater shot Alastair Icke in the back of the knee. All three hundred pounds pitched forward grotesquely, putting him face-first on the ground. The revolver spilled from his hand and skittered out of reach. He lay flat on his considerable stomach, one cheek pressed to the concrete, immobile.

  His body started heaving.

  King thought he might be convulsing.

  Then he realised.

  The judge was sobbing.

  The gunshot report echoed in the loading bay. Its noise was final.

  Slater limped over, kicked the revolver even further away, then retreated. King passed him by en route to Icke.

  Slater said, ‘He’s all yours.’

  King said, ‘You don’t want this?’

  ‘I don’t want to look at him,’ Slater said. ‘I’m going to pretend he never existed.’

  Slater’s eyes were tired.

  His soul was tired.

  King understood.

  Slater held out a hand, palm open, fingers out. King slapped it, held it, and pulled his brother in.

  ‘An entire system,’ Slater said. ‘We did it.’

  ‘We did.’

  Slater eyed the judge one last time. ‘Now finish it.’

  King mirrored Slater’s words. ‘My pleasure.’

  He walked over to Icke.

  The judge had levered himself into a half-seated position. He’d rolled over, tried to sit up, deduced that was impossible, and propped himself on his elbows. His collar streamed blood, as did the back of his leg, but neither were fatal. King tore Icke’s sweat-soaked shirt apart at the buttons and ripped off two strips. He bound both wounds tight.

  Preserving his prey.

  King said, ‘Where were the three kids headed?’

  ‘Huh?’

  Icke tilted his face to the white light overhead. It made him paler then he already was from the shock. His pockmarks were craters.

  ‘Elsa,’ King said. ‘And the other two. Where’s the buyer?’

  Icke’s face clouded, but clarity struck him after a moment’s thought.

  He said, ‘Oh. Russia.’

  For some reason it left King at a loss for words.

  He couldn’t pinpoint why.

  Icke noticed. ‘What?’

  King didn’t have an answer, because he didn’t know.

  Then, all of a sudden, he did. He saw it all in perfect clarity.

  It made him sick.

  86

  Before Vegas, King had been on a vigilante job in Los Angeles.

  He and Violetta had intercepted a shipping container full of trafficked women from Eastern Europe, shipped all the way to the Californian desert to be sodomised and then killed.

  Now he was staring at the formula in reverse — girls from the Californian desert, destined for the wintry cold of Mother Russia.

  It boiled down to a simple age-old principle.

  You want what you can’t have.

  Old men in power would never be satiated. They’d chase the thrill forever, believing the key to satisfaction was the treasures of some far-off land. Californian tyrants weren’t content with Californian product, and Eastern European tyrants weren’t content with Eastern European product. They’d trade back and forth forever, chasing some incomprehensible goal they’d never reach.

  King knew the answer.

  So did they.

  They just didn’t want to admit it was staring them in the face.

  They didn’t want to admit their lust for power had all been for nothing.

  Avoid the temptations, no matter how grotesque they are, no matter what depths your mind wanders to, and you find contentment. You find something men like Alastair Icke will never touch in their lives.

  You find peace.

  Or chase every cheap thrill, every depraved urge, and you find yourself like Keith Ray and Armando Gates and Alastair Icke and every criminal that dies isolated and lonely and miserable. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you can mask your guilt. It’s always there for everyone — even true psychopaths like Icke, who managed to drown it in any substances he could get his hands on. Maybe he’d stayed oblivious to the suffering he caused right up until the end. Maybe he’d been lucky enough.

  He would die a pathetic death all the same.

  No one would miss him.

  No one would remember him.

  Those who did would be glad he was dead.

  Another useless body on the pile.

  Then a fresh idea struck King. He rolled it over, contemplated it, then looked Icke right in the eyes.

  The old man stared back.

  King lowered his SIG.

  Icke smirked. ‘Smart man. You know if you lay another finger on me my reinforcements will—’

  King smashed the butt into Icke’s nose, shattering it. Blood spouted. Icke howled and went down and threw up on the concrete.

  King crouched by the man’s hunched shoulders and lowered his voice. ‘You have no army. We slaughtered your army. The men you sent to our estate are dead. You have nothing.’

  Icke tried to respond but couldn’t.

  King used the top of the SIG’s barrel to weave through Icke’s pudgy hands and tap the metal against the broken bone.

  Icke howled again.

  King said, ‘What was that about not touching you?’

  Icke didn’t respond.

  King tapped him on the nose with the barrel again.

  Icke didn’t have the strength to howl a third time.

  His face contorted into a grimace and he fell to his stomach, lying prone on the concrete with his hands over his head.

  Weakness personified.

  King said, ‘I’m going to let you live and you’re going to get Josefine Bell out of prison.’

  87

  Icke said, ‘W-what?’

  ‘The woman you planted a brick of cocaine on. The woman you gave eleven years to yesterday.’

  ‘I didn’t give her that sentence,’ he moaned. ‘I wasn’t the presiding judge.’

  ‘Does it look like I give a shit?’

  Icke didn’t know. He couldn’t see. He was crying from the pain.

  ‘Get it commuted,’ King said. ‘Hell, I don’t care what you do. Use every political and judicial connection you’ve ever made in your life. Call in every favour. Get on the phone to the right people. You’re a relentless man. I’m sure you have a thousand curried favours in your back pocket. You’ve been waiting for the opportunity to use them, to gain more power, to get whatever it is you want from life. Now you’re going to use them to make her sentence disappear.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘I’m making
it that simple. A bullet in your fat head, or Josefine’s sentence quashed.’

  He said, ‘I can’t guarantee—’

  ‘Which means I can’t guarantee your life,’ King said. ‘Is that a nice incentive? I’m sure you’ll work hard when you know what’s on the line.’

  ‘If you let me out of here,’ Icke said, his tiny voice gaining an iota of strength, ‘I’ll never let you forget—’

  King smacked him with an open palm on the back of the head, forcing his face into the concrete, squashing his nose against the floor.

  Icke screamed.

  King said, ‘Are we done with the threats?’

  No response.

  King raised a hand.

  Icke sobbed. Dribbled blood.

  King said, ‘Are we?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes what?’

  Icke hesitated.

  King flicked him in the ear, and Icke flinched harder than anything.

  Icke said, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  ‘Let’s talk this through,’ Icke said. ‘Come on. You’re a reasonable guy. What if my connections don’t get the job done? There’s so much more I can give you. I have money, I have resources. I can make you happy in a million other ways.’

  ‘I’m happy enough,’ King said. ‘There’s only one thing making me unhappy right now, and that’s Josefine sitting in a cell. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘I told you—’

  ‘Do we have a deal?’

  Silence.

  ‘Yes.’

  King said, ‘There we go. There’s that intelligence I thought you had.’

  Icke started babbling. ‘There’s a risk, you know. We should reach an agreement beforehand. Or, you know what, we should just get another deal done right now. Neither of us want this hanging over our heads. I can’t get Josefine out tonight, but like I said, there’s a whole lot more I can do for you. You know, consider the risks, man. What if I disappear after I walk out of here? Then you’ll be sitting there thinking you should have had a reasonable talk with me beforehand…’

  ‘Who said anything about walking?’

  King smashed the butt of the gun against the exit wound just above Icke’s kneecap.

  Icke had no more screams left to release.