Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2)

by Chad Huskins

  Inside, the music was still going, and just as loudly as ever.

  Boris signaled what they’d found. Semyon had selected Boris to search the east side of the lodge because he’d also been involved in serious tactical military training, including room clearing and sweeping houses. Boris held up his hand, indicating he had information. He held his two index fingers out and drew a square in the air, and then signaled two fingers: Two windows at the side. He made a big zero with his left hand and shook his head: Nobody inside. Boris then cupped his hand to his left ear, then moved his fingers and thumb like a talking duck, and finally made a shake of his head: I don’t hear anybody talking inside.

  Semyon nodded. He now sent three beeps along the radio, telling the others he, Boris, and Kirill were all set to move and that they should stop firing. It was now Abram’s show. By doing the exact same thing Semyon had, Abram and Anton would move up to the back door while Erik and Yulian fired a few more shots from the west. This took about thirty seconds, until finally Semyon got the four beeps from Abram. They’re all ready at the rear.

  Semyon turned to Boris and pointed at him. Semyon then patted his own head, and touched his chest: You cover me. Then, he held his hand out in a C-shaped gesture: It’s a crisis entry, no need to bother with stealth. Boris nodded the affirmative. Hopefully, Kirill would follow their lead.

  Now, Semyon made five more beeps with his radio. Abram beeped him back five times. Semyon nodded to the others, then began the countdown with a series of three beeps. One…two…three! On the third beep, he stood and moved around Zakhar’s body. Semyon put his boot to the door. A swift kick smashed it open, and they moved in quickly, storming the place. Semyon nearly slipped in the blood, brains and melting snow as he moved across the kitchen.

  At the back of the house, he heard the rear door smash open. As they fanned across the living room, they could hear Abram and the others moving up the short hallway in the back. They came into the living room and saw nothing out of place; nothing, that is, besides bullet holes punched into the walls, the tables, and some furniture. A pair of bearskin rugs hung from rafters, and another massive one was sitting in front of a crackling fire.

  Semyon paused at the entrance to a hallway and signaled for Boris to check the corner. “I’ve got deep,” said Boris, affirming that he had the hallway. After doing a wide arc and a sneak-and-peek, he called, “Clear!”

  “Turn that fucking music off!” Semyon screamed. Kirill moved to obey. Once it was done, they stood for a moment listening to the lodge creak occasionally because of the wind.

  They moved around the corner and on down the hallway, Boris was now the point man and Kirill right behind him. Abram and Anton came down the hall and made brief eye contact with Semyon. Semyon touched two fingers under his eyes and pointed towards the stairs, indicating they should go and search. Abram nodded wordlessly and moved up the stairs with his Uzi at the ready, Anton close behind.

  As they left the living room, Semyon’s eyes did one last quick sweep. There wasn’t much to see here, no real place to hide. However, his eyes did absorb an extra piece of information. Dust was falling down on the fire crackling away in the fireplace, but his brain didn’t decode that bit of information fast enough and he followed after Kirill and Boris.

  Kaley heard them storm the house, their feet like distant thunder on the floors beneath. But long before she heard them coming up the stairs, long before she heard them smash open the door, and even before they had sent a volley of bullets into the lodge, she had felt them coming. Little gnats in her spider web, only somehow in this instance the spider wasn’t able to move, and all the little gnats were.

  “She’s afraid,” whispered the voice in her bones and on the wind. “Others are hunting her. We must find her first!”

  Something moved in the water. It moved past her, slithered under the bed where the boy was still hiding, then swam out the other side and climbed up the walls, tasting the picture frames which held old black-and-white photographs of stern-looking men and women assembled around a fireplace, kind of like the fireplace downstairs, but not the same one. The family of the dead man Zakhar, presumably. There was a tentacle tasting that family’s portrait, and, at times, even swimming into it, as though interacting with the figures inside, all while water continually cascaded down from nowhere. “Find her! Find her!”

  At school, Kaley would have been safe and sound. But impossibly, her physical body was here now, and her telepresent form was back in the girls’ bathroom of CMS, shivering. Very soon now, Mrs. Cartwright would send someone to check the bathroom, or else would come herself. And what might she do if she found Kaley there and reached out to grab her? What might she do once her hand passed through the apparition of her student?

  Water climbed both up and down the walls of the bathroom, too. Kaley looked down at her feet, saw things swimming in that foaming water and somehow disappearing back below, even though it couldn’t be any great depths—her feet were touching the bathroom tile, as well as the pinewood floor; only the pinewood felt real, whereas the tile was slippery.

  When the bedroom door was smashed open, Kaley jolted. When she did, one of those tentacles turned its attention back towards her, and slithered back around her leg. She didn’t look—she didn’t want to look—but it felt like it was licking as high as her knees.

  The man leading the others was stout-looking. He filled out his bulky jacket completely. There was a no-nonsense look on his face, yet he also held an avuncular look that Kaley could almost relate to. And she did relate. How could she not, considering who she was? The alpha of the group was a family man; she detected that in him at once. His emotions flashed from paranoia to worry and back to paranoia again. But in that brief battle with worry, Kaley found sympathy, and something familial. The man had a daughter, of that she had no doubt. She’d tasted enough of fathers’ love for their daughters to know this at once. It was no different than touching the callused hands of a man; you knew that he worked hard for something, and that all other men with those same calluses must work equally hard.

  His heart is callused with worry for his daughter. He’s worked so hard to keep her safe.

  But the man was a professional, and, backed by his fellow professionals, he had to remain strong in front of them. As he eased towards her, Kaley remained the very definition of statue. He said just three words, and in near-perfect English. “Where is he?” For a moment, Kaley didn’t know whether he was talking about Spencer or the boy. At the moment, she didn’t dare give up either, for fear of losing the other. As despicable as he was, Spencer was the only creature present that was willing to face these men.

  Unless he’s left us, she thought.

  “Oh, he’s left you all right,” delighted the voice.

  Oh no…no…it can hear me? Please tell me it can’t hear me. Please, God, tell me it can’t…

  “Ohhhhh-ho-ho-ho, we hear just fine. We’re getting closer—”

  “I am only going to ask one more time, my dear,” said the alpha male, speaking slowly and raising his gun at her.

  “—so it would behoove you to make this transition—”

  “Where—”

  “—a little easier—”

  “—is—”

  “—so that it saves you unnecessary pain.”

  “—he?”

  At that point, two things happened at once. There came a gunshot from outside the lodge, and she heard the door of the girls’ bathroom opened. “Kaley?” said a stern, mature voice. “Kaley, are you in here?” She heard Mrs. Cartwright’s heels clicking on the tile. At the lodge, the others turned to run back down the stairs, and the alpha male snatched her up by her arm, yanking her out of the room.

  Something slithered after her. “…so much easier on yourself…if you just let us in…”

  He’d held his breath for most of the climb, but almost at the top of the chimney Spencer could hold it no more. He tried to take a breath, inhaled only rancid smoke, and then came scrambling
out of the chimney, hacking and coughing and wheezing.

  The chimney had been almost as hot as a furnace, and now that he was out the Siberian cold nearly took his breath away. Which was bad, because as he flopped onto the roof and slid halfway down it, he was still fighting against all the smoke in his lungs. Chuckling, hacking, laughing, coughing, and guffawing to himself, he rolled onto his back and pulled the Glock out from his jacket. He winced. His lower right leg was burned where the fire had licked at him. He hadn’t wanted to douse the fire; with it burning, there was little chance they would’ve suspected him going out that way. It had burnt some of his clothes, however, and singed some of the hair on his head. And with the radio blasting, hopefully they hadn’t heard him clawing up through the chimney.

  Half walking and half sliding on the ice, Spencer moved awkwardly around the sloped roof, trying to get an idea of who was surrounding him.

  When he came around to the front of the house, he considered hopping down and running for the shed. But he was almost positive that his enemies would have left someone out here to watch for that, so he moved to the rear of the house, where the second SUV had been parked even closer to him. Still resisting the urge to just hop down and flee, he moved around to the east side, and it was here that he found a nice top-down view of the two goons who had probably been the ones laying down the suppression fire at the lodge, giving the others a chance to close in on him.

  Fighting against the wind, Spencer sat his ass on the roof and just peered down at them, watching them whisper back and forth behind a pair of decrepit sheds, never once thinking to look up at the roof. He watched them a moment, and took aim. He also entertained himself trying to imagine their conversation. “What do you think? Should we go inside and help the others?” Spencer shrugged. “I dunno, I’m just a dumbass with a pencil-thin dick that girls laugh at.” He chuckled. “You too? I thought I was the only one. Man, it’s good to know I’m not alone in the world.” He laughed, and coughed, and laughed some more.

  When the bigger one stopped moving for a moment and just stared towards the house, Spencer took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and squeezed the trigger. The bang sounded like thunder, but was almost lost on the wind. The big man’s head snapped back, and he was clutching at his throat, which was jetting blood. The other man ducked behind the shed for cover, too cowardly to attend to his dying colleague.

  Spencer fired two more shots at the slimmer man, then turned and ran to the other side of the roof. Halfway there, he heard crackling underneath his feet. He had a moment to think Oh shit before the great sheet of ice covering the whole roof gave way beneath his weight, and took him for a ride. His feet went out from under him and he shot down the slope. Unable to stop, and picking up speed, he shot off the back side of the roof, landed in the snow with a hard “Hoof!” and was stunned for just a moment.

  Still coughing, still wincing from his burns, Spencer pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He was just staggering to his feet when a pair of men came barreling out of the back door, their Uzis raised. “Drop it! Drop it now!” the smaller one shouted in forced English. “Drop it now, you mudderfacker!”

  “Fuck me,” he said, half coughing and half chuckling. “Fuck me right in the ass.”

  “Drop the facking gun!”

  “Privet, you assholes. Privet.”

  “Drop it!”

  All at once, he was surrounded. The Russians came racing out of the house, three of them were on him at once, Uzis and Makarovs pointed right at him. Spencer knelt before them, Glock still in hand, pointed at the ground.

  “Drop the facking gun!” another of them shouted.

  A few seconds later, the Russian that Spencer had missed by the shed came running around the lodge, his own Uzi trained on the kneeling man. He shouted something to the others in Russian, and Spencer believed he caught the gist of it. The newcomer was informing them that he’d killed someone named Julian or Yulian, and then there was something about ripping his throat out through his asshole.

  “Ya gonna do that yourself, comrade?” he said, saying the last word in heavily-accented Russian.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Oh, such a great rejoinder.” He chuckled. “Rejoinder. That’s a sharp or witty reply.”

  Spencer kept his eyes on the man, challenging him, and before the others could stop him, the newcomer ran at Spencer and bashed him across the side of the head with his Uzi. The world went sideways, and the snow-covered earth rose up to meet him, but Spencer managed to put a hand out and push himself back up. He still hadn’t dropped his Glock, and they weren’t ignorant of that fact. The newcomer was about to lay into him again, but someone cried out, “Net!”

  Spencer shook his head, felt the world tilt to one side, and slowly, very slowly, pushed himself back up onto his knees and sat on his feet. He saw the stocky Russian that emerged from the back door and onto the porch, almost swaggering. In one hand was a Makarov, in the other hand was a wad of black cornrows, attached to which was Kaley Dupré. The girl was trembling, and looking at Spencer with eyes wide and watering. In so many ways, she was out of place: her skin so dark, being the only female, being so young amidst so many of her elders, and obviously way, way underclothed for this weather. She’s as alien to this world as E.T., he thought, chuckling to himself.

  The stocky man paused at the foot of the steps, and then shoved Kaley to the ground, a few feet away from Spencer. She looked at him, eyes pleading. Silly little bitch. What does she expect me to do? Still, there might be something here, a way out even he hadn’t considered until moments ago. That’s why he couldn’t let go of the Glock. It wasn’t a surefire plan, but he had a working theory about it.

  “…she’s very close to him now…”

  A whisper on the wind, fluttering through the trees, carried on each snowflake. Spencer snorted out a laugh.

  The stocky man raised an eyebrow. “You think this is funny, Mr. Pelletier?” he said, walking around Kaley. He then walked around to Spencer’s left, still giving him a wide berth because of the Glock. “You are in a, eh…how do you say…a compromised position?” He nodded, and smiled briefly. “Dropped the gun, and we can talk.”

  “And by talk,” he huffed, “I suppose ya mean scream.”

  “We are not the monsters you knew in Atlanta. Dmitry wasn’t one of—”

  “You may not be into the child porn thing yourselves, but Dmitry learned all he knew from you fucks.” Spencer gathered a wad of blood in his mouth, and spat it on the snow. The red against white was kind of beautiful. “Ya think I don’t know that?”

  “No, I believe you are very smart, Mr. Pelletier. I’ve heard stories. The way you just walked out of Leavenworth Penitentiary. Ingenious, as you Americans say. Simple, but ingenious.”

  “He fucking killed Timofei!” shouted the newcomer, who Spencer could now see was bleeding from the arm. Maybe I clipped him, after all. That brought about another smile. “He killed Yulian and Zakhar! We should—”

  “We should calm down, Erik. We need to speak with Mr. Pelletier and hear what he has to say, yes?”

  Spencer laughed. “Ya want me alive, huh? Those your orders? Alive on a slab somewhere in a basement like Zakhar’s?”

  “Speaking of Zakhar,” said the stocky man, walking around to his right. “Is this his girl, or yours? I presumed that she was yours, since I never knew Zakhar to prefer shahktor.”

  “Shahktor,” Spencer said, and snorted. “Coal-miner. Ya know, I like your derogatory terms in Russia. It’s much better than nigger. More descriptive.” His head was still spinning from Erik’s hit—he hoped it wouldn’t upset his aim. The Glock was still in his hand, but it was so cold, as were his hands. Would everything function properly when he needed it to? He only needed one shot—just one—and it needed to be accurate. “And no, the girl ain’t mine. She ain’t Zakhar’s, either.”

  “No? Hm. Curious.” The stocky man moved on with his idle chit-chat, resigned to solving that little mystery later. “I�
�d like to talk to you without all of these guns in the way, Mr. Pelletier.”

  “Great. Tell your boys to put ’em away an’ then maybe we can chat.”

  “I would like nothing more than that. But they are quite jittery and mistrusting, and you can hardly blame them after all you’ve done. They’ve demonstrated incredible control until now. You’ve killed three of their comrades, and yet there isn’t a single bullet in you yet. You have to admit, that shows a great level of discipline.”

  Spencer nodded. “Yeah…yeah, that’s right, you Russians have compulsory military service, ain’t that right? Lotta military discipline in the men of this country.” No one said anything to that. Spencer looked at the stocky man. “Seems like you’re in control here. What were you in the military? SWAT an’ tactics, shit like that, I imagine?” He nodded knowingly. “I’m never wrong about people. Like this. I can tell by the way you’re talkin’, you’ve dealt with hostage situations before, Mexican standoffs maybe, like the one we’ve got here.”

  The stocky man nodded. “Da. Yes, I’ve done those things before.”

  Across from him, Kaley was shivering in the snow, looking down at the ground now, forlorn and forgotten. Spencer glanced over his shoulder; the SUV was just a few feet behind him, but still too far to reach for cover.

  “Number one goal: wear down the hostage-taker. I know that negotiation strategies vary dependin’ on the demands, the time of day, what you perceive as the hostage-taker’s sanity, and numerous other factors. I also know that, typically, during the night, you guys try to send in more units—SWAT, police, National Guard units, et cetera. You try to cut off the hostage-taker’s supply of food, prepare for the long-term, just in case. You’ll have fresh food ready to send in—to establish goodwill—like pizzas and Chinese food, but all of it is laced with Valium, and you’ll play loud music at all hours, all while dumping tear gas in random quadrants. How am I doin’ so far?”