by mike Evans
Matt who was thinking of that on a much grander scale laughed, falling to a knee as he tried to get back up “I don’t belong anywhere, ma’am.”
When he took his hand off of his side she saw that it was soaked in blood. She ran to him remembering the doctor’s oath and knew that she needed to help the man. Matt tried to push up off the ground but fell back to a knee. Pamela wasn’t ignorant and knew if this man wasn’t going to be able to get up on his own that there was little to no chance that she was going to be able to do anything to get him up. She said, “Can I ask what is wrong with you, and why you didn’t go to the emergency room?”
“I got shot last night. I’ve been trying to make it here all night. I was out at this campground. Well, I ran into the corn after this insane man came out of this truck.”
The bells were screaming in her head; the radio announcer’s voice cutting in and talking about the bloodbath that had taken place. She cut in not able to hold back, “Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that you were out where the killer was last night? I listened to that the entire way here. Where were you shot?”
Matt pulled down his overalls making sure that there was no way she’d see the mask. He said, “I ran all night long. I didn’t think I would make it but I eventually got to a farmhouse. The family must’ve been on vacation because they didn’t answer the door when I knocked. You said that you were listening to radio reports on the way to work this morning. What exactly were they saying?”
“Just that the man who everyone thought was dead in Missouri has come back and done so with a vengeance. He killed everyone.”
Matt tried to keep the look of fear on his face, nodding. “Yeah, you know at first I wasn’t actually sure if it might have been some sicko wearing a mask and pretending to be him but then he fired his gun and that was when I felt these two sharp pains go through my side. I'm not sure how bad it is, but I put some bandages over it and wrapped tape. From there I did my best not to pass out on the drive here. I can’t believe that he or she had the entire country to pick from and they went one state north. You’d think that they’d be smarter than that.”
“He killed, like, an entire police force. I think he’s a psycho but he’s probably above average intelligence.”
Matt looked at her for the first time, seeing she had a good head on her shoulders as well. Almost every case he’d ever worked prior, involving them looking for the masked man, led to them saying he was some lucky psycho and no one ever gave him the respect he felt that he deserved. She realized the man hadn’t answered her original question and asked, “So why didn’t you go into the emergency room?”
Matt looked around seeing a few medical bags for emergencies hanging on the walls and said, “You don’t have enough stuff in here to fix me up?”
“I do, but that isn’t the point. You should be admitted and properly cared for. I'm not allowed to do this kind of shit. I’ll grab a bag though and at the least I can get you stabilized, then I need to get someone in here to help me get you into a wheelchair and to a room of your own. You are going to need a few days of light duty before you leave or a breeze is going to knock you over.”
Matt smiled uneasily seeing that she was getting ready to bolt. When she turned back around the man had disappeared. When she walked back looking around the corner the masked man was standing there and it all came home for her. She turned to sprint away but The Stranger already had a hand wrapped around her and he pulled her back in. When she tried to scream the door burst open and two female doctors walked in. The two disappeared out of sight and he let them go as he was trying to slow down, or he knew he’d burn the entire hospital to the ground before the sun had fully risen.
The two doctors walked to the changing room opening their lockers and The Stranger whispered into her ear. “If you say one word, Pamela, I promise you, they are both dead. Do you want to live?”
She did not waste any time thinking about the answer to the question and began shaking her head yes, quickly. “I'm sorry. I didn’t know that anyone would be in here. It isn’t my fault. I was going to start the early shift and those two were probably on night duty.”
A voice came from around the corner, “Hello, is anyone else in here? This is the ladies locker room. You need to go to the men’s, please. This is going to get weird real quick.”
Pamela said, “We…I mean, I’m okay, I just thought that I could get a quick nap in before my shift starts.”
The voice didn’t come back and two women looked around the corner and saw the mask and the machete in his hand. They screamed at the top of their lungs and Matt, who didn’t think he had anything left in his body, dragged her behind him.
He made the distance before the two women had the opportunity to sprint away. The Stranger brought up the machete running it through both of them in one lunge. The women tried to gasp but he was so close and quick with the machete that he’d pulled it back out already and across the first woman’s neck, and as she fell to the ground and the second was standing in shock he stabbed it in through her eye socket letting it come out the rear of her skull.
Pamela pleaded because she didn’t know what else to do. “Please, don’t kill me, please don’t do it!”
Matt brought the two of them over to the small leather couch where he collapsed, never letting go of her. He looked up at her, his eyes looking even darker with the white mask engulfing himself and his features. “You probably should not give me a reason to kill you then. If you don’t think you are going to be able to fix me and keep your mouth shut, then let me know. I am confident that there’s a shit ton of doctors who are available. I can slash my way through this hospital until I find someone or until everyone is dead. Once I get going it’s a tad hard to stop.”
She was thinking only of her own survival and said, “So I fix you, you are going to let me live, is that the deal?”
“Besides an officer busting in here and putting a forty-five through the back of my head it is going to be the best offer you’ll see in some time to come.”
She knelt down next to him pulling out a wash, sutures, disinfectant gel, a numbing agent, and bandages and said, “I'm going to need a little bit of patience and freedom, you able to give me that? I can’t work scared.”
“If you run just remember even when I'm on the brink of death that I’ll still come for you.” He squinted seeing the name badge on her shirt and said, “Pamela Seabolt. Can’t be too many of you around here. I’ll keep that in mind when and if you give me a reason to. I love road trips. I'm sure it wouldn’t take long at all to find you and from the ring on your hand there’s probably a Mr. Seabolt.”
“Just be quiet while I work, I don’t know what this feeling is I'm experiencing.”
Matt said something and she pushed in a little deeper than she needed to sending a shot of pain through his side. He lunged the machete, still soaked in fresh blood next to her throat. “Do that again, and I’ll find someone else for the job. This kind of offer doesn’t happen very often.”
She went back to cleaning it out and trying to get a good eye on what needed to be done. She knew that doing this after it had been open for hours didn’t help. “I’d like to just keep you as happy as possible. I promise that I won’t do anything else like that. I'm not kidding though when I say that you are going to need to take it easy.”
He watched her work even with a grip on her arm. When she was done she made the bandage as tight as possible. Matt motioned to the bag and she handed it to him. He took out a fresh shirt sliding it on and then over it a Kevlar vest. He had her help put it on and she didn’t need to ask what it was for. After the bloodbath from the previous night they were going to be out in droves going after him.
Pamela said, “You know that you could stop right? You could get help, or we could help you.”
Matt pushed up off of the couch testing his limitations. “I don’t need help, the only thing that is going to save me from my demons is death, and I’m not quite ready for the devil yet.”<
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She wanted to push the issue but was pretty sure that he knew what he wanted to do and one heart-to-heart conversation with her wasn’t going to do enough to change anything. He said, “I’m going to need you to help me for just a little while longer.”
“You said that you would let me live, the deal was letting me go after you got fixed up.”
“You ever have a job before where they said - and other duties as assigned? Well you just got promoted to head of medical counsel. I have a feeling that the police are going to be looking for me, and the sun coming up isn’t going to do much for that. You tell me, I don’t think I’ve ever given someone the choice. You want to live, or die?”
“Well, that’s an obvious fucking answer isn’t it?”
The Stranger squeezed her arm until it hurt, pulling her into him. “You might not realize this because a lack of living victims does not exist but I’ve had many people pray to be killed. They don’t want to play my games. They don’t enjoy the dance of death.”
“Would you?”
“You don’t get to go inside my head, Pamela. I’m confident that once you got there, you might not like who you meet.”
She opened her mouth to say something but he opened his bag sliding the machete back into it. “You and I are going for a drive, and you’re going to help me get out of town. Just a husband and wife carpooling. You can handle that, can’t you?”
She pointed to the mask and Pamela asked, “I’m sorry, but are you going to be wearing that mask the entire time, because it might be a giveaway.”
He pulled it off sliding it into the bag. “You might have a point there. We need to get going, this took much longer than expected.”
He led her to the door and handed her an extra medical bag thinking, what could it hurt. The two of them made their way through the hospital corridor heading for the rear entrance. Doctors were coming in and giving Matt some strange looks. He wasn’t a doctor and they knew that, therefore he didn’t belong. Pamela took a deep breath hoping that in two minutes she’d still be alive. She pulled the fire alarm as she passed it sending the floor into a rush to get out. Matt looked at her pulling her in closer. He didn’t say anything and she could read the annoyance and frustration all over his face. Matt squeezed her tighter slamming her into the wall bouncing her head off it. He propped her up and the two made their way towards the exit amongst the chaos.
She tried to pull away, almost getting free. Matt nodded thinking about it and pulled her off balance and let go trading for her neck and slamming her into the wall three more times. Each one felt like someone was hitting her with a cinder block upside the head. A man clamped on to Matt from behind and he spun around with Pamela still in hand. “You can’t do that! What’s wrong with you?”
Matt brought up a foot kicking the man in the balls and sending him to a knee. Matt reached into the bag grabbing a hunting knife and brought it down swiftly through the man’s spine. He looked to Pamela and said, “This one is on you. Was this how you wanted this to go? Was that what you were hoping for?”
Screams filled the hallway and cell phones were out and photographing and videoing the scene. A security guard who wished to be in any other career field at that moment was sprinting down the hall screaming to get out of the way. Matt saw the people and knew authorities would already be on their way but would be unsure what to do with a building this size. He slid the machete back into the bag. “I’m sorry, just don’t hurt anyone else. Please, I’m begging you.”
He took the bag sliding it over his shoulder and pulling the mask from it. The people that were already captivated and frozen in the moment gasped when he put on The Stranger’s mask. Pamela saw what he was doing and yelled, “Fuck!” She looked to the gawkers who couldn’t believe what it was they were seeing and screamed, “Would you fucking run, you idiots! What are you doing standing there?”
One of the doctors, an intern, said, “He uses knives so he can’t kill everyone.”
Pamela wanted to tell him he might be a fucking idiot but she was busier watching the man. He didn’t pull out a machete. He had a pistol in his hand and she could tell he was full of confidence. The man that had just commented about knives was the first in his sights. The Stranger said, “Guess knives aren’t scary?”
He squeezed the trigger once letting the fire erupt from the barrel and painted the white tile behind him. After the first gunshot went off, those that had been in a trance watching the scene had very quickly come out of it. Matt looked to Pamela and said, “Thirty more to go.”
The implication of those words even worked through the fuzziness that was her world right now. She could feel blood on her cheek and realized he’d split her head open when he slammed her into the wall. The Stranger spun around with her still in a firm grip, pulling the trigger as quickly as he could. Those that were unaware of what was going on were the first to die. They were running for the exit not knowing what they were moving towards.
By the time they saw the gun leveled, their workplace nightmares became a reality and as he was not prejudiced about who he aimed his pistol at. Pamela was frozen by the time he was done. Her coworkers and friends lay dead, covering the floor. He looked at her and said, “It’s pretty impressive, I know. I don’t think that there will ever be a day when this doesn’t feel like heaven. What most people think of sex and food, is what I feel about this. It’s the greatest thing I have and it always will be. I don’t care what people say, there’s nothing like seeing the death float out of someone’s eyes. It puts me into a euphoria that most will never know.”
“You are horrible; those people just came to work; they were just trying to leave.”
“They were trying to leave because you pulled the fire alarm, because you were looking out for yourself not for them. If you hadn’t pulled that, then they would still be alive, happy, and going home. I don’t think that they are entitled to live just because they’ve completed training. There are more doctors out there and they aren’t exempt from the threat of death by my hand. I don’t care what anyone says. I am not biased when it comes to picking my victims.”
“Maybe you should be?”
He pushed a button on the pistol dropping a high capacity magazine back into the bag, and pulled out a second one. She couldn’t run at the moment if she wanted to. She realized that the entire ordeal had taken less than two minutes.
“Just think how many people can die if you don’t behave, Pamela. You should be thankful that I need you, or you’d already be dead. There are thirty one more bullets in here. Please, do anything stupid and see what happens. I assure you there won’t be any hesitation on my part.”
The two made their way alone through the hall. The bystanders and onlookers were all dead. Matt felt adrenaline fueling him and knew that at some point it was going to crash and leave him sick. The wounds themselves would be enough to flat line him for a few days when he finally stopped. He pushed out into the underground parking lot and three police cars were pulling into the entrance. They saw the man in the mask and slammed on their brakes exiting the cars and fanned out, the four of them trying to get an advantage on the man unafraid of death.
The Stranger pulled her tiny frame in front of him. He ducked down the best that he could. One of the four officers yelled, “Ma’am, ma’am, are you okay?”
“Fucking peachy, thanks.”
The officer realized how ignorant the question was and the veteran officer yelled, “Put your gun down now, there’s no way that you are getting out of this. We have you surrounded, put your gun down now and live!”
The Stranger looked at the situation knowing he needed to leave soon. He could hear more police coming and knew they’d be coming in the exact direction of the underground parking lot. He whispered in Pamela’s ear, “I’m going to have to back out of our deal, Pamela.”
“I don’t understand?”
“You will.”
He pulled the trigger two times. The first officer looked down at his chest touchin
g it and bringing a blood soaked hand up. His legs began to quiver and he dropped to the ground. Pamela went limp in his arms but he held her upright. She looked down at herself shocked and confused. She watched smoke coming up from her chest. Pamela wanted to say something but more gunfire erupted and all of her insides were coming out. Pieces of intestines as well as her heart were swaying and jerking up and down as the Stranger emptied the thirty-one round magazine. When he was done the four officers all lay in impossible positions on the concrete. Matt let her body fall to the ground. He turned around disappearing back into the hospital, sliding the pistol back into his bag and heading towards the main entrance to leave in the pandemonium with everyone else.
Chapter 7
FBI - Main office
Director Hansen sat in his chair rocking back and forth. He was getting orders and details. “No, sir, I don’t have any questions. I will send someone out as quickly as I can. I’ll get a plane on standby. I have the man for the job; I just need to check with his head doctor to make sure that he really is ready to get back into the game. Yes, sir, I will update you as soon as I have anything worthwhile. I am aware of the importance here. I hope to have him there in the morning.”
Hansen hung up the phone and picked it back up, immediately speed dialing their top psychologist’s home number. Scott Peters picked up on the fifth ring. “Hello.”
“Sorry to call so late or early, Dr. Peters, but this is important.”
Scott rolled over picking up his glasses and looking at the nightstand and the table. He said, “Well we’d probably be looking at closer to morning wouldn’t we. Do you have a case, what is it?”
“We have something big, pretty serious developing.”
“Is it ever not serious?”
“You remember The Stranger, the string of killings down in Missouri? Well reports from a police department in Iowa had photos of smiley faces drawn on the victims. There was an overturned truck found out there as well that had the bodies of two men that were from the same town that the killer had been in, not more than a few weeks before. They have some serious leads and this chief isn’t ignorant so he called it in right away. They don’t want to waste this opportunity.”
