Bad Men (2003)

by John Connolly

  “Listen—”

  Moloch shoved him hard.

  “We go on! The bitch is running now. We don’t have much time.”

  It didn’t take Shepherd long to figure out that he was lost. After all, the forest should have been thinning out by now. Instead, it seemed to him thicker than ever, even though he was still heading northeast according to the compass. He was forced to push low foliage back from his face. His gloves were sticky with sap and his cheeks were scarred by errant branches. The only consolation was that the snow was not as heavy on the ground, the great trees above and around him sheltering him from the worst of it.

  He leaned against a tree trunk, took out his Zippo and lit up, keeping the cigarette shielded in his palm. He took a long drag, closed his eyes, then released the smoke through his nostrils.

  When he opened his eyes, there were three men moving through the forest about fifty feet ahead of him. Shepherd whistled loudly but they didn’t respond, so he flicked the butt into the snow and started to go after them. He had closed the gap by about twenty feet when the man bringing up the rear turned around.

  It wasn’t Dexter.

  First of all, Dex had been wearing a black jacket and green combat pants. This guy was wearing some kind of hooded arrangement made from skins and fur. His face wasn’t visible beneath the hood. When he stopped, the other men paused too, and all three of them stared back at Shepherd.

  Then the man bringing up the rear raised his weapon, and even through the snow Shepherd could see that it was an old, old gun, a muzzle loader.

  Shepherd dived for cover as the gun flashed and smoke rose and a noise like cannon fire echoed through the forest. When Shepherd looked up, the men were spreading out. He could see the one who had fired at him reloading as he moved, his hand ascending and descending as he pressed the ball down.

  Shepherd aimed his own weapon and fired two shots. He didn’t give a damn about the need for silence or for concealment of their presence. Right now, his need was to survive. Shepherd saw one of the men rise and he fired again, the shot tearing through the layer of furs, and watched with satisfaction as he went down.

  And rose again.

  “No way,” said Shepherd. “That’s not possible.”

  They were surrounding him. He could see one of them trying to flank him, to get behind him and cut off his retreat. Shepherd retreated, firing as he went, using the trees for cover. Twice he heard the great eruptions of the muzzle loaders, and one shot came so close that he felt its heat against his cheek as it passed.

  He had been backing away for about a hundred feet when he found himself in the clearing. To his rear were a number of rough-hewn houses built from tree trunks. There were six or seven in all. In the doorway of one he spied a woman’s body, naked from the waist down. There was blood on her face and neck. Other bodies lay nearby, in various states of undress and mutilation. He could smell burning.

  “No,” he said aloud, remembering the layout of the island from Moloch’s map. “I was going toward the boat. This is—”

  The south. I could not have gone so far astray.

  The image faded, and now he was surrounded only by broken rocks and old graves and a huge stone cross that cast its shadow on him.

  He registered the shot at almost the same instant as his belly exploded in agony. His dropped his shotgun and fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. His body began to burn, as though wreathed in flame. The pain was too much. He took his hands away to examine the wound, but his jacket was intact.

  But I feel pain. I feel pain.

  He heard snow crunching beneath approaching footsteps and looked up to see the three figures closing in on him, their heads low and hooded, their weapons held at port arms. Two of them paused while the third moved forward, so close now to Shepherd that the wounded man could smell the stink of dead animals that rose from the hunter. He tried to crawl away and felt a hand grip his leg, pulling him back. Shepherd searched inside his jacket and found the butt of his Colt. He twisted and raised the weapon, aiming it at the man who was dragging him backward, then emptied five shots into him.

  The hunter released him and lowered the hood of furs from his head.

  “Aw fuck,” said Shepherd, as he saw at last what had come for him. His disintegrating mind registered pale, withered skin, and blue lips, and eyes that burned cold red with a fearsome, implacable fury. Here were the true hunters, unbound by time and space, traversing the centuries in their quest for vengeance, seeking final reparation for old sins.

  Shepherd started to cry. They should never have come here. It was a mistake, a terrible mistake.

  “Aw fuck aw fuck aw fuck aw fuck…”

  He placed the barrel of the gun against his skull.

  “Aw fuck aw fuck aw—”

  And fired.

  Moloch and his men heard the sound of the shotgun blasts and the final shot as Shepherd turned his gun upon himself. Dexter and Moloch exchanged a glance, but said nothing.

  Willard, moving along the road, skirting the outer reaches of the forest, paused as he too heard the shots, then began to run faster. He wanted answers, and dead men could tell him nothing. He also wanted to believe in Moloch, to be reassured that Tell had acted on the wishes of Dexter and Shepherd and not those of Moloch himself. If Moloch was in trouble, then he would need Willard’s help. Willard would show his loyalty, and Moloch would reward it with his love.

  And Sharon Macy, trying to warm herself before the flames rising from Lubey’s house, heard them as well. They sounded some way off. She stared into the forest, its outer reaches now lit by the fire, and tried to discern movement within, but there was nothing. Keeping away from the flames, she circled the house and retreated into the shadows.

  Moloch had grown quieter. Dexter watched him as they progressed toward the fire, but didn’t say what was on his mind. They had lost two men already. Maybe Moloch was right. Perhaps Powell had just given up and headed back to the boat, and Shepherd had done the same, but Dexter didn’t think so. That wasn’t like either man. They had been approached because Dexter knew that they would stand firm. For Shepherd it was primarily about the money, for Powell the promise of a little action. But they had also come because there were few opportunities for men like them to strike back at all that they hated, to break a prisoner loose, to hunt down a betrayer, to kill a cop. Their discipline was almost military. They were not the kind of men to turn back at the first sign of trouble.

  Moloch swiped at something unseen in the air, as though swatting away a fly. No, thought Dexter, not a fly.

  More like unwanted company.

  There were voices in Moloch’s head. They were whispering to him, saying things in a mocking, familiar tone, but he couldn’t understand the words. And each time he felt his footing slip, and reached out to grasp a tree or a rock for support, he seemed to endure a kind of mental flash.

  Blood.

  Men among the trees.

  A woman beneath him, dying as blade and man moved in unison.

  And darkness; the sensation of being trapped in a mine, or a tunnel network, or a honeycomb.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and thought:

  Gray. They’re gray.

  “You okay?”

  It was Dexter.

  “I’m good,” he said. “I’m—”

  They’re gray, and they carry lights.

  “—real good.”

  Braun was leaving a trail of blood on the snow. There was nothing he could do to stop it. He’d tried to stem the flow, but the cop’s shot had torn up his arm badly. Despite the cold, he was sweating and feverish. He wanted to rest, to lie back against a rock and let sleep come, but Dupree was following him. He had caught a glimpse of him through the trees, and had considered waiting for him in the darkness in the hope of ambushing him, but he was afraid that if he stopped to rest he might lose consciousness and become an easy target.

  And he wasn’t running only from Dupree. When he paused briefly to catch his breath and
examine his copy of the crude map while leaning against a big fir, the snow thick on his shoulders and bright red hair, he heard a whispering and saw the gray shapes moving along the ground, trying to get ahead of him and cut off his escape. He was delirious with pain, he told himself. His mind was playing tricks on him, forcing him to believe that figures were crawling along the ground, clutching at roots and stones with emaciated hands as they pulled themselves across the earth.

  Braun checked the compass attachment on his watch. All he knew was that if he continued due east, he would reach the heart of the island, and from there a trail, hacked through the forest for tourists, would lead him close by Lubey’s house. He broke through a bank of evergreens and found himself in a clearing filled with dead trees, most of them little more than white staves, their branches long since decayed. Some had fallen sideways, to be supported here and there by their stronger fellows, creating archways over the trail. Braun tested the black ground on either side of the causeway and felt his foot begin to sink. It was beaver bog, he figured, or something similar. He began moving, anxious to get back under the cover of the trees again. Out here, he was a sitting duck for the cop.

  Braun was halfway across the bog when he realized that the gray figures were no longer shadowing him. When he looked back, he thought he glimpsed a single pale shape moving across the snow, like a crazed hound chained to a post walking over and over the same ground. Braun raised his gun and fired off a shot. He didn’t care about the cop now, didn’t care about Moloch or the woman or the money. Braun just didn’t want to die out here, among these things.

  He became aware of new movement around him. The surface of the marsh rippled, the forms of what swam beneath visible briefly when they broke the surface. Braun fired down at one and something gushed darkly, then fell away. He heard a slithering sound behind him and spun just in time to see a dark body sliding back into the bog, blackened, withered feet glimpsed beneath the wetness of its shroud, its hips still round, a halo of white hair pooling briefly on the surface of the bog before sinking back into its depths.

  It’s a woman, thought Braun.

  No, it was a woman.

  Then a voice spoke, and he turned to see Dupree using a tree for cover, his shotgun pointing directly at Braun.

  “I said, ‘Drop it.’ ”

  Braun started to giggle.

  Dupree couldn’t figure out what the gunman was doing. He had seen him pause in the middle of the trail, then begin firing wildly at the trees and the bog. Maybe he was hallucinating from the pain of his wound. If so, his unpredictability would make him even more dangerous. He made his move when the man turned quickly, seemingly distracted by something on the ground behind him. Dupree took up a position against the biggest fir he could find, then shouted a warning.

  The man turned.

  Dupree gave him a second warning.

  The man laughed, then raised his gun and fired in the policeman’s direction.

  Dupree pulled the trigger and blew him into the marsh.

  Braun’s lower body took the force of the blast, and he fell backward, his feet slipping from beneath him. The trees tilted crazily and he was lost for a moment in snowflakes, suspended between the path and the blackness below. Then his back hit the water and his head disappeared into the murk. He tasted rot and decay, and even as the pain began to separate body from mind, life from death, he attempted to raise himself up. His face cleared the surface and he spit mud and vegetation from his mouth. He tried to open his eyes, but his vision was blurred. He could see the shape of the cop, Dupree, the gun held to his shoulder as he approached him along the path, and he could sense movement in the marsh to his right and left as the black beings converged upon him.

  The cop was right above him now. Braun was dying. He could feel it as a gathering darkness, punctured by slivers of red, like wounds in burnt skin. It was coming slowly, too slowly. The things in the bog were faster. They would get to him first, and Braun didn’t want that. He didn’t want to go that way.

  With a last surge of effort, Braun raised his gun from the water and died in the shotgun’s merciful roar.

  Moloch cleared the trees first and stood looking at the remains of Carl Lubey’s burning house. The garage door was open and he could see the truck inside, the hood gaping, the shape of the cab behind it making it seem like the flaming skull of some great bird. Scarfe and Dexter took up positions at either side of him. Nobody spoke for a moment.

  “Looks like our ride’s gone,” said Dexter.

  Scarfe shielded his face from the heat of the flames and thought about running. He’d take his chances with the Russians back in Boston. They were brutal, but at least they weren’t crazy. It was supposed to be simple: Scarfe would do the groundwork, set them up with Carl Lubey, and take off. Then Scarfe found himself pushed into the role of boatman and now there were cops being killed, and handicapped men shot with arrows, and his buddy Carl’s place was burning like a bonfire at Halloween, with Carl, he felt sure, burning right along with it. Scarfe didn’t hold out much hope for the woman they were hunting either, nor her boy. The money wasn’t going to be enough for Moloch. Whatever she’d done to him, Scarfe figured it must have been pretty bad.

  There was a rustle of bushes to Scarfe’s right and a female cop appeared. Her gun was in her hand. Scarfe looked at her, then Moloch and Dexter followed his lead.

  Scarfe recognized Macy at the same instant that she recognized him.

  “Aw, this is just great,” said Scarfe.

  Dexter didn’t even wait for the cop to speak. He just started shooting.

  I was too slow, thought Macy, dumb and slow, but the black man had moved so fast, forcing her to run. Then the others had joined in, and the forest around her was now alive with falling branches, shredded leaves, and the hiss of bullets melting snow. Macy hit a rock with her foot and went tumbling down the slope at the rear of Carl Lubey’s property, wrenching her ankle painfully before at last coming to rest among a pile of trash and discarded metal. She was in Lubey’s private dump, and it stank. Macy got to her feet, but her ankle almost instantly collapsed beneath her weight, so she leaned against a tree for support. Above her, she heard the men moving, but the trees on the slope shielded her from the light of the fire.

  There was another blast of gunfire. Macy pressed her face hard into the tree and drew her body in as close as she could to the trunk. A bullet blew bark inches from her face and she closed her eyes a second too late to avoid being momentarily blinded by a spray of wood and sap. It got into her mouth and she coughed, trying desperately to mask the sound with the sleeve of her jacket.

  But the men heard her.

  A thrashing came from the trees above as one of them began to descend.

  Macy, hurt and afraid, headed into the forest.

  They sent Scarfe.

  According to Moloch’s map and the late Carl Lubey’s directions, they were pretty close to his wife’s house. Scarfe could take care of the cop while they got the woman. They would wait for Scarfe at her house, then find a car and head back to the boat.

  It sounded simple.

  Even Scarfe thought it sounded easy, except he had no intention of coming back to the woman’s house. Scarfe wasn’t really a killer. He’d never killed anybody, but he was pretty certain that he could do it if he had to. The cop knew who he was. If she got away, Scarfe would be in serious shit. Maine didn’t have the death penalty, but he’d die behind bars as an accomplice to murder if the cop lived to tell what she’d seen. Scarfe was a weak man and a coward, but he was quite capable, under those circumstances, of killing a cop.

  The ground was now rising beneath Macy’s feet, the slope gradually becoming more pronounced so that she could feel the effort of the climb in her right leg. She was trying to keep her weight off her left foot, although the pain was not as intense now. It was a pretty bad sprain, but at least the ankle wasn’t broken. That said, her pursuer was gaining on her. She couldn’t see well enough in the snow to pick him out bu
t she could hear him. There was only one, but uninjured and perhaps better armed than she was.

  Ahead of her, a tall structure blotted out the descending snow: the island’s main observation tower, the one she had explored during her introductory tour earlier that day. Watching for rocks and stray roots, she made her way toward it.

  The rusted iron door stood partially open. She had slipped the bolt earlier, she recalled, and had wrapped the chain around it. Someone had been there since then. From behind came the sounds of her pursuer. She couldn’t keep running. Her ankle hurt too badly. After a moment’s hesitation, she entered the tower, feeling broken glass crunch beneath her feet. There was no bolt on the inside of the door. To her right, the flight of concrete steps led up to the second level. She followed them, then stopped.

  A moth was bouncing against one of the windows. She looked up and in the faint light saw more of the insects fluttering around the room. One of them brushed against her face and she slapped it away, feeling it against her palm and then instinctively rubbing her hand against her leg as if she risked contamination from its touch.

  A noise came from somewhere above her. It sounded like boards creaking beneath the weight of a footfall. Macy’s bowels churned. She shouldn’t have come in here. The realization hit her with the force of a fist. Everything about the place felt wrong. She was like a rat caught in a maze with no prize at the end of it, or an insect teetering on the edge of a jar of sugared water.

  The sound came again, clearer now. She imagined that she heard someone crying. It sounded like a little girl.

  “Hey?” called Macy softly. “Hey, are you okay?”