101 People to Kill Before I Die

by Anthony O'Connor

  Sirens screaming, two more police cars arrived, screeching to a halt on the other side of the street. Fortunately for Boris and Vadim, they were on the other side of Boris and Vadim’s attackers. Several police officers jumped out of the cars drawing weapons, opening fire on the group nearest them. Everyone knew that within minutes the place would be swarming with cops. Boris and Vadim crouched down and carefully backed away. They reached the side of the street, turned and ran off.

  They didn’t have time to congratulate themselves on their close escape. Only a block away from the gunfight they stepped in front of a car forcing it to stop. They got in the car. The driver was an elderly gentleman. Boris put the Berretta to his head and ordered him to drive. Boris asked him if he lived nearby and when he answered in the affirmative Boris ordered him to drive home and park in his driveway. They hustled him inside. Vadim attached the silencer to his gun and shot the old man in the head, killing him. They put the body in one of the bedrooms. This place would do for a couple of days until they could get organized. If anybody came by they would kill them too.

  They managed to work out what suburb they were in using the map on their victim’s smart phone. North Melbourne. They were just a block away from Harlem Street, the stripper’s old apartment, where all of this started.

  ------------------------------------------------

  Svetlana spent most of Wednesday night going through the folder she’d stolen from Charlie Samuals. She couldn’t make any sense of most of it. Bills, Receipts. Some pages just full of gibberish. She managed to get to sleep, but slept only fitfully. She woke up again at 5:00 AM Thursday morning. Got some coffee and continued looking through the folder. Just before 6:00 AM she found something. A receipt for lawn mowing, dated only a few months earlier. A house in Maffra, Carpenter Street. She knew from her research into Brian that Maffra was the town he’d grown up in. And Charlie Samuals too. It wasn’t much but something about it felt right. She got fully dressed, checked her weapons and then went to the car outside. She checked directions on her phone. Two hundred and eighteen kilometers. Two and a half hours. Princes Highway. South-East initially and then east. She had a gleam in her eye. A hunger for a kill. She drove off rapidly. There was hardly any traffic that early in the morning.

  An Australian intelligence analyst, Collin Martins, had been working all night, from an undisclosed location in Canberra. He found something, also at 6:00 AM on the Thursday morning. He jumped to attention as one of the programs he’d been running alerted him of a match. There were photos from a Caltex petrol station in Maffra, Victoria. A crystal-clear image of Brian Samuals. Images too of the car he was driving and a passenger. The girl! Natasha Brown. He quickly checked the car license plates against the satellite surveillance data repositories. The car left St Kilda on Wednesday morning and drove out along the M3 and Highway-34 to Lilydale. They didn’t have satellite coverage beyond that. But he could easily have gone through the lower Dandenong Ranges and back down onto the Princes Highway in a number of places before going on to Maffra. And the car had been reported as stolen. Fuckin A! He alerted his superiors. The news raced up the chain of command.

  Svetlana got a call from Alexandrovistch around 6:10 AM. She had only been driving for fifteen minutes. She snatched for the phone. Checked the caller. Then she said,

  “Yes Dmitri.”

  Alexandrovistch replied,

  “Got a call from an informant. One of the Australians. Samuals is in Maffra. Small town. South-East Victoria. Don’t have an exact address.”

  Svetlana was beaming. She snapped back,

  “I do. I’ve got the address. Tell you how later. I’m already on the way.”

  Alexandrovistch congratulated her.

  “Ah Svetlana, you are the best. The very best. Enjoy killing him.”

  Svetlana smiled.

  “Oh. I will. I really will.”

  Alexandrovistch warned her,

  “You don’t have much time. They don’t have an exact location but they’ll all be heading to the town. They’ll cordon it off. You need to hurry.”

  Svetlana replied,

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find him. I’ll kill him.”

  Alexandrovistch called Krikov next and gave him the same information. Both Krikov and Karpov had managed to escape from their failed attempt to kill Boris and Vadim - though they’d lost ten of their soldiers. Minutes later Krikov and seventy of his men were piling into cars and racing towards Maffra. Krikov left twenty of his men behind as a reserve under the command of Vassily Karpov. He was just being cautious. He didn’t think he really needed a reserve. They were going to find this motherfucker and smear him back into paste.

  Mr. Cheng was notified by one of his American spies even before Chuck Miller was informed. He was awake. He jumped up excitedly, screaming out,

  “Found the cocksucker.”

  His men came running in. A few minutes later they were all pouring into vans and speeding off towards Maffra. Mr. Cheng left fifty men behind just in case, under the command of Mr. Zhang. But he was sure they wouldn’t be needed. He was going to kill the cocksucker personally. Bring him back to life. Kill him again. And again, and again.

  Chuck Miller received the notification at 6:15 AM. He jumped into action. He got in contact with the Liaison Unit at Williams Airforce Base. Gave them the location and the go-ahead. He was furious to learn that most of the drones were down for routine maintenance. It would take time to get them operational. Maybe an hour. Only one was ready for immediate departure. It wouldn’t take it long to get to Maffra. Within minutes it was on its way. Chuck then put in a call to Richard Gaiter.

  “Gaiter. We’ve got a location. Maffra. South-East Victoria. Get there now. There’s a drone already on the way. The other nine within the hour.”

  Gaiter replied,

  “Yes Sir.”

  Chuck Miller raced downstairs to his waiting car. Jumped in and set off for Maffra. Two and a half hours. He could hardly wait. Personally, he really would have preferred to just kill Brian Samuals. But he was a professional. They needed to know who he was working for. Capture and interrogate was now the operational requirement. At least he would lead the interrogation team. That was going to be fun. They would kill him eventually. Just had to be patient until then.

  Assistant Commissioner Michael Branton and Commander David Morton were also notified at 6:15 AM. They were all ready and waiting. They issued the appropriate commands. By 6:25 AM two thousand police - Victorian, NSW and Federal - were loading into vans and buses and heading for Maffra. Branton and Morton were at the head of one of the convoys. They would come in through each of the available routes blocking off the town. No-one would escape. They would search every fucking room in every fucking house. Brian Samuals would not escape from them again.

  At Hopkins Barracks at Puckapunyal the SAS troopers were loading into choppers. There were only fifty of them but they looked extremely formidable and deadly beyond all measure. Massively armored, massively armed hyper-aggressive super-soldiers. They would wait for the police to secure the general area and then they would move in. Today they had just one task in mind.

  Chapter 19. Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight.

  We woke up early on Thursday morning - around 8:00 AM. I didn’t know if Tommy and Jennifer had been found yet. But I knew we had to get out of town today. Maybe move onto Lakes Entrance. I had some good memories from there. I had an argument with Natasha. Our first argument. She hadn’t got any cereal the day before. I needed some for breakfast. She didn’t see what the problem was. Eat something else. It escalated. We exchanged heated words and I stormed out of the house, got into my car and drove off to the nearest shop. This is the way it starts - and always over something trivial. The end of that initial blissful period of joyful fucking and unconditional mutual adoration. The grim realization sets in that you're sharing your bed and your life with an alien with its own aims and goals which are not always compatible with your own. Having tits and a cunt on tap hard
ly makes up for the inconvenience and the sordid compromises that are constantly required, and the never fucking ending arguments. Their little heads always so god dam full of arguments which they scream at you constantly and relentlessly. Arguments utterly flawed and limited which anyone with half a fucking brain can instantly see to be made up of just so much self-serving, self-deluding fucking bullshit. A rubber doll you could take out of the cupboard whenever you felt the need would be so much easier to get along with. If it could speak at all, it would be limited to just a few pre-set phrases like, ‘Oh yeah, baby, stick it in me’. Of course, I knew I was thinking more of Beatrice, the ex-wife, than of Natasha but still ... so it always goes.

  I calmed myself down as best I could as I drove towards the supermarket. I couldn’t afford to make a scene. Someone would offend me - the checkout attendant, store security, a passing stranger. And I would tell them to fuck off. Nobody likes that. They would yell back at me. It would escalate and keep escalating. Eventually somebody fucking dies. I had a Glock and a knife. It wasn’t gonna be fucking me. But the cops would arrive, with their own weapons and multiple layers of backup. I couldn’t take them all on. Not to mention the small, or now not so small, fucking army of them in Melbourne no doubt searching desperately for the faintest hint of my current location. There would be thousands of them already pouring into town if they knew I was here. No. Calm down. Dial it down. Be cool.

  I got my cereal from the supermarket, without incident, and drove back to the house. I was thinking of what to say to Natasha. Of course it was me that had to apologize. How does that fucking work exactly? I didn’t notice anything untoward but when I went into the living room there was Svetlana. Svetlana Araknilova. Fuck! She'd just punched Natasha in the face sending her sprawling backwards onto the floor. She'd heard me come in. As I started to react she'd already spun in my direction, drawn her weapon and was pointing it straight at my head. I stopped. Didn’t move. I glanced at Natasha. She wasn’t moving either. She'd smacked the back of her head into the floor when she fell. But it was carpet not concrete. She'd probably be OK. Svetlana was glaring at me. I'd only seen her once before, in the lift, and in a few pictures before that. But she was not someone you forgot. A cold-blooded killer. Tall, sleek. Long black hair. Bony face. Dead eyes. Dressed all in black. I didn’t recognize the gun she was holding. A revolver. Some very old model. It struck me as odd that she would use it. It struck me as odd that I was still alive. Why hadn’t she fired yet?

  She held the gun steady, pointing to a spot right between my eyes. She snarled at me,

  "Brian Samuals. You're a hard man to catch."

  I didn’t reply. I knew I was dealing with a pro. Distract. Lunge. None of that was going to work. She continued snarling at me,

  "Dmitri wants you to suffer. He wants a video."

  I asked,

  "Who the fuck is Dimitri?"

  She replied,

  "Don’t worry about it. I don’t have time for that anyway. There are a lot of others on the way. You like my weapon?"

  I said,

  "Not that much."

  She smiled, in a sinister deadly kind of way. I suddenly understood. She liked to play with her victims. She probably tortured most of them. She got off on it. Slyly and malevolently she told me about the gun.

  "It's a Nagant M1895, first used in World War Two. Belonged to my great grandfather Vladimir."

  I snapped back,

  "Looks like a piece of fucking shit to me."

  She sneered.

  "Always the wise ass." She ran her other hand across her breasts, down her stomach, caressing her hips and thighs. "Do you like my body then? Does it turn you on?"

  I snapped back,

  "Not that fucking much."

  I was thinking to myself,

  "This bitch is a fucking lunatic."

  Then there was a loud click as she pulled the trigger and nothing happened. Fuck!!! I grabbed for my own weapon as fast as humanly possible. The Glock! I lunged to the side as I did so. Pushing the weapon up to line up on her. My fucking arm wouldn’t move fast enough. Faster. Faster. I could see that she was reacting similarly, reaching for another weapon, also lunging sideways. But she'd started with a gun in her hand and now was just slightly slower than me - ever so fractionally. I fired at her as I straightened up. She fell to the ground howling and screaming. I kept firing at her as I walked towards her, center body mass. I stood over her. She had managed to draw another weapon. I kicked it away from her. She was still twitching and struggling. She had ten rounds in her. Not sure if she was wearing body armor. What did it take to put this fucking bitch down? I fired my remaining five rounds into her face, splitting her head open. Yeah, well. If that's not enough we're all fucked anyway.

  Natasha was starting to stir. I went over to her. I checked her head. No blood. I watched closely for signs of concussion. She sat up. Looked at the body nearby. She asked,

  "Who's that?"

  I was dismissive.

  "Just one of the Russians. No problem now."

  Natasha smiled bravely, rubbed her jaw.

  "Good."

  I helped her to sit up on the couch. Reassured her. Got her a glass of water. We'd both forgotten the fight we were having. We were in this together. Natasha asked,

  "How did she find us?"

  I replied,

  "I don’t know."

  Natasha got up, walked over towards Svetlana’s body and kicked her in the side a couple of times - there wasn’t much left of her head, the more obvious target. Natasha snarled at her,

  “Bitch.”

  I smiled. That’s my girl. But I was deeply worried. I didn’t know. How did she find us? And so quickly. If she knew then who else knew? How far away were they? How many? I stepped outside onto the front lawn. Not sure why. I felt like looking around, for all the good it would do. And that’s when I saw it - in the distance, to the west, low in the sky. An American Predator Drone. Jesus fucking Christ. I'd seen the drones in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. I saw one of them chase some poor bastard down the street only a block away from me and blast him, shredding him into a thousand bloody pieces with 30 mm rounds from close range. The whole thing looked like something out of the fucking Terminator. For a brief stupid moment, I asked myself how long had it been here? Why was it here? Then it hit me. Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph. It was here for me. There would be others. Oh fuck!

  I raced back inside. I screamed out to Natasha,

  "We have to go. Now."

  She got to her feet, a bit unsteadily. We rushed around packing our bags as quickly as possible. As we went out the front door towards the garage I screamed at her,

  "Cover your face. Don’t look up."

  She covered her face with her hands and looked down. And I did the same. I knew what we were up against. I got in the car and drove madly down the street thinking furiously. They were already closing in. They'd be on all the main roads. They'd block off the town. I had to get out before they did that. Maybe it was too late already. But I had to try. I sped towards the start of Backwater Road, around behind the old Milk Processing factory. It was sort of a back way out of town. It would be the last one they closed down.

  As I turned off Johnston Street into Foster Street I saw a large group of Chinese men walking down the street. Not that far away. But they hadn’t seen me yet. Dozens of them, and then I saw dozens more over the other side of the street. They looked like thugs, gunmen. I could see several weapons, they were barely bothering to conceal. Oh, for fuck's sake. They were looking for me too. Who the fuck did I kill to piss them off? I didn’t remember the incident in the casino and the two young Chinese men until later. I thought to myself,

  “Fuck, I’m not killing anyone else. I don’t dare to. Motherfucker could turn out to be anyone. The Pope’s grandson, the king of fucking Siam. I never did like Yul Brynner. Good in West World though. The original. Wham. Bam. Stone cold fucking killer. The remake was OK too. Fucking robots.”

  Natasha
screamed as we almost went off the road when I drove around the factory complex and into Backwater Road. I gasped. OK. Concentrate. Concentrate. It was narrow, twisty, and hard to navigate at the speed I was going. But it wasn’t blocked off, not yet. I sped past farm houses and milk sheds, and fields full of grazing cows, dumb as shit, who looked up complacently without the faintest fucking clue what was going on. I was gazing around in all directions, especially up. Nervous. Apprehensive. Nothing in the sky I could see. Of course, they could pop a hundred pounds of explosive onto the top of my car from three miles away and blow us into a million fucking pieces, and I would never even see or hear it coming. Fuck! How did it come to this?

  Backwater Road runs back onto Sale road after about five miles. There's a turn to the left and then you go gradually down-hill onto the main road. As I turned and got up over the hill I gasped. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A long row of police cars, a dozen or more, and behind them twenty or more black vans, full of God knows what. I could just hear the sirens from where I was. Above them and a mile further out I could see eight military assault choppers, flying in formation, overtaking the cars and heading towards Maffra. Further to the west I saw three more of the Predator combat drones also heading towards the town. There would no doubt be similar incoming forces on the other main roads leading into Maffra - the one from Stratford and the one from Rosedale, through Heyfield and Tinamba. They'd lock the town down. We'd got out with just minutes to spare. If it hadn’t been for Svetlana we would have been trapped, and then no doubt systematically hunted down and slaughtered. I had slowed the car down and then stopped. Gradually. No sudden moves. I didn’t want to be noticed, obviously. I watched all the ground and air units rush on by, just half a mile from where I was, and imagined others elsewhere doing likewise, all angrily, furiously, determined to converge on me and then destroy me. I had the strangest of thoughts. I was bizarrely flattered by all the attention. For just a brief moment I felt like I was a part of history, just a small part, a small piece, of the history of the world as it unfolded over time in all of its fucking glory and agony. Mostly agony. Lies and bullshit a thousand miles deep, blood soaked murder and butchery, slavery and oppression. Still, it was a privilege in a way. A brief starring role. The most significant role that most of the rest of you can aspire to is accidental road-kill, barely noticed and quickly forgotten.