by James Cook
I knew about the infrared sensors. I knew my enemy was not within two hundred yards of the crime scene, or if they were, they were extremely well hidden. I knew if they didn’t have eyes on the scene, they had some other way of watching. I knew there was a very strong possibility they wanted me alive.
I knew they expected me to fall for their trap.
When you know an enemy is expecting you to do one thing, the proper strategy is to do the opposite. If they’re expecting you to be in one place, attack from somewhere else. The killer expected me to start my search at the crime scene and expand outward from there. If his eyes were fixed in one direction only, then the element of surprise was mine.
I changed direction and headed north.
*****
There were more infected on the other side of the highway, but I didn’t bother fighting them. The day’s high temperature had only been thirty-four degrees, and it had dropped at least ten degrees since sunset. Immobilized, most of them now lay face down in the snow. Corpsecicles, as Eric called them.
I pictured the crime scene and drew a quarter-mile circle around it. Then I cut that circle in half, favoring of the northeastern side of the highway because the ground sloped gently upward in that direction. Not a hill, really, but higher ground than what lay to the south, the most sensible place to set up an ambush. I stayed to the outer edge of that circle until I reached its northernmost point, directly north of the crime scene. Beyond that point, the terrain sloped back downward leading to an expanse of flat, treeless fields. Not much cover out there. If the enemy was nearby, there was a good chance I was behind them.
Now for the hard part.
I adjusted both my FLIR imagers to their highest settings and started searching. For the first hour, all I found were frozen infected, an owl, and a small herd of startled deer. It was too bad I was hunting men, and not animals. I could have had some fresh venison.
Halfway through the second hour of searching, I picked up a heat signature. There was a thick stand of red cedars in the way, preventing me from seeing it clearly. I started to work my way around them, but then I remembered they provided good concealment. Going down on my belly, I crawled under fragrant evergreen boughs until I was close enough to see the source of the signature.
It was a house. A small one, more of a cabin, really. Maybe a thousand square feet of interior space, if that much. To my right, an overgrown gravel driveway wound its way through hundreds of yards of forest to the highway beyond. Referencing the map in my head, I figured I was about three hundred yards from the crime scene. Ahead of me was the crest of a long, low hill I hadn’t noticed earlier.
It was a good location for a hideout. The sheriff and his deputies could have walked a two-hundred yard perimeter around where they found Montford’s body, and they would not have seen this place. I only spotted it because I had approached from the opposite direction.
Clever bastards. They had planned this out long in advance.
Moving slowly, I removed my goggles and peered through the FLIR imager on my rifle. The walls were thin, but they were enough to obscure most of what was inside. Looking away from the scope, I saw there was no light coming through the windows. The heat signature was on the lower part of the wall closest to me, probably in a bedroom, a circle of brilliant white on the otherwise gray exterior. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it was some sort of portable gas heater.
As Eric is fond of saying, only one way to find out.
I put my goggles back on and went around to the other side, moving in a low crouch. Ten feet from the house, I spotted a tripwire. Kneeling down, I could see it surrounded the house on all sides, rigged to little boxes tied to trees. On closer examination, the boxes were made of scrap metal with wires poking from the seams. Improvised explosives, and fairly sophisticated ones at that. Most IEDs I had seen since the Outbreak were triggered with bullets or shotgun shells. They were easy to make, and didn’t require any special tools. These bombs looked electronic. Which would require advanced know-how, testing equipment, and a 3M soldering kit.
With a sudden sense of alarm, I realized that if they had rigged IEDs around the house, they could also have rigged cameras. Just as I thought this, I heard the faint sound of a door opening.
Time slowed down. My thoughts raced. I ran through everything I knew about video surveillance.
Unless a camera is mounted to a motorized turret, they only look at one area. If you are outside of the camera’s field of view, you are invisible to anyone monitoring its video feed. To get comprehensive coverage of a place with as many approaches as this one, you would need dozens of cameras. The question was, how many did these guys have? It could not have been very many. Batteries and other sources of electricity were rare and precious. A person would have to expend a great deal of trouble and expense to mount more than four or five. If it were me, and I were worried about someone sneaking up on my hideout, I would not point the cameras out into the forest where they could be easily eluded. I would point them at a potential intruder’s intended target.
I would point them at the house.
I backed off quickly, careful with every step, making almost no sound as I melted into the forest. When I felt I had gone far enough, I found a suitable spot and dropped to the ground, head down, eyes just above the snow, the trailing edges of my ghillie suit dangling in my vision. A man rounded the corner, walked a few feet to a hand-dug latrine, unzipped his pants, and proceeded to relieve himself. His outline stood out brilliant white through the infrared goggles. He started humming to himself. I eased my finger off the trigger.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this wasn’t a hideout. Maybe the guy at the latrine really lived here. The presence of the IEDs didn’t necessarily mean anything. Just that someone here knew how to make bombs out of scrap metal and old electronics. That kind of knowledge was rare, but not unheard of. It was a dangerous world, and it was not uncommon for people who lived in isolation to place booby traps around their homes. Hell, I had done the same thing at my old cabin in North Carolina.
On its own, the idea seemed plausible enough. But then there was the house’s proximity to where Montford’s body was found, and the infrared sensors. It just seemed a little too convenient. I examined the house, looking for signs of habitation. Normally at a place like this, there would be an outhouse, a woodpile, maybe a shed for storing perishable food. The remnants of outdoor cooking fires, a fence to keep the infected out. Looking around, I didn’t see any of those things. No one had bothered shoveling the snow from the roof, the latrine looked recently dug, and the house was in a state of extreme disrepair. Another winter like this one, and the roof would probably collapse. It looked abandoned. Felt abandoned.
No. Something was wrong here. Slowly, I stood up.
I probably wouldn’t be able to reach the man at the latrine before he finished his business, but I could make it to the side of the house and blend in with the ground. The man would have to pass within feet of me to get back inside. That would be my opportunity.
Seven quick, silent steps took me where I needed to go. As I went down to my stomach, I unslung my rifle and pressed it into the snow, covering it up. If it came to a fight, it was going to be close quarters work. Better to use my pistol. I had just enough time to draw my Beretta and hide my hands before the man turned around.
He didn’t go back toward the house immediately. He took a few slow, strolling steps, casting his eyes around the surrounding trees, probably looking for infected. Not seeing any, he gazed upward through barren limbs at the moon above. It was three-quarters full, only marginally visible through high, fast-moving cloud cover. The freezing wind whipped one end of his scarf behind him and rattled the branches overhead.
“This is some bullshit,” he muttered, shivering. “Waste of goddamn time. Got us out here freezing our asses off for nothing.”
He coughed a few times, spit into the snow, and walked toward the porch. I waited until he was two steps past me before I stood up. At
this range, there was no way he wouldn’t hear me, so I had to move fast.
One hand drew my dagger, while the other gripped the Beretta. My target had just enough time to turn his head in my direction before my knife was at his throat. I pulled him against my chest with my forearm, pressed the knife into his esophagus, and then touched the end of the suppressor to his temple.
“Don’t move. Don’t make a sound. If you call for help, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
“What the fuck are you-”
The knife bit deeper, cutting into his skin. A thin bead of crimson began to run down the edge of the blade. “I said quiet.”
“Okay, okay. Ease up.”
“Put your hands behind your back.”
“What?”
“Do it now,” I said, tapping the gun against his temple.
“All right, all right, Jesus.”
Working one handed so I could keep the blade pressed to his throat, I holstered the pistol, tugged a zip tie from a pouch on my vest, and bound his hands. Finished, I patted him down and found a folding knife and a Glock pistol. I tossed them away before putting the gun back to his head.
“Who sent you?” I asked.
“What are you talking about? Christ’s sake, why are you doing this? Look, I have food and stuff inside, okay? You can take whatever you want, just don’t hurt me.”
I dragged him a few steps back to keep his voice from carrying into the house. “Nice try. I know you’re lying, and I already know why you’re here. Now I’m going to ask you one last time, and if you want to live, you will tell me the truth. Who sent you?”
His breath was coming in panicked gasps, raising a cloud of vapor around his face. I felt his pulse hammering against my thumb. His body shuddered, and not just from the cold. If I pushed a little harder, I could probably make him cry.
He said, “Please, I don’t-”
“I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t answer me, I will slit your throat.” I pressed the knife a little harder. “One. Two.”
My elbow came up, the blade tugging hard against his skin. He gasped and stood on the tips of his toes.
“Okay, okay, stopstopstopstopstop. Just stop, please. Look, I don’t know who the guy was, all right? Just some guy. We never met him before. We were passing through town and he offered us a job.”
“Who is ‘us’? How many of you are there?”
“Four. Me and three other guys.”
“Where are they?”
He hesitated, swallowing hard. I cocked the hammer on the Berretta. “Where?”
“They’re in the house. S-sleeping.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay? Pay attention like your life depends on it, because it does. Are you listening?”
“Y-y-yes.”
“I didn’t come here to kill you. You’re not the man I’m after, so there’s no reason for you to die today. If you do as I ask, if you tell me the truth, I’ll let you go.”
“Okay, okay. Ask me anything, man. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“Of that, I have no doubt. First question: were you sent here to capture someone?”
He hesitated a few seconds, voice growing high-pitched. “Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Garrett. That’s all the guy told us, just Garrett.”
Suspicion confirmed. “You do this kind of thing often?”
“No way, man. We do protection. Caravans and shit, guarding cargo. Sometimes we collect debts for people. This is the first time we took a job like this.”
“So you and you’re friends are mercenaries?”
“Y-yeah. I guess so. Something like that.”
“A man was murdered not far from here. Tortured to death. Someone carved my name into his back. Did you have anything to do with that?”
No answer. I leaned my face closer and asked him again. His shuddering turned to sobs, tears began to drip onto my forearm. “Yes,” he said miserably. “I didn’t hurt him, okay. I just helped catch him. Mike was the one who tortured him. He’s fucking sick in the head, man. He get’s off on that kind of shit.”
“Why did you do it? That man had a family. A wife and children.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I-”
“Fuck your apologies, just answer the question. Why?”
“It wasn’t our idea. The guy who hired us told us to do it. Said it was important we do it just like he wanted. He even wrote down instructions.”
“Why the farmer? Did the guy who hired you tell you to kill him specifically?”
“No. Mike found him walking alone on the highway. I guess he was hunting, or something.”
Wrong place, wrong time. Poor bastard. “The man who hired you, what did he look like?”
“I don’t know. He looked like a regular guy, I guess.”
I raised the Beretta and rapped him on the ear, drawing a hiss of pain. “Race? Age? Eye color? Tall? Short? Be specific.”
“Uh…he was about my height, I think. Brown hair, brown eyes, big beard. He was a white guy. Told us to call him Marco.”
I was silent for a moment, thinking. That description didn’t sound anything like who I thought was after me, and I didn’t know anyone named Marco. He must have been working through hired agents. But why? Why go through the trouble of hiring someone to do his dirty work for him? He knew good and well that sending amateurs after me was as good as sending lambs to the slaughter. So why do it? It didn’t make any sense.
Briefly, I debated what to do next. The man under my knife might know something that could help me, but I couldn’t interrogate him with the other mercenaries nearby. If I hurt him too badly, he would just scream for help, and unsuppressed gunfire this close to Hollow Rock would draw attention I couldn’t afford. I didn’t have time to knock him out and carry him far enough away so the others would not hear him scream, which left me with only one option.
Killing someone in a fight is one thing, but cold-blooded murder is something else entirely. Not that I haven’t done it. I have, many times. But it never sits well with me. Of all the things that plague me in the night, those memories are the worst. The times when I had the option to walk away, to let someone live, and chose not to.
But then I thought about Sean Montford’s reanimated corpse dangling from a tree not far from where I stood. I thought about the fingernail in his mouth, and the parts of him that were missing, and the gruesome wounds left by his torture. I thought about what he went through before he died, the pain and fear he must have felt. I thought of a wife bereft of her husband, and children orphaned because their father was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I thought about the sheriff, and how I lied to him because I wanted to keep my sins dead and buried. How I couldn’t let him bring these men to justice because they knew too much. I thought about all these things, and I made a decision.
I asked for the names of the other three men.
He told me.
I asked him to describe the layout of the house, and which room each man was sleeping in.
He did.
I holstered the Beretta and shifted my weight to my right leg.
“Wait, what are you doing?”
“Don’t move,” I said.
“Please, I-”
“Do you want to live?”
“I…yes.”
“Then hold still.” I raised the hand holding the dagger and slammed the pommel into the back of his neck. He dropped, his body going limp.
I took a few moments to bind his ankles, hogtie them to his hands, and drag him around the side of the house. Once he was well hidden, I cut away strips of his jacket to make a gag, stuffed it in his mouth, tied it off, and rolled him onto his side so he wouldn’t suffocate. Confident he wasn’t going anywhere, I retrieved my rifle and moved to the front of the house. The porch steps creaked under my boots as I slowly climbed them, leveled my rifle, and opened the doo
r.
I didn’t see anyone in the room beyond. A couch, a couple of chairs, and a long-disused television occupied a living room to my left. There was a dusty kitchen to my right, as well as a small dining room. On the floor of the dining room lay the jumbled bones of a human skeleton, dead long enough for all the flesh to have rotted away, body fluids soaking into the floor. A faint scent of decay hung in the air, clinging to my throat as I breathed it in. The bastards didn’t even have the decency to bury the remains. Just left them there.
Sick fucks.
I switched my goggles to night vision mode and stepped inside. I could hear snoring coming from behind two doors in the hallway ahead of me. Staying low, I moved to the first door and opened it. There was a single bed inside, along with the usual bedroom furniture. It looked like an elderly person’s room. Old fashioned painting on the wall, scratched up furniture from several decades ago, transistor radio on the windowsill. But the person in the bed did not look old. He looked to be in his late twenties, bearded, gaunt, lying under a pile of blankets. There was a rifle propped in the corner and a pistol on top of the dresser.
“Jason?” he muttered sleepily. “Mike has the next watch, dumbass, not me. Go away.”
It was dark in the room, nearly pitch black. A set of blinds lay over the lone window, covered by a pair of thick curtains. The weak moonlight outside did not reach into the cramped little space. Even with NVGs, the mercenary’s outline was dim. I stepped closer to the bed, looming over it, waiting to be noticed.
“Dude, what the fuck?” He reached for a flashlight on the table beside him and clicked it on. The dampeners built into my goggles toned down the sudden glare, keeping it from blinding me as he shined it in my face. When he saw what was standing over him, his eyes went wide with fear.
“Holy sh-”
I clamped a hand over his mouth and shoved him down onto the bed. He struggled to get out from under me, but I was twice his size. He wasn’t going anywhere. I shifted my weight and put a shin across his thighs to keep him from kicking.
“This is what happens when you murder innocent people.”
