INHUMANUM: A THRILLER (Law of Retaliation Book 1)

by Bradley Ernst

  The house. The ship. Troy’s retirement fund and life insurance.

  The boy had immediate and unlimited access to the fund.

  It was staggering.

  Rupert looked at his desk phone. Besides Bonn, there hadn’t been calls for days.

  No messages.

  Rupert would have to hire some lawyers to keep up appearances … or would he? Why not sell the building and farm out any existing business? Maybe he’d relax a bit. He wondered what Malaysia was like. Maybe he and his wife would actually go to Fiji. Rupert pulled the phone onto his lap. For the first time in his life, he swung his feet onto his desk. His old oxblood penny loafers looked good up there. He’d taken them to be resoled many times. Although the current fashion was loafers without socks, Rupert wore them.

  He always would.

  Rupert bought the shoes thirty-one years ago—the day he graduated from law school. His daughter was only a month old at the time. The shoes were a big expenditure back then. Rupert leaned forward to pull a baby food jar out of a drawer. It was full of pennies. On New Year’s Day each year he’d pried the old pennies out of the shoes with a letter opener and put them in the jar. He’d shine the shoes then put sparkling new pennies in. The jar still had the label on it: Blueberry Buckle. It had been his daughter’s favorite. After the shoe ritual each year, Rupert cut loose in his own way. He took one drink of cherry liqueur. He was a simple man—

  A superstitious man.

  Superstition and routine served him well. Though it wasn’t January, Rupert pulled out the bottle of Heering and removed the cork. He took a drink right from the bottle and shook the penny jar.

  The coins gave a nice rattle.

  Rupert sat the jar on his desk and looked back to the phone in his lap. He felt the alcohol already, the oily warmth seeping comfortably throughout his brain.

  It was so quiet now without the Germans here.

  Rupert took another pull from the bottle to celebrate their absence.

  No matter. He’d take a taxicab home.

  He let his eyes drift from the keypad on the adding machine to the keypad on the telephone. Absent minded, he tapped Bonn’s annual trust fund revenue into the keys on the phone. He was good at word jumbles. Now he’d have time to do the one in the paper every day. He tried to spell something from the letters corresponding to each number. 3-8-2-5-6-3-3. Rupert shook his head and grinned.

  It was obvious.

  3-8-2-5-6-3-3 became F-U-C-K-O-F-F. R&R’s message to the tax collector.

  The “Tax Man” would never be privy to Bonn’s actual wealth.

  ~Mantle-Wolf

  Henna was headed to Diego Garcia. From the airport she called to check on Alvar. He was fine. So was the curly-faced puppy. The cashmere goats had multiplied.

  “The kids are earmarked for a lady nearby. She has a spinning wheel.” Alvar sounded vibrant. Involved. He had projects. He’d traded the goats for beehives. “I’m going to put up some wildflower honey. Lots of beeswax. Do you want me to send you some wax? I’m anticipating about thirty kilograms.”

  “Save some for me there, Grandpa. If you keep it in slabs, we can filter it together when I come home.”

  He sounded young again.

  Clear—like the man who’d taken her in nineteen years ago. Alvar was a gentleman. He’d never press Henna to visit, but he sounded happy that she’d declared a possible visit on the horizon. He sounded lighthearted. “You said you were at the airport? A grand adventure, I hope.”

  Henna explained. “Renegade fishermen on the outskirts of Diego Garcia have been dragging everything up from the seafloor. I read an article about sustainability and in one picture I saw a species that isn’t in books yet.”

  “Renegades, huh?” The lightness in Alvar’s voice was gone. “Diego Garcia is remote enough. I don’t like the sound of ‘outskirts’ at all.”

  After an uncomfortable pause, Alvar forced some levity back into his voice. “I’ll be excited to hear about the discovery, though—I guess most remaining discoveries are in some ‘outskirt’ or another.” Something seemed off. Henna couldn’t place it. She considered asking Alvar if she shouldn’t go. She didn’t know much about Diego Garcia aside from the island’s military history. Henna hung up unsure about the trip. Her intuition told her to cash in the ticket.

  Go home. Take a bath. Sit down at a hotel for a full Scottish breakfast. Sip mineral water the rest of the day. Poke around a bookshop.

  But why shouldn’t she go? Diego Garcia was now a military atoll. In her pocket she carried a fax, which granted her permission to collect any unknown species from the marine protected area. She knew fisherman—they had a code. She’d be fine, wouldn’t she? She called Stephan, regardless. If Stephan felt she shouldn’t go, she wouldn’t go. Her phone rang. It was Stephan. “I was just getting ready to call you.”

  Stephan was in a joking mood. “I have a checklist we should review before you board. Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hand sanitizer?”

  “Check.”

  “Jaguar-print panties?”

  Henna laughed. “Going commando, mate—no laundry services on boats.” Usual banter followed. Henna congratulated Stephan on his recent grant. He brought money into the university now.

  “I’m going to write one while you’re gone. I think we’d benefit from some of that coffee that’s already traveled through an elephant before they roast the beans. It’s expensive, but now that I’m getting good at this grant writing thing I should test myself.” Stephan didn’t offer warnings. He was nothing but encouraging. Henna felt better.

  He’d know if something bad awaited her.

  Henna was no martial savant like Stephan, but she felt confident in the failsafe techniques he’d taught her. Quick fight-enders. They routinely did drills. Stephan tested her skills with random attacks. The first time he’d done it, she got angry. “I wasn’t ready!”

  Stephan smiled. “We never are. That’s why it’s called ‘defense.’ When you’re truly ready it becomes offense looking for a reason to justify itself as defense. I can teach you offense, but you’re really organized. It may feel a bit more like premeditated murder.”

  He was right. Random was better.

  Sometimes she was bested. Sometimes she fended him off. She always learned. Stephan insisted she counter his attacks with full contact. When she did well, he needed ice packs. They traditionally ate gelato and watched old black-and-white movies while he recuperated. It felt brutal, but Stephan was a hardened man. He could take it. It allowed Henna to learn how to actually fight, but in a safe environment. Of gifts to give another person, there were few greater.

  Stephan signed off without giving her an ominous warning. Henna dismissed her hesitations. She was quite early at her gate. She dozed off. She dreamed of Mortimer and the mantle-wolf. In her dream the wolf skin came alive. It peeled itself from the wall and dropped onto Mortimer’s dead body. The large dog absorbed the skin of his conquered foe. A hybrid beast arose, gasping dead, fetid breath—breath hotter even than the fire licking at the hearth. Embers glowed on each matted tip of the creature’s mane. As the hellhound turned to face her, the glowing firebrands became the heads of venomous snakes. Adders and vipers hissed hatred and vitriol in every direction. Vestiges of Mortimer were gone. The beast’s jaws yawned open. Its great glass teeth clicked and foamed. Its face grew longer. It appeared part wolf, part Komodo dragon. Foam spittle churned from the demon’s mouth in jagged coughs. The wood skinned floor beneath the wolf was blackened. The foam was acid. The floor hissed and fell away. A necrotic maw opened in the crumbled earth beneath. The thing scrambled for purchase. It was Mortimer again. He struggled to claw his way to safety. Mortimer fought the beast from inside his corpse. The lion-dog looked plaintively at the spot above the mantle where the wolf pelt should be, then turned to Henna, frightened.

  He was losing.

  He panted and whined. He was exhausted. In a last great effort, he pulled himself from the hole an
d turned to look at it. He wagged a moment, then shook his mane. The firebrands spread. He began to burn. The heads of the snakes bleated like sheep and struggled to escape the flames. The snakeheads birthed themselves from scaly hair-stalks to become fire-bees—

  “Gate 64 now boarding.“

  Henna sat up. Heart racing, mouth parched—she tasted fear and blood in the back of her throat. It took her a few moments to realize there was no monster. People jockeyed for position in line.

  Get up and move.

  Henna closed her eyes. Mortimer remained. He wagged at her from the backs of her eyelids, like an overexposed negative in various tones of red, orange, and pink. His fangs were broken glass. He puffed out his cheeks and looked at the mantle, telling the first half of their story. Henna followed his gaze to the mantle and saw herself hanging there. Her own skin. Pale, mottled leather—hollow eyes, small—her skin from childhood. Dirt from the garden wedged beneath her fingernails—one hand clutched a paring knife. Curly soft hair floated like dandelion fluff above her rancid blue-black scalp.

  The attendant called Henna’s row. She stood to board the plane. As she entered the jet way, she felt committed. People bumped into each other as they shuffled along, looking forward to the comfort of seats they’d soon realize were too cramped. Henna felt tired. She found her seat and buckled herself in. She needed to close her eyes again, but didn’t want to return to the dream.

  It wasn’t real. It wasn’t symbolic. It was just stress. Doubt.

  She suffered an amazing imagination. The dream was just that, wasn’t it? Stress, combined with imagination?

  Not a premonition.

  The plane took off. It gained altitude and leveled off the way it should. Henna started to relax. She meditated a bit to clear her mind. She focused on the thought of a field—a light breeze waved neat rows of meadowsweet. Nothing bad lurked out of view. There was no wolf.

  But there was.

  He waited for her to go deeper. He waited for her muscles to freeze so she couldn’t escape, then he eased his glass fangs into her meat and the hole took them. When Henna fell into the abyss, she fell with the wolf. They fell together through the hole in the blackened skin-wood floor, and they landed together in her grandfather’s hut. No longer a woman, Henna was a jumbled pile of bone and sinew. The blackened soft skin of the blue jay bounced from the pile and stuck to precious things. She watched the wolf paw through her rotting self from a shelf nearby. It was a real wolf. It sorted through her putrid parts as though he revisited a kill. The wolf turned from the task, mouth full of her, to glance at her shelf-self. He gazed at her as he chewed. He had her grandfather’s glass eyes. When he spoke, it was Alvar’s voice.

  You promised me. You promised me you’d watch him.

  ~Evolution

  College courses would achieve portions of Bonn’s goals, but not all of them. New York City had the most resources to hone his other skills, so that’s where Bonn went. He didn’t declare a major, but studied physics and engineering. Bonn didn’t care if he graduated—he simply wanted the knowledge. He sought out extreme fitness and improved his machinist skills. Bonn knew where things were headed for him. He watched the news. Murderers and rapists were acquitted at accelerating rates. These were not hidden stories: James Porter, known fondler, rapist, Catholic priest, amassed 160 or more victims. He bumped against the law for decades. The law ever-so-gently—so fairly—with fashionable kind civility bumped back, but didn’t remove him from the public for long. A few months here, a few years there, then back again.

  Massachusetts, Texas, New Mexico, Minnesota. He’s reformed now. OK, not then, but now. Now he’s reformed. It’s truer because we said it twice. We are sure this time. Whoops, we were wrong, but now we are certain. Certain is a bigger word than sure, so rest assured, James Porter is not a danger any longer. We are certain, and our specific certainty we have reached, at this particular time, is indelible. Stop diddling kids, James—you are making both the system and the church look bad.

  They could have killed him on the spot—either the system, or the church. It had been done before. That Porter made it out of Texas alive was amazing.

  Could have? They should have. One was enough—160?

  Mothers killed their kids and blamed it on hormones. A man ate some junk-food, so a premeditated murder was downgraded to voluntary manslaughter. These were hugely public cases. Police? Many times found above the law. Reports discounted. The uniform shielded even those who didn’t deserve to wear it. They were still criminals, left to act outside the law without repercussion. Many for decades. Bonn intended to be that repercussion. Hell, he intended to be proactive. No one else was going to do it. He reached his tipping point early. He had attended celebrations intended to laud his father’s grasp of that one loose legal thread. The legal system failed true citizens every day. Lawyers like Troy played dirty games to get their clients off. Judges and lawmakers were too afraid to uphold the law, unable to focus, too removed from crime to remember what mattered. Bonn knew—only one thing mattered.

  Justice.

  Maybe he wouldn’t make big differences at first. It would take him some time to get up to speed. He could play dirty too, but the time for games was over.

  Bonn walked through Central Park often. He liked the trees. He liked seeing people walk by, yet the idea of interacting with any of them was distasteful. He didn’t need people. He didn’t feel like a person himself—more of an extension of the Bill of Rights.

  A living extension.

  One fall day a family walked ahead of him on a trail. A whole family. A mother and father marched arm-in-arm while a small girl ran zigzags out front. She called each discovery back to her parents. Although she had the speech of a toddler, she explored with utter confidence. Bonn slowed his pace to watch. The girl picked up a stick. The mother called out, “Be careful.” The girl wasn’t careful. She ran with her wand and swung it very close to her eyes while she did. The man surged ahead and grabbed it and broke the sharp pieces off. When he gave it back, the tiny adventurer held it aloft and ran triumphantly. The couple laughed. The girl seemed to have—even to be—pure joy. She had a gentle father and a mother who cared if she got hurt. They let her take calculated chances. They had found the sweet spot that left her spirit intact.

  It was the perfect way to learn about the world.

  Bonn was now close to the family.

  Too close?

  The man saw him and gave his wife a tap on the hip. Without fanfare, he gracefully stepped in-between Bonn and his family. He managed a smile. “Good morning.” He had curly hair. He wore his mustache exactly like Eugen Sandow wore his.

  Bonn nodded. “Good morning.”

  The man seemed like a perfect father. A good husband. He would protect his family. He cared if his wife was happy. He inspired glee in the tiny girl. The epiphany buckled him: Bonn had nothing in common with Eugen Sandow. He was nothing like him. Sandow was a show boater. An exhibitionist—some even speculated he was bisexual. Bonn didn’t identify with any of that. Bonn gave a wide berth to the family. He sped up so the Sandow lookalike could relax. He later pulled the card from his pocket to look at Eugen. He felt nothing. The usual and euphoric comfort, the idea of the man as a shield worthy of worship, the photograph proof that the marvelous ideal had ever been real? The feelings were gone. He was just a man. A man he wanted to be nothing like. In a moment of rare introspection, Bonn realized he’d tried to turn Sandow into his father—back when he’d needed one. Manny, however, had been like a real father to him. Manny and Linda were both gracious. Kind. Gentle and funny. Supportive. Consistent.

  They were what every child deserved.

  The realization fresh, Bonn did something he never dreamed he’d do. He folded Eugen Sandow in half and shoved the card in his wallet as if it were change from a street vendor.

  That would’ve made Troy furious. He’d have come unhinged.

  Bonn had Manny and Linda. He’d care for them.

  He didn’t
need Sandow anymore.

  When Bonn wasn’t studying, he exercised. Bursts of intensity throughout the day seemed most effective. He varied movements so his body couldn’t become accustomed to any one thing. The city had every type of gym Bonn could imagine. Some useful and some not. Bonn harvested techniques from many sources, but preferred to practice alone. Kendo taught him timing: when one struck was more important and the item with which one struck mattered little. Kung fu taught him speed. In addition, it offered techniques to harden his body. Both Kendo and Kung fu bordered on religion for its practitioners, however, but Bonn didn’t seek religion. He didn’t trust those who took their own religion too seriously. Faith was different. It was more like optimism, and Bonn had plenty of that. Boxing was good burst exercise, but there were lots of rules. Bonn didn’t want to be “a boxer.” Once he realized the best way to knock out your opponent was to cheat, he quit. Cheating made sense when your life was at stake. Cheating was smart. Rules wouldn’t get him where he was going. In the darkest times, those who walked away were the ones who won quickly.

  Efficiently.

  He wanted tricks. Judo had a lot of them, so he studied it extensively.

  Bonn took one Tae kwon do class.

  Kicking things seemed inefficient.

  The grandmaster had an obvious need to stroke his own ego. He attempted to dominate the fit newcomer to impress the regular students. Bonn followed his instructions and dutifully held a pad out for the man to demonstrate a spinning back kick. Then, just as the instructor started his spin, Bonn stepped in low and fast. He put his shoulder into the man’s groin and hoisted him for a moment, then took him to the mat, hard. His opponent attempted to escape, but Bonn choked him unconscious.