The Assassin's Prayer

by Mark Allen

  He cradled her head in his lap and tried to wipe away the blood, but there was too much of it, making it impossible to tell how much damage the bullet had done. He ripped off two strips from his shirt. He folded one into a makeshift bandage, covered the wound, then used the other strip to tie around Larissa’s head and hold the bandage in place. It was rudimentary first aid, but the best he could do under these conditions.

  He carried Larissa to the second Hummer and strapped her into the passenger seat. The woods had become silent and still in the aftermath of combat. As Kain climbed behind the wheel, he heard the crackle and pop of flames as the cabin continued to burn. He turned the key and the Hummer rumbled to life. Gunning the gas, Kain whipped the vehicle around in a tight U-turn, crunching Macklin’s half-decapitated corpse under the oversized tires as he did so and not giving a damn.

  He resisted the urge to pin the pedal to the floor. The path was rough enough as it was; high speed would only intensify the bouncing and jarring and might do more damage to Larissa’s head wound.

  Assuming she’s alive at all.

  Kain crushed that thought before it could sink its barbs in.

  Time crawled. The trail seemed to go on forever. But dirt finally turned to blacktop and Kain punched it, tires screaming in protest. He wiped the sweat from his brow and cracked a window to let in some air. Wind rushed into the cab and Kain felt something brush against his arm. He glanced down. It was Larissa’s hair, the silken strands sodden with blood, red on gold.

  Guts churning, he drove faster.

  CHAPTER 17

  With the pedal pinned, it took Kain less than twenty minutes to reach Glens Falls Hospital. Larissa slumped in the seat, held up only by her safety belt, horribly still the entire way. Kain kept thinking she had died, but when he placed his fingers against her neck, he could feel a weak pulse. She was a fighter, possessed by an incredible will to live. She had cheated death once. Kain prayed she could cheat it again.

  He pulled up to the Emergency entrance and exited the vehicle without killing the ignition. The rumble of the Hummer’s engine echoed loudly off the hospital walls. He left the SPAS-12 in the cab, keeping only the Colt. Moving quickly, he unfastened Larissa from the seatbelt and lifted her in his arms. She was a rag doll, her head lolling limply on her neck.

  The automatic doors parted with a pneumatic hiss as he carried her inside. Blood dripped from the now-sodden makeshift bandage, the droplets absurdly red under the bright lights, as if they belonged in some abstract painting. Kain felt fear and panic gnawing away at him as he headed for a set of double doors in front of him.

  A nurse darted out from behind a desk, her eyes sizing up Kain and the bloody bundle in his arms. “What happened to her?”

  “She’s been shot in the head.”

  “This way.”

  Kain followed her through the double doors into a long corridor. The nurse led him into the first room on the right and pointed to the examination table. Kain laid Larissa down, careful not to jostle her head. The room smelled of antiseptic.

  The nurse snatched the phone from the wall. “Get Dr. Morrow down here now!” she said to whoever was on the other end of the line. “I’ve got a Code Two GSW in Trauma One.”

  Kain couldn’t take his eyes off Larissa. Even now, covered with blood, she was beautiful. He should have told her that. There were a lot of things he should have told her. And now it looked like he might never get another chance.

  A doctor burst into the room, stethoscope flapping around his neck. Kain looked at the ID tag clipped to the pocket of his white coat. Dr. Morrow, a short man with a receding hairline, gentle eyes, and the long, slender fingers of a surgeon. “Status report,” he said to the nurse as he started toward Larissa. But he hesitated when he glimpsed the gun under Kain’s duster. He eyed Kain warily, giving him the kind of look usually reserved for strange dogs when you don’t know whether to believe the wagging tail or the bared teeth.

  Kain pulled his coat tight around him, concealing the Colt. “Please,” he said, hoping his voice conveyed his growing desperation, “help her.”

  “I want to,” Morrow said, “but the gun…”

  “Is no threat to you,” Kain said. “You have my word on that.”

  Morrow didn’t look fully convinced, but he got down to business. As he peeled off the bandage, he said to the nurse, “Get me some help in here, stat.” When he dropped the bandage into a stainless steel basin, it made a soggy splat sound that Kain found disturbing. It was a hopeless sound that reeked of finality. Morrow pulled the overhead light down for a closer inspection of Larissa’s wound. The nurse was on the phone, calling for assistance.

  Kain had never felt so helpless. He wanted to beg, plead, say something, anything, to let Morrow know just how desperate he was for Larissa to survive. But they were beyond words at this point. Morrow would do his job and Larissa would either live or die. It was as simple as that.

  He knew he couldn’t stay here much longer. The police would be called soon, if they hadn’t already. It was standard hospital procedure for gunshot wounds. He leaned over Larissa’s lifeless form. “I’ll be back,” he whispered softly, knowing she couldn’t hear him but needing to tell her anyway.

  Footsteps pounded in the corridor outside. The door burst open and what seemed like a mob of hospital personnel poured in. Kain slipped out of the room as people began to scurry this way and that, players in an orchestra of organized chaos designed to pull Larissa back from the brink of death.

  Out in the hallway, Kain leaned against the wall and tried to compose himself. His emotions were jagged fragments floating randomly through his heart and soul, unable or unwilling to come together and form a cohesive picture. He wanted to go back into the room, wanted to stay with Larissa as she fought for her very life. But he knew he couldn’t. If he stayed here, he would be taken into custody when the police arrived and he would be no good to Larissa behind bars. Besides, there was something he needed to do. Something he should have done a long time ago.

  He walked away before he could change his mind. With every step further away from Larissa, his conscience punished him, accused him of abandoning her when she needed him most. But he kept walking, because he had no other choice.

  Outside, clouds thickened the sky and a light drizzle spattered the windshield like tears as Kain got into the Hummer and drove away.

  ******

  As he drove out of the hospital parking lot, Kain saw police cars approaching. Their pulsating lights painted a surrealistic red and blue montage on his windshield, the colors smeared by the rain. Kain tensed, knowing that if anyone had told the cops that he was driving a Hummer, it was game over. The early stages of a headache pounded on his temples as the wail of sirens pierced his eardrums and needled into his brain. The wipers flicked back and forth like a metronome, hypnotic in their regularity and rhythm.

  The police flashed by in blurs of light and sound. Kain saw by the markings on the cars that they were city boys. Either nobody had called the State Police or they were just lagging behind. Either way, he didn’t intend to stick around to find out. He merged with traffic and made his way out of the city.

  He made one stop along the way, a used car lot that hadn’t opened yet, ditching the Hummer in favor of a nondescript Ford Ranger 4x4. He quickly hot-wired the truck and got back on the road. The Ranger was badly out of alignment, pulling hard to the right, and the interior smelled like moldy gym socks, but it ran.

  Kain turned on the wipers, sluicing away the rain, and listened to the tires hiss over the wet road in a vain attempt to take his mind off Larissa. With every passing mile, it became harder and harder not to turn around and go back. Not knowing if she was alive or dead gnawed at his guts.

  He was so distracted that he failed to notice the black Toyota Tacoma tailing him. All he could think about was Larissa and his combat instincts paid the price, dulled by his troubled heart. The Toyota stayed several cars back as Kain drove through town, following in his wake
like a disembodied shadow, just one vehicle amidst many.

  Kain turned off Burgoyne Avenue onto Route 196 and started across what the locals called the Flats, a three-mile, arrow-straight stretch of road with nothing on either side save barns, crop fields, and barbed wire fences. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw the black Tacoma about a hundred yards back, but paid it no mind. Route 196 was the main connection between Hudson Falls and Hartford and saw more traffic than one might think, considering it was just a two-lane country road.

  The next time he looked in the rearview, the Tacoma completely filled it. Kain had time for one thought—What the hell?—and then the truck rammed him, metal crunching on metal.

  At 60 mph, the impact nearly sent Kain sailing off the road. He fought the Ford for control, teeth gritted as the back end fishtailed wildly. For one breathless instant, he was sure he was going to end up in the ditch. He wrenched at the wheel, straining to keep the Ranger on the road. The tires suddenly found their grip again, biting into the shoulder. Kain whipped back onto the pavement, dirt and stones spraying everywhere.

  The Tacoma pulled up alongside the Ford. Kain looked over and saw the spurting flame of a muzzle flash. The window exploded over him in a wave of glass. He felt the bullet sizzle past him close enough to singe the tip of his nose before blowing out the opposite window. Wind and rain howled into the cab, cold and stinging.

  He stomped the brakes. The Ford shuddered to a rubber-screeching halt. The Tacoma shot past him like a missile. Kain throttled the steering wheel as if it was the throat of the driver who was trying to kill him. Anger and adrenalin pumped through his veins.

  Up ahead, the Tacoma skidded to a halt and swung around so that it was facing Kain. They looked like two rivals preparing to play a game of chicken. Kain locked onto the face of the driver and a jolt ran through him.

  Silas.

  Kain didn’t waste time trying to figure out how Silas had found him, because it didn’t matter. He just stared at his former best friend and Silas stared back, years’ worth of dark emotions bridging the gap between the two vehicles like telepathic waves. Silas’ right eye gleamed hotly, a burning star in the stone-like mask of his face, while his left eye—what was left of it anyway—was hidden beneath a black patch. He had to be in incredible pain. It had only been twenty-four hours since his eye had been shredded, but instead of recuperating in a hospital bed, Silas was out here hunting the one who had wounded him. Kain wondered how much morphine he had jacked into his system in order to function.

  Silas held the steering wheel in one hand, a Glock-17 automatic in the other. The look on his face was one of grim finality and at that precise moment, Kain knew they had reached the end of the line. Something dark and cold seeped into his blood, a strange numbness that somehow hurt worse than any pain.

  He punched the gas. Rubber screamed in protest as it was peeled off the tires and pasted to the pavement in smoking stripes. Up ahead, the Tacoma did the same and the two trucks hurtled toward each other on a collision course. The shattered side windows gave the elements access and rain stabbed at Kain’s eyes like icy needles. Through the liquid veil, he saw the Tacoma approaching fast.

  At the last possible second, Kain jerked the wheel to the right. The other truck flashed by, missing him by inches. Kain’s pulse pounded but beneath it all was a sense of loss that he had never expected to feel. One of them was going to die this morning and no matter who it was, neither of them would ever be the same again. Regardless of who was left standing when this was over, the sins of the past had left their mark on them both.

  Forgive, forget, and walk away, an inner voice urged.

  But Kain knew it was too late for that.

  He slammed the brakes and guided the Ford through a tightly-controlled skid so that it was once again facing the Toyota, which had also swung around for another pass. He wiped the rain off his face, then drew his Colt .45 and cocked the hammer. “All right, Silas,” he growled. “Let’s finish this.”

  As if on cue, the Tacoma surged forward.

  Kain pinned the pedal to the floor.

  The two vehicles devoured the road like a pair of buzz-saws, rapidly closing the gap between them. Kain steered with his right hand, his left gripping the Colt, eyes slitted against the wind and rain razoring through the cab.

  When the Tacoma was only thirty yards away, less than two seconds from impact, Kain thrust the .45 out the window and fired several rapid rounds at the Toyota’s driver-side front tire. At least one of the rounds struck home. The tire exploded with a bang, the sound snatched away by the wind.

  The Tacoma veered crazily out of control, barely missing Kain’s truck. Its rear end sloughed around and Kain caught a glimpse of Silas fighting the wheel as the vehicle barreled toward the ditch. Rags of rubber shot everywhere and sparks flew as the bare metal rim bit into the blacktop. Then the blacktop became the shoulder and the shoulder became the ditch. The Tacoma nosed in at close to 40 mph. Metal crunched, dirt and debris geysered into the air, and the truck came to an abrupt, bone-shattering halt.

  The same could not be said for Silas.

  He obviously had not been wearing a seatbelt, for when the Tacoma slammed head-on into the ditch, inertia flung him through the windshield in a spray of glass. He looked like a scarecrow pin-wheeling through the air, arms flailing against the rain and gravity.

  Kain watched grimly as the ground rushed up to meet Silas, sucking him down into a snarled hell-zone of half-rotted fence posts and badly-rusted coils of barbed wire. Screaming horribly, he thrashed and twisted in midair, reminding Kain of a cat hurled off a roof by some cruel kid. But nothing could save him from landing in the tangled pile of wire.

  Silas screamed in pain as the steel coils snapped around him. Barbs tore his clothes to tatters and sank into his flesh like fish hooks. The wire wrapped around his wrists like bracelets, chewing at the veins there. More strands whipped across his face, neck, legs, and chest. Kain watched Silas struggle against the metallic cocoon, but the more he fought, the tighter the razored embrace became. He was hopelessly entangled, trapped in a sharp steel web. Kain couldn’t make out the exact nature of the wounds from here, but he could see a lot of blood. It was the kind of blood spillage that someone didn’t walk away from. Not so long ago, that sight probably would have given him great pleasure. Now he wasn’t sure what he felt. Silas finally lay still, apparently realizing that every movement only dug the rusty fangs in even deeper.

  Kain parked the Ranger on the shoulder where Silas had run off the road. As he stepped out of the truck, the cold rain pelted down on him and the wipers continued to keep their metronomic beat as he scanned the long, flat stretch of road in both directions. There was no one coming. He and Silas were alone.

  He kept his gun ready as he approached Silas, but it wasn’t necessary—Silas wasn’t going anywhere. Kain crossed the ditch in front of the wrecked Tacoma. Steam hissed out from under the accordioned hood. Cold rain sizzled on hot metal as he went and stood over Silas, who stared up at him with his one good eye filled with pain. Kain tried not to feel sorry for him, tried to find the hatred that had burned inside him for so many years. Tried … but failed.

  “Hey … Kain,” Silas said, the words slow and thick from the blood on his lips.

  “Don’t talk,” Kain said. The .45 hung loosely in his hand, down by his side. Stretched out under the dark skies like a crucified martyr, Silas had no shelter from the rain, which began to come down harder, diluting some of the blood from Silas’ wounds. But not all of it. It would take a downpour to get rid of all the blood.

  “Why … not? I’m gonna … die … anyway.” A spasm racked Silas’ body. He arched his back against the agony. The movement caused the barbs to burrow further into his flesh.

  Kain stood still and silent as a thousand memories flashed through his mind, all of them from better days. He saw the tiny trailer park he and Silas had grown up in, the fields in which they had played, the schools they had attended, the cars they ha
d driven, the girls they had loved, along with all the other sunny images of childhood that the mind never forgets, no matter what darkness comes after. Shoulders hunched against the rain, Kain stared down at the man he had once loved as a friend and then hated as an enemy. Now he was caught between the two extremes, unsure of how to feel or what to say. Nameless emotions formed a cold, hard ball in the pit of his stomach.

  Silas tried to smile and somehow, that was the most sickening thing yet. “Hey ... Kain,” he said. “We ... sure had some ... good times ... huh?”

  Kain lifted his head and looked at the sky. Nothing but gray as far as the eye could see. The thick, swollen clouds hung motionless in the sky. Looked like things weren’t going to clear up for a long time. He lowered his head and looked at Silas again. “Yeah,” he said, feeling a cold ache inside. “I guess we did.”

  “I really am … sorry … for what I did.”

  Kain told himself it was just rain on his face, but who was he kidding?

  Silas tried to say something else, but it turned into a scream. He clenched his teeth so hard that the muscles of his jaw stood out in stark relief. But as Kain lowered his eyes to Silas’ most mortal injury, he couldn’t blame him for screaming. The barbed wire had ripped open his belly and his insides bulged, wet and glistening, from the gaping gash.

  Kain lifted his eyes back to Silas’ face, seeing not the man who had betrayed him, but the boy who had been his dearest friend. He also saw the utter hopelessness on Silas’ face. Silas knew he was a dead man, knew that his gut wound would kill him as surely as a bullet to the brain, but it would be a slow, agonizing death. In a world of bad ways to die, it was one of the worst. “Kain,” Silas gasped, “kill me ... please ... I’m begging you … I can’t take ... this pain … please.”

  Kain said nothing. He had expected the grim request. Not only because he would have asked for the same thing if the situation was reversed, but because he knew Silas. Knew him the way you only know someone you have loved and hated.