by Mike Gomes
With the binoculars still in place Falau spotted two men coming out from the gate on the street. They were dressed in the same suits the men had worn months earlier when he had been arrested. These men, however, were younger, fitter, and had a stronger look of determination.
Their jackets flapped in the breeze, and Falau could clearly make out each one of them had a shoulder holster that contained a handgun. These guards of the Wise home gave no indication that they were out for anything other than to get to Falau in the van, so Falau wasted no time, and turned the engine over and started the car again. He knew these men would hold him until the police arrived, just as the others had done before. He would probably get a good beating for being there a second time, and God knows what they would do to him to make sure it wouldn't happen a third.
The men hustled directly across the street in a diagonal direction toward Falau.
Falau dropped the car into gear and sped from the curb, the wheels gripping the street hard. He went straight toward the two men, playing a game of chicken and knowing there was no way they could win. The two men froze in their tracks and reached for their guns. Falau hammered the gas hard, surging the car right at them. As the distance closed, the men realized there was no hope of opening fire on Falau on the streets and bailed off to the sides as he drove past them and made a hard right at the corner and driving away from the Wise home.
Looking in the rearview mirror he could see one of the guards talking into his shoulder radio, probably alerting the other guards in the home that he had made a break for it. His only hope now was to gain some distance from them and be able to slip away.
Taking another sharp turn to the right and then the first left, Falau found himself moving into the countryside, and a large open stretch of road where he was able to edge past the speed limit and not get himself pulled over by the police.
As the big man rolled along, frequently checking his rearview mirror, he started to feel at ease that the guards were not in pursuit.
Chapter 27
Falau rode the gas hard, taking another right and then a quick left. After a series of twists and turns he got the car onto an open road and was soon passing by large fields. It had to have been fifteen minutes, and the men were nowhere to be seen. Falau reached over to his jacket on the passenger seat and felt inside the chest pocket. He’d been dying for a smoke, and after the tension with the guards it was exactly what he needed to calm himself down. Digging into the pocket he realized the cigarettes were gone. Tyler had managed to give him all the things that he had before, except he’d removed the cigarettes. His old friend had been on his ass about giving up smoking, and had now done his little part to make sure it would happen.
Falau reached first into the glove, box and then the center console, and again find nothing. He shook his head and banged his fist on the steering wheel in frustration. There was no way he could stop at a convenience store to get cigarettes at a time like this. Suddenly, looking back into his rearview mirror again he saw an oncoming black Humvee racing up behind him. The car looked more like something out of the military than the kind you would find at your local dealer.
The car was bearing down on him hard, and he had the sinking feeling the guards were back on to him.
Falau pulled over to the side of the road to allow the Humvee to go by, but instead it came up hard and pulled in front of him at an angle to box him in. The back door opened to reveal a man with a handgun drawn. He wore sunglasses and the same suit as the rest of John Wise’s guards. He lifted the gun and took aim at Falau, and fired one shot that ricocheted off the bulletproof windshield.
Falau dropped the van into reverse and pushed his foot down on the gas as hard as possible, causing the tires to spin and squeal as the van lurched backward. Shoving his foot hard on the brake and pushing the transmission into drive, the car locked up and spun around, shooting him forward.
The Humvee was quick and nimble for its size, and much like the van Falau drove, was not straight out of a showroom. It had been modified, improved, and made into an attack machine.
The Humvee raced up tight to the bumper of the Caravan and shunted hard against it.
A man in the Humvee waved a shotgun outside the window and took aim at the racing Caravan in front of him. He fired one shot that slammed into the back window of the Dodge, splintering the glass into a massive spider web waiting to fall away.
Falau cut the wheel hard, pulling it to the side and then back the other way. The Humvee stayed in close contact as Falau bit into corners and turned, trying to beat the bigger car with precision rather than flat-out speed.
The Humvee was up to the task, riding close on his bumper with the guard still aiming and ready to take him out.
Falau pushed the gas as hard as it would go and felt the engine straining. The Humvee pulled up next to him, getting itself in position to clip the back quarter of his car to cause a spin out and possibly a rollover.
Falau could see the driver eyeballing his back tire as he looked through the side-view mirror, and quickly stepped on his brakes, pulling back into a side-by-side position with the Humvee. The back window of the Humvee rolled down, and a man wearing the familiar suit hung out the window as the two cars pressed closer and closer together. He reached out, trying to grasp the handle of the sliding door of the Caravan.
Falau swerved out, then in, and out again, trying to strike fear into the man that he could get crushed between the two cars as the race continued. But the man had no such reaction, and he stayed steadfast in his task and eventually grabbed onto the handle and pulled it open, causing the door to slide back.
As he saw the man Falau cut the wheel again, hard to the right, forcing himself into the side of the Humvee. The guard hanging out the side pulled himself away just in time, but as Falau cut back again the other way a hand reached out from the Humvee grabbing onto the frame of the door.
The guard’s horrific, blood-curdling scream rang out through the air, causing all heads to turn, including Falau’s, who looked back to see blood rolling down the guard’s hand as he grabbed tight to the front door frame. The van’s doors had been finished with razor blade sharpness that Tyler had forgotten to tell him about. It was obviously developed for exactly this kind of situation; an unwanted intruder entering the van without permission. The blade was more obvious now Falau could see it, its edge running from top to bottom and across the top beam as well.
Keeping pace, the Humvee tried to pull closer, seeing that the man could not pull his hand away. The blade dug deep into the flesh and the man yanked with all his might, but the blade had sunk deep and hard into the bone.
Feeling his animalistic side rear its ugly head again, Falau knew he could simply hit hard into the Humvee and dislodge the man. But that wouldn't take care of the situation. Falau looked at the console on the car and flipped a switch that he knew would close the side door. The door slowly crept forward, closing inch by inch. The guard was still unable to remove his doomed hand.
The young guard yanked harder and harder, despite the pain and the screams.
The door slid ever closer, now within a foot. The man leaned out the window even further as Falau started to drift away from the Humvee.
“NO!” screamed the guard as the door crushed down on his hand. The sliding door showed no mercy, and simply kept closing until it reached its final destinations, with the strength of the jaws of life, the device used to pry open cars with trapped people inside. Falau heard the blade cutting through the bone, severing the man's hand in half as the door finally slammed into its locking position.
Falau looked back and saw the man's hand and fingers sticking inside the car, and he yanked the wheel hard to the left in a final attempt to completely sever the hand from the man's arm. The man was yanked from the window of the Humvee and was now being dragged on the outside of the car, his shins and feet dragging on the ground, the underside of the back wheel almost sucking him under and running him over.
Falau looked to
the console again and flipped the switch. The door made a clicking sound and crept open. The guard screamed again as he saw the door moving forward, and reached with his other hand to try to grasp onto it, but as the door opened about four inches his severed hand fell inside the van as the rest of his body flopped to the ground, smacking hard off the tarmac as the Caravan’s wheels drove right over him, crushing his body and causing blood to splatter from his face and torso.
Falau let the door slide fully open, and glanced into the back and saw the severed hand rolling around as he swerved from side to side, blood smearing the door and the rear floor.
The guards in the Humvee were now ready to fight having just seen their brother fall. Opening fire mercilessly on the Caravan from the passenger side of the Humvee, a man rested his butt on the outside of his window, leaning across the hood of the Humvee and firing an automatic rifle into the side and back of the open door. The window that had just been occupied by the fallen guard was now filled by another man with a shotgun he had leveled at Falau.
Boom! The shotgun exploded, causing pellets to fly everywhere inside the van. Falau felt several pellets stab into his body.
“Moron! Too stupid, even for you!” shouted Falau, realizing that if the man had used the buckshot more commonly used for shooting birds than the hard-round slugs, it would have acted more like bullets.
Falau activated the sequence on the dash that made the back seats roll in and the turret machine guns rise up. He used the radio knob to tune them in and put on their tracking device, then hit the button to fire.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap...
The machine guns rang out with ferocity and power, and ripped a straight line across the side of the Humvee and found their mark on the young man hanging out the window with the shotgun. A mess of red and gray lay on the top of the Humvee and its side window, where the young man's brains had been deposited after the machine gun destroyed his head. The guard on the far side of the car firing the M16 pulled himself back inside.
It was now obvious to Falau that the Humvee was also bulletproofed, so as long as the two stayed inside the car his weapons would be useless for attack.
Seeing a row of telephone poles down the right side of the road Falau, closed into the Humvee.
He quickly set the internal system for the machine guns to fire more rapidly and precisely at the window of the driver side door, opening them up to their maximum.
As the driver steered to the left Falau triggered the machine guns to fire. The Humvee driver was met with a barrage of bullets crashing into the window just inches from his face. He pulled his head down to the right to avoid any breaking glass.
Timing his move for maximum effect, Falau jammed the front of the Dodge Caravan hard into the Humvee, pushing it to the right and straight into one of the telephone poles.
The Humvee wrapped around the pole, causing it to stop instantly and snapping the pole in half. The men inside crashed against the front windshield and collapsed in a heap inside. Falau pushed his foot down on the gas again, soon creating distance between him and the men that would soon come after him.
It was time to regroup and finish this mission.
Chapter 28
SITTING AT THE DESK his fingers floated over the keys on the laptop. His eyes watched the screen as the images appeared, popping up in rapid succession. The feeling deep inside him that he couldn’t prevent was going to come on.
Calvin Wise had been spending his days and nights slumped over the keyboard like a writer fixated on his story. But he was flipping from website to website looking for the next woman that would deserve his love. He wanted to get all of her love, and the only way he thought he could was causing her death with his own hands.
The women were not just faces and names. He saw each one is an opportunity to fulfill his deepest desires. He felt them move and look at him as he clicked on each profile. Pausing on one of his favorite sites, he looked at the woman on the screen.
“She’s a slut,” he muttered to himself looking at the woman and reaching out with his hand to touch her cheek on the screen. “She needs to know what love is. I can fix her. I can show her what true love really is.”
The madman shifted from side to side in his chair, anxious to get to the woman he wanted. He pulled the top drawer of his desk open, displaying a number of trinkets that lay in the bottom. An earring, a necklace, a hair tie, and several coins. He scooped them out of the drawer and put them in front of him, admiring them as trophies of his great conquests.
He smiled at the collection, each one a small remembrance from each of the woman that he’d told he ‘fully loved.’
“Samantha, you were my favorite,” said the killer, picking up a hair band that had held her ponytail in place. “You struggled. Then you gave yourself to me. You just let go. You opened up to true love. You know now what true love is.”
“There’s more that needs to be done,” said the voice in the back of his head. “So many more... so many more.”
“I know!”
“You know, but you don't do anything. You're afraid. You can't do this. You're not man enough. You'll never be the man your father is. You'll never be the man you want to be.”
“I am a man. I am more of a man than you'll ever know. I've taken life and I've given life, and I'm all that a man can be.”
Calvin slammed his hand on the desk, knocking the items to the floor. Then he dropped his head in his hands as he heard a knock on the bedroom door.
“What?”
“Hi. It's Dad. I heard you yelling. Is everything okay?” said a timid voice from the other side of the door.
“I’m fine. Just leave me alone.”
“You sounded pretty upset. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I said fucking leave me alone!”
The door slid open revealing the cautious face of the young killer’s father. Not getting too close to the opening, he peered in to see his son sitting in front of the open laptop.
“No need to swear. I was just seeing if you're okay.”
“You just won't listen. I try to tell you to go away and you keep coming back.”
Pushing the door all the way open John Calvin took a small step forward and stood tall and proud, staring down at his son at the desk.
“We’ve been down this road before. You don't speak to me that way. I pay the bills. I do all the work. You're just living off me. Once you have your own place and pay your own way, you can tell me what to do there.”
Spinning in his chair, disgusted, he turned his back to his father. Calvin crossed his arms like a defiant child.
“What are you doing on the laptop?” he asked, looking across the desk to see what was on the screen. “What the hell is this?”
Calvin reached back with his hands and slammed the top of the laptop shut. “None of your business.”
“The hell it isn't.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Another girl has gone missing! Your computer has that same site up on it. Where are you going at night?”
“I don’t care if some whore got killed. She probably deserved it.”
“The police have been coming around again. A friend of mine said you were seen in the area of one of the killings. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“He doesn’t respect you,” whispered the voice living in Calvin’s head. “He knows you’re weak. He has never respected you.”
“No!” squealed Calvin, pounding his fist on the desk and causing all his trophies to scatter.
Calvin’s father looked down at the desk and spotted Calvin’s trophies, now strewn all over the place. He grabbed a hair ribbon and held it up. “Who’s this from?”
“Nobody.”
“Who is it from?” he demanded, insisting on an answer.
“I said nobody!”
“Is this from a girl you’ve hurt?” he asked, his voice quivering and sounding somewhere between tears and rage. “Did you hurt her? Who is she?”
Reaching out, Calvin ripped the ribbon from his father’s thick, strong hands. “That belongs to me. I earned it. Me!”
“You earned nothing! If it wasn’t for me you would be rotting your life away in prison right now.”
“Look how he treats you,” whispered the voice. “He has no idea what you can do. He will never respect you until you prove you’re a man.”
Calvin stood up from his chair and turned to his father, his face hardened. His eyes had lost all life. He pushed the chair under the desk and took two steps toward his father, pausing inches from his face.
John Wise lost all authority, as his eyes questioned what his son was doing and what he may do to him. His mouth gaped, as if he were searching for something to say. The child he had known and the young man he had called his son had just vanished before his eyes, replaced by a monster who had possessed the vessel that was his son.
“Father, you should watch your tone with me. You have no idea who I am or what I can do. I might as well be a stranger to you, and you know what they say...” He inched closer and locked eyes with the older man. “Don’t talk to strangers!”
Chapter 29
HIS SHAKING HANDS MADE it damn near impossible to get the key into the lock. Placing one hand over the other Falau guided the key, only catching the top opening to the keyhole, his efforts were more reminiscent of a man using a sledgehammer than a surgeon.
Finally, the door swung open, the knob on the inside leaving a dent on the wall from the impact. Falau moved quickly, closing the door and locking it, both the chain and the deadbolt. He moved to the window and looked out, being sure to keep himself to the side so he could not be seen. He saw a few hookers on the corner and the same old daytime traffic. Nothing out of the ordinary.
