Catharsis (Book 3): Catastrophe

by Campbell, D. Andrew

  The scariest looking individuals all appear to be members of the makeshift biker gang that is pulled into the back of the line that I passed on my way in. Unfortunately, although they do look intimidating, they are also a bit far away for me to hit accurately with a thrown hunk of misshapen metal.

  With "meanest" removed as an option, I go to the next best choice: closest. And closest would be the late model Corvette with the two slender, and yet shudderingly-shady looking Asian lads stepping out and taking aim at me over the extended car doors. Car doors that are essentially paper-mâché-wrapped around aluminum foil frames. Even I can recognize that the car's body isn't made of real metal; it’s some kind of synthetic material or fiberglass. There's a good chance I could sneeze through their doors and hit them, let alone have to use a real bullet to take them out. Might as well educate them on that matter now.

  Flipping the gun over in my right hand so that I have a better grip on the barrel, I pull my arm back and zip it forward like an angry metal boomerang that has no intent of returning. Instead of aiming for the car's driver side door panel, I just send the gun through the safety-glass encased window, shattering it and letting the gun bury itself in the driver’s chest. He doesn't even scream as he drops to the ground, too stunned to even realize he's been removed from the fight.

  Tossing the lighter-weight magazine over from my left hand, I catch it nimbly in my right and launch it at the other Asian man just as he turns to watch his friend drop out of site. Not bothering with the window at all, I just watch as the small, aluminum cylinder bounces off his temple taking a chunk of hair and scalp with it. The shotgun that had been in his hand moments ago and on its way up to be aimed at me, quickly begins a rapid descent towards the ground.

  Both men are down and out before the battle has even begun.

  Too easy, I think, and pick up the revolver from my lap and dismount the bike. Time to play.

  Leaving the bike behind me, I race towards the Corvette and the two downed men. I have no intention of checking on them aside from making sure they won't be getting back up any time soon. As long as they won't be shooting at me, then they are no longer a worry of mine.

  As I reach the passenger door of the electric-green sports car, I jump up and hurdle the barrier in one smooth motion and bring both feet down in a single stomp on the moaning man's chest on the other side. There is a muted cracking sound as something that was once hard beneath my feet gives away and becomes fragmented. Most likely a rib...or four. Judging from the increased amount of screaming that escapes from him, it couldn't have been a pleasant sensation.

  Quickly digging the toes of my tennis shoes under his discarded shotgun, I pop my leg up quickly so that the gun flies into the air and I grab it. Even with my strength easing the burden, the weapon feels disgustingly heavy and deadly. The death contained inside of it won't be aimed at me tonight. Or any other innocent girl. The Death it brings will be painted with the brush of justice.

  Bullets begin to zing through the air around me and the soft upholstery of the expensive car begins to erupt into little volcanoes of leather and perforated padding. Apparently some of the gentlemen in the other cars are feeling brave. Well, how daring of them. I guess it is time to give them their official invitation to my little party. But before I do, it is time to collect one more little party favor.

  Catapulting myself up and sliding over the low-slung top of the sports car, I land on the driver's side of the vehicle and see the first man I had hit. It's a more gruesome sight than I had expected. The gun wedged itself into his chest cavity, and the image it creates is a macabre one. He looks like a weird art project with the butt end of the pistol bursting forth from the crater where his right lung used to be. As I stare at him for a moment, I watch his body rise and fall and shudder as he attempts to breathe with what is left of his pulmonary system.

  He might not make it out of this, I think for a moment, and wait for the wave of regret to hit me for what I've done. It doesn't. The Darkness just swells over me and pulls me back towards more important things. This man and his struggle is no longer relevant to me. The Darkness assures me of that.

  Almost as if he can read my subconscious mind, though, Ren pipes up in my ear, "I'm calling in for ambulances and emergency services. They should be there soon, but I doubt they'll get anywhere near you before you disappear from the scene."

  How did he know ambulances would be needed? I wonder for a moment, and then I realize he probably has a camera wired into me somewhere. Most likely he can watch everything that is happening right now. He can most likely see the ruined wreck of a man lying at my feet. He knows what I am up to.

  "Can you see this, Ren?" I ask him without much concern. Just curious interest. "Are you watching right now?"

  He doesn't respond immediately, but eventually gives me a short, "Yes. I can see it all."

  "Ok," I tell him and shrug. The Darkness dulls any guilt that might have haunted me in knowing he can see the destruction I am bringing. It's almost pleasant.

  The pleasantness is quickly shattered by the spunkering of bullets across the Corvette's open door behind me. Two rounds hit my legs, but Ren's suit absorbs the impact and keeps them from penetrating. They hit hard enough to hurt and cause me to stagger slightly, but I keep my balance and manage to not drop either gun.

  Shifting my gaze slightly from my wounded legs, I check out the assault rifle that the man at my feet had intended to bring out of the car before I removed that option for him. It appears to be a modified AR-15. It's a U.S. military rifle that fires reliably and impressively accurately. I’ve seen them used against me, and I’ve learned from it. It's a good weapon, and it will serve me well until it goes dry.

  Again digging the toes of my sneakers under the body of the gun, I pop it into the air as high as I can so that it soars up and over my head. The move accomplishes two tasks for me simultaneously. The rifle flying into the air manages to work as a distraction and draw attention to it that had been focused solely on me. And as a bonus, it allows me time to bring up the revolver in my right hand and sight on the man who had just fired at me. Having three guns and only two hands is a problem, so I need to eliminate the need for one of them. The revolver is the easiest and quickest to empty, so it wins.

  Looking out at the surrounding vehicles, I quickly locate two men who are both aiming guns at me. One gun is a scoped hunting rifle, and the other is a dark-colored handgun that I can't make out from this distance. Since the rounds that hit my legs didn't penetrate the armor or knock them out from under me, I'm guessing it wasn't the man with the rifle who had just fired at me. Most likely they were smaller caliber rounds otherwise I'd be in a lot more pain. That means the pistol has moved to the top of my list.

  Squeezing the trigger, the gun bucks in my hand and I watch as the man who had just been aiming at me tumbles backwards and out of sight.

  Although he might not have shot me yet, the rifleman scares me a bit with that scope. I trust Ren and his armor, but there is no need to test it more than necessary. Taking a giant slug from that gun might be more than even his magic fibers can negotiate. Time to prevent that little scenario from even having a chance of playing out.

  Spinning in place and resetting my aim, I pull the trigger again and tamp down the metal, bucking bronco clutched in my fist. My aim is both dead on and deadly as the glass on the front of the scope implodes followed by a red cloud appearing behind the man who had just been looking at me through it.

  Two shots used and two to go before the gun is empty.

  With no other immediate threats facing me, I randomly pick two men I can see standing up behind cars and pull the trigger twice, dropping them both. Four shots, four hits. The Darkness smiles at me. It is proud.

  With the gun now empty and having served its purpose, I adjust my grip on it and hurl it as hard as I can at the windshield of a beaten-up, silver Buick parked farther back in the line. The glass shatters and thin spider web lines shoot across it as the metal gun i
mbeds itself into the cocoon of safety glass. Not a perfect attack, but at least that is another vehicle that won't be going anywhere tonight.

  Looking up as the assault rifle I had launched moments earlier drops back to earth near me, I reach out and easily pluck it out of the air. I am now armed with two weapons that can generate more Pain and Death than any of these men have ever seen before.

  I estimate that there are twenty of them remaining alive, and they're all armed with various guns, knives and implements of violence. And there’s only one of me. Yet I still feel like I outnumber them.

  It almost doesn't seem fair. Almost.

  The Darkness reassures me that it is. They have earned what I am bringing to them tonight. They have asked for it. And it is my duty to deliver it. And deliver it I will.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Pushing the bike's motor as much as I dare, I race away from the burning warehouse as I listen to the whoops of various emergency vehicles descend on the place. I end up cutting the timing closer than I had wanted to, but I decided to be a completionist tonight. No point in leaving a job only partially finished.

  "Did you leave any of them alive?" Ren asks me softly over the helmet's radio. "Cat? Are they all dead?"

  I contemplate his question before I answer. Why does it bother him so much if I did or not? The fewer left alive this time, then the fewer I have to encounter next time. It's simple math. I am reducing numbers here. When you call in an exterminator to get rid of the rats in your house, you don't ask him to just wound several of them and hope they warn off their friends. No. You kill them all. You destroy the problem. That's what I did. I solved this problem.

  "No, Ren," I say with a forced sigh. I know what he's asking, but I refuse to play into it. "Not all of them. There were innocents there. The five girls I found in the vehicles are still safe. Traumatized by what they went through, but safe. I imagine they'll still be there when the ambulances arrive."

  "Aside from them, I mean," he tells me. "Did you leave anybody else alive?"

  "Oh," I respond breezily. "No, of course not. I left no one there who could either identify me or continue working their evil. I solved that particular problem. I imagine that might affect how they run their operations now."

  "Catarina," Ren says softly. "You just killed close to thirty people tonight. You slaughtered them," he pauses before continuing even more quietly. "You murdered them."

  His concern for these men is almost comical. They were evil. They were killing innocent people out there on the streets. They deserved to die. No, they needed to die. To be destroyed. To be wiped out.

  "No, Ren," I say in a matter-of-fact voice as I slow the bike down to the speed limit to avoid bringing any unwanted attention to myself. "Murder is reserved for humans. For individuals worthy of life. For people. The men I attacked tonight were none of those things. They were vermin. They were a pestilence infecting our city. They were a scourge," I say and pause. "No, Ren, they are a scourge. And I'm not done with them, yet.

  “Save your pity for those that are deserving of it. Not those men tonight. They are unworthy of your tears. Or your heartache. Or even your concern. They no longer exist, Ren. They are gone. They have been removed from the equation. It is time to move on to the next nest and repeat the process. That is how we win this."

  "Repeat the process?" He echoes my words back to me. "You want do that again? You killed those men. All those men. Every last one. And that doesn't bother you?"

  "Bother me?" I respond. "Yes, I am bothered. But it’s by the fact that I wasn't able to save every last innocent there tonight. A girl died by their hand before I could prevent it. She is dead, and she shouldn't be. If I had moved faster. If I had removed more of them sooner. If I had done any number of things that I did not do, then she would be alive. But she isn't. And that is on me." I pause as I realize my voice is rising as I drive, and I don't want to get emotional. "That death, Ren, and that death alone tonight haunts me. That was the only murder I witnessed in the warehouse, and it was not committed by me. And I want to prevent any more of them from happening. Do you understand?"

  He doesn't respond, but I can hear him breathing over the speakers. And then the gentle clacking of his keyboard starts up and breaks the silence. Slowing the Zero down as I hit the heart of the city, I realize I don't know where I'm going. I only ever knew the location of the first warehouse the syndicate was using. I'm not quite sure where their other ones are located. That means I'm going to have to ask, and I'm not sure Ren is in much of a sharing mood right now.

  Inhaling to ask the question, he beats me to it by responding before I manage to even vocalize the words.

  "They have two more warehouses set up to receive trophies," he tells me. "You're about ten minutes away from the closest one," he continues and relays the address. The warehouse is in a slightly nicer part of the city, but the neighborhood has fallen on hard times lately. I know there are a number of foreclosed buildings in that part of town as I had to run down an impromptu drug house there a month or so back. I'm guessing this new company just set up shop in one of the local foreclosed buildings.

  "Thanks," I say as sincerely as possible. "Let's try and stop any more harm from coming to these girls tonight if we can."

  "Yeah, sure," he responds robotically, and then doesn't say anything else.

  Not wanting to break the quietness of the drive after the barrage of noise I just suffered at the warehouse, I let the silence stretch out as I drive the empty streets of the city.

  Finally after several minutes of hearing nothing but light breathing coming over the speakers, he speaks up. "You're changing, Catarina. You're not the same girl I met on that bridge in the rain. You're not her anymore."

  I don't want to get into a philosophical debate before driving into a metaphorical death trap, but this isn't a comment I can just let go. He's right. For better or worse, I am no longer the person he met when I saved his life. I believe it is the former, but I fear Ren is leaning towards the latter.

  "No, I'm not, Mr. Knighton," I say using his given last name again to stress the importance of my words. "The girl you met on the bridge may have saved your life, but her decisions since then have cost the lives of others. And those decisions changed her. Changed me. I can't be that girl anymore. I won't be that person. The type of person who allows her choices to let good people die so that evil ones can live. That's not how the world should work, and I refuse to let it be that way.

  “I'm still good Ren. I'm not evil. I'm not trying to rule the world or gain power. I just want to put an end to the horror and destruction and nastiness I see in the world. I see that I am the only one who can accomplish that. So I will. I'm just no longer throttled by the need to allow bad people to keep on living. They have made their choices in life, and they will suffer the consequences of those choices. I'm simply the one that is going to help ensure that their suffering comes a little sooner rather than later."

  "They're called morals," he tells me in that same low voice.

  "What?" I ask him. "What are you talking about?"

  "Those 'things' that 'throttle' the rest of us and prevent us from killing a building full of people, Cat. They're called morals. They're something you used to have before...” He doesn't finish the sentence, but instead just lets it trail off.

  "Before Leyna died?" I finish for him. "Yes, her death helped me realize that I needn't hold myself back from my true potential. And if 'morals' were allowing the guilty to run free while innocents were killed, then they were something that needed to be shed. So I shed them, embraced who I am, and I haven't looked back. Because of that decision, a half dozen young girls are alive tonight. Girls who most likely wouldn't be if I had been guided by those outdated morals you speak of.

  “Now enough grieving for the deaths of those who chose their own fate," I say trying to change the subject. "Let's focus on saving those who didn't. Has there been any word from the syndicate about the fallout at the warehouse?"

  The key
board keys begin their rhythmic clacking again as Ren dives back into the criminal underworld and their unsavory social networking.

  "Smooth girl," he says as he types. "Very smooth. But that is a conversation we're not done having, yet. We can pause it for now, but we will come back to it. We will speak about what happened here tonight."

  I smile as I ease up on the throttle and the suspected building comes into view. Ren is no dummy, and he's not easily manipulated. Not by others, and especially not by me. It's one of the reasons I care so much about him. His influence on me is beneficial, even if I tend to resist it at times.

  "Okay," I tell him in response. "I can agree to that. We'll pick this up later. Now what can you tell me about this place?"

  "It's not nearly as large as the warehouse you just left. This was an outpatient care facility for a medical group that went under and lost funding a number of years ago. It hasn't been occupied for a little over eighteen months."

  "Relevant?" I ask not sure why he gave me the details.

  "No, not really, but I figured I'd pass along all that I had, which isn't much," he says. "I'm guessing most or all of their business tonight will be performed externally as there is no easy way to get vehicles inside. Not sure that helps you much, but at least you should know everything about their vehicle numbers without having to worry about anything being squirreled away. And my best guess is that they will be on the front side instead of the back."

  "The side exposed to the street?" I ask a bit surprised. It's a bold move operating where they can so easily be seen by every stray vehicle that passes this way, but then again the number of unwanted visitors in this location at this hour are probably limited. That would also explain why I'm not seeing any activity around the place as I roll up on the side road that empties into the back parking lot. I had assumed I could approach silently and with lights off and watch what was happening before moving in, but now I'll have to maneuver myself to the front side of the place. Something I wasn't expecting.