Fathers

by Matt Rogers

  73

  King heard the conversation.

  He’d barely moved a muscle for four hours. He’d risked a total of three glances over the windowsill during that time, each of which reinforced the fact that for all his faults, Myles Vaughan had inhuman focus. The ex-cop sat the wrong way round on a dining chair, using the top of the seatback to rest the arm holding the gun. With his elbow supported, he ran no risk of muscular fatigue. That barrel was going to stay pressed against Mrs. Templeton’s head until either Rebecca showed up or he grew sick of waiting and turned the suburban home into a murder-suicide scene.

  Now, after a brief back and forth, King heard, ‘No deal, Bec. You’re not going to come. I’d tell you to say some final words to your folks, and maybe even to me … but after everything you’ve done to me? Fuck you.’

  Then the sound of Mrs. Templeton putting the phone down. She had to answer calls for him. One of his hands held the gun and King had destroyed the other arm.

  King tensed, ready to explode. He wasn’t going to sit here and listen to it play out. He also knew he’d be hesitant to shoot as he was vaulting over the windowsill, especially with two human shields in the mix. He’d let himself get shot and killed before he took a fifty-fifty chance on blowing away an innocent. Most people tell themselves that’s what they’ll do, but the survival instinct proves them wrong on the off chance they find themselves in a life-or-death situation. King knew it was true because he’d done it many times before.

  So he readied himself for a final burst of frenetic motion.

  Then Mrs. Templeton’s sobs floated over the sill, followed by a sigh from Myles.

  Myles said, ‘Maybe your daughter’s telling the truth, huh? Maybe…’

  ‘Please,’ the old woman said.

  King inched above the sill, risking a bullet to the top of the dome. Myles was fixated on the side of Mrs. Templeton’s head, staring at her curly grey hair with a manic gaze. Like he was hesitant to do it, like some tiny part of his soul was still intact. But he wouldn’t take the gun away. It stayed fixed in place, his trigger finger like a bomb fuse at its very limit. His other arm hung useless, broken, by his side. Above all else he was disciplined and impervious to pain. No doubt his hand was cramping, but he’d set up this scene, and he wasn’t about to abandon it.

  Though he wasn’t about to end it, either.

  King inched back down, frustrated to his core. He could sneak into the house, but the slightest creak of a floorboard and Myles would panic and pull the trigger. Even if King got right up behind him, grabbed him and yanked him backward, or dove for his gun hand, it’d be the same result. Any shred of movement would make Myles tense up and his trigger finger would move a millimetre and that’d be that.

  King flattened himself to the flower bed again and waited.

  It all came down to Slater.

  74

  Slater went limp.

  Deliberately.

  It was perhaps the most white-knuckle thing he’d ever done, and that was saying something. Probably because it involved giving up all control. He simply stopped struggling and lay there like a soulless husk of meat, his chest tearing itself apart in the fight to get air, but he couldn’t let himself try to breathe yet. It took everything within him. He knew his pain tolerance was incomprehensible and his mental strength was second-to-none, but even that wasn’t enough. He had to tap into something deeper, some dark undiscovered realm, and live there for a brief spell.

  It dragged on for an eternity.

  But finally the hand on the back of his neck slackened from an iron grip to a firm one, the mercenary convinced Slater was dead. A moment later the hand relaxed, but instead of rearing up and gasping for air Slater lay there a second longer, and sure enough the hand gripped the back of his collar and hauled him up, pulling his limp body from the marsh to check he was dead.

  He wasn’t.

  He sucked in beautiful air, unfazed that he vacuumed in flecks of mud with the inhale, and didn’t bother wiping his eyes. Instead, still blind, he reached out and grabbed the guy holding him. The last mercenary was big and broad and strong and had full use of his eyesight but that didn’t stop Slater from driving him down into the mud and holding his face in place with one hand and then swinging his other elbow like it was a sledgehammer, over and over and over again like he was a lumberjack hacking a tree down, only the axe was his elbow and the trunk was an invisible skull.

  He was almost glad he was blind to the damage.

  When he was sure the man underneath him was dead — actually sure, not just confident like his enemy had been — he took a few breaths and forced himself to slow down, to take his time, even though every part of him screamed to do the opposite.

  Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

  Underneath him, he probed for some tiny portion of the mercenary’s clothing that wasn’t soaked in mud. It took far too long, but finally he found a dry couple of square inches under his Kevlar vest. Slater lowered his face and wiped the material slowly, tentatively, across his eyes. One by one. It hurt like hell but pain was nothing anymore, both nothing and everything. His whole world was pain, so what was a little more?

  When he blinked hard, he could make out fuzzy shapes. He saw a handful of nutgrass right next to him and ripped the reeds free, rubbed them against his eyes. They burned and he probably took some skin off his eyelids, but when he blinked again everything was clearer.

  He’d ended up only a dozen or so feet from the shack’s open doorway. His chest was trapped in a vice, internally brutalised from the fight for air. But he could breathe now, and pain, no matter how egregious, was temporary.

  So he clawed his way to his feet, realising he’d taken down all seven men, outsmarted two separate teams of top-tier mercenaries.

  It had nearly destroyed him, though.

  If there were more…

  Then a tall man with a frame like an elite basketball player stormed into view, barreling through the marsh toward the safe house. He was six-four, at least, with bowling balls for shoulders and lean athletic limbs. Long and ripped and broad. Fearsome genetic power in the way he moved, like Slater but faster.

  Slater knew it was Dwayne Griggs from the fearful determination in his eyes. The gangster wasn’t used to this, didn’t do frontline work. That’s what he had men for. Slater had torn through those, so he’d probably dropped most of his hoarded cash on outside help, and now Slater had torn through them, too. The man was laser-focused, though. He mightn’t have used his physical abilities in live combat, but that didn’t mean he’d be hopeless when he was forced to.

  He surged forward like a bigger, stronger version of Slater, which wasn’t anything to scoff at.

  And Slater was discombobulated, blurry-eyed, weaponless.

  Dwayne opened fire.

  75

  Thankfully Slater wasn’t entirely useless.

  He’d seen Dwayne’s silhouette rear up well before the big gangster opened fire so he was already hurling himself through the shack’s doorway with no regard for his own safety when the first shots came. He rolled over the mercenary’s corpse sprawled across the threshold and dug a shoulder underneath the body as he came down on the other side of it.

  It saved his life.

  Given his inexperience Dwayne was scarily accurate, and two of his initial shots dug into the meaty corpse. If the guy wasn’t at least two hundred and fifty pounds the bullet that didn’t hit the Kevlar would have gone straight through into Slater, but his bulk swallowed the round.

  Slater then careened away from the doorway and snatched up the merc’s M4 carbine, which is what the guy who’d tried to drown him should have done all along. Slater didn’t blame the last mercenary. The guy had seen red and spotted an opportunity to put his bare hands on the hostile who’d mown through his friends, his brothers-in-arms. He’d paid for it with his life. A fair cost for a pricey mistake.

  Slater almost adopted a firing position before his overstimulated brain shrieked one word.
>
  Empty.

  Of course.

  Slater dragged the merc’s body out of the doorway, deeper into the charred shack, and fumbled for his belt. He found a mag and ejected the empty one from the M4 and—

  Dwayne stormed in, gun up, firing, sensing an opportunity.

  Slater was on his knees but he recognised a shit situation when he saw one so he exploded into motion, using all his strength to heave the corpse up by the lapels and hurl him into Dwayne. The body ate the initial shots and then Slater had thrown himself into the fray. He grabbed Dwayne’s gun hand and shook it with everything he had. He squeezed with such severity that he probably tore tendons in Dwayne’s wrist, and the pistol — a fearsome-looking Beretta — came free. The momentum carried it spinning across the room. It clattered to the blackened floorboards between the husk of the desk and the row of scorched filing cabinets.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, it became a fistfight.

  Slater’s confidence swelled at the shift. Bullets are so unpredictable, but fists and feet and elbows and knees are always the same. Sure, there’s the likelihood of a lucky hit in both fighting and shooting, but he’d been in too many fights to count and he was still here, still kicking.

  Dwayne took a step back and yanked his empty hand free, whipping it out of Slater’s grip.

  Slater surged forward, guard up, ready to take the big gangster’s head off with the first swing. He was pissed, angrier than he could remember being in a long time. Dwayne was looking for murderous revenge against a preteen boy. It was incomprehensible. Pure evil.

  Slater swung a right hook with sinister intentions.

  Dwayne expertly slipped it with a shoulder roll, using technique that could only come from years of consistent training, and Slater thought, Oh, shit, the guy’s a boxer?

  He pulled the punch back but it was too late, he was already in range, and he watched Dwayne pivot his hips and rip a hook to the body.

  Slater could take a punch.

  He tensed his core for impact.

  When it hit, Slater knew something was grievously wrong. There was an audible crack in his ribcage and he felt the bones break, felt the instant fiery jolt of pain tear through the adrenaline and nearly crumple him. It took everything just to stay on his feet, and he backed up wondering if Dwayne Griggs was even human.

  It was the hardest he’d ever been hit in his life.

  He felt his body shutting down, his insides shrivelling, the natural response to overwhelming pain. It was like a liver shot. His whole core was numb, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to throw a punch without collapsing from the agony. He retreated into the shack, keeping a poker face. This was where boxers took a knee, yielded to the pain, and accepted the ten count. But if Slater took a knee Dwayne would beat him to death. The big man stomped after him like a lion hunting its prey. The shack was too small. There was nowhere to go.

  Slater’s back hit the edge of the wall, next to the desk.

  Literally cornered.

  Dwayne nodded, like, Oh yeah, you feel that? His eyes were wide as saucers and his teeth were bared. He sensed the kill, and he’d damn well get it. Some people were blessed with scary genetic power. They could hit like a truck with minimal training. Mike Tyson-esque. Dwayne hit that hard, if not harder, and on top of that he seemed competently trained.

  Slater turtled up, shielding his head with raised forearms.

  Dwayne feinted a step-in like he was going to throw a strike.

  Once, twice, three times.

  Slater threw a stabbing front kick and it hit Dwayne in the mid-section. Dwayne smiled at that, bared his teeth wider, slapped his stomach with an open palm. Like, Go on, do that again.

  Slater didn’t.

  This time Dwayne didn’t fake. When he stepped in he threw, a giant overhanded bomb of a right hand. Slater had nowhere to retreat to but he jerked his head fast to the side, employing his own genetic gifts — reflexes — and narrowly avoiding the punch that might have taken his head off. Instead it slammed down on his collar bone and instantly his right arm went dead. The pain was horrific, nearly buckling him at the knees.

  Who is this guy? he thought.

  Dwayne threw like his limbs were corded steel, like physics didn’t exist.

  Sooner or later, Slater realised, he would have run into someone like this.

  Someone better gifted genetically.

  Dwayne pivoted the right hook into a half-speed, pinpoint-accurate shovel uppercut that cracked Slater in the jaw, slipping right through his guard.

  He thought he stayed on his feet but when he blinked he was on the ground, his legs having given out from underneath him. He wanted to chalk it up to the fact that his brain wasn’t working properly, having nearly drowned maybe a minute earlier, but in reality he knew Dwayne was just something different.

  The huge gangster loomed over him, still feinting even though Slater was curled up in the corner like a wounded dog.

  Taunting him.

  Dwayne’s eyes stretched wide, his pupils huge, his grin leering. He said, ‘Why’d I hire these people? Coulda done it myself.’

  Slater spat blood. He couldn’t feel half his body. He hoped he wasn’t paralysed, then realised that didn’t matter because he’d soon be beaten to death.

  Not the most ceremonious way to go out.

  Such is life.

  Dwayne kept feinting, hoping Slater would flinch, but getting no reaction. Frustrated by the ease with which he’d dispatched his mortal enemy, he took a knee and pressed his huge fingers into Slater’s throat.

  ‘Where’s the kid?’ he growled.

  76

  Slater talked loud, like he was neurologically compromised. ‘Tyrell plays soccer, right?’

  Even in his manic, blood-frenzied state, Dwayne had to pause. It was so odd, so out of left field, that it left him no choice. ‘What?’

  ‘Tyrell!’ Slater shouted. ‘Your nephew. He plays soccer. He told me that last night at dinner.’

  Dwayne put more pressure on Slater’s throat, squeezing blood from between his lips, preventing him from babbling any more incoherence. ‘Tell me where he is.’

  ‘Can’t … breathe,’ Slater choked.

  Dwayne thought about it, then shrugged. ‘You know what? Fuck it. I’ll find him. Not giving you the chance to weasel your way out of this. You seem real good at that.’

  Slater’s blood ran cold. He was beaten worse than he thought, maybe permanently scarred by the punches that Dwayne had landed, and his oxygen-deprived brain could barely function. He forgot why he was talking about soccer in the first place.

  Oh. It clicked. He remembered.

  But he couldn’t finish it. He couldn’t say a word with Dwayne’s fingers destroying his throat, crushing his windpipe. With the charred wood behind his head and Dwayne’s sweaty muddy palm against his neck he could do nothing but gag as he succumbed to unconsciousness.

  Then he found something deep within, and he stared Dwayne in the eyes and managed, ‘I’ll … tell you … where …’

  Dwayne still didn’t seem to care but he eased off the pressure by the tiniest margin.

  Through bloodshot eyes Slater tried to get his bearings, but his vision was going, so he sucked in a restricted breath and shouted, ‘He should treat this like soccer. Right in your calf muscle. That’s what he should do.’

  Dwayne visibly rolled his eyes. ‘Enough crackpot shit.’

  He pushed harder on Slater’s throat.

  So hard Slater’s vision shrank to a tunnel, and he felt himself slipping, and he knew there was nothing he could do now except hope…

  Like a mirage, the big door on one of the scorched filing cabinets slid silently open. It was behind Dwayne, so he didn’t notice, but Slater could see.

  Tyrell stepped out of the gutted cabinet. Slater had removed the drawers for him, shoved him into the dark until the chaos was over.

  Except the chaos wasn’t over.

  Tyrell looked his age now, a scared kid with hunched
shoulders trying to find his place in a mad brutal world. Through his ever-darkening field of view Slater watched the boy’s eyes go from his to Dwayne’s stooped form.

  Back and forth, back and forth.

  Who was family?

  Who wasn’t?

  Dwayne was crouched over Slater’s cowering form, staring him in the eyes as he choked the life out of him, so he didn’t notice Tyrell come up right behind him.

  The kid took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, then made two bounding steps and punted for his life, like someone had told him he’d die if he didn’t kick hard enough.

  Which was probably true.

  The sound of his shoe hitting Dwayne’s exposed calf muscle was horrendous, akin to a baseball bat against flesh. It made the calf visibly seize, a deep knot of muscle cramp, and Dwayne’s face involuntarily showed the pain. He was mainlining adrenaline though, so he spun with a furious glare and threw a backhand that connected across Tyrell’s face.

  The boy spun like a top.

  The impact was sickening, Dwayne’s raw power transferring into damage.

  Tyrell careened backward and slammed down on his rear, hands flying to his face, blood already gushing from his nose.

  Dwayne lurched back to finish Slater off.

  But Slater was on his feet.

  77

  The sight of Tyrell crumpling, maybe severely injured by the strike, put an indescribable fire in Slater.

  He became something not quite human. Overrode his survival instinct. His brain told him if he got up and kept fighting he was dead, and his body wouldn’t even let him get up, but he got up anyway. Sometimes you can find a level you didn’t know existed. It’s hard to achieve for selfish reasons, for your own survival, because it’s nearly physically impossible. It’s raw heart, sheer will.

  But in that moment, Slater wanted nothing more than to protect this kid who’d stumbled into his life.

  He cracked Dwayne in the chin as the big man turned back to him, fist and jaw moving in opposite directions. Dwayne’s head snapped back and his neck cracked and blood sprayed from his mouth, and as he swayed in the other direction he twisted his calf at a bad angle and it cramped again, making him fall on his rear.