by Matt Rogers
He scrambled up as fast as he could but Slater leapt forward and stabbed a front kick right into his face as he rose to his knees. The sole of Slater’s boot crushed Dwayne’s nose, and the big man fell back again.
He skittered to the centre of the shack and managed to finally stand, bleeding from his mouth and both nostrils.
Tyrell was only a couple of feet behind Dwayne, motionless on the scorched floorboards.
One step backward and Dwayne would be able to turn and stomp, probably kill the boy with the sole of his boot.
He was petty enough to try it, too.
So Slater didn’t take a breath, didn’t so much as hesitate. He charged and feinted like he was going to throw a punch and Dwayne braced to slip it, but Slater ducked low and rammed his shoulder into Dwayne’s gut. He used the leverage to pick the big man up and continue his charge, running him straight out the door.
Two bounding steps on the porch and then Slater leapt forward, hurled himself and Dwayne into the mud.
They landed with ferocity, four hundred and fifty combined pounds slamming to the ground.
At least Tyrell was out of harm’s way.
No, Slater thought. Only if you finish the job.
Lying on his back, Dwayne swung a fist, and it barely missed the side of Slater’s head. With the gangster’s raw power, if it had connected it would’ve been lights out, and the death of both of him and Tyrell.
Instead Dwayne’s fist blasted through empty space literally a couple of inches in front of Slater’s face. At the tail end of the swing, knuckles caught the bridge of Slater’s nose. Slater heard the snap and felt the deep drilling pain and his brain screamed, That’s enough!
His body started falling, cowering, collapsing inward as the agony overwhelmed him.
Then his mind took control and he stopped himself.
He was still conscious.
Still breathing.
Which meant he could fight and claw with everything he had left.
That was the art of living.
Slater pretended he was fine and leapt on Dwayne and drilled a huge punch into the side of the big man’s ribcage, just smashed his fist into the ribs. He did damage but he didn’t hit the liver like he wanted to, so he loaded up again and put twenty years of technique and consistency into it and ripped a second punch and this time he felt it crush the liver, which shuts the body down no matter how strong you are, no matter what your willpower’s like.
Dwayne winced and cowered into a ball.
That was it.
It was over.
Slater was in more pain than he thought one man was able to experience, but he stood up and walked over to one of the bodies near the safe house and ripped a loaded M4 carbine off the dead mercenary.
He limped back over to Dwayne, who hadn’t moved, and trained the gun on him, made sure it was ready to fire.
He slipped a finger inside the trigger guard.
He thought he might hear Dwayne plead for his life, but the big man was in worse shape than he thought. Dwayne’s nose was crushed from the front kick, blood streaming from his mouth. His jaw didn’t seem broken but several teeth were loose and his liver was cramping so bad his eyes were squeezed shut in an awful grimace.
When he opened them he saw the gun aimed at him, but he didn’t seem capable of responding.
He brought his knees up to his chest.
A six-four wrecking ball of a man, reduced to the foetal position by the right strike.
Understanding the human anatomy is paramount.
Slater’s head throbbed and his body ached and his soul pleaded for rest, but he still swept the outskirts of the marsh with the carbine, checking for more mercenaries.
There was nothing.
He’d killed seven men here and three while rescuing Alonzo. Dwayne must have only ordered ten. They probably didn’t run cheap.
Slater never left a foe alive any longer than he had to, but this time he couldn’t fire the kill shot. It went against every fibre of his being, but King needed him.
He caught a footstep at the edge of his hearing and whirled toward the shack, gun raised.
He found Tyrell upright, standing on the porch, surveying the scene. Blood trickled from his ear. He had a bony hand pressed to the side of his head.
He was scared.
Slater said, ‘It’s over.’
Tyrell blinked like he couldn’t believe it, then winced as pain rippled through him. Like he hadn’t been through enough already, like Dwayne had determined the kid needed physical punishment to go along with all the other shit…
Tyrell said, ‘I screwed up, right? He decked me. One shot.’
Slater shook his head. ‘No, kid. You saved my life.’
Tyrell thought about that. ‘Both our lives. Without you, I’m dead.’
‘But you’ve got me,’ Slater said. ‘Always.’
A beat of silence. Blood and death hung fresh in the air, as thick as the salt.
Tyrell said, ‘You ain’t shot him yet.’
Slater said, ‘No, I haven’t.’
‘If you worried about me, don’t be. I wanna see it.’
Slater shook his head. ‘You don’t want to see it. And I need him for something first.’
‘What?’
Slater shook himself awake, realising King was probably on a time crunch, needed him more than anything. He knelt by Dwayne’s curled-up body.
Dwayne burst up, one final chance at revenge, reaching for Slater’s throat.
It might have been terrifying had Slater not expected it.
He darted back out of range, reversed his grip on the carbine rifle, and used both hands to thunder the stock down in a clubbing motion against Dwayne’s damaged liver. Which tipped the big man over the edge. He pressed his face back to the mud, wincing so hard Slater thought he might crack a tooth as he clenched his jaw.
Tyrell studied Dwayne from the porch with curiosity. To Slater the boy said, ‘That’s the part in the movies where the bad guy comes back. It makes everything scarier, y’know.’
Slater stomped on Dwayne’s knee, rupturing the tendons, and the gangster screamed.
Slater said, ‘This isn’t the movies.’
78
Slater grabbed a handful of Dwayne’s dreadlocks and lifted the man’s face up.
Dwayne leered up at him. Nose cracked and bloodied, jaw puffing up, eyes bloodshot from the pain of his spasming liver.
Slater said, ‘You know, I respect you.’
That cut through it all. Dwayne coldly absorbed it. But he didn’t laugh at the compliment. He almost believed it.
Slater said, ‘You’re genetically gifted. That was probably the hardest I’ve ever been punched, and if you knew what my life’s been like you’d know what sort of compliment that is. You didn’t just take a job that paid the bills and wondered about what could have been had you applied yourself. You scared people into working for you with your physical prowess, I’d imagine. You went out there and took no shit and paved your own way. I think maybe, in another life, I would have been you. Maybe that’s why I respect it, deep down.’
‘Yeah?’ Dwayne growled, in horrendous pain but unwilling to show it. ‘So what happened instead? Why’d you become you instead of me?’
‘I was born with a conscience.’
Dwayne spat blood on the ground, but didn’t go so far as to throw an insult back. A hint of self-preservation, maybe.
Slater said, ‘I’m going to let you walk away.’
Dwayne said, ‘No you’re not.’
‘It comes with a price.’
‘I’m not doing shit for you.’
‘You hate me, right?’
Dwayne hacked up more blood and spat it in the mud like it was his answer.
Slater said, ‘You should use your head for once in your life. Ignore those tricky emotions. They lie to you. They whisper sweet nothings in your ear. Use your brain. Your logic. I’m giving you the option to keep living your life.’
; Dwayne blinked.
Beneath the psychotic exterior, he was razor-sharp. He asked, ‘What do you want?’
‘Myles Vaughan.’
‘I dunno where that guy is. He’s all over the place, you know, mentally.’
‘I don’t need him. I just need you to call him.’
‘And say what?’
Slater told him.
Dwayne said, ‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it. But if it’s not believable, I’ll shoot you in the head.’
‘I bet you will.’
‘Get your phone out. Tilt the screen toward me, so I know what you’re doing.’
Dwayne got his phone out. The screen was cracked but it still worked. He pulled up his list of contacts, scrolled down to “M.” There he found “MYLES BM.”
‘“BM”?’ Slater asked.
‘Blackmail,’ Dwayne muttered, dribbling blood. ‘I label all the people I use that way.’
Slater pretended he hadn’t seen what was in the files he’d burned. ‘I thought you two were co-conspirators.’
Dwayne rolled his eyes. ‘That boy’s got shit for brains. He took one bribe from me. One. He didn’t realise I don’t need to bribe him after that. Just caught him in a trap. Told him I’d anonymously leak it. The fact he took a bribe from me. After that he did anything I asked. Which adds to the blackmail. It’s a beautiful system. Shame he wasn’t smart enough to see it for what it was the first time.’
Slater grimaced. ‘That’s all it takes?’
‘All it takes,’ Dwayne said. ‘I think the guy meant well. Once upon a time. Now he’s all the way gone. Lost to the rush of it all, y’know? We all get that way, eventually. In too deep.’
Slater couldn’t help thinking about Myles. Maybe this scumbag, this guy King wanted to murder, tear apart, eviscerate … maybe he was only a guy who made a bad decision, all those years ago. Said yes to something he shouldn’t have. Then got sucked into Dwayne’s web, made to do his dirty work, and steadily got corrupted to the core.
Maybe, Slater figured, the difference between good and evil had more to do with circumstances than he used to think.
But he couldn’t delay any longer, so he put that aside and said, ‘Do what I told you.’
Dwayne called, and did what Slater instructed.
He performed well.
He sold it like he was trying to get nominated in awards season.
When he hung up, he gazed up at Slater. ‘You were never gonna let me walk away, were you?’
Slater shook his head.
Dwayne nodded. ‘I respect you, too. That’s why I did it, even though I knew. ’Cause you’re like me if I made all the right choices. Like the person I should have been. So fuck it. Maybe I made one thing a little better.’
Slater shrugged. ‘That’s about all you can hope for at this point.’
‘Yeah.’
Slater shot him between the eyes.
79
King hunched below the windowsill under the grey sky.
He was a charged-up ball of nervous energy.
A phone rang inside.
Myles said, ‘Roy, answer and put it on speaker. Margaret, don’t move.’
A gruff old voice that could only be Mr. Templeton said, ‘Go to hell.’
‘You don’t have a choice here, Roy.’
Roy must have known that, because the next thing King heard was Dwayne’s voice barking from the phone. ‘What am I hearing about some clusterfuck you’ve got yourself wrapped up in?’
A beat of hesitation spoke volumes. King wished he could inch up and watch Myles’ reaction, but he didn’t dare. The guy would be reeling, flustered that his mess of a personal life had hit the rumour mill. ‘What have you heard? It’s probably lies.’
Dwayne again. ‘I heard enough to step in.’
Another tenser, darker pause from Myles. ‘What…?’
King braced himself to explode into action.
Dwayne’s low, crackly voice, barking from the speaker. ‘I took care of that bitch for you. She’s not going to bother you anymore. Now you can focus on your work.’
Between Mr. and Mrs. Templeton’s anguished cries, King searched for the sound he wanted to hear more than anything else.
He heard it.
Myles gasping like he was about to burst into tears.
King gave it three seconds. He felt awful for prolonging Rebecca’s parents’ suffering, but they were vital moments of time. He needed the reality of what had happened to set in, for Myles to realise he was never going to salvage his life, never going to put the broken pieces back together. Dwayne had driven a stake through his very existence and now it was all for nothing—
King imagined Myles’ eyes welling with tears.
Now.
He launched himself over the sill like his legs were made of springs. All two hundred and twenty pounds of him barrelled through the open window frame and spilled inside. He’d gone over the actions step-by-step in his head so he was able to land on his feet instead of careening off-balance. Momentum carried him forward, like shooting out of a cannon.
Myles’ aim had shifted a couple of inches, away from Margaret’s head.
Understandable, given the news.
That had been the point. Nothing would throw Myles off, nothing at all … unless he thought his world was crashing down. Unless his hostage situation was rendered moot, nullified by the death of the only person he was trying to win back.
In the space of a few seconds he’d had an existential crisis, forgotten about his hostages, and now that big guy from the hospital was charging across the room at him, closing the gap fast.
King didn’t dare shoot. Myles was framed by the elderly couple, and the slightest waver in accuracy would result in the death of an innocent retiree. King would much rather put his own life in harm’s way.
Which is exactly what he did.
Myles realised what was happening and panicked and swung the gun away from Margaret, trying to focus it on King. He had recognised the hostages meant nothing anymore. But he’d hesitated, processed the shock before he acted, so when he got his aim on King the big man was only six feet away.
King ducked under the barrel and crash-tackled Myles in the mid-section with the equivalent force of a vehicular impact.
He was angry.
He hadn’t been this angry in a long time.
Myles didn’t spill back off the chair so much as he rocketed to the floor, carried by King’s deadweight. He smashed the back of his head on the floorboards and then all two hundred and twenty pounds of King drove down into his chest, probably cracking his sternum. He was semi-conscious and couldn’t breathe and his broken arm had bounced off the ground. All these things added and combined into a whirlwind of agony and horror and made the gun an afterthought. It spun away from him, released as his body went into pure survival mode.
King didn’t need to make it ceremonious.
He just grabbed Myles’ head like a bowling ball and picked it up and smashed it into the floor three times in a row.
The third one killed him.
King rolled off the body and stood up to meet the pale frozen stares of Mr. and Mrs. Templeton. He tried to keep his voice level, but it was hard with a massive dose of adrenaline dumping into his bloodstream. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that.’
Neither of them blinked.
Roy looked like a tough old dog. He was maybe eighty, probably a decade older than his wife, and his skin was tanned and wrinkled like dried fruit. He had the no-nonsense look in his hard grey eyes of a man who’d seen far worse. King wondered if he’d been in Vietnam, based on a rough estimate of the timeline.
The old man asked, ‘Are you a cop?’
King shook his head. ‘Close enough, though. Listen. Your daughter is safe.’
Now it was Roy’s turn to shake his head, his eyes glassy and welling with tears. Margaret hunched over and opened her mouth in a cry so loud it was silent, as if the sound she wanted to make didn’t exist.
Roy said, ‘You … have bad information. You mustn’t have heard what we just heard.’
‘That was me,’ King said. ‘I set that call up. It was a fake. Rebecca’s alive and well.’
Margaret’s contorted face returned to something close to normalcy, and she looked up at King, shocked.
Roy blinked a couple of times. ‘Why w-would you do that?’
‘Made him drop his guard.’
Roy gazed past King to Myles’ body, stared at the ex-cop’s deformed head. ‘He sure did.’
Definitely Vietnam, King thought.
80
Slater couldn’t understand why, but looking down at Dwayne’s huge corpse, he almost broke down.
Tyrell must have noticed him squeeze his eyes shut, grind his teeth together, flare his nostrils. He must have understood Slater was fighting for composure.
Tyrell asked, ‘What’s wrong? You feel bad you did that?’
Slater pulled it together, replaced his facial features with the usual stoicism. ‘No, kid. I feel bad for what I did to you.’
‘Huh?’
‘I saw you on a street corner,’ Slater said. He felt the salty breeze beating against the drying blood on his face. ‘I just wanted to help. Now your whole family is dead. Your uncles. Your dad.’
When Slater finally looked over, he saw Tyrell shaking his head.
‘Nah,’ Tyrell said. ‘I was gonna have to protect myself, whether you showed up or not. So maybe Uncle J and this dude here would still be alive, but who cares? Maybe they’d’a killed me anyway, after they found out what I did. Actually, nah, not “maybe.” They for sure would have. So you saved my life, man. You killed my no-good uncles.’
Slater looked into the boy’s eyes. ‘Are you okay?’
Tyrell seemed like he didn’t understand the question.
Slater repeated it.
Then he realised Tyrell was just working out what he wanted to say. He wanted to say it right.
