Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set

by Gordon Carroll

  He had thought there were only these two worlds and that he had no place else to turn. Until now, until this new world came into his purview. This world was different from the other two, but in some ways like them. It took the best of both and merged them together into a colorful slush of battle and peace. In this world his abilities were respected and the threat of combat was always possible; but there was also peace — true peace, and quiet times. Not to mention interesting people to interact with. And at the end of the day he could go home, shed his uniform and be a normal person without fear of a sniper’s bullet or an IED or a suicide bomber finding him in the next step. In this world he could have it all. Like a superhero with a secret identity.

  Dominic had no intention of failing. He would be a cop — no matter what.

  14

  Sarah Hampton

  * * *

  The Mission

  * * *

  Sarah stood next to the bed, looking down at the sleeping man. She always stood in his room, never sat, even though after a while her legs would grow tired and her feet would start to hurt. The sleeping man wasn’t exactly sleeping — he was in a coma — had been since that early morning when Sarah found him sitting up against the post, minus one hand, his manhood and most of his blood. The doctors didn’t know if he would ever wake up.

  A John Doe to the police and hospital, there having been no identification on him and AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) unable to match his fingerprints, but Sarah knew he had a real name. Just as she knew he was a real person and not just some comatose vegetable for the nurses and orderlies to change his feedbags and clean up his waste.

  Sarah had come to visit him every morning since her release from the loony bin. She owed him, and Sarah always paid her debts.

  The hospital, located on the outskirts of Denver proper, just past the City of Gunwood’s jurisdiction, bustled with the passing out of early meds and breakfast. Visitation started at nine, still a couple of hours away, it being only six-thirty. Sarah didn’t care. Some of the staff didn’t like her being here this early. Again, Sarah didn’t care. Her uniform and bearing shut down the majority of nurses and staff members who objected to her presence and for the few brave ones who tried to push the issue, they quickly found that Sarah could be very…intimidating, and backed off.

  A tube protruded from his mouth, hooked to an enclosed bellows that breathed for him. Machines quietly beeped and whirred and booped and clicked, keeping track of his heart, his lungs, his brain, his kidneys and bladder. Bags of clear and colored fluids dripped into his veins while the gentle rise and fall of the sheet covering his chest struck Sarah as oddly peaceful.

  His face muscles were relaxed, very different from the blood rimmed and spattered horror that had smiled at her on that chilly morning months ago. She thought he had been trying to tell her something. She didn’t know what though and that had haunted her on the lonely nights she spent in the rubber room, naked and bound.

  “Who did this to you?” She said the words out loud, speaking to him as if he were awake. She’d heard that comatose patients might sometimes be aware of the goings on around them and she had to reach him, to bring him back. There were no leads on the case and Sarah needed this crime to be solved. The man that did this to him had to pay, had to be brought to justice.

  Sarah remembered how it felt when she broke, how it wasn’t that she couldn’t hear or comprehend what people were saying to her, but rather that the voices and words were out of reach. Like being on the bottom of the ocean and looking up, seeing people on the other side of the water, their words muffled and hollow and of no importance as she floated far below.

  When they admitted her she was in a state of acute catatonia; absolutely no response to audible, visual or tactile stimuli. A doctor shoved a hand fast and close to her eyes — she didn’t blink. He slapped his hands together near her ear — she didn’t flinch. He drug a sharp point along the bottom of her foot — her toes didn’t curl. They checked her brain waves, her heartbeat, her blood pressure, her urine, her blood. They gave her vitamins, stimulants, depressants. They filled her bowels with radioactive liquid and turned her upside down on a board. They slid her into the cavern of an MRI and let it wonk and hum and thrum down her entire body as its magnetic power sliced her into images for computers to decipher. They put drops in her eyes, drops in her nose, drops in her ears. They swabbed her cheeks, her nostrils, her rectum. They listened, felt, probed and prodded, and through all of it she showed not the slightest outward reaction.

  But on the inside — on the inside it was a different story. She felt everything. She smelled, tasted, heard, saw everything. Feelings and emotions raged over her in conflicting waves of fear, humiliation, anger, terror, shame, confusion. She wanted to kill, to cry, to hide, to scream. But she could do nothing — nothing. She felt humiliatingly helpless. So strange, so weird, because even though she couldn’t move a finger or twitch a toe, even though she couldn’t open her lips or utter a sound, even though she stayed locked and buried in the tomb of her own body; somehow, somewhere, she knew that she could if she really wanted to. Or rather, she could if she found the place in her mind… or maybe her soul… if she could discover that certain place or feeling or thought, then everything would go back to how it was. And a part of her wanted just that, for everything to be normal. But another part didn’t want that at all. So she stayed silent and still and let them run their tests and stick her with their needles; sucking the dull red blood from her body and spitting their useless medicines into it.

  She wondered if it was like that for John Doe now, hovering just out of reach, but aware of everything going on around him.

  The doctors had been unable to reattach his hand, too much destruction to the surrounding tissue, and since the penis had been… lost, there wasn’t anything they could do there. The news on the damage to his throat wasn’t much better. The chainsaw destroyed his larynx and tore into the trachea. They’d been able to repair most of the damage to his trachea but were unable to salvage the larynx, which meant he would never speak again.

  Did he know? Was that why he refused to wake up? Was he too afraid to face life on these terms?

  Sarah could relate to that. When at her worst — when they were strapping her down on the table and fixing the electrodes to her temples, when the sizzling agony of electric shock was having its way with her, a rubber guard shoved between her teeth to keep her from biting off her tongue — she felt that way; afraid to come back to reality. A part of her thought she really could, all on her own, that the choice remained hers to make, but she wasn’t ready, it was too soon. And so she’d continued to fight, because fighting at least gave her some measure of control and Sarah had always been good at fighting.

  The orderlies were surprised at just how hard she could fight. She injured more than a few of them. And some got back at her. Big Mike had gotten back at her.

  She fought off the memory, shaking her head hard, the movement jostling her brain enough to help physically push away the thoughts. Another trick she’d learned at the crazy farm — that the physical and mental were not completely separate.

  She wondered if John Doe was just hiding in there; if he had the choice like she had thought she had the choice, to come back — to wake up — to take up her life right where she had left off anytime she wanted to. She still believed she had had that power, at least at first — later — when things got really bad — maybe not. Because even as deep as she had been into her psychoses, there remained that sliver of light, far off, but always there, as though all she had to do was reach out with her mind and take back her hold on sanity. To grasp it — hang on and pull it to her. Somewhere, way down in her consciousness, was the knowledge and the way to float back to the surface, to push through that crack of light as though being reborn and spring forth into the real world again. But there had been danger. The farther she let herself go into mental collapse, the dimmer that light became, until, by the end, it was almost to
o hard to see and nearly out of her thoughts completely. So that insanity became a friend, a shelter, comfort, protection. And on that last night — that last terrible night — when she finally realized she had to come back, she could hardly see or recognize the way back and she knew that if she couldn’t find her way back to that light, she would be trapped there forever.

  It was then, on that night, and there, in the lonely confines of the rubber-room, when all hope seemed gone and she lapsed helpless in the depths of her madness that John Doe came to her.

  Just as she had last seen him; his throat cut half way through, missing one hand and the bloody stump of his crotch. He smiled at her, like before, only this time when he spoke she could hear him, and his voice sounded like a commandment, an order from on high. It held the authority of God himself; strange because Sarah didn’t even believe in God. But she believed what John Doe said, that she was to find his attacker and kill him — him and the cat that had desecrated his body. He also told her what would happen if she failed and how the cats would try and protect the other cat — they were all in it together — which made perfect sense — somehow. He promised her she would be able to get back at Big Mike for what he had done to her, but that she had to get out of this place first. And then he left… vanished.

  After that, she felt all right; for real this time.

  She had a mission.

  And now she stood in his room as she had so often. Sarah reached out and touched his lips with her fingers.

  “I’ll find who did this to you. I swear it. I’ll find him and I’ll kill him.”

  15

  Dominic Elkins

  * * *

  The Worrier

  * * *

  “It’s not a badge,” said Officer Quinn Taylor who sat in the passenger seat staring out the window and shaking his head. Sharp blue eyes scanned their surroundings constantly. He was pale skinned, in his late-thirties, with balding blond hair and a slight blond mustache. “No, not a badge.” He held up a finger. “It’s a bulls-eye is what it is. And they have us wear it right over our hearts so it’s sure to be a kill shot when we get hit. Real smart.” He shook his head, looking out the window.

  Dominic sat next to him driving the patrol car. His first taste of dayshift and he was still a little tired from not getting off until three-thirty the night before, coupled with The Dream that had left him feeling even more tired than before he fell asleep. He had a two-inch scrape over his ear; a couple of bruises and his knuckles were sore from punching the pig-light guy.

  Sarah…Officer Hampton…had offered to call the sergeant and have him fill out workmen’s comp forms, but Dominic declined. He could tell from her attitude he’d made the right choice.

  Only two hours of sleep and bad dreams to boot. He would have to make coffee a priority. If only Taylor would quit griping.

  “Ya know, sometimes I wonder why I do it,” said Quinn. “Walk around all day with a big fat target on my chest just begging for some drugged out zomboid, or an irate housewife to start plugging away. And that’s not even counting the Ritalin addicted pre-teen terrorists that sit in front of their giant screen TVs playing first person shooter games until they don’t know the real world from their fantasy game land and come out gunning for any authority figure.” He shook his head again. “How crazy do you have to be to do a job like this? If the gang bangers don’t get you, you’re bound to get pulped in a head-on with a drunk, or stuck by a tweaker’s AIDS and Hep infected needle while patting him down, or burned up while trying to save some blue-haired ninety-year-old lush who drank herself unconscious while watching “The View” and chain smoking, and the lazy-butt firemen are still getting the sleep out of their eyes or pumping that last rep or tossing a pinch of cayenne pepper into their vat of chili before they roll their big shiny rig out to do their stinking job with the crowds cheering them like heroes.

  “And do the crowds cheer us? Noooo, we’re the pigs and the fuzz and the five-o, and the storm troopers, and the po-lease. We get spit on and cursed at and sued. But not the firemen, oh no, the firemen — they’re the good guys. All they do is save people and get lost kitties out of trees. They’re America’s heroes while us cops are all just a bunch of racists rednecks trying to meet our ticket quotas and plant drugs on innocent kids and sit on our fat butts eating doughnuts and drinking spiked coffee, just waiting to get what we deserve which is a brick in the head, or a Molotov cocktail, or a bullet through the badge. And did I mention that they put the badge right over our heart — did I tell you about that?”

  “Yes, sir, you told me about that, sir,” said Dominic, wishing someone would use him for target practice. At least that might shut him up. Dominic began to feel paranoid.

  “Crazy! I’ve got to be crazy! Sooner or later it’s bound to happen. A terrorist or a psycho or an illegal immigrant or a biker or some wigged-out mom with postpartum depression or a spoiled brat first born son with a grudge or a drunk in an eighteen wheeler or a lightning bolt or a blown tire while running code.” He took off his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He looked over at Dominic.

  “Why anyone would want to do this insane job, in this time and climate, is beyond me. If it was like it is today when I was first starting I would have chucked the whole thing and said ‘no way, man — no way’. I mean back in the day, we could at least bust punks when they deserved it. We could take a scumbag off the streets and know he’d be in the joint a while instead of being out before you could even finish your report. If someone hit a cop or even spit on one, he could expect a whack across the face or a screen test. We had respect back in the day. And nobody ratted either. There was a code and you could count on your brothers to stick to it. But not today. There’s no respect and no code. The trash of the streets treat us like trash and if you pop one, they get the ACLU to sue you and some meth-head weenie-wagger gets to sit on your favorite chair and watch your TV in your house and drink your beer. Man — man why would you want to be a cop in today’s world — I mean really — why?”

  Dominic shrugged. “Where else can you get paid to race cars, run red lights, and point guns at people?”

  Quinn put the sunglasses back in place. “Yeah, I guess there’s still that. Until you go through an intersection, lights and siren blasting and some old fart runs the red and crashes into you and your lowest bid piece of crap police cruiser bursts into a fireball frying you slowly to death. And then some jerk-wad lawyer sues your family and takes everything leaving your wife and kids destitute.”

  “Luckily I don’t have a wife, kids, house or even beer,” said Dominic.

  That made Quinn grin. “First right thing you said all day, Rookie.”

  Dominic suppressed a yawn, still feeling tired, which made him think of the dream again. He remembered the talking dragonfly and his dead friends, but other than that, most of it was a strange mixture of murky images and words that didn’t make much sense. He tried to push it out of his mind. Dominic didn’t like thinking about that mission.

  “See that?” said Quinn, pointing up and over Dominic’s side of the windshield.

  “What?”

  “There, right there. See it?”

  Dominic tried to focus in on where Taylor pointed while keeping the patrol car from crashing into anything. He saw it then, up about the fifteenth floor of a tall office building; a flash of reflected light.

  “You mean the flash?”

  “Of course I mean the flash. What do you think it is?”

  Dominic shrugged. “I don’t know; a piece of metal or maybe something from inside the building?”

  Officer Taylor squeezed himself sideways in the car, flattening out as much as he could against the door. “I thought you were supposed to be some hot-shot soldier Marine with all kinds of medals and stuff. But you don’t know the significance of a flash like that?” Taylor’s voice had gone up an octave.

  Dominic looked again, thinking he must have missed something. Seeing the way his FTO was making himself as small a ta
rget as possible, the obvious strain — maybe even fear — in his voice and the flash of sunlight striking glass all came together and Dominic found himself suddenly back in the war catching a glimpse of a sniper’s scope as it flashed in the sun. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he swerved the car, ducking as he did and then swerved back the other way. Cars around him panicked and started veering too. He ripped the wheel a last time, popped the emergency brake and held on as the car skidded into a one-eighty coming up against the curb with a jerk. They were hidden from the danger of a possible sniper by the corner of the building.

  Taylor, already out of the car, peeped around the corner. Dominic came up behind him, gun in hand riding the seam of his pants.

  “Hm,” Taylor grunted. He looked at Dominic. “Window cleaners. Couldn’t see them from that angle. Nice evasive driving though.” He pumped his thumb in the direction of the patrol car. “Back to the cruiser, let’s go.”

  Dominic’s heart raced; sweat dotted his forehead. He felt the gun in his hand, but couldn’t remember having drawn it. He looked around the corner and saw the window cleaners high up on the building. His lips tasted salty and dry. He looked at his FTO as the man climbed back in the car. Had he really just about gotten them both killed in a car crash or a heart attack for a couple of window washers? Dominic let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and walked back to the car.