by Ethan Cross
Hell had come to Foxbury.
That made him smile.
Not because it sounded like the tagline for a movie. Or because he had any desire to see Hell.
It made him smile because this Hell had come to Foxbury shortly after he had arrived. And that reminded him of John the Revelator and his story of the rider on the pale horse. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
Ackerman liked thinking of himself as the pale rider of death. He had just started to imagine what that might have been like when he heard the rapid rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons fire.
It was too early for the sounds to be from the guns of law enforcement tactical units. Only the tower guards would have ready access to such armaments. It could have been some capable guard who had sprinted to their central armory and had then sprinted back with such a weapon. But it was the final and most likely scenario that disturbed Ackerman the most.
He thought of the bomb left for Ray Navarro. The mastermind would have done something similar here. Only this time it was likely assault rifles left for Leonard Lash and his men.
He should have thought of that.
Now, he would be facing a group of men more heavily armed than he had anticipated.
That didn’t disturb him because of the added danger. He couldn’t have cared less. He would adapt and overcome on the fly. It was what he was best at. What disturbed him was the fact that he had made such a tactical error.
He considered the implications and decided to stay the course.
A moment later, Leonard Lash and two of the members of his goon squad, a pair who were still able to walk, burst into his holding cell. They covered the corners and tried to act the part, but Ackerman could tell that these men had been given no formal instruction. Their movements were sloppy and undisciplined, and they had never lost the bad habits repeated confrontations literally beat out of you.
The ULF enforcers found no one around the viewing area of the Ad Seg hallway. Ackerman had gotten Maggie and the others out of his way, so that he could handle the situation with Lash.
He honestly didn’t know what his brother and his team did without him.
He sat in the corner of his padded cell just as he had been when Maggie had arrived a few moments earlier. The ULF enforcers swarmed in and covered him with their M4A1 assault rifles. Ackerman didn’t move. He didn’t make eye contact. He didn’t even look up. He didn’t acknowledge them in any way.
Lash stepped in after them with a black Glock pistol dangling from his left hand. Lash said, “Not such a big man now, huh? That’s the thing I love about guns. They level the playing field between more evolved and more feral beings.”
“Whoever said that being less feral equates to being more evolved?”
Lash said, “You don’t act like a cop. And you obviously have skills. So who do you work for?”
“I take orders from no man.”
“Everyone answers to someone.”
“I answer only to God. I fear no man. ‘You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day.’ Psalm 91 verse 5.”
Lash said, “I don’t have time for this. Tell me who you are and maybe I let you live.”
Ackerman laughed. “You know, Leonard, your biggest sin will also be your downfall.”
“Who do you work for?”
“It’s the same sin that led to the angel Lucifer’s downfall as well.”
“Are you with Demon’s group?”
Demon’s group?
Ackerman still wasn’t sure how his new friend, Demon, fit into all of this, but Lash had just confirmed his suspicions about Demon leading some type of group.
“Do you know how Lucifer sinned?”
“I don’t care.”
“He thought that he could be the biggest fish in the pond. But the truth is that there’s always a bigger fish, at least from our limited perspectives on dimensional space. And the sooner one accepts that, the quicker they can find where their piece fits into the grand puzzle of creation.”
Lash just smiled and said, “Kill him.”
*
Maggie looked through a crack in the frame as she nudged the door open with her foot. They had moved into a room that looked like the nurses’ old break room, which was just down the hall from the Ad Seg cells, located down the hall from the infirmary. It was a whole medical wing which had once housed the doctors and nurses of an insane asylum, and now the space had been revived and housed the prison’s medical unit. Different but still the same. Things had a way of coming back around.
Jerry Dunn hovered over her shoulder. He whispered, “You and your undercover agent seem to have a bit of a strange relationship.”
She said, “He’s a strange sort of guy. And he’s not an agent.”
“Then what is he?”
She thought about that, but anything she wanted to say wouldn’t have been appropriate.
“He’s a special consultant.”
“So he’s like an expert on prisons or something?”
“I’m watching for Lash. Do you know if these are the only Ad Seg rooms?”
From behind her, Powell said, “There are two identical Ad Seg units in this wing. Each with four cells. The one your consultant is in and another closer to the infirmary.”
“Good. Then they’ll check that one first and give us all an extra second to prepare.”
Jerry said, “You seem to really trust your consultant.”
She glanced back at the shy correctional officer and said, “Why would you think that?”
“You gave him your gun.”
“I didn’t exactly give it to him.”
“You could have tried harder to stop him from taking it or questioned that he had a plan or would handle the men who were coming to kill us. But you just went along.”
“He’s a good guy to have on your side in a fight. The problem is that he’s never actually on your side. He’s only ever on his own side. If your goals align with his, then you’re fine. But let’s just say that I don’t always align with his goals.”
Jerry said, “Oh, that’s good.”
“How is that good?”
“I thought that maybe the two of you had a thing.”
She scowled at the young man. “He’s not my type.”
“What is your type?”
“The kind of guy who doesn’t ramble in my ear during a crisis situation.”
Jerry backed up a step, and she felt guilty. It was a strange feeling. Like she had just kicked a puppy.
“I’m sorry, Jerry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. You’re a sweet kid, but I am seeing someone.”
“Someone on your team? Agent Williams?”
She said, “Do you work for National Enquirer all of a sudden?”
He hung his head. “I’m sorry.”
And there was that look again. One puppy through the uprights. She said, “No, Jerry, again, I’m sorry. And yes, I’m dating Special Agent Williams.”
“So the boy you mentioned earlier, Agent Williams’s son—”
“Dylan.”
“Yes. Dylan. He’s kind of like your stepson then?”
“I suppose he’s something like that, but nothing legal yet. I need to be listening for—”
“I’m sorry. I just really respect that. After my parents passed away, my uncle took me in and raised me like his own. He and his wife couldn’t have kids and. well, I guess it’s just special for someone to take on that kind of responsibility.”
Maggie did her best to focus and keep the tears at bay, but Jerry’s comment about his uncle not being able to have children had struck too close to home. Her eyes couldn’t contain them. The tears flowed freely. She wiped them away.
Jerry said, “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, your comment just made me think of something that I’ve been trying to forget. I just found out that I’m infertile. I can’t have kids. Just like your uncle and his wife.”
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“Oh no, I’m so sorry. But you know, I think sometimes God opens up holes like that in our lives to make sure that we have room for something or someone else. Like with my uncle taking me in. And, in your case, so you would have room in your life to let in new people.”
“Shut up. Someone’s coming.”
She looked down the hall and watched as Lash and two of his men entered the room where Ackerman was waiting. She reached down and retrieved her backup weapon from an ankle holster. She had inherited the compact Taurus .357 Magnum revolver from Marcus, as a gift.
She stepped into the hallway and said to Jerry, “Who said I gave up all my guns?”
*
Ackerman had initially intended to use Maggie’s gun only to threaten Lash and his men. He had promised his brother not to kill anyone, and bullets could be very unpredictable. Up close with a knife, he could have stabbed these men twenty times without doing any serious, permanent damage. But even a perfectly aimed bullet could ricochet off a bone and slice an artery, ending the target’s life.
He supposed it was a chance he would have to take. And how could his brother fault him for taking down three armed men? It would be a “clean shoot” as the cops would say.
Still, he had given his word, and so it would break the spirit of that oath if he didn’t at least try to wound them. Just a slight maiming. Maybe they would no longer have the use of a hand or would require kidney dialysis. But that definitely still counted as being alive.
As he crouched in the corner of the padded cell, he could feel the weight of Maggie’s Glock against his leg. He had tucked the gun between his calf muscle and his thigh, into the crook of his knee, so that he could access it with ease. Tucking the gun into something like a waistband could cost a few milliseconds if it snagged on clothing. And in situations like this, milliseconds mattered.
His adversaries thought that they possessed the advantage, but Ackerman had set up the cell to be in his favor. He had pulled the metal shade closed and had removed the lights in the hallway. Which meant that the cell’s only light source was a naked bulb in the corner of the room encased in clear plastic beneath a metal cage.
He knew that he had the element of surprise because they had no idea that he was armed.
And he knew that he could take all three of them before they realized what was happening. The no-killing part was what made matters more complicated. But he wasn’t concerned. He had always come out on top in such situations.
And Ackerman had a theory as to why.
Gunfights like this, point blank range, were about reaction times measured in the tenths of seconds. He had come to believe that his lack of fear gave him an advantage of at least a few milliseconds over nearly every other living creature on the planet. He gained valuable reaction time while the brains of other organisms struggled against the pointless forces of implication and consequence and fear.
But there was none of that for him. He just saw what needed to be done and did it. There were, of course, logical variables that his brain still calculated like the organic supercomputer that it was, but if reaction time meant the difference in such a duel, then Ackerman had an inherent advantage.
He waited until the last possible second before springing into action.
The two untrained ULF revolutionaries squeezed their assault rifles tighter to their shoulders, preparing to fire.
And he lunged forward and to the right and swung the gun up and across in a very controlled and calculated arc.
But he wasn’t shooting at Lash and his comrades.
He was aiming for the light in the corner of his cell.
He squeezed the trigger in a quick double pull, sending two projectiles through the metal grate and shattering the red emergency bulb.
Darkness fell over them.
He rolled away again and one of the ULF enforcers fired their assault rifle. But the man’s aim was wild. He was literally firing blind into the spot where Ackerman had once been.
The room wasn’t completely dark. There was some ambient light still coming from down the hall. And Lash held a small flashlight in his left hand. But it was dark enough that night vision became a matter of tactical significance.
And Ackerman was ready. Like the pirates of old, he pulled the makeshift eye patch from his right eye. He raised Maggie’s Glock. And then, squeezing his left eye shut, he aimed and used his perfect night vision to fire three bullets into three strategic, pre-calculated points on each man’s body.
When it was done, there was a lot of screaming and cursing. None of it coming from him, since he didn’t find either particularly helpful.
He stepped forward and finished disarming the trio of men while regarding his handiwork.
At some point in his life, he had flipped on the TV at some seedy motel and watched an action star shoot the guns out of the hands of two attackers. But Ackerman knew that was not the way to disarm an opponent. First, modern firearms could sustain multiple rounds from even high-powered rifles and remain functional—still firing, still able to take a life. Second, it created shrapnel that could kill the person you were trying to disarm.
The correct move, in his opinion, was to go for the dominant shoulder, which forced the attacker to lose their aim for sure, and then either drop their weapon or, in most cases, completely lose control of their arm and their senses.
As he looked at the three writhing men and covered them with the Glock, he thought of the past. He thought of the man he had once been. Once upon a time, these three would have been ready to play a game. He laughed to himself. He had truly been the angel of death in those days.
And his name that sat upon him was Death …
Maggie rushed into the cell waving around a snub-nosed revolver. She looked at the three writhing and cursing men and said, “I thought you had a plan?”
Ackerman said, “This was it.”
“So your plan was to face down three dangerous criminals armed with assault rifles. And to do it alone, outnumbered, and outgunned. And end up shooting the three of them. With my gun.”
“You say all that as if it was a bad plan.”
She shook her head. “You had three other people who could have helped you. And I had a second gun. We could have caught them by surprise, snuck up behind them, distracted them. But instead, you have to face them down alone.”
Ackerman considered this and said, “I see your point. I suppose I’m still adjusting to working in a team-based environment.”
She said, “It figures that you’d be a ball hog.”
Ackerman took a step forward and placed the barrel of the Glock against Lash’s forehead at a spot between the ULF leader’s eyes. Lash just glared back and clutched his wounded shoulder.
Ackerman said, “You know, we could end all this fuss right now. We could put two more into my friend Leonard and remove the financial backing of this little revolution. No one would doubt that it was self-defense. That would sure throw a wrench in their plans. All it would take is one squeeze of my finger. With all the people I’ve killed, what’s one more?”
Maggie said nothing.
He waited a couple of seconds and then looked over at her. Ackerman had merely been playing around with Lash, making him feel that his life was in danger. Ackerman expected Maggie to quickly tell him to stand down, but that order never came. He could see in her eyes that she was considering it. She was trying to think of a reason not to just put a bullet through Leonard Lash’s brain.
He waited, and finally she said to Lash, “Get on your feet.” Then to him, she added, “Now, what’s so important about the control room if the system is already down?”
He stared at her a moment and let the tension settle in the air. He wanted her to know that he knew what she had been thinking.
Ackerman said, “I’ll explain on the way. Let’s hope that no more tests arise between here and there. Because Mr. Lash and his men won’t be the only convicts headed for the control room, and time is not on our side.”
&n
bsp; *
Demon had studied the blueprints and knew the layout of Foxbury well. In order to reach the control room, he would have to pass directly through all of the residential wings. His own apartment was, of course, at the farthest end of the facility opposite his destination.
The corridors he discovered on the way there represented many different levels of chaos and, to his eyes, varying pictures of hell.
In one, there was screaming, and burning toilet paper and the aroma of blood and sweat.
Another corridor was empty. It looked serene and mundane, like everyone had just stepped out for lunch.
Down a third hallway, he found a single dead man resting in a spreading pool of blood. The dead man was lying roughly in the center of the corridor, roughly halfway between one end and the next. Someone had stabbed the man repeatedly in the abdomen. And Demon knew enough about forensics and wound patterns to see that most of the stabs had occurred post mortem, or after the man’s death.
This killing hadn’t been some kind of riot-related, wrong-place-wrong-time kind of thing. This killing had been fantasized about. This had been an old debt come due.
When Demon first spotted the body and the blood, he hadn’t been sure if it was real. But upon viewing the murder scene, he knew this was a true corpse. It wasn’t a trick of his mind or his condition. That had been a living person and was now a rotting pile of meat.
He knew for sure because demons didn’t kill this way. Only men killed liked this.
Demon removed his prison-issue shirt and threw it to the side. He kicked off his shoes and rolled up his pant legs a cuff, for better range of movement.
Judging by the color and abundance of the blood, the dead man’s killer must have nicked a primary artery. Demon stepped out into the pool of blood and lay down on his stomach. He rolled in the blood. He took handfuls of it and smeared it all over himself. He painted his entire torso with it. The blood was still warm, and it made him feel powerful, unstoppable, immortal.
He made sure that every inch of his flesh was coated in fresh blood. Then he stood, stretched out his fingers on both hands, and tensed all his muscles.
He heard a noise at his back and spun around to see two men standing at the end of the hallway. They stared at him with their eyes wide and their mouths agape.
