CHAPTER 4 — THE BUTCHER OF MARCZENKO
The power came back ten minutes later. He’d been following a series of signs toward the med-ed offices, moving slow and quiet, not knowing who or what lie ahead. Outside the OB/GYN office, he squinted at a mini-map on the wall when a fluorescent light above him began to spasm. A second later, a whole row of them flickered to life.
Gunn made a cursory glance around his surroundings. The textures and colors of the wall — older than the rest of the hospital, were in the same design as the IM office. He was in the right place.
He moved towards where the hall bent again, slower now that the lights were on. As he stepped past a single service elevator, he stopped. A figure loomed between a drinking fountain and the woman’s bathroom. He stepped closer, head swiveling. Paused again.
Collapsed against the wall was a mustachioed man in a blue security uniform. His head was twisted sideways, blood pouring out of his mouth and a gaping wound in his forehead.
Gunn did a three-sixty, heart pounding. His ears fine-tuned to the ambient noise around him, or at least the absence of it. Turning back to the body, he noticed the empty holster compressed between the man's hip and the wall. He almost reached down to check for an ID card or something else, when he froze. A tingling sensation up the back of his spine and neck told him someone was standing behind him. He turned around, slowly.
A white man in a red-and-black checkered flannel shirt and jeans pointed the Glock at Gunn. He was Gunn’s age, give or take five years. The stench of cigarette smoke wafted off him like an aura.
“You did this?” Gunn said.
The pistol trembled in his hand. "So what if I did?" the man said, his voice high and whiny. Even under the bright light, his pupils were enormous. Cracked out, most likely.
Adrenaline poured into Gunn’s veins. Raising both hands, he said, “Take it easy, guy…”
“Turn around.”
Gunn did as we he told. The metal barrel pressed into the smooth skin on the back of his neck.
“Where are they?” the man said, sniffing. The gun was shaking in his hand.
“Calm down,” Gunn said, slowing his own breathing. “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll try to make it happen.”
“The ****in’ drugs, man. Where are they?”
“I… I don’t know.”
A low snicker from behind as the gun was against pressed deeper into his skin. "Guard said the Oxys are in your office.”
His heart raced at full-speed now. Thirty-three years old, wife and kid. Survived three years in the killing fields of Syria. All that, just to be killed by this degenerate junkie.
“The drugs,” Gunn said.
“Yeah,” the man said. “Where the **** are they?”
Gunn let a pause stretch out between for them a second while his mind reached for an answer.
"Alright," Gunn said, trying his best to sound resigned. "I'll... I'll open the narcotics cabinet for you.”
"Just give me the ****ing key.”
“It don’t work like that. It’s biometric.”
A pause.
“You better not be ****ing with me,” the man said.
“I’m not,” Gunn lied. “I’ll take you there and you can have everything you want. It’s stocked full of Norcos right now — they made a shipment yesterday.”
Another pause. The junkie licked his lips, his eyes darting around in his skull like marbles. “Where?”
"Across the hall.”
The man sniffled, as if the answer were encoded inside into some fragrance in the room. Finally, he said, "Lead on then. But no tricks or I’ll shoot."
Gunn stepped out into the hall, gun still flush to his neck. His eyes darted around, ideas popping into his head. They came to the familiar bay window overlooking the front entrance — the same place Gunn spoke to the security guard on his way to the stairwell. Out on the front lawn of the hospital, the earlier crowd was no longer. Replacing them was a field of refuse and errantly-parked vehicles, making the place look like it'd suffered a rock concert.
Gunn came to a stop on the cusp of a window near the a closed office door. “I need to get the key from my pocket.”
“This your office?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll do it for you,” the junkie said. “Where is it?”
“Front pocket,” Gunn said, steeling himself for the next moment.
The man sniffled again as the cold metal shook against the back of Gunn's head. He felt the junkie leaning forward to reach around him. “Don’t keep me wait—”
Gunn swiveled and ducked, using the junkie’s momentum to push him sideways. The sound like a cannon shot went off over his head, shattering the window. Gunn shielded his head for a split second as shards of glass rained down on them, sending his assailant backwards.
“Argh,” the man grunted, moving backwards, hand covering his face.
Gunn reached a leg out and tripped him. Getting to his feet, Gunn sent an off-balance kick right into the junkie’s cage, busting him over forward. The man collapsed into the glass-streaked floor, a stray fragment piercing through the globe of his left eye.
“Ahh!” he shrieked, crimson blood pouring from his eye.
Gunn stepped back to search the floor for the Glock, his eyes never leaving the injured junkie. The man reached into a pocket and brandished a flip-knife, his arm dripping with blood and broken glass. Gunn abandoned the search as the junkie tried clambering off his knees. He sent a second kidney-crushing kick into the junkie’s lower back. The man grunted and stumbled forward, tripping on shards of glass. A sickening crack as the man’s ankle twisted the wrong way, splaying him sideways. The junkie’s eyes widened in terror, his arms flailed as he fought the momentum carrying him through the window.
The man screamed as he fell. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
CRASH.
A sound like a sledgehammer on sheet metal cut-off the scream. Gunn peered over the empty sill, eyes wide in shock. The junkie’s body lay atop the bowed-in frame of a security van, the alarm bleating into the night like the herald of a great invasion.
Gunn stepped back, shaking. His fingers clasped at his neck, loosening the tie, ripping it from his collar. He tossed it aside, then shedded his suit jacket. He planted a hand on the wall, bent forward gasping.
It’d been a long time since he'd killed someone.
For a minute, he stayed there. He breathed in deep, in-and-out, slowing his heart. When he regained his bearings, he bent over and picked-up the Glock. With a metallic shrill, the slide was drawn back, revealing an empty chamber.
****.
His legs carried him down the long hallway, toward the med-ed offices where he’d began the morning. He was only a few steps down the hall when he came to an open janitor’s closet. He froze.
A trail of blood pocked the carpet and walls near the door. He almost ignored it and pressed onward. But his eye wandered in anyway. In front of an industrial-sized vacuum cleaner on either side of two metal shelves stood a large garbage can. A pair of pale legs poked out of the garbage, a green Croc shoe hanging off one of them. A torn dress skirt hung from one ankle.
His breathing became rapid, his guts twisted as he peered inside.
The body was the Chief Resident Andrea — the one who’d yelled at him for staring at his phone. She’d been raped and murdered, that much was obvious. The rim of her glasses hung forward off her nose, one lens cracked. Behind them, her eyes were wide-opened, bloodless, and empty. Dried blood caked her hair and neck where she’d been shot point-blank, before being stuffed in the garbage like a discarded mannequin.
An old tic came back then, one he hadn’t experienced in a long time. A fluttering in his eyes turned to hard, rhythmic blinks — his eyelids squeezed shut and opened in rapid succession as though something was stuck in his eye.
It wasn’t the first body he’d seen like this. Not even the youngest. In Syria it was more common. It had been a long time though.
He grabbed a sheet off a nearby counter. Flapping it out, he drew it over the garbage can, covering the half-naked, brutalized body. The sickening in his guts worsened.
“Help…”
An ice-cold sensation washed over him. Was he hearing something? He turned from the closet, empty gun in-hand. Before he knew it, he was running toward the med-ed offices. His feet slapped off the floor, the gun held at the half-cocked position. Images from the past hit him like bricks. Nighttime over the marketplace in Aleppo... The cries and screams… the sound of…
“Help!"
It was a female voice, growing louder as he moved, his brain isolating it amongst a chorus of other noises. The anguished scream came through even louder as he drew closer. Helpless and tortured, the scream of unbearable nightmares. He’d heard them several times in Syria, and in Marczenko.
Stay with it, Gunn. Stay in the moment… don’t let him control you.
The room was dizzying around him now, but his feet carried him onward. His blinking started again — eyes squeezed shut, then opened hundreds of times in the span of a minute.
He moved past several offices, triangulating the sound. Elevators came-up on his left, familiar ones. He turned right, spotting the University’s insignia below the Medical Education sign.
“Help!”
Gunn raised the empty pistol and crept through the door, staying low behind the reception desk. The conference room door was only half-ajar, forcing him to lean sideways around the desk to peer inside.
At the podium in the center of the room was a dark-haired figure in blue scrubs who he recognized as Mina, the resident he’d met earlier that morning. From his vantage point, he could see Mina's scrub bottoms and top ripped open around her waist. Behind her was one of the six men they’d seen in the elevator earlier — the four-hundred pounder. To Gunn’s horror, the man was trying to remove his overalls while fighting to keep her head pressed against the table.
Gunn tried to stay in the present, but the flashbacks were strong, invasive.
“It’s my turn next!” a voice yelled.
Gunn shook himself out of the trance. In the corner of the room, he spied more figures. Two others. More of the gang they’d seen earlier. One looked young — sixteen years, maybe. A teenager. He had the same face as the older one next to him. Father and son perhaps?
Mina's tortured sobs continued.
"Hurry up Bill, I want a go," the old one said. “Just knock her out and get on with it.”
"I wanna try the Indian bitch next," said the teen, sneering.
“You did the other one, boy.”
“Yeah, after the bitch was already dead.”
Yeah, well…” the older one said. “Still counts!”
They roared with laughter. Behind them, their fat friend was still wrestling to keep an obstreperous Mina still.
Rage exploded in Gunn's breast. He looked around, trying to find another weapon. A fake gun would do to trick one man, but not three. He peaked out over the desk, spotting something on the ground near the cubicle caravan. Froze again.
A figure in a black pantsuit and jacket lay under a desk. Even from here, Gunn could tell Belinda’s throat was savagely cut open. Blood pooled underneath her body.
Swallowing back the bile, Gunn looked up at the form sitting above Belinda. Callahan sat at the desk, hunched back against the chair, dead gaze shifted up at the ceiling. Streaks of blood ran down his face from a bullet hole between his eyeballs.
In Gunn's mind, Aleppo came back… the mass graves… the women thrown into pits and stoned… the children hung with their fathers, tortured in front of their parents…
“Hold still bitch!” the fat monster screamed. “Ah!”
Mina kicked his shin and tried running. With a great paw, the man reached out and grabbed a fistful of hair, yanking her backwards off her feet.
“Want us to hold her down, Bill?” the teenager said.
Gunn couldn't take it anymore, he was losing control. He raised the Glock and burst into the room. “Let her go!”
The fat man looked up. Mina’s screams continued. The other two turned.
“Let her go or I’ll blow your—”
BOOM.
His head became a dizzying blur of black-and-white. The Glock flew from his hands as he staggered against the door frame. Into the blur stepped a man from behind the door. The fourth member of the gang.
“Hey there mate,” the man said. He was holding a baseball bat that had just clubbed Gunn upside the head. Thankfully the bat had caught the edge of the doorway, taking momentum out of a killing blow.
Gunn picked himself up off the ground, head pounding, ears ringing. The teenage boy removed a fire axe from a nearby casement as the old man retrieved the empty gun from the floor.
“Kill him,” the fat man said, still wrestling Mina.
Gunn lurched out at the bat man with a right-hook and missed, his balance more deprecated than expected. He swayed past his target, opening up his own jaw. The resulting blow sent Gunn off-balance and he collapsed backward against the door frame.
He tried getting up before a boot met the side of his ribs.
“Ooph,” he wheezed, air forced from his lungs.
Another kick, this one harder.
“Aww give the big guy a chance, Ray,” the teenager said.
Gunn’s vision wavered in and out. The image of a broken hovel in the desert superimposed itself on reality. A mixture of laughter and screams rose into the night, the shadow of death cast along ancient bricks. Screams and laughter… his own laughter…
“Get up, faggot,” the man with the bat called Ray said.
Gunn's eyes watered as his breaths became rasps.
“Don’t kill him yet,” the axe-wielding teenager said. "Let's make him eat the fat bitch outside first."
“Kill…” Gunn repeated, his voice strained and different. Not his voice. His eyes shut tight, opened again.
“What’s that?” the teenager said.
A strange feeling washed over him then. One he hadn't felt in a long time. His mouth filled with the sharp, metallic taste of blood. His mind floated into a cloud of unquenchable, intemperate rage. The pain stinging his side eased into something less than an itch. An annoyance, then.
His eyes fluttered opened. A giant fat man was standing behind a wooden box. Bent over in front of him was a dark-haired woman with skin the color of caramel, fighting him off. They had few of her kind in Marczenko, and she looked familiar. A friend perhaps?
A low-rumbling chuckle vibrated through him.
The Butcher of Marczenko kept no friends. Only victims.
“Want some more, do ya?” a young boy holding an axe said.
The Butcher leapt up from the ground like an acrobat, a smile tugging the corners of his mouth. He blinked against the dry sting in his eyes. "Some… more…" he rasped in a voice that was low and throaty, deeper than the deepest seas. Deeper than the thousand-man pits he’d left in the desert.
The axe boy stared into the Butcher's eyes and his smile vanished.
“Get back, Jessie,” an old man said from behind him. “Let Raymond take care o’ this ****ter.”
The Butcher turned his smile on the man with a strange wooden stick. This one had met the Butcher’s eyes for an instant and stepped backward towards the wall, nearly tripping over a chair.
“Kill him!” the fat man urged, still struggling with the woman.
The boy raised the axe high and struck forth, but the Butcher was too quick. He sidestepped and grabbed the boy’s axe-arm, twisted it the wrong way. The boy’s arm made a sickening crunch as it was torn from the joint.
“Ah!” the boy screamed, axe clattering to the ground.
The Butcher kicked him the ass, sending him head-first into the wall.
“Jessie!” the old man screamed.
The Butcher grabbed the axe off the ground, turning as the man with a wooden stick took a swing at him. He raised the fatty part of his left arm to greet the blow. The bat bounced off, the recoil sending the man off-balance just as the axe swung through the air like destiny.
CRUNCH.
“Ug…” the bat-man sputtered, eyes going cross at the blade sunken into his skull. His knees buckled as dark blood poured from his split-open face.
“EASY NOW…” The Butcher said. He planted a foot against the dead man’s shoulder and tore it free, painting the room in blood.
"No, no, no…" the old man said, wide-eyed and panicky. He scrambled back towards the wall like a snake was on him.
The Butcher threw back his head and loosed an insane laugh. “WHERE ARE YOU GOING, PIGGY?” he screamed, upending a table in the way.
The foe bolted towards the exit, and the Butcher leapt at him like a starving lion on a gazelle.
“Ooph!” the man grunted as he was tackled face-first into the ground.
The Butcher yanked his shoulder, spun him around, straddled him. Crushed the man’s frame between his two legs.
The Butcher smiled wide, steadying him for the cleaning. “HOLD STILL NOW…”
“No… plea—”
CRACK.
The blow tore clean through the ridge of his sternum. Blood fountained into the air as the great arteries were severed, covering them in hot blood. The blade was drew back a second time and sliced the old man’s heart in half.
"Hahaha!" The Butcher screamed as he plunged the axe into the man’s chest. Once, twice, three times… “Hahaha!”
The air sang with his laughter and the blood of the dying cattle. Ty svin'i na uboy, i ya tvoy myasnik...
He chopped with an insane ferocity, turning the carcass into a bloody pulp of meat. An entire minute went by, but he felt no fatigue. Never fatigued.
A sound brought him out of his work. He stopped cutting and turned. The woman’s screams turned to a low sob as the fat man pushed her aside, giving up on her. He hoisted at his half-fallen trousers, eyes fixed on the Butcher. There was terror in those eyes, the Butcher could see. It made the Butcher excited. The fat one would be the tastiest.
Just as the fat man stumbled towards him, the woman kicked him from behind in the groin, doubling him forward.
Another sound greeted the Butcher’s ear and he turned. The boy was rising from the ground now, scrambling toward the exit. Anger washed over him like the desert winds. He launched across the room, tackling him to the ground. “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”
An instant later, the Butcher was on his feet, every muscle in his body singing. His foe was less than half his size, skinny too. No meat on this one at all. The Butcher tore him from the ground with the ease of a rag-doll.
“Please… I didn’t kill her,” the teen shrieked. “I swear… I only ****ed her after she was dead!”
The Butcher brought the boy’s face in close, fingers clutching at a fistful of his hair. This cattle dared run from him? His bloody hand grabbed the boy’s neck, hoisting him in the air.
“YOU… RUN… FROM… ME?” the Butcher said, voice choked with rage.
The boy’s eyeballs bugged out as his face turned a shade of scarlet. “Please…” he croaked, neck veins bulging into thick cords.
“You… run…. FROM ME?”
The Butcher squeezed his windpipe closed, turning his face a deep shade of scarlet.
"Let him go!" the fat man screamed in anguish. “Please, please let him go!”
The Butcher turned, smiling. Drawing the boy back to the ground, the Butcher released the boy's neck. His victim breathed a quick gasp of relief as the pressure was released.
“Thank you… man… thank—”
The Butcher grabbing him by the back of the hair and yanked.
"Ow!" the boy said. "Wait, what are you—"
“SMILE!” The Butcher screamed, rocking back on his heels. With a sickening crack, the Butcher slammed his face into the stone wall.
"No!" the fat man screeched.
The Butcher wound up again, this time with every ounce of his momentum.
CRACK.
Blood and brain matter splattered the white stone, teeth clattered to the ground. The ruined corpse hung limp, skull crushed open like a pinata. The Butcher tossed it away like a picked-clean carcass. He turned his attention toward the opposite end of the room.
The fat man viciously back-handed the woman, sending her flying against the wall. He strained forward under a nearby table, face red with effort. A second later, he produced a gun, pointing it at the Butcher.
The fat man snarled at him, blood pouring from his nose. “That was my nephew, you motherf—”
BANG.
The fat man's eyes went wide, clutching his chest with a free hand.
BANG.
The gun clattered to the floor, a widening stain forming on the man's chest. He reeled backwards, swaying like a great oak. In what seemed like slow motion, the man tipped sideways and fell, splitting a nearby table in half on the way down.
The Butcher turned to the doorway. A brown-skinned figure in a cowboy hat and bright green boots emerged.
"That was a big ‘un," the cowboy said, a smoking revolver in his hand.
A dizziness washed over the Butcher. A voice told him he wasn’t in Marczenko anymore.
“Who are—” his voice caught in his throat, causing him to cough.
The world swirled inside his head, twisting in a blur of black-and-white. The Butcher’s knees went weak as he fought the tide dragging him to sea, bucking him forward.
##
Gunn collapsed to the ground like a sack of bricks. His head and ribs screamed in pain. His breath turned to pained whimpers. He was covered in blood. His hands, his face, his hair.
From the ground, Gunn could see the figure in the doorway. The brown-skinned cowboy held a smoking revolver, sleeves rolled up on a blue denim shirt. On his feet were a pair of huge neon green boots that appeared to be dyed gator skin.
“Who are—” Gunn tried to speak but the feeling of blood trailing along the back of his throat made him gag, forced him to sit up.
“Howdy,” gator boots said, a half-smile on his face.
“Who are you?”
Gator boots gave him an ear-to-ear smile. An expression so out of place it caused Gunn to question if he was stuck inside some insane nightmare. “Name’s Ernesto de Santo.”
“You ****ing piece of ****!” Mina wailed from across the room. Gunn turned to watch her foot connect with the purple face of the dead giant, each kick snapping his head back against a row of cabinets.
"Mina?" a new voice said.
Gunn glanced up. A second man poked his head into the room, an M4 carbine cradled in his arms. This one was white, wearing a much too-large NPF uniform. On his belt was a Kimber SIS.
Mina glanced up a fraction of a second, recognition flashing in her non-swollen eye.
“Zane?” she said.
Then, as if someone hit a reset button, she turned back to the corpse. Her kicks sent the dead man’s head bouncing off the cabinet, tongue lolling from his mouth.
“Piece…”
Kick—thud.
“…of…”
Kick—thud.
“…****ing…”
Kick—thud.
“…****!”
Kick—thud.
The man named Zane set his rifle on the desk, ran to her. He wrapped his arms around her.
"It’s alright," he whispered, trying to pull her away. "He’s dead. It’s okay… it’s okay…"
She fought him for a moment, even as her shrieks lessened. After a few seconds, her good eye filled with tears, and she turned into his chest, sobbing. Blood from gashes on her face smeared the front of his jacket.
"Shhh…" he said, petting her long dark hair.
Gunn tried to stand, ribs protesting every move.
Click.
The sound made him freeze. As he slowly turned his head, gator boots emerged on the corner of his vision, holding the revolver a few inches from his face.
"Don't move, hombre," de Santo said.
Gunn looked at him, breathing in short gasps. "Get that out of my face."
De Santo gave him a half-smile, holding the gun steady. “That’s what she said.”
"He’s okay…" Mina said through choked tears. She was still being held by the rifleman. “Saved…” she took a gasp. “Saved… me…"
Zane looked suspiciously at Gunn for a long moment, then at the axe near his foot. His head turned as he examined the other bodies, spending a long moment staring at the one with the split-open chest. A look of sickness filled his countenance as he turned to his partner, nodding.
De Santo released the hammer on the revolver, stepping back. "Looks like ya’ll had a nice scramble here," he said, holstering it.
“Are you NPF?” Gunn asked, looking straight at Zane.
Zane looked down at the red uniform and then back up at Gunn, shaking his head. “Stole this off a corpse a few blocks up the street. Had to get through the cordon.”
Gunn frowned. Cordon?
“I threw mine away already,” de Santo said. “Ugly uniforms, those. And I can’t be pictured wearing no faggot commie uniform or it’ll ruin my reputation.”
Gunn rose to his feet, bent at the waist. With a rolled-up sleeve, he wiped blood off his face.
"Did he hurt you?" Zane asked Mina.
Gunn looked at her. Torn-up scrubs, bra strap visible through a torn shirt. Her right eye was red and swollen, a fresh cut over her brow.
"******* tried to rape me," she said, moving out of his grasp. She planted another kick in the dead man's forehead, slamming it off a half-open cabinet. The door crashed into the stopper, vibrating.
Gunn's hands trembled violently as he made to loosen the buttons on his dress shirt. His left arm hung to the side, sharp pain in the triceps region every time he moved it. When he got three buttons from the collar, he stopped.
A low whistle from the corner of the room. Gunn turned to see de Santo knelt over the bat-man's corpse. His head was split-open, eyes still crossed. He looked up at Gunn, eyebrow raised.
Gunn stared back, taking slow, shallow breaths.
A half-smile returned to de Santo’s face. "Wouldn't wanna get on your bad side, hombre."
Gunn said nothing.
"Where’s Andrea?" Zane said.
Gunn turned to see him holding up Mina, arms on either side of her shoulders. His hand now in view, Gunn noted the silver band on his left ring finger.
“I-I…” Mina said.
"No," Zane said, an urgency in his voice. "Don't tell me she’s…"
Mina swallowed, looked up at Gunn. They locked eyes.
"Where?" Zane pleaded. "If they did something to her…” he trailed off, tears forming in his eyes
.
Gunn held Mina's stare for a long moment. Finally, she turned to the man still holding her about the shoulders. His gaze was locked on the floor, head leaned into the flat of her tummy for support. She touched the back of his head gently, caressing it in a manner that made Gunn’s brow raise.
"She’s with RE-ACT," she said, fingers running through the back of his hair. "The medi-vac chopper. I… haven't seen her since this morning."
Gunn swallowed back the sick in his stomach as Zane’s head raised.
"What?"
Mina swallowed, the movement of her Adam’s apple visible across the room. “She flew to Flagstaff Regional this morning. Hasn’t been back since.”
A look of relief flooded the man’s countenance. Holding Mina’s arms, he fell to his knees, heaving a great sigh. “Thank God…”
A long pause. Gunn and Mina glanced at each other.
“They fly a big green chopper?” de Santo asked.
“Yes…” Mina said. “Why?”
“That’s what the NPF said,” Zane said. "The green medi-chopper went to Gray Mountain with injured NPF. They commandeered it.”
“That’s…” Mina began, but didn't finish.
Gunn said nothing, not knowing what to say or to ask. He turned away from them, spotted the old man’s chest split open nearby. A scream was frozen into the dead man’s face.
"I don't mean to spoil the mood," de Santo said, removing a round canister from his back pocket. "But we’d best be off."
Gunn looked the cowboy up-and-down as he slapped at a tin of red Skoal dipping tobacco. The can oscillated back and forth in his grip as his limp forefinger slapped at the top of the can. After five or six slaps, he ejected the lid. With a free hand, he reached in and pinched out a clump of black shreds and jammed it into his lower lip.
The cherry-sweet aroma reached Gunn from across the room, making his stomach rumble. For the first time since that afternoon, Gunn realized just how hungry he was. The adrenaline had masked the hunger pangs, but for some reason they were back and more fierce than ever.
"Who are you again?" Mina asked.
"Name is Ernesto von Williams de Santo," he said, bowing. “Chairman, CEO, and Grand Dragon of Ernesto’s Firearm Emporium of Liberty Reach, Wyoming.”
"He’s a friend," Zane said. "Met him at the gun show this morning."
Mina looked between the two men. Said nothing.
Zane walked up to Gunn, held out a hand. “I’m Zane, I don’t think we’ve met before.”
Gunn stared down at it like he didn’t know what to do. Finally, he reached out his own blood-caked hand and shook. “Marcus,” he said, voice barely above a whisper.
Something crashed to the ground then, and he turned sharply, ribs screaming in protest. The nearby closet was opening.
De Santo had the revolver drawn and pointed at the closet. Zane grabbed Mina, pushing her behind him. Gunn did nothing.
The ghostly-white face of Kayden came into view. He was huddled in the fetal position, shaking. Once the door was fully open, his head raised slowly. His face was streaked with tears, snot, and a look of unimaginable terror.
And then Gunn knew what had happened. Sometime after he’d left the presentation, the gang had found them. Probably took a moment to kill Belinda and Callahan in the main office. The Chief was taken and raped down the hall, tossed into the garbage can. That gave time for this scared boy to hideaway in the closet, to leave his female companion to face-down the gang alone.
“Who’s this?” Zane asked.
De Santo hunched over next to Kayden, eying him like a curious museum exhibit.
“Looks like some kind of creature,” de Santo said. With a closed fist, he tapped on Kayden’s head like it was a coconut, making distinct clucking noises with each knock. Kayden did nothing. Didn’t back away or flinch. Didn’t react at all. Just rocked back and forth, mumbling incoherencies to himself.
Without thinking, Gunn stepped over to him. With his good arm, he reached down and grabbed Kayden by the arm.
“Let’s go,” Gunn said.
Kayden didn’t protest, didn’t speak, didn’t even look at Gunn as he was hoisted into standing position.
“Wait,” Zane said.
Gunn turned.
Silence in the room. The sound of a the still vibrating cabinet where Mina had kicked the man’s head in filled the silence.
“Where…” Zane said, turning to Mina then back to him, frowning. “Where will you go?”
Gunn watched the man, holding onto Kayden’s arm all the while. He felt dizzy.
“You a doctor?” de Santo asked him.
Gunn stared at him a beat.
“Yes,” Mina said. “He’s one of our residents.”
De Santo looked him up-and-down a moment, much like one would examine a horse at auction. “Come with us. I can find a place for you.”
“I need to get back to Chicago,” Gunn said.
De Santo laughed. “That’s a good one.”
Gunn frowned. “My wife and kids are there.”
De Santo’s laughter died out, replaced with a look of utmost concern. “Well that’s gunna be a tall order, given the state of things.”
A sinking dread twisted like a knife in his guts. “What do you mean?”
Zane spoke up. “Come with us and you’ll see.”
There was a long pause. The corpses in the room seemed to inject their own silence into the equation. After a whole minute of silence, the five of them collected themselves and walked into the hallway, saying nothing. In the main corridor, Gunn reached out a bloody finger, pressed the elevator button.
A moment later, the elevator dinged. De Santo pointed his gun, Zane pointed the rifle. Gunn just stared, ribs hurting him so bad he nearly passed out. The doors slid open, revealing an empty carriage. The five entered and Mina hit the button for P — Parking.
“Well,” de Santo said as the doors slid closed. “Who else is hungry?”
Guns of march [v.3]
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