Scott Nicholson - Chronic fear

Killers like me.

Mark waited while the man flipped the bipod legs of his gun, apparently planning to set up and spray the cabin, which Mark could only barely see through the thick leaves.

Shooting a man in the back was cowardly.

But bravery was an abstract moral concept, lumped in with the honor-duty-courage triumvirate that the powerful had always used to manipulate fools.

Mark didn’t need a goddamned reason.

From eighty feet away, he fired three times in rapid succession. If the man had been moving, Mark probably would have missed all three, but at least one of them hit the target. The man’s head flopped forward without a sound.

The clap of a single shot issued from the cabin, the bullet whistling through leaves overhead.

Roland, you crazy bastard. I’m here to help you.

But Roland was likely just firing in the direction of the shots. In Roland’s position, Mark would attempt to keep the attackers away from the cabin, because if they all rushed it at once-depending upon how many there were-Roland wouldn’t be able to cover all the windows.

The SUV couldn’t have held more than six passengers, and with two down, the odds were a little better. From the location of the shots, though, Mark believed there were only three attackers.

So the job was nearly finished. If only Roland didn’t kill him before he had a chance to finish it.

Mark didn’t bother checking his latest victim’s pockets. Instead, he worked his way to his right, through a section of old pines and maples where the creek cut through the rotted stumps and ancient black dirt.

A stone bounced free behind him and he spun, Glock leveled, and if it wasn’t for the soft, feminine whimper, he would have cut loose with half a dozen rounds.

She stood there between the scabbed trunks of two white pines, the AR-15 limp in her hands, dirt streaked across her face, blonde hair stringy with sweat. A long red weal, moist with blood, ran up her forearm where she’d been scratched, and her bare knees were muddy.

“Lex. I told you to stay in the goddamned car.”

“You’re Seething, Mark. Darrell Silver was working on Halcyon but-”

“Keep your voice down. The woods are full of killers.”

“Don’t you understand? You’re not yourself.”

“When have I ever been myself?”

Her eyes were heavy and sad and her tears sickened him. “I can help you.”

“Yeah, you and Briggs and CRO. Let’s all just hold hands and follow the Yellow Brick Road.”

“I…” She shucked her backpack from her shoulder while Mark glanced around the perimeter. “I have something.”

“Where’s Forsyth?”

She waved the barrel of the rifle vaguely behind her. “Back there.”

Another burst of gunfire sounded from the ridge opposite them, and a couple of shots responded from the cabin. Mark glanced around, waving his wife into the protection of the pines.

“Mark, you’re sick,” she said. “That wasn’t Halcyon in the vial. It was Seethe.”

Her words hit him like a mag clip. “The fuck you talking about?”

“Forsyth set us up.”

She leaned her rifle against a tree trunk, knelt in the mud, and unzipped the backpack. She brought out a bottle of water.

Mark laughed and waved the gun at the rushing creek. “I’m not thirsty.”

“It’s Halcyon.”

“No one has Halcyon.”

“No one has Seethe, either. But how do you feel, Mark?”

He felt pretty damned good. He had a warm Glock and a full clip and some people to kill. Life couldn’t be better.

She moved closer. “Like in the Monkey House, right?”

She was saying “Monkey House” like it was a bad thing. She didn’t understand.

“I’ve been treating you with this,” his wife said.

“Treating me?”

“You’re losing it, Mark. You’ve been slowly falling apart since the Monkey House.”

“Shut up about the Monkey House. I’m fine.”

She thrust out the plastic bottle. “You need it.”

“You never had Halcyon.”

She looked away, but then stepped forward and gazed into his eyes, filling him up, leaving him no place to escape. “I lied. I had to do something to save you.”

“Lied?” Mark fought the wash of red that threatened to sweep over him like the water sluiced over the rocks. He didn’t want to kill her.

But he had to. Seethe demanded it.

Sometimes a guy just got in a killing mood. And now he even had a reason.

“No, Mark,” she shouted, backpedaling and tripping on vines that grew in tangles along the creek bank. She dropped the bottle and it bounced off a stone, tumbling to Mark’s feet. He picked it up.

“You did this for me?” he said.

“Yes,” she hissed. “I love you, you bastard.”

She’s a liar, but she’s the only one I can trust. Love is crazier than Seethe and Halcyon put together.

And his choice was to trust her or kill her.

He twisted the cap from the bottle and was about to put it to his lips when he heard a voice yell, “Don’t move or I’ll give you a third nostril.”

Killers without and killers within.

If Harding’s background digging had any merit, then the two people in the cabin with Gundersson were unstable and sociopathic. He had personal proof of Wendy’s traitorous nature, as her scent still clung to him and her whispered passion and sweet lies still swirled inside his head. But her response had seemed simultaneously robotic and disturbed, as if she were following a compulsion she didn’t quite embrace.

And Roland had displayed his homicidal bent several times, snapping from dutiful and even dull husband to a ranting, destructive force. Harding’s research had revealed Roland’s troubles with alcohol, but Gundersson hadn’t seen so much as a drop in the cabin. No, this anger made its own sauce.

Whatever had happened inside the Monkey House, three people had died there, and Roland and Wendy survived.

Through whatever means.

So he was afraid to turn his back on them, which made it difficult to keep from getting his ass shot off by the mysterious gunmen.

But he couldn’t watch all the windows, and the bursts of automatic weapons had grown more desperate, spraying the cabin until the windows held only the most stubborn shards of glass.

So his choices boiled down to making a deal with the devil, or just trusting the devil to help him out simply because he already owned Gundersson’s soul and didn’t much care one way or another.

“Roland, where are the bullets for your revolver?” he shouted from the south window.

The couple was huddled on the floor by the couch, Wendy clutching her rolled canvas to her chest as if it were a rare and precious artifact. Roland said, “I dumped them outside because I didn’t want to kill anybody.”

Just my luck. I get the world’s first psychopathic killer with a conscience.

Like many agents, Gundersson carried a backup weapon, a SIG-Sauer P232 that was a popular conceal-carry weapon. He fished it from the inner pocket of his vest, hammer-dropped the safety off, and held it behind him without breaking his surveillance of the window.

“Seven shots, just pull the trigger,” he said.

The forest had been quiet for a couple of minutes, and he wondered if Mark Morgan had taken out a couple of the black jumpsuits. Harding had told him about Morgan’s cop training, but it was hard to imagine a trainee tackling guys who were by all appearances professionals.

If Morgan’s on Seethe, then maybe the rules don’t apply. No wonder so many people are willing to kill for this stuff.

He felt the fingers on his wrist and the SIG pulled away. Wendy whispered, “Your gun’s cold and short.”

Bet you say that to every man except your husband.