Harry Shannon: Kill Them All

“Mr. Kearns, I just came to apologize for striking you. I’ll just be on my way.”

“Who the fuck asked for an apology?” No front teeth, a slavering lisp. “You from the gummint?”

“I’m not from the government, no, Mr. Kearns.”

“Bullshit.” Kearns spat. “You get off my land.”

“Sure…”

Suddenly Kearns shrieked. A crow and two vultures took flight in alarm as the sound echoed. Startled and afraid of the shotgun, Matt flinched.

“What is it?” he asked.

Kearns fired the shotgun, aiming towards his own house. Out here in the middle of nowhere, the noise was like the bark of a giant dog. “Stay away from me, you bastard! Stay back!”

Spooked, Matt looked. The house. The rocker. There was nobody there.

Kearns squinted, carefully studying his porch for the movement of a creature that didn’t exist. Matt took advantage of the distraction and edged towards his belongings. Kearns clearly had a bad case of amphetamine psychosis-full-on auditory and visual hallucinations. If he had really seen the Dark Man, the experience had run together in his mind with dozens of other delusions. He’d be useless in terms of acquiring new information. The trip had been a waste of time-and could still be a fatal mistake.

The gun discharged again. An echo barked back a few seconds later, and then one more. The crow cawed as if amused. Kearns screamed in a voice high and shrill. He fired at it the bird, and blood and feathers exploded in all directions.

“Take that, you skinny, black-winged motherfucker!”

Matt trotted over to his stuff but didn’t take his eyes off of Kearns. He gathered up the backpack and sleeping bag and reached for the ax. Matt thought he heard some kind of low throbbing sound, wasn’t sure from where. Could have been the panicked blood thundering through the veins in his own ears. Facing down an enemy was one thing. A psychotic with a shotgun was quite another.

Kearns hunkered down like a man taking a dump in his pants, which was actually quite possible, all things considered. He gripped the shotgun in his trembling right hand and with his left he dug into his filthy pocket for another shell. He seemed to have forgotten Matt’s presence or written it off as a hallucination. Kearns reloaded and stalked towards his own home.

But Kearns stalked nothing and fired at nothing. Matt backed away, the ax in his right hand and the pack and bedroll over his left shoulder. He was almost out of range of the shotgun when he noticed the humming sound again and pegged it for an engine.

A vehicle this far from the highway?

A large one, a truck or a van, and it sounded closer. Perhaps he could hitch a ride away from this madhouse.

“Ugh!”

Kearns threw his hands up as if upset by something, and the shotgun went sailing. Matt blinked. Part of the redneck’s head disappeared, to be replaced by a strange pink cloud that floated away. Kearns dropped to his knees and fell over dead.

He’d been shot, and Matt hadn’t heard a thing.

Someone was using a silencer.

Matt ducked and tried to run, but something slammed into the side of his head, and he dropped his gear. The world went white with pain, spun in a circle, and turned pitch-black.

Friday, 4:32 p.m.

Matt came to but kept his eyes closed. He was inside and could feel cool air-conditioning on his exposed skin. His arm ached-like an IV needle had been badly inserted and then clumsily taped down. The back of his head was pounding. No one could have gotten close enough to hit him without Matt sensing it, so he’d been shot with something, perhaps a beanbag. Cops or military? But why?

“Sleeping Beauty is awake.” A man’s jocular baritone. “Bro, we have been trying to catch up to your ass for a week. This morning we got here ahead of you. At last we meet!”

Matt forced his eyes open and squinted. He was on a gurney but not in a hospital. This was some kind of gigantic van-he could tell by the shape of the walls. Everything around and below him vibrated a bit. The speaker was dressed in black with a web belt and a sidearm. Mercenary all the way. He had a friendly, boyish face and a good-natured grin.

“My name is Scotty, Cahill,” the man said. “And of course we already know who you are.”

The scary stranger Sally had mentioned. Scotty instantly reminded Matt of someone. Someone he knew. His head hurt too much to focus. He rolled his head to the right. There was a needle in his arm. And some kind of a transfusion bottle there, but something didn’t look right. What was it? Matt struggled to make sense of his situation. He felt weak and dizzy. And then it finally hit him. They weren’t giving him fluids or medication.

They were drawing his blood.

Lots of it.

“You hungry?”

“What?”

Scotty repeated, “You hungry? Our medic says you’ll last longer if we give you some fruit and orange juice once in a while.”

Matt felt the world slide sideways and tilt. He was growing weaker by the second. Matt knew he wasn’t like other people-not anymore, not since he’d come back from the dead. No one was guaranteed immortality. How many pints of blood in a human body? Something like ten? How much had he lost already?

They were bleeding him.

“Two things I get off on,” Scotty said. “Football and old movies. You ever watch Laurel and Hardy? Those two old comics from the silent movie days? One tall and skinny, one short and fat. Loved those guys. You know, it turns out the dumb one was the brains.”

“Huh?”

Scotty grinned again. The boyish smile prompted Matt’s memory. “Andy,” he said. His voice was already becoming a desperate croak.

“Andy?”

“You remind me of my friend Andy.” A lifelong friend Matt had to kill after the Dark Man and the rot of evil took him over. And now that same rot was spreading across Scotty’s face, eating away the flesh on his chin. A thin stream of pus dribbled from his right nostril.

“That so?” Scotty seemed pleased. “Cool. Hey, thing is, under other circumstances, we probably could have been friends. Hope you realize this isn’t personal, Cahill. If it was up to me, I’d keep you around. Orders are orders.”

Matt shivered. The air was cold and he felt weak. “ Whose orders?”

“Boss man says to take your blood, so we take your blood. Ours is not to reason why.” Scotty yawned. Something ugly and black writhed like a worm of smoke in the back of his throat as if fighting to get out.

“Don’t do this,” Matt said. “It’s murder.”

“War is hell,” Scotty said. And he flashed that Andy grin again. Matt felt fear and a deep sadness, both for himself and for Scotty, who might have been a decent person once but was past saving now. Matt didn’t want to die like this, but he was too weak for much of anything else-and growing weaker by the minute. He closed his eyes.

Scotty slapped his face lightly. “Stay awake, dude. We want you around for as long as possible.”

“Screw you.”

“That’s it! Come on, you don’t want this to be too easy, do you?”

“I don’t want this at all.”

Matt rolled his head the other way. A couple of mercenaries sat nearby. One was sucking on what smelled like a joint. The other was snoozing. The sliding side door to the van was open a crack. Another mercenary stood guard outside, but without much panache or enthusiasm. These men were well trained, but evil was on board, eroding their focus. Individual discipline was sliding. Appetites running amuck. They all reeked of sin. If Mr. Dark wasn’t actually running the show, he was most certainly involved. Had to be in some way.

Matt studied his foe. Tried to speak. “Why?”