Sharon Sala - Going Twice

“This is it. It’s time to party.”

He checked his shoulder pack for Tasers, ropes and leather gloves, tossing them in the front seat of his truck beside the flashlight. He wore dark clothing with a black hooded sweatshirt to hide the side of his face burned in the explosion, and heavy boots for walking through the debris.

The wind was rising, and the sky was getting dark. It would be sunset within the hour, and the storm would move through the area soon afterward. He got in the truck and started driving north, pacing himself so that he would be coming in behind the weather, and the bigger the storm clouds grew, the more hyped he became.

According to his radio, the tornado watch had just been upgraded to a tornado warning for Wichita Falls, even as he was nearing the city. A side draft from the powerful storm cell made it difficult to drive, and he finally pulled off the road and parked, unwilling to get any closer until it had moved on. He had the radio tuned to a local weather station with a minute-by-minute update on what was happening. When he heard the frantic announcement that tornadoes were touching down in city neighborhoods, he began planning how he could get into the area before police and rescue sealed it off.

As soon as the storms began moving away, he drove straight into the chaos they’d left behind and, as he’d hoped, became just another person on the streets trying to help. He’d thought long and hard about how this would play out, leaving bodies with his mark on them. He’d been dreaming about the condition of Louise’s body when they finally found her—naked and coming apart at the seams. She would have hated the humiliation, but she was dead, so he hated it for her.

Rain was still coming down hard as he jumped out of his truck. He shouldered his backpack, grabbed his flashlight and began moving down the street, quickly getting lost among those who were already afoot.

Some were searching for survivors, while others appeared to have rescued themselves. They were wet, blood-stained and disoriented. Soaked by the downpour and on the lookout for live electrical wires, he kept moving through the area with an eye on his surroundings. At any moment the police or emergency services could show up, and then he would have to move on.

He saw a trio of men already working to free a couple from under what was left of their home. He wanted no part of that and kept running, dodging downed power lines and using the light from the intermittent lightning flashes to see a broader area than what his flashlight beam showed. Finally he heard what he’d been waiting for: a faint cry for help. He stopped, waiting for the cry again, and when he had a location, he headed into the debris.

At first he was just moving broken lumber and huge chunks of insulation, then he realized there was a standing wall with a partially attached staircase behind it. He removed a broken commode, cushions from a piece of furniture, broken table lamps and the water-soaked contents of a closet before he finally got to a door. As he dug his way closer, the shouting got louder.

“I hear you, man. Stay calm,” Hershel said, and the man quit shouting. Nothing like having the victim cooperate in his own demise.

Finally he cleared away enough to see that the man who lived here had taken refuge under the stairs. Hershel got out the Taser, grabbed a piece of rope from his backpack and reached for the doorknob.

An old man stumbled out into the rain.

“Thank you, thank you, you saved my life,” he cried, reaching for Hershel’s shoulder to steady himself.

“I didn’t save it. You don’t deserve to live,” Hershel said, and pulled the trigger on the Taser.

The man dropped to his knees, paralyzed by the electrical current pulsing through his body. Hershel glanced over his shoulder and dragged the man behind the wall, making sure there was no one around. Then he wrapped a short length of rope around the old man’s neck, yanked it tight and held on.

The old man’s body was seizing. Lightning flashed long enough for Hershel to see the shock and horror on his victim’s face, but he felt no guilt. When the man finally went limp, the release of endorphins that flowed through Hershel’s body was nothing short of elation.

Working quickly, he removed the electrodes from the man’s chest and then proceeded to strip him naked. Once the dead man was completely nude, he tossed the clothes and pulled a piece of Sheetrock over the body. There was nothing sexual about the act. It was all about humiliation and how the family would feel when their loved one was discovered in such a condition.

Satisfied with what he’d done, he stepped out from behind the wall and walked back down to the street just as a pair of young men came running toward him.

“Anyone in there?” they yelled.

“All clear,” he said, ducking his head, and kept moving in the opposite direction.

He added two more victims before the police and rescue workers closed off the hardest hit area, then returned to where he’d parked, jumped in the truck and began trying to find his way out of town. The power was out almost everywhere, and the place felt like a ghost town as he drove carefully through the streets. After a lot of stopping and backtracking, he found the highway he’d been looking for and pulled off the road. He took out the cell phone and sent FBI agent Tate Benton a text. Sending texts now and then had been part of his ritual since the agents began hunting him, and he needed to feed off their frustration to make this work again.

I am not dead, so do not weep. It was not my time. I have vows to keep.

Then he turned off the cell phone so it couldn’t be traced, and plugged it into the cigarette lighter to recharge as he pulled back out onto the highway.

As he drove, he could tell how far the power was out by the lack of house or security lights along the way. About five miles from his campsite, he began seeing the occasional light off in the distance, where people still had power.

When he finally found his turnoff and drove off the highway onto the old dirt road, he pulled around behind the abandoned ranch house where he’d set up his tent and parked so the truck couldn’t be seen. He checked to make sure nothing had been disturbed, and once he was satisfied all was well, he zipped himself inside the tent, took off his filthy, rain-soaked clothes and crawled naked into his sleeping bag. He was asleep in minutes.

Washington, D.C.

Tate Benton was in the den eating salted cashews and nursing a bottle of beer. The television was on CNN, and his wife, Nola, was in her art studio, working on a commissioned painting. He was coming off of a long, drawn-out kidnapping case that had ended badly, so when his cell phone indicated an incoming text, he almost didn’t answer.

Then he glanced at Caller ID and the skin crawled on the back of his neck. The last thing he expected was a message from the Stormchaser.

I am not dead, so do not weep. It was not my time. I have vows to keep.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and immediately forwarded the text to his partners, Cameron Winger and Wade Luckett.

Within moments his cell phone rang. It was Wade, and he had Cameron conferenced in.

“We’re absolutely sure it’s him?” Wade asked.

“It came from the same phone he used to use,” Tate said.

“I didn’t know the agency kept that old phone activated,” Cameron said.

“That’s on me. I told them to,” Tate said.

“I turned on The Weather Channel,” Wade said. “There’s a tornado outbreak along the Texas-Oklahoma border.”

“Do we wait for the bodies to begin showing up or go now?” Cameron asked.

“He’s already killed or he wouldn’t have sent the message. But we won’t know for sure that’s where he is until the medical examiner makes that determination,” Tate said.