Chapter 128: Book 2: Chapter 29

Chapter 29

 

Quixbix managed to penetrate my anger-fuelled fugue long enough to convince me to slow down when we were passing the ship, call over LT, and add a few extra squads before we turned in a south-westerly direction towards our target.

The B&B was located in a small triangular patch of land on a slight incline. There were six or seven other large, detached houses on the ‘block’. I could see that pre-apocalypse this would have been an idyllic and picturesque place to stay. It was a shithole now, though. Garbage was strewn all over the lawns and the rose bushes out front had been thoroughly desecrated with human waste if the pungent smell was any indication.

The windows had been opened wide in the summer heat. The scent of stale sweat, spilt booze, and cigarette smoke wafted down to us on the street. We could hear tinny music coming from inside the building. Maybe from a mobile phone that miraculously had some battery power left. Accompanied by a few squeals of some kind of raucous activity on the ground floor. And then my sensitive ears detected grunting, unmistakably coming from Keith, coming from one of the upstairs rooms.

The dilemma information had been accurate, not that I had doubted it wouldn’t be. 

LT led his squads around the back in case anyone made a run for it. A sharp whistle from him let us know he was in position, and we rushed the building. The oak front door was closed but not locked and we entered unopposed. The security here was ridiculously lax.

So very Keith.

Although I very much doubted Keith would be in any kind of authoritative position here. More likely, this lot had the run of this part of Flint since the official forces had retreated to the other side of the river but hadn’t had the misfortune of anything big and nasty come knocking during the day yet to modify their bad habits.

That was about to change.

My musings on the lackadaisical security and the relatively small size of the place convinced me this couldn’t be the Hellhound’s base of operations. They would be set up somewhere else, and this would not be a fait accompli.

Inside was the foyer area of the B&B. The white cream carpet was now filthy. Cigarette butts, discarded food, and bottles of booze leaking the last few dregs of liquid littered the place. Tony and his squad went left into the breakfast area. There was a group in there sitting around the table, drinking heavily, and playing cards.

Jackson’s squad, sans the young sorcerer himself, was led by his second, a guy known as Minty, went to the right. The music was coming from that room and there were several more people partying in there.

I went directly upstairs with my squad following closely. From the brief glimpse I got from each room as I passed, there were a surprising number of women in both rooms. More than half of the people who were present. Most looked to be in their late thirties or older and were in grotty denim or leathers. They looked like long-time associates for the Hellhounds. Not a collar in sight.

Well, no slave collars.

I did recognise one of the men in the music lounge. Bruce. Keith’s weed dealer. I didn’t really know him, but we had met a couple of times. Usually when Keith and I were on a break at the same time and had stepped out to the back of the BuyMart for some fresh air. In truth, I would have been there mostly to avoid Connie and Vincent, while Keith was stocking up on his medicinal supplies as he liked to call his drugs.

I sent Charlie with a few others to check out the other upstairs rooms while I led Shana, Ana, and Fang Mei directly to the bedroom where I’d heard Keith’s grunting coming from. The white-painted door was stained with something that I hoped was beer and not some other yellow substance and had been left slightly ajar.

Gently, I pushed the door a little wider to get an eyeful of the situation inside.

They were on the bed. A woman, likely in her fifties and wearing too much makeup, lay on her back, ciggy in her mouth and a bored expression on her face. Keith was on top, his worthless, skinny butt pumping away as he grunted and mumbled some shit which he thought was sexy.

Tracy, her name gifted to me by my analysing habit, spotted me at the door and smiled widely. She took another drag on her cigarette and blew it out in what I presumed she thought was an alluringly sexy manner.

“Looks like Terror finally got around to recruiting a real man,” she drawled, and Keith redoubled his pathetic efforts on top of her, completely oblivious that she hadn’t been talking about him. I could practically feel the delusional pride emanating from him.

“Come on in, honey. Show mama what you can do. I’m tired of these small-dicked, patchless assholes,” she giggled at me in her version of coy.

“What?” Keith groaned, stopped, and looked Tracy in the face, sweat dripping from his brow.

With no need for further circumspection, I kicked the door the rest of the way open and walked inside, onto the varnished wooden floor of the master bedroom. The room was a little cleaner than the rest of the house, but there was still an array of half-empty bottles of Jack Daniels on the white dresser, which was now covered in circular drinks stains.

Tracy pushed Keith off her with greater force than she would have been capable of pre-apocalypse. He tumbled off the bed completely, his ass hitting the floor and concealing from him just who it was that had come into the room. The ladies followed me into the room and Tracy’s welcoming smile faded into an angry scowl.

“Who the fuck are these bitches?” she barked in sudden annoyance. “There weren’t supposed to be no new girls ‘till the boys get their wings. Why else would I waste my time with a useless pussy like Kit?”

“Keith,” the stoner whined, not looking up from the floor. Still unaware of how screwed he was.

“New girls get put through their paces by me first,” Tracy continued screeching. She was in full flow now. Her attention was completely on the girls. I seemed to have almost been forgotten. “Who the hell do you think you are walking in here unannounced without showing me respect? I’m Terror’s, old lady. Do you know what that means? I’m guessing not but believe me, you bitches will soon learn. You think you’re the first dumb sluts to join up and think youth and an available pussy will get you to the top. There is a hierarchy here and I’m above you and always will be. You’ll be lucky if I don’t mark you permanently with the shards of one of them bottles. How far do ya’ think you’ll get as a scarred hag?”

“How pleasant,” Shana remarked and lazily nocked an arrow to her bow and half-raised it in Tracy’s direction. The unspoken threat clear. “Can we kill her?”

“Not yet. Tracy, I must regretfully inform you that we aren’t new recruits,” I told her. “I came specifically for that useless prick you threw to the floor like the piece of trash he is. Play nice and you just might get out of this in one piece.”

“Torin?” came the curious question from a dazed Keith who had finally got onto his knees and peeked over the bed to see who had come in.

My merciless gaze switched to him, and the blood left his face. Keith had taken a class. He was a level three Courier. Another piece of the puzzle slotted into place.

“It wasn’t me,” he gasped as he scrambled backwards and banged the back of his head on the closet door. “It was Bruce. All Bruce. I tried to stop him, I did.”

“Keith,” I said slowly. “You are one dumb motherfucker. Innocent people don’t try to pass the blame before they’ve even been accused of any wrongdoing.”

Keith gulped and there was the unmistakable sound of trickling as a pool of urine formed where he was sitting.

“I know you betrayed Mia and Malky to these Hellhound bastards and you are going to tell me everything.”

“Like hell, he will,” Tracy muttered and summoned a dagger from her inventory and threw it at Keith.

Her throw proved ineffectual as both Anastasia and Shana reacted to her actions at the same time. Ana’s Drainer’s whip wrapped around her throwing arm and ruined her aim. Shana’s arrow embedded itself in her temple. An instant kill shot that robbed the throw of the necessary force to do any damage. It only flew a few feet and landed on the soiled mattress of the double bed.

“Bloody Nora, Shana. Give a girl a chance to drain the trash first will you,” Anastasia complained.

“I’m sorry.” Shana smiled winsomely and pulled the shorter blonde in for a hug that Ana tried to squirm out of.

Meanwhile, Fang Mei padded across the room silently, drawing her chaos daggers. She put one under the trembling Keith’s chin and forced him to his feet and then kicked his bare ass, so he fell forward on the bed that was rapidly being stained red. Shana had retrieved her arrow from Tracy’s dead skull and the body had flopped over and was leaking blood onto the sheets.

“Guh, guh, guh,” Keith gurgled through his sobbing and snot bubbles.

“Pathetic,” Anastasia grumbled as she sniffed at some of the open bottles, searching for anything drinkable that hadn’t been tainted by the current residents. I didn’t fancy her luck at finding any.

I sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed hold of the sobbing Keith’s ratty hair and pulled it back roughly, so he had to look up at me. The sharp tug seemed to restore the power of speech to the stoner in front of me.

“Please, don’t kill meeee,” he begged, the words coming out as a high-pitched whine.

I had no intention of making Keith any such promise.

“Tell me what I want to know, Keith. Or things are going to get very unpleasant for you. More unpleasant,” I added as the dribbling of his piss on the floor restarted.

“Stu…Studies have shown t…t…torture to be ineffective means of information gathering,” the stoner gabbled in a panic. “T…T…Torin, this isn’t you man.”

I nodded to Fang Mei behind Keith. She reached down between his legs, grabbed his flopping pecker and sliced the helmet off, condom and all. It hadn’t been quite what I’d expected her to do. We hadn’t discussed anything in advance which may have been a mistake. I thought she would just cut him a little, but it was certainly an effective move and got my point across.

Keith howled, more from fright than pain. Although he would feel plenty of that later, I was sure of it. While Keith caterwauled and struggled for freedom, I summoned a pair of manacles from my inventory and bound his hands behind his back and then slapped him until he settled down.

“Quit crying. It will grow back if you get your hands on the right potion. To answer you, before the apocalypse I wasn’t this kind of man, Keith. The Darkwyrlds has changed us all. Take you for example, before all this happened, I could have sworn you actually cared for Mia. Instead, I find you here, rutting with that skank while Mia is in the hands of a bunch of evil fucking bikers doing who knows what to her.” My grip on his hair tightened at the end and he wailed again but lost his voice as he saw the fury in my eyes. “I promise you will experience every horror and indignity she has endured three times over before you die.”

“T…Torin. It ain’t like that, I swear. Terror and his boys they ain’t touched her. Nu…Not like that. All they’re doing is making her work their farms. She took a class that makes her good with plants. That’s why they wanted her.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Anastasia called from the dresser. “Scum like this can’t get it up unless they’re raping somebody. It’s what gets their motor running”

“Nuh…nu..no. They’re all being abstinent. All the patched guys. I swear it on my life.”

“You certainly are,” Shana seethed angrily and kicked him hard in the side.

“Explain,” I demanded.

“They…they’re like the quiet girl with the knives behind me. Most of them, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Erm… the same species, I mean.”

“Cambion?” I asked him and pulled on his hair again.

“Yeah, that’s it. Cambions. They got some deal with a fella that’s calling the shots for the club to get their wings. Although it’s also supposed to help make their motorcycles work again, I’m not sure about that part. All I know is that sexual abstinence is part of it for some reason. That’s the only reason Terror’s old lady and the other club girls would have anything to do with us. None of the patched guys are allowed to fuck ‘em for three months. Mia too. You can ask the others; they’ll tell you the same.”

This was good news. Keith wasn’t off the hook, though. In a few months’ time all the horrible things I’d feared had taken place would have taken place. And he had let it happen.

“Where are they?”

“A golf course, not far from here. It’s where we built the farm. They have turned the golf clubhouse into their chapter’s clubhouse. I can take you there,” he offered, a smidgeon of hope in his voice.

Of course. The blasted golf course that Swartz Creek ran through. I knew the place. I had tried to get a job there when I first moved to Flint. It had been on my list of places to investigate because the creek connected to the river. I hadn’t needed the dilemma at all, bloody typical.

“I know the one you’re talking about. Tell me everything. Everything you know about this Terror and his men. Make me happy, Keith, and I’ll be inclined to mercy.”

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Ten minutes later he had spilt his guts and confessed everything.

I threw him a pair of jeans. “Put your trousers on. No one wants to see your bleeding pecker.” I smiled at my slightly British pun and looked about me for any recognition.

Nothing. My comedy genius was being wasted.

I noticed that Charlie was lingering at the door.

“Anything else upstairs?” I asked him.

“A few others we caught in flagrante delicto. We led them downstairs already. Bit of a bloodbath down there.”

“What the hell. Grab that asshole and drag him down with us,” I said pointing at Keith, and rushed down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

My concentration had been fully on Keith and Tracy, and I had somehow missed whatever had been going down here.

Any hopes that Charlie was exaggerating proved fruitless. LT and Tony Parks were waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. Behind them in the lounge where the music had been playing was a pile of dead bodies. I recognised Bruce’s body among them, his now vacant eyes staring into nothing. Considering how much dope he smoked, this wasn’t a major difference for him, dead or alive.

“What happened down here?”

LT looked to Tony, who answered me after a moment. “A bunch of crazy women is what happened here, Captain. We rounded them all up as you ordered. Had them under guard. One of my guys demanded they talk. The few gents present seemed amenable but that was when all hell broke loose. The women produced knives from their inventories and started knifing the dudes to death. We had to take most of them down. The casualties were all theirs.”

“Why weren’t the women cuffed with our manacles? They can’t access their inventory if they are cuffed” I demanded.

Tony squirmed on the spot and coughed apologetically. “Well, they were women…and they hadn’t put up any kind of fight.”

“So, you didn’t cuff them.”

“Not right away.”

“I’m disappointed, Tony. Do Shana, Ana, and Fang Mei strike you as wilting violets that can be taken for granted or are they three of the deadliest weapons in our arsenal? The damn Framework is a great equaliser. You can never take appearances for granted. This will not happen again.

“I’ll determine the punishment detail for you and the squads under your command when all this is done. They should have known better too.”

“Yes, captain,” Tony answered swiftly without even a twitch of resentment.

I was angry. Not all at Tony, though. The former prize fighter was loyal and a damn good warrior. Thoroughly dependable in a fight but he had blind spots out of direct combat as today’s little wrinkle had aptly displayed. My eagerness was as much at fault as Tony. First, we didn’t wait for Kristoff’s return from his visit to the Guard. Second, I’d sent LT to command the encircling forces precisely because he was more adaptable and then I’d been the one to leave Tony alone to handle the downstairs because I had been so eager to get my hands on Keith.

The most worrying element was that it exposed a weakness in my crew. How thin we were on able commanders. I leave Jackson behind and something like this happened.

My introspection was interrupted as Charlie shoved Keith from behind and he fell the last three or four steps and landed in a heap in the B&B foyer.

“Where are the other survivors?”

“We’ve already sent them back to the ship, Cap,” LT answered.

“Good. We’re done here. We’ll head back, do a quick bit of interrogation. Confirm what this jackass has told me.” I lightly kicked Keith who hadn’t got to his feet yet.

“I told you the truth, Torin, I swear.”

“We’ll soon find out. If they corroborate what you’ve said, you’ll spend a bit of time in my dungeon. If not, ever since I got my hands on my own pirate ship, I’ve fancied a good old-fashioned keelhauling. Marena’s Mercy doesn’t have any barnacles on the hull to gouge out your flesh, but Anastasia can fix that.”

“It would be my pleasure,” she called down to us as she descended the stairs.

“That won’t be necessary. I’m telling the truth, you’ll see. A bit of time in your dungeon will teach me a good lesson. I’m sure of it. Make me a new man,” Keith babbled, desperately trying to appease me.

So intent was he on reassuring me of his truthfulness he missed the smirks from my crew who knew precisely what fate awaited Keith in my dungeon. Along with the other Hellhound wannabe’s already back on the ship.

Giving Marena’s Mercy a little bit of energy for her growth would be the most worthwhile thing Keith would ever do with his life.

 

***

Chief Ballard

 

Chief Ballard sat in his office, the real office, not the makeshift command centre those National Guard jerks had set up at the medical centre, sipping his whiskey, neat. Ice was something of a rare treat these days, so he had to forego it. At least, until the winter and then Michigan would have more ice than they’d care for.

The Guard bastards had been throwing their weight around more and more lately. Stripping him of his authority bit by bit. He wouldn’t have it. He was the goddam Chief of Police for Flint and they would respect him. Not treat him like a piece of trash. They were as bad as those holier-than-thou FBI cocksuckers.

First, they got rid of the mayor. Admittedly, James Price had lost the plot. But if the mayor was incapacitated then responsibility for law enforcement fell to the Flint Chief of Police. Instead, they had James stand down and the Governor appointed Lieutenant Hernandez of the National Guard as the acting regional Michigan State chief of law enforcement over him.

It wasn’t even a real position and essentially existed for the sole purpose of cutting him out of the picture almost entirely. At least, that was how Ballard saw the situation. And how he saw the situation was how the situation was. You couldn’t get one over on him.

Half his officers had been killed in the upheaval of the first couple of weeks. Half again sided with that interloping fake and took orders from him now. Traitorous bastards.

The front door to the station opened and was allowed to slam shut.

Chief Ballard hated when people did that, and he gripped his whiskey glass tightly. Probably Johnson. He did it every time.

Sure enough, the chief’s suspicions were confirmed as officer Paul Johnson tapped on the glass of his office door before entering. At least, he got that part right.

“Chief.”

“Johnson, what did you find out?”

He’d sent Johnson south of the river an hour ago after a visitation from one of the guardsmen. Apparently, there was some VIP muckity-muck, a big league asskisser of the Governor who had come to town or something, and they had been ordered…Ordered! Damn those arrogant pricks.

Ordered to stay away from them and let them do as they pleased while they were in Flint.

Screw that and screw them. That is not how Chief Ballard did things in Flint. And how he did things was how things should be done.

“They got a ship alright. Fancy old-timey looking thing. And they look ready for a fight.”

Ballard nodded along and gestured for the officer to keep going.

“You know the B&B down by the golf course. The one our ‘friends’ were occupying.”

Ballard leaned forward all ears now.

“Well, they hit it. Cleaned the place out. I managed to sneak a look when they went back to their ship. There is a stack of dead bodies in there, fifteen, maybe more. Looks like the unpatched and a bunch of the ‘hounds old ladies. I reckon that’s what these folks are in town for. Must be some kind of special forces unit for Tricky Dicky, come to take out the ‘hounds. What are we going to do?”

Chief Ballard steepled his fingers and thought things over for a moment.

This confirmed his worst fears.

Then he got up from his creaky wooden chair and walked over to his office door. A quick glance on either side revealed no one was within earshot, but he closed the office door anyway. Not all the officers who had remained loyal to him had been on the Hellhounds payroll like him and Johnson.

Most, but not all. Better to take no risks.

He stalked back over to his desk, picked up his glass and slugged back the rest of the whiskey inside.

“The ‘hounds have been good to us over the years, Johnson. We’ve developed a mutually profitable association and I won’t stand to see that jeopardised. Not while we can do something about it. And we may need their help to take the city back from the Guard cocksuckers. But we don’t have the manpower to help directly and can’t let on to the Guard that we are disobeying them. Not yet.

“Report the crime at the B&B, but not at the sub-podia in this station. Go back over the river. There is an abandoned state police station over in charter town. You know the one?”

“Yes, chief.”

“Good. Take the Guard’s communique and make sure the description of Captain Carter is included. That should generate one of these quests to apprehend or kill him. Should be a generous one, fat with rewards for the crime of mass murder, I’d think. Then we can let every greedy adventurer type, hungry for gold and XP, do the dirty work for us. Our hands will be clean. Meanwhile, I’ll send the signal to Terror. Let him know what is coming his way. With any luck, the Governor’s hit squad will be caught in between a hammer and an anvil.”

Officer Johnson grinned wickedly and ran off. Letting the front door slam behind him as he exited the building much to Chief Ballard’s chagrin.

Chief Ballard left his office and walked over to the rickety stairwell at the back of the station. This was the only one that led up to the roof. It was time to hoist ‘Old Glory’. One of Terror’s people should see the flag and know that meant trouble was on the way.

A simple signal they had come up with the loss of mobile phone service and a ruse no one would suspect. What could be more American than flying the flag? And who would suspect them for not doing so until now, given the dire circumstances. No reason for Hernandez or any of his people to start asking questions.

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