7: Collateral Damage
The first rays of the morning sun were shining from behind our high school as we took one last look at it from the parking lot. Matthew stood on my left and Katrina stood to my right.
“I can’t believe it,” Katrina said.
“You guys want to get some breakfast?” Matthew asked.
“I’ve got to get to bed,” she said with a yawn. “Come here.” She hugged each of us, then opened her car door.
“Catch ya later,” I said.
“Yeah,” she replied, smiling, and drove off. Matthew looked over at me.
“You hungry?” he asked. “Let’s go get some breakfast.”
“I don’t know, dude. I’m pretty tired, and…”
“Please? Come on.” I looked at my friend, and my heart sank. I knew why he didn’t want to go home. Matthew’s real parents had been killed in an accident years earlier; his foster parents were horrible. His foster mother was a worthless drunken floozie, and his foster father was a violent drug addict. The guy was on steroids and routinely beat the **** out of my best friend.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go to my house and say hi to my mom, then we’ll go to Perkins, okay?”
“Cool!” Matthew said, smiling. We got into my car and made our way across town to wher I lived. I pulled into the driveway of my house, right behind my mom’s truck, and got out. I realized then that my neighbor was sitting on our front step.
“Mr. Decker?” I asked as I approached. “What’s going on? Are you okay?” He was smoking a cigarette. It was then that I realized there appeared to be blood spattered on him.
“Michael,” he said, not looking up at me. “I’ve got something to tell you. You don’t want to go in there.” His hushed, gravelly voice had a strange accent, sounding almost European.
“What? Why? Where’s my mom?” Mr. Decker stood up, and placed his hands on my shoulders.
“Michael, your mother is dead,” he said flatly, looking me in the eye.
“What?”
“Your mother is dead, Michael. She was murdered.”
“That’s…that’s not funny…you…”
“I’m not joking, boy. Don’t go…” I pushed past him and ran into the house.
“MOM!” I said as I stepped through our small porch. The inner door led to our kitchen, and it was open. What I saw next will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Our kitchen had been ransacked. The table and chairs were dumped over, and the walls had been stitched with machine gun fire.. Two men in dark suits were by the stairs, laying in pools of blood. One of them had a pistol in his hand, and some kind of submachine gun was laying on the floor.
My mother was lying face down on the floor, in a pool of blood. She had several bullet holes in her back. Blood was splattered on the counter and cabinets behind her, and her chair had been knocked over. I looked down at my mother’s body, and I felt cold inside.
“Mom…” The word came out as a raspy whisper. I turned around, and headed back out the door. On my way out, I noticed that my dog was lying by the door; he’d also been shot.
I stepped back out into the crisp morning air, eyes wide, not saying anything, not feeling anything.
“Mike?” Matthew asked.
“My mom is dead,” I said very quietly. “She…” I stumbled down off of our step and landed in the grass. On my hands and knees, I threw up violently. I stood up, shaking, and tears began to stream down my face. I turned to Mr. Decker.
“What happened? WHY? WHY DID THEY KILL MY MOM! WHY…” I was sobbing. Decker grabbed me. His hazel eyes were cold, and hard.
“Listen to me, boy,” he said. “Those men came for me. They just got the wrong house. I’m sorry. Your mother was…collateral damage. I heard the noise from my porch. When I found them, it was too late, but I killed them.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking badly. “Why did they want to kill you? Why did they kill my mom?”
“In another life, Michael, I made a lot of enemies. It seems my past has come back to haunt me. I thought I was safe here. I’m sorry. It looks like they just walked in and started shooting.”
“What am I going to do?” I asked. “I don’t have any family. I don’t…” I fell silent, and slumped down onto the grass. It was strange; at first I’d felt nothing, then it hurt so bad that I couldn’t stand it. Then…then it stopped. I looked up, and the tears stopped. I felt still inside, the pain a distant memory. It was like everything that was happening was just something I’d seen in a movie. For the first time in my life I felt the calm wash over me. Mr. Decker looked at me as I collected myself.
“Come with me, boy.”
“What?”.
“Come with me. I’ll take you in, give you a home. I…I owe you that much.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to find the ones that ordered this hit.”
“Are we going to kill them?” I asked, voice steadying.
“I can promise you that,” Decker replied, ice in his voice. “Let’s go. We need to go right now. From this moment on, you’re dead. We’ll get you a new name, a new life. You can’t take any of your things. You’ve got thirty seconds to start a new life, boy. Can you do it?” I nodded shakily.
“Wait,” Matthew said. “Take me with you. Please.”
“No,” Decker said. “I’m sorry young man, but…”
“TAKE ME WITH YOU!” Matthew almost screamed. “Take me with you or I’m going to the police.” Mr. Decker’s eyes narrowed, and his hand slid under his shirt. I froze, fearing he was going to pull out a gun.
“Please,” Matthew said, tears rolling down his face. “I can’t go back to that. I can’t do it anymore. Please.” Mr. Decker closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and nodded.
“Okay. Both of you, come with me, right now! We don’t have much time. He led us next door to his house, and told us to get into his Ford Explorer. He went into the house, and reappeared a few minutes later with two big duffel bags. He threw them in the back of his SUV, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
I took one last look at the little green house I’d grown up in. It looked so peaceful, bathed in the golden morning light. We rounded the corner and it was gone from sight. Mr. Decker produced a large satellite phone and placed call. I heard only half of the conversation.
“It’s me, Hawk. Yes. Yes. There’s a problem. They tried to do a hit on me. No. They hit the wrong house, killed a woman. Yes. They’re coming for us, Hawk. Get everyone together. We’ll meet at the usual place. If we don’t deal with this they’ll kill us all one by one. Yes. I’ll be there in a couple of days. Oh, one more thing. I’m not alone. I’ll explain when I get there.” He hung up.
“Your new life starts now, boy,” he said, not looking at me.
***
Austin and Rebecca sat together on my bed, wide-eyed, as I told my story. I leaned against the bathroom door, absentmindedly fiddling with a pen as I talked. The TV was on to frustrate anyone outside the room that might be trying to listen in.
I talked for more than half an hour. I told my only two friends nearly everything about myself in cold, detached detail. My own voice seemed distant to me as I recalled the empty, violent adrenaline rush my formative years had been.
I told them how Decker had taken us in and made us trainees of SWITCHBLADE. I told them as much about that organization as I could without compromising its few survivors. I then rolled up my left sleeve and showed them the tattoo there. It was a grinning skull, fiercely clutching a switchblade knife between its teeth.
Still I talked. I told my friends about that warehouse in Mexico where I’d killed my first man; that had been only a couple of months after my eighteenth birthday. I told them about the intense training Decker, Hawk, and Aryeh put us through, turning two boys into efficient, well-trained killers.
Rebecca squeezed Austin’s hand as I told them about the first time I got shot, and about when Aryeh, Doc, Ramirez, and Hudson were killed. Neither of them said anything as I talked, even after I explained about the destruction of Federov’s yacht, how I had killed Decker myself, and the end of SWITCHBLADE. Rebecca looked like she was going to cry by the time I finished, and Austin stared at the floor. Both of them looked up at me again as I told them about the tractor-trailer full of girls that EXODUS had contacted me about. Finally, I fell silent, and looked at the floor myself. It was awkwardly quiet in my dorm room then, save the chattering of the television.
“What are you going to do?” Rebecca asked finally.
“That depends on a lot of things, darlin’,” I replied, looking up at her.
“What do you mean?” Austin asked.
“Well,” I said, “you said you were going to go to the police. If you’re going to do that, I have to bug out again. Maybe they’ll catch me this time, probably not. I have other sets of ID, even other vehicles I have access to. I can walk out that door right now and you’ll never see me again. EXODUS will have to do the hit without me, and they might fail. If they fail, a bunch of young girls will spend the rest of their lives as sex slaves.”
“You…you won’t stop us from, you know, calling the cops?” Austin asked. I sighed.
“Guys, you’re my friends. Despite the fact that just about everything I’ve told you about myself is a lie, that much is true. You guys are my only friends, as a matter of fact. I wouldn’t hurt you. If that’s what you need to do, then I won’t stop you. I’ll be gone by the time they get here though, and I’ll be in another state in a few hours. But I won’t stop you.”
“You pulled your gun on me earlier,” Austin said steadily.
“WHAT?” Rebecca gasped.
“Yeah,” I said. “Reflex. Sorry about that.”
“You *******!” Rebecca snapped.
“Look, I didn’t point it at him. God damn, do I get a thanks for saving your life?”
“You…” Rebecca started, then fell silent. This is going well, I thought to myself sarcastically.
“Well…except for where I was really scared and almost died, it was kind of cool,” Austin said. Rebecca gave him an evil look.
“Austin, I’m sorry you got caught up in this. I’m sorry you got hurt, I really am. But I can’t just go. I have to do this, I have to help EXODUS. I need to do something good for once,” I said truthfully. They were silent. “How would you two like ten thousand dollars, then?” I asked.
“What?” they said simultaneously.
“That’s what I’m being paid for this. I don’t need the money. You two should take it, use it for school. Just don’t deposit it all at once; any transactions of ten thousand dollars or more are reported to the federal government. Put some in the bank, keep the rest in cash.”
“You’re bribing us?” Rebecca asked, crossing her arms.
“Consider it a thank-you for being there for me.”
“Well…I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “It just seems so…so…”
“Criminal?” I asked. “That it is.”
“I just feels wrong,” she said.
“I don’t tend to think of things in terms of right and wrong,” I said. “I think of things in terms of practical reality. The reality of this situation is if that truck isn’t intercepted, a bunch of young girls are condemned to a life of misery and suffering. There’re no-two-ways about it.”
“Can’t we just call the police and have them stop the truck?” Austin asked.
“No, we can’t,” I replied. “First off, I don’t have any idea where it’s going to be at, or when EXODUS plans to intercept it. I don’t get to know that until we start the op. Secondly, if I betray EXODUS, then I’ll have them trying to kill me too, most likely, and that’s more heat than I’d care to deal with. And even if I survive that, they cops’ll still probably want to know how I came by this information, and that’ll likely end up with me in prison. Forgive me if I don’t consider going to jail and being killed to be viable options.”
“I…see,” Rebecca said. I could see the moral quandary in her eyes. She was a sweet kid; all of this must’ve been a lot for her.
“Do you…do you ever think about the people you killed?” She asked then. What a rude question.
“I have nightmares every night. You…you have no idea.”
“Then why are you going back to it? You said you wanted to retire.” I wasn’t sure how to answer that one. I was silent for a long moment before responding.
“It’s…this is what I do,” I said slowly. “I understand that now. I’ve been trying so hard to be something I’m not. I feel like I’m suffocating. You…I can’t explain it any better than that.”
“Are they going to kill them? The slavers, I mean.” Rebecca asked.
“EXODUS always does,” I said bluntly. “Many of their operatives are former slaves themselves.” She just nodded.
“What should we do?” she asked Austin.
“I…,” he replied, looking into her eyes. “He saved my life. I can’t…you know.”
“I could point out that it’s because of my meddling that you two hooked up in the first place,” I said then, almost grinning. “But I won’t.”
“Yeah,” Austin said. “Hey Mike? I want to go with you.”
“WHAT?”
)
Loving it!! And to read it even for free....Thanks Nightcrawler.