A Blood of Killers Read online

  I destroyed my little girl’s life. In return, she’s shared the truth of death with me.

  Nina’s inside the house now. She’s coming upstairs. She’s in the bedroom, listening to me.

  Would you like to say something into the recorder, Nina? Can you laugh for them?

  No?

  Such serious eyes. What does she see?

  I’m picking her up and carrying her in the crook of my arm as I tour the house. It’s much smaller than the other one, of course. The smell of kerosene is making me nauseous. Nina isn’t complaining. Are you okay?

  She’s so brave.

  The firemen are coming to put out the fire. Too late, of course. The fire is leaping up the stairs. The floor is getting hot. Smoke is coming in through the baseboard trim of the walls, through the electrical sockets, from under the door.

  Fire breaks the silence between us, snapping and crackling. Fire lights the darkness, makes shadows dance.

  Nina is holding on to me very tightly. She’s so still. I’m the one trembling. Because she’s not fighting what’s happening, like this is what she really wants and she’s happy and at peace, at last.

  “The Ash Man is coming.”

  That was her. I’m glad you got to hear her voice.

  “I know.”

  And I do. I can feel him coming. Right out of her, ravenous to consume our conjoined sadness like he consumed Gloria, my girlfriend and her daughter.

  “He’s almost here.”

  “Don’t cry, Nina. The Ash Man can’t hurt us.” She never wanted the Ash Man to come. She never wanted to be a monster. At least I have that small piece of redemption.

  At last, I feel like a father.

  “We’ll be gone by the time the Ash Man gets here.”

  THE MULE

  It had been a while since Max rode a train for work.

  The car swayed back and forth to the rhythm of wheels rolling over rail joints. Late Spring countryside, with new crops and livestock neatly divided and parceled in the fashion of civilization, seemed to crawl past the small windows, as if on an endless conveyor belt filled with heaps of cereal on their way to boxing factories and cattle to the slaughterhouse.

  Isolated farmhouses and small towns clung like overripe fruit to the thin vines of roadway between fields. Max felt as if he only had to make a selection and the train would stop, allow him to get off to satisfy his appetites in privacy and at his leisure before resuming his journey.

  He could taste the blood. The air, chilled to an early morning bite, would carve the smoke of cities from his lungs and let him roar like an engine destined to run through the end of the line to its destruction.

  The Beast slid and rolled itself through him like a gorged snake tasting the memory of its hunger in the air.

  Max closed his eyes for a moment. Those days were gone. Times were different, as were places. He opened his eyes back to the world of his reality before someone came along to kill him.

  Mr. Tchask gave his ticket to the conductor and fidgeted in his aisle seat, his bulk raising annoying squeaks while he glanced at Max as if searching for the answer to an unspoken question. According to the file, he and Max were about the same age, but he appeared a decade older. He’d covered up the eyes tattooed on his lids with makeup, which made him slightly less disconcerting to the civilian population. With his round face and loose, flowing pants and shirt that might have been more appropriate in a tropical setting, he resembled an unshaven Buddha and had drawn looks from the conductor and older passengers getting on board. Thick but nimble fingers worked a thread of prayer beads, though he’d denied he was actually chanting any religious appeals to spirits or himself.

  The conductor took Max’s ticket, moved on. Max turned away to stare through the window. He’d already memorized the car.

  College students were strewn across rows of seats all around them like piles of ragged, abandoned clothes. Closer to the front, an elderly couple sat dozing. A family had conquered the cozy set of seats facing each other on both sides of the aisle next to the sliding door to the next car and the bathrooms. Three young boys in their midst were lost in hand-held electronic games; two interrupted their play to argue in what sounded from a distance like English accents until their mother intervened. The third, the oldest but still no more than eleven or twelve, stared at Mr. Tchask without expression. Max worried the family might become a distraction later if a firefight broke out.

  It was that kind of a job.

  The air was musty, tainted by the smell of chemical cleaners, as if someone had very recently vomited on the multi-shaded, vertically striped orange fabric seat. The Beast found three women within ten feet and urged Max to get up, take a walk, look. All it wanted was a look.

  Max gave his demon room to play in his mind. He was on the job, but it wasn’t time yet to actually work. Feeling a little warm, he wanted to take off his sport coat, but then the Beretta would be exposed. He settled for undoing another shirt button and feeding the Beast bits of old murder.

  Drifting on currents of memories and hunger promised more entertainment than paying attention to Mr. Tchask.

  Even though he hated dwelling on the past, or his hunger. Remembering only made the past seem worse than what it had seemed like when he’d lived it. And letting the Beast run with its desires made it harder to control.

  Still, the only other option was Mr. Tchask.

  He could have solved the problem by killing Mr. Tchask, himself. But that wasn’t his mission. He was supposed to wait for the death Mr. Tchask’s presence invited, and when it arrived, kill it. For a change, his employers were on the side of life. Which made the assignment perilously close to bodyguard duty.

  But his contact hadn’t included the man’s survival in the mission parameters. His superiors were becoming too clever for their own good. He supposed Mr. Tchask was expendable. He certainly wasn’t going to risk his own life saving someone else’s.

  He’d been told the attempt on Mr. Tchask’s life would most likely come on the train. So death was riding with them. Max wished they’d hurry on with the game.

  The Beast curled around the imaginary throat of one of the college co-eds, shutting off just enough of her breath to keep her from screaming, but giving her enough to understand she was dying.

  In the modern world, death arrived like the mail: by air and by road. The people important enough to have someone like Max sent to assassinate them lived in cities, strongholds from which they could wield their power. Reaching them never required long rides on crowded trains.

  At the worst, the flights were long, but on commercial planes he usually traveled first class, and always with the seat next to his empty. On military transports, he was the only cargo. He’d have to go back to the days right after the war, when he was still killing military officers, drug dealers, revolutionaries and other minor entrepreneurs far on the outskirts of true power throughout Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and South America, to remember having to make do without, at the very least, parachute drops and helicopter pick-ups. In those days, he’d often been forced to ride the rails.

  The Beast had strained even harder back then to break Max’s attempts at restraint in the face of temptation, making those long journeys locked in tight quarters with prey such torture. He’d been so young and hungry, accustomed to depending on the Beast for survival. The further he’d ventured from the small and savage world of his Calcutta upbringing, the greater the danger he’d found in relying on the Beast for handling every situation. Those early journeys had been tense affairs, harder to complete than the missions on which he’d been sent.

  There’d been times when he hadn’t been able to hold back, when the Beast had feasted on the small and weak and compromised the mission. Once, he’d had to jump off the train to avoid authorities; another, wound himself and lose himself among survivors. Only his duty officer had seen through the ruse.

  Still, for most of the old train trips, he’d relied successfully on lessons learned in sharin
g company and curbing appetites during his military service in the Asian jungles. His first commanding officer often resorted to keeping him tied up in transit aboard crowded trucks and helicopters simply to keep his violent nature from randomly taking out his comrades. Sitting next to you, a sergeant once told him, makes it easy to jump into a hot landing zone.

  Lectures and lessons in law and personal public conduct, military training and discipline, stockade time, bunkhouse beatings, deliberate friendly fire, had all served to educate him about the cost of surviving a world more complex than running or fighting his way through the streets. But those lessons had only gone so deep before being swallowed in the darkness of his rage.

  He hadn’t thought of the score of prisoners shot in the head in his cell one night, by his last trainer, since the night he’d been bathed in their blood. But he’d lived since then with message those bodies had taught him: he would die if he couldn’t serve.

  That was the lesson that shined through the night of his being, all the way to the bone-littered roots of his rage. Even the Beast, after first feeding on the bodies left in the cell, recognized after a few days that it could not survive the machinery of war in which it had been recruited. It was a mad thing, demonic and uncaring, yet the demonstration of superior power had touched its twisted heart. It did not want the feast of flesh and terror to end, and came to trust, as far as it could, Max’s perceptions of the world through which they traveled. The Beast learned to at least feel the whip of Max’s will.

  Slowly. It still bucked and threw him off, less frequently as the months and years passed and he grew older, stronger. But there were still days when he had to work so hard not to kill for pleasure when working. The Beast was forever re-learning that first true lesson: survival depended on surrendering its need. Too often, it forgot that Max would see to their pleasures.

  It was as if the Beast couldn’t remember they were true brothers in nature.

  Max rubbed his forehead with two fingers, massaging the twinges of a headache.

  A fog of unpleasant memories was not what he wanted filling his mind at the moment. He might as well be talking to Mr. Tchask.

  Much more entertaining were the Beast’s fantasies about what it would do with three co-eds trapped in the bathroom. The scenario made a little time pass, but even the Beast became bored with imaginary atrocities. It wanted real violence.

  Mr. Tchask said something. Max didn’t understand the words. All he heard was the screaming in his mind. He gave his companion a look. Mr. Tchask paled. The cloth gathered at his crotch darkened with his own piss. Either Max had frightened him, or he’d asked for backup in going to the bathroom because he couldn’t hold himself anymore. Max didn’t care, either way.

  All that mattered was the killing. If his masters were right, the Beast would get a taste of death. But only a taste. Trains were not places for feasting.

  Which didn’t mean train journeys couldn’t end in feasts. Max fished out fragments of the old kills, feeding the Beast their past like pieces of regurgitated meat, hoping to quiet its demanding voice.

  They’d often found good hunting grounds blooming with the change of seasons and local politics just off railroad tracks. Like interstate highways with rest stop parking lots filled with trucks on their way elsewhere, the peripheral and transitory nature of communities that came to exist along the rails had served Max’s needs for discretion. Young runaways, the homeless, itinerant workers, the dispossessed and the disinterested all congregated like wandering tribes at abandoned stations, dead towns, failed industrial parks and dumps along the rail ways for the comforts of a temporary shelter far from authoritarian eyes. Victims washed in on stray currents, became trapped in eddies, waiting to drown or be plucked from one danger to another. Traffickers and thrill seekers, as well as predators, moved easily through these lawless enclaves, taking advantage of people and circumstances.

  Riding the trains to satisfy their hunger had, at one time, offered a welcome diversion from the stale and sometimes overtaxed hunting grounds in the cities. But Max’s growing professional popularity left him with less time to spend on the rails for pleasure, or even work. His targets changed. He spent most of his time in metropolitan centers,

  It had been a while since he’d been on a train for any reason.

  The Beast strained against Max’s hand, baited by the scent of fear rising from Mr. Tchask. Max took a deep breath.

  No.

  Wait.

  Of course, the wait was sure to pass as if supervised by a master torturer, more painful with the passing of time, never fading into numbness, always rising to new heights of clarity sharpened by need. Jets were not a substitute for trains. Traveling at high altitude hid the small and fragile parts of the world that interested Max, and airports and their surroundings had been reduced to necropoli sterilized by the needs of commerce. He missed catching sight of quarry scat in the hypnotically scrolling view from a train window: smoke, graffiti, lonely piles of clothing, odd and pointless constructs, shanties nearly hidden by trees, faint trails in the brush. He missed getting off at random stations others shunned and discovering gateways to the worlds he’d come from, the worlds in which he felt most comfortable.

  Places where screams thanked the Beast when it released them from their prisons of fleshy throats.

  “Are you ready yet to move over here?” Mr. Tchask asked.

  His words floated to the surface of Max’s dreams, flattening the tempestuous nature of their comfort.

  Max could only think of the urine soaked seat. The man seemed intent on provoking the Beast.

  A bodyguard would have taken the aisle seat right from the start of the trip. Yes. And stood outside the bathroom while Mr. Tchask relieved himself. But Max was aware of what was happening in the car even while looking out the window. Even as he dreamed. Words might elude him, but death never would.

  “No,” Max said, forcing himself to answer Mr. Tchask’s question so he would stop asking it.

  “But you’re supposed to be protecting me.”

  “No.”

  “Then what do you think you’re doing here?”

  “I’m going to kill the people after you.” Max’s frustration added an edge to his voice. They’d been riding for a while, and he’d been living in memories for most of that time. In the reality of the world flashing past him, he hadn’t found the scat of lost humanity. The hidden homeless and hobo camp grounds were empty. The old factories abandoned. There’d been no new hope to toss to the Beast to keep it quiet.

  Mr. Taschk was looking better every moment.

  The Beast shuddered in Max’s belly.

  Max thought the train should be coming alongside a river, soon, with a few dying industrial towns on its banks. Humanity’s sick elephants and wounded lions might have gone to them to die alongside the broken and the weak trapped in the ruination. Perhaps he could find a commune. A reason, any reason, to take the train back home and make a few recreational stops along the way to wash away the mission’s aggravation.

  The Beast still wanted Mr. Tchask.

  “I didn’t realize I was going to be bait,” Mr. Tchask said, summoning as much indignity as his body could hold.

  He looked ridiculous. “You should think more clearly.”

  “What if I’m killed first?”

  “Our employers must not value your life as much as you think they do.”

  The clatter of wheels rolling over tracks filled the silence between them.

  “I’m carrying very important information.”

  Max turned to Mr. Tchask, drilling into the soft flesh of his face with a stare as if searching for a worthwhile scrap of meaning in a desert full of sand. “It must be more important to remove the individuals who want this information than it is to save the actual information,” Max said. “I’m starting to believe these travel arrangements were made to lure those individuals into a controlled environment in which I can do my work. You’ll find, Mr. Tchask, that people like me are sent
to handle the source of a problem, not its consequences. Your danger is only a consequence.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My mission. Your mission.”

  Mr.Tchask closed his eyes. The makeup had smudged, and the tattooed eyes peered out from under his brow with fierce intensity. His shoulders relaxed; the prayer beads slipped from his fingers. A subtle change came over his face, as if a mask had fallen away.

  “You don’t know what my mission is.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I have two. One for our masters.”

  “I don’t have masters.”

  “I was hoping to avoid this. It was enough to just to ride with you. Perhaps, to see you in action, though I’ve taken every precaution.”

  “You have another priority?” Max didn’t bother reaching for the gun. Anything that needed to be done could be handled with his bare hands.

  “You.”

  Max checked the doors, the sleeping bodies. The young boy from the corner family was staring at them again, though his expression was indifferent, as if he was watching a television commercial waiting for his favorite cartoon to come on.

  In Calcutta, Max could never have looked at anyone for as long. He would have been noticed, and that would not have been good for him. He spent so much of his life struggling not be noticed. And yet, here Mr. Tchask was telling him he had a personal mission involving him, implying he’d sought Max out, even manipulated the situation so they would be alone together for an extended period. It didn’t seem to Max a wise course of action to take.

  And it was another complication in a job with too many of them. Mr. Tchask’s so-called mission was no doubt a private concern, perhaps involving some kind of fetish for murderers. Max had run into the type before, men and women playing the role of victim, some even coming to him for lessons in the art of killing, or of surrendering.

  Mr. Tchask surprised him with the possibility of a need to mix play with work. The fear coming off of him didn’t seem to leave much room for pleasure.