Read Crusade (Eden Book 2) Online
Authors: Tony Monchinski
Crusade (Eden Book 2) (39 page)
“They’re gonna kill Buddy. Look at him,” she meant Sonny. “He was going to kill—”
“You should get your friends out of here,” Singh said. “Out of Clavius…”
“Julie,” Gwen said. “What the fuck are you thinking?”
“…for a few days, until this calms down. Otherwise they’ll never be treated fairly.” Sigh dropped down next to Sonny and started working on his thigh.
“You can’t go, Julie, look at you—”
“I shot him. I shot Sonny. I have to.”
“
Nooooo
!” Sonny bellowed in anguish.
“Come on,” Mickey said. “Gwen, give me a hand with—”
“No.”
“What?”
“I don’t want any part of this.” She shook her head. “You go and take him with you if that’s what you want to do.”
“You’re serious?”
She didn’t answer.
“Come on, Mickey.” Julie tried to lift Buddy.
“My daughter, my little girl…” Sonny cried.
“Sonny, listen to me.” Singh bound the man’s wounded thigh. “If this man is responsible for Torrie’s disappearance, killing him won’t help you find her. You know that.”
“Get out of the way, Julie.” Mickey tucked the 9mm in his waistband and pulled one of Buddy’s jacketed arms over his shoulders. “Get his bags.”
“You’re never going to get out of here,” Sonny promised between gritted teeth.
“Wait,” Singh said, standing and taking Buddy’s other arm, “I know a way we can go. Mickey, help me get Buddy there and then you stay. You stay and you help find Torrie. You talk to everyone and make them understand!”
“Yeah, okay,” Mickey sounded unsure.
“Kip!”
“Sonny, when calmer heads prevail—”
“Let’s go,” Julie said. There were voices and lights in the distance.
“Gwen.” The two women looked at one another. “Goodbye.”
Gwen didn’t say anything. She watched them go. Mickey and the doctor supported Buddy. Julie followed a few steps behind.
“
Nooooo
! Not like this—no!” Sonny howled and punched the ground. “Everything we went through—no! All that—not like this! No-no-
nooooo
!”
Gwen sat down in the snow next to him. Danny’s body laid a few feet away. She put her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and waited for the first of the people to arrive.
Panas sat in the break room at work the next night, alone at his table with a cup of coffee. Kieran, Sasha, and Mei mostly ignored him, talking low amongst themselves at another table across the room. He had his back to them and the door, alternating between staring into his cup of coffee and the bulletin board on the wall. When Eva entered the room, Kieran looked up at her, nodded, motioned to the others, then they all got up and left the room.
She walked over to the coffee pot and poured herself a mug.
“Panas.” She came over to his table and circled it.
“Eva.”
She sat down in a chair across from him. Eva placed her coffee mug on the table and unslung the assault rifle, placing it on its butt on the floor, the barrels leaning against the table.
“You like the nightshift?”
“It gives me time to think,” he said.
He knew why she was here.
“What do you miss most about that place
Eden
?”
Panas thought about it.
“We used to sit out in the evening, watch movies. Harmon—Mickey, that is—had a huge collection. Sometimes when we’d watch a film, I’d forget where I was. What was going on around me.”
“Mickey and his movies. I thought Lauren was bad, but that guy,” the door behind him opened and Panas noticed Eva didn’t look up to see who it was, “he takes the cake. You know he has the plague?”
“Mickey?”
“Yeah, it’s true. Sonny told me.”
“Well.” He noticed she did not drink her coffee. “Damn.”
“Mmmm. Let me ask you a question, Panas. You got a first name?”
“Nick.”
“Nick. Okay, Nick, let me ask you a question. You said you like the late work. Gives you time to think. When the doctor and the pregnant bitch carted that baby killer out of here, what were you thinking when you let them go?”
Panas picked up his coffee and sipped it.
“I thought someone would kill them. Kill Buddy. Sonny’s daughter?”
“Torrie is still missing. But you and I know, we know, she’s not going to turn up alive, is she?”
“I really hope she does.”
“Sonny is…He’s a broken man,” she said. “This Buddy—he that important to you?”
“The Buddy I knew—” Panas said, “if he is responsible—the Buddy I knew
wasn’t
a bad man. He came to Eden and he helped us all out. He—Graham, Markowski…” Panas knew she wasn’t listening to him. He knew she had made up her mind, so he stopped.
“Your friend, Mickey? He should have run while he had the chance. Nick, let me tell you what I’m going to do when I’m done here talking to you. I’m going to go and wake Mickey up, take him for a ride. Out into the woods. We’ll stop and we’ll go for a walk. Not too far. And then I’m going to kill him. Do you want to know what I’m going to do after that?”
Panas picked up his coffee cup and sipped.
“I’m going to hit the woods and track down your friend Buddy and his little entourage. They couldn’t have gotten too far. Not with your friend the way he is. Not with the pregnant bitch in the condition she’s in.”
“That’s what you’re here for now, isn’t it?” Panas asked. “You’re here to kill me too?”
“No.” Eva leaned her chair back against the wall and clasped her hands behind her head. “I’m not going to kill you.”
The garrote dropped around Panas’ head from behind and Hayden pulled it tight. The wire buried itself in his neck. His hands shot up to grab at it but it was already digging into the soft flesh of his throat and had opened him up. Blood ran down his neck and chest, his hands and forearms.
Eva put her chair back on all four legs, leaned across the table, and grabbed his wrists. She wrestled them down to the table and held them there while Hayden pulled back on the garrote. His face turned crimson, his legs kicked the table, his torso torqued in the chair, and the coffee mugs toppled, spilling their contents across the table top. Eva’s M16/M26 shifted and clattered on to the floor.
Hayden cursed between her clenched teeth. The veins in her forearms popped out.
Panas evacuated his bowels and died.
Hayden let him go and the corpse slumped across the table in a puddle of coffee.
“He stinks.”
“He shit himself,” Eva said. “Spilled my coffee too.” She bent over and picked up her assault rifle.
“You need a hand with that other guy?”
“No. I got help waiting for me.”
“Eva.
Thanks
.”
She looked at the younger woman.
“I know it doesn’t bring Danny back. But, I don’t know,” Hayden looked at the garrote in her hands, “it makes me feel better.”
“Mickey?”
It was the second time in as many nights that he was roused out of bed early, but this time he was pleasantly surprised.
“Lauren?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” She stood in the doorway of his room. She hadn’t turned on the fluorescents, but he could see her clearly from the ambient light in the hall.
“Hey, what’s up? What time is it?” He sat up in bed and pulled the sheet over his underwear.
“It’s real late. Or early, depending on how you look at it. I’m sorry to—”
“No, it’s cool.”
“I’d like to show you something, something beautiful.”
“Okay.” Mickey was eager.
“Put on something warm. We won’t be gone long. I’ll wait for you out here.”
“Okay.”
He watched her go. He stood up and stretched, his excitement mounting.
How cool is this
? The chick he was into, a chick he knew was into him, showed up in his room at three or four o’clock in the morning or whatever time it was. She wanted to show him something beautiful.
Awesome
. For a few moments he was able to forget about Julie and Buddy and the missing girl.
He pulled his sweat pants up to his hips and considered. Was she here for sex? He pulled the elastic of his boxer shorts forward and looked down at himself. Maybe he should chub up?
Nah
, no time. And if she was taking him outside in the cold it would defeat the purpose. He pulled his sweat pants up the rest of the way and hastily laced his boots.
He found the 9mm but left the holster on the dresser, sticking the pistol instead in the back of his pants. He slept in a white t-shirt, so he pulled a light flannel shirt on over it.
When he stepped out into the hall it was empty. There was a low electrical hum from somewhere in the dormitory.
“Lauren?”
There was no reply.
Maybe she was waiting for him up ahead or outside in the night. With a smile spreading across his face, he strutted across the hallway like a rooster. The pockets of his sweat pants were inside-out, flopping at his hips like a dog’s ears. He passed Gwen’s closed door and stepped into the common area they all shared.
The blow to the back of his head knocked him down.
He managed to push himself up, getting most of his upper body off the carpet, his is head throbbing, not comprehending—
The second blow put him down.
When Mickey regained consciousness he was very cold and couldn’t see anything. There was something pulled down across his eyes and nose. His mouth was bound with tape. He tried to talk but couldn’t. Instead he mumbled futilely, moving his head side to side. They had a hood or something over his face.
He was in a vehicle of some sort. He could feel it moving beneath him. His hands were bound at the wrists. Try as he might he could not free them.
There were two voices talking in front of him but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
When the Jeep stopped, Eva put her hand on his neck and dragged him from the backseat. He tripped and fell from the vehicle, landing in the snow. He protested behind the tape and hood.
“Shut up,” she said, pushing him forward with the barrels of her assault rifle.
Mickey staggered forward a few steps unseeing, tripping and falling again.
“Get up.”
“He can’t see, Eva,” Lauren said.
“You want to see? You want to see where the fuck you are?” Eva ripped the hood from his head.
They were standing on the side of a road, trees stretching out on either side of it. Someone must have plowed in the last couple of weeks because there were mounds of snow packed on the sides. Mickey thought this was strange. The sky above and behind them was purple-black. The horizon in front of them lightened with the dawn.
The Jeep was parked in the road. Eva and Lauren stood looking at him. Eva had murder in her eyes and the assault rifle at her hip. Lauren looked bewildered and had the MP-40 at her side on its sling.
“Looking for this?” She held his 9mm in her hand. “Say bye-bye.” She winged it off into the trees on the opposite side of the road.