Into the Shadows (27 page)

I decided not to call Viggo about it. He
expected information, and I didn't have much to give him yet. I
spent the day doing common chores and errands, snuck in a nap, and
then prepared to go meet with Fletcher again. With all my guns,
combat knives and extra ammo in a duffel bag, I watched the time
fly by until after nightfall. I grudgingly headed out, hoping
against odds for a calm evening. Yeah, right.

Fletcher was waiting for me at the same park
shelter. I set my duffel bag on a picnic table for his inspection.
He either wasn't a gun expert or just wanted to see what I had
available; either way, he quickly and casually looked at my
selection of firearms and seemed content. He then handed me a map
and got right down to business.

"Tonight," Fletcher began, "and for every
night agreed upon until I say otherwise, you will be on patrol."
While he spoke, I pulled out a pen light and looked at the map.
"There are three parks I've marked, as you can see." Fletcher
paused, and then continued. "Mr. Beck . . ." When he said nothing
more, I looked over at him. I shouldn't have done that. Those damn
burning eyes were waiting for me again.

"You will search those parks - my parks - for
any criminal activity or unwanted elements and remove them with
prejudice," Fletcher demanded, drilling the order into my brain.
"For every shift, meet me here soon after sunset to receive my
orders. You will begin your tours at 10 p.m. and return to your
home at 4 a.m., spending time patrolling one park each night. Take
only necessary risks, but do what you must. For now, I don't care
if you kill them, hurt them, or simply scare them off, but I want a
lasting impression to be made. I want the poison of crime and fear
purified. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, elder, I understand." Fletcher was
forcing me to be an enforcer, a vigilante. I had to imagine it was
a military operation so that I could do whatever was needed and
still be able to live with myself.

I started right there in Green Valley Park.
First, I drove the lanes to acquaint myself with them. At the same
time, I kept in mind certain places where people could park or
gather without being seen too easily. Other than a young couple
getting busy in the back of a car, the big park was quiet that
night. It gave me time to assess the other two parks by their
locations. One was a couple miles south of my house, so I was aware
of the area . . . and it wasn't good. The other was further north,
sitting next to the rail yards. That was near where I grew up, so I
knew it wasn't exactly a slice of heaven, either.

I stayed diligent and mobile - whether by car
or on foot - for the rest of the night. Nearing four in the
morning, the effects of Fletcher's mind whammy started to wear off.
Pressure slowly released from my brain, like a fist unclenching and
loosening its control of me. It may sound weird, but I never
noticed that pressure the whole time I was under his control. The
one side-effect, aside from the dishonor of being used, was that I
was fucking exhausted from staying on high alert for hours.

I met with Fletcher again the next night, and
he forced me to meet his glowing gaze again. From there, I drove to
the south-central park - Spire Park - and circled it a couple times
in my car. On one end of the forty-acre park was an old ball
diamond with a sagging backstop, plus a tennis court with graffiti
all over the asphalt. The middle of the park was sparsely treed
with a few gang-marked benches here and there. At the other end of
Spire Park was a rusty and littered playground that no children
should've played in unless they were brave and recently had tetanus
shots.

Once on foot, every weapon I owned except my
rifle was on me, all fairly well concealed under my long jacket. In
most cases, I figured it would be best to act like I owned the
fucking place and intimidate any scumbags out of the park before I
actually shot at them. A gun's report scares people, but it would
also get the cops on my ass. I had to walk a thin line but do what
was needed to make an impression. For the smaller park, I had
little chance to put my stealth training to work. Bold aggression
was the best tactic.

And I used it that very first night in Spire
Park. From the cover of a big, dead tree, I saw three figures
hanging out over by the jungle gym. It looked like young teens
passing around a joint and a bottle. After taking a deep breath, I
walked quickly across the slight downhill grade toward them with
both 9mm's in my hands. By the time those idiots noticed me I was
only fifty feet away, guns up and going right at them. "You're not
welcome here," I said just loud enough for them to hear.

Their surprise turned to alarm pretty quick.
"Motherfucker," one of them yelled, "what -"

I started shooting close to their feet; the
bullets made soft noises hitting the dirt. Even without the flash
and bang that the silencers suppressed, the young punks knew what
was going on. I was raising my barrels as I came closer. One bullet
hit an outer edge of one kid's baggy pants, and another made a hole
in the billowy shirt of the kid next to him. They jumped back and
started running.

One kid tripped over part of the jungle gym
in his haste to get away and landed hard. Before he could scramble
back to his feet, I stood over him with both guns pointing at his
face. "If you ever come back here," I growled, "it will be the last
time you and your friends go anywhere. I'll spread chunks of you
all over this park. Do you understand me?" It took a second, but
the kid fearfully nodded. I took a step back. "Now get the hell out
of here."

As I expected, they started yelling their
threats once they were all far enough away. I didn't know if they
were part of a crew or not, but sooner or later I'd point my gun at
someone that was. I figured Spire Park was claimed by a gang -
hopefully a small group of losers, but I doubted it. I was gonna
have to get a ski mask or something, get my rifle threaded for a
silencer, and be extra damn careful.

The realization that I was basically starting
turf wars without any backup of my own made me queasy.

USED

"Elder, it's going to get worse before it
gets better," I said three nights later to Fletcher under the roof
of the park shelter as rain poured down. "And when it gets worse, I
won't be able to handle all that shit on my own. Here," I gestured
out toward Green Valley Park, "it's big enough that I can move
around and have fallback positions, so that's okay. But at Spire
and Colby Parks, there're only a couple decent sniper locations and
nowhere to go if I'm flushed out."

I was under his mind-control command Gift at
the time, and he'd asked what the general situation was. There'd
been a couple other encounters after those first ones. In both
Green Valley and Spire, I noticed cars slowly driving around, more
than likely looking for me. I planned on letting them do their lazy
recon and let them think the attack was random. Then I'd come at
them hard.

In Colby, a heavily wooded park that offered
more privacy, I pulled a would-be rapist off of a girl in his
backseat and took my anger out on him. I tied him up and made an
anonymous 911 call, although it was tough to do while she was
screaming at him. She didn't even notice that he was unconscious.
The short incident made the news. The girl was quoted in the paper:
"A white man with big blue eyes in a ski mask pulled that b******
off me and then f***** his s*** up". The 'bastard' I pulled off her
turned out to be a Barrio Mob member, so I figured they claimed
Colby Park as part of their territory.

Gwen told me that as gangs went, the Barrio
Mob was one of the bigger ones in town. Not exactly what I wanted
to hear. I never asked about her source - a police contact was a
fair guess. In any event, I was just glad that I had Gwen as my
info guru. She also gave me the name of a gun shop that could
thread my Remington and had the correct suppressor in stock. I
offered to repay her with a nice lunch, knowing she'd press me for
details about my new employer then. I planned on keeping my lies
simple.

"I understand, Mr. Beck," Fletcher said. He
said it with a tone that implied he might've understood but simply
didn't care. "Now is the time to truly enforce my issue." He
grabbed my shoulder and leaned close. "Strike hard, take the fight
to them. Make them remember." Damn that Gift of Control. I wanted
to scream out that innocent people might get hurt, but I couldn't.
My worry of civilians in the crossfire was mixed with strategies to
do exactly as he said no matter who got hurt. "With more of an
impact you make, the sooner I can move you on to other
targets."

"What other targets, elder?"

"Did you think that the criminals in my parks
were the beginning and end of this city's contamination? No, Mr.
Beck, they are a result of a greater filth that fostered their
growth. Industries and corporations not only belch pollution into
the earth and sky, they also spread their corruption into the
society of man. Discontent, poverty, greed, fear - that is what
leaders of commerce create and rely on to build their false
empires! Their injustices must end!"

Fletcher was about to lose his cool, and I
didn't want to be around when he did. Especially when I noticed
that his fingernails had grown into thick three-inch claws. "I
understand, elder," I said, backing away. "I'll continue with my
current mission until you say to move forward with your goals."

He dismissed me with a throaty grunt. I felt
safer once I was in my car, but still broke a few traffic laws
getting the hell out of there. Okay, so I was going to be working
my way up; dealers and thugs were just the beginning. I hoped
Fletcher wasn't expecting me to start knifing CEOs in their
offices, but I didn't put it past him.

Back at Spire Park once again, I soon saw the
same big SUV circling the area. I crouched in a good spot of bush
and tree cover and waited for a clear shooting zone where there
weren't any parked cars. The first .308 bullet hit high in the
front windshield. I was able to get another shot off before the
driver hit the gas and wild sprays of gunfire came from the lowered
back windows. Even with using a bolt-action and having to reload
once, I still put at least seven big holes in that SUV before it
drove out of sight.

Back at home about an hour before dawn, I
called Viggo to give a report. He told me not to give it over the
phone, and that he'd 'arrive' soon. Half an hour later, he
void-walked into my dark bathroom; for some reason, that unnerved
me more than normal.

When I told Viggo about Fletcher's goal for
me to be a serial killer of corporate types, he wondered aloud,
"I'm not sure how much assistance I can offer to thwart your
efforts, and I'm not sure that I should. If you continually failed,
you'd lose both credibility and your current position with Mr.
Fletcher. Is it feasible to simply wound your targets from a safe
distance?"

I thought about the damage that even a small
caliber bullet fired from a sniper rifle could do to an arm or leg.
"Uh, I suppose that's possible, sir," I answered, "but only if my
target is standing in front of a hospital with a trauma team
waiting. The poor bastard wouldn't make it very far otherwise."

"It's that effective, eh?" Viggo asked,
looking away with a thoughtful expression.

His question didn't need an answer, so I used
the lull of conversation to express my main concern. "Sir, I'm not
sure why I'm being allowed to be put in this position, and it's not
my place to ask. It's just that Fletcher . . . he's using me,
forcing my mind. It's like mental rape. Maybe I have too much
pride, but it's humiliating. I come home at night literally sick to
my stomach. I feel fucking degraded. Not to mention that I'm
pissing off dangerous people. Is there some other way I can carry
out your orders?"

Viggo leaned forward in the chair and
solemnly replied, "It must be this way for now, Leo."

I don't mind saying that I was depressed as
hell right then. My commander was making me serve one demented hemo
after another. I hardly had to deal with Ragna's abuse anymore, but
then I got rented to some Outsider bad-ass who mind-fucks me into
being a tool for his sociopathic vision. And Viggo was letting it
happen. Worst of all, I wasn't given a reason why I was being made
to endure all that shit. There was no anger at Viggo for it, just a
deep sadness that he didn't trust me enough to tell me.

BLOODLUST

Two nights later, I was walking through a
lightly wooded section of Colby Park. At that moment I was
wondering what white collar targets Fletcher had in mind, when I
heard the inarticulate shout of a male voice somewhere ahead of me.
I couldn't tell whether the yell was one of alarm or pain when it
rang out and then cut short. I kept low and sped up my pace.

In front of me was a thicker stand of trees
plus some underbrush, with a small clearing just beyond. Scraping
through bushes might have ruined any chance for surprise, so I
hurried around to a clearer path. I zigzagged through trees and
came to a stop just before the clearing. I wasn't expecting what I
saw, and it made me hesitate for a second.

There were two men on the ground ten feet
away from me - one prone, and the other kneeling next to him. For a
split second, I thought they were in some sort of gay lover's
embrace. That is, until I saw all of the blood. The guy lying on
the ground was pulled up against the other dude, who had his mouth
clamped on the guy's neck.

The guy on the ground looked middle-aged,
dressed conservatively, and was pretty much dead. One of his legs
twitched, but his arms were limp at his sides and his eyes stared
up at the night sky. The dude kneeling next to him - obviously a
goddamn hemo - looked like a young hitchhiker that you knew better
than to offer a ride to.