Last Light Falling (24 page)

“There right here,” he says as he slowly reaches underneath the counter.

Instead of reaching for the keys, he attempts to grab an old Colt Python pistol, but before he pulls the trigger, I backhand my sword and swiftly swing down, cutting off his hand with the gun still attached. The man violently screams and falls to the floor, holding his severed wrist.

“Since when do keys look like guns?” says Gabe.

“If you wish to keep your other limbs, tell me where the keys are!” I demand.

He points over to the back of the counter beside some leaflets hanging on the wall, where the keys are located. Gabe grabs them, locks the door, and pulls down the shades.

“Now, I’m going to give you a chance to redeem yourself if you so desire,” I say. He nods his head. “Do you believe in God?” I ask.

He struggles to contain the pain from his severed hand. “I don’t know,” he whimpers.

“For the sake of argument, let’s say you do believe in God. Do you believe you deserve to live?” I ask.

“Yes!” he yells, trembling and backing up against the shelf.

“Do you think He would forgive you of the evil pandering you have partaken in?” I ask, pacing back and forth behind the counter.

“Probably not,” he says.

“So, you believe you deserve to live regardless of your sadistic and twisted existence, yet you feel guilty about your behavior because you believe forgiveness isn’t an option. You see, if you simply believed in God’s existence, you might not be in this predicament, because He forgives all who genuinely asks, and because you believe you deserve to be in this world, you will never find the opportunity to accept His grace to replace your guilt. And here you sit, bleeding to death, avoiding a chance to be forgiven and accept Him into your heart because of the pride that binds you,” I say.

I pry the gun from his severed hand and unload all the bullets except one. I spin the cylinder and lock it without knowing where the bullet rests in the chamber, and I place the gun in his good hand, then point it to his head.

“Now, if you’re right and God doesn’t exist, then neither one of us will ever know it, but if you’re wrong, you will know for an eternity. Do you really want to risk that? If you truly believe in your heart that He is your Heavenly Father, then I suggest you ask for forgiveness now before you pull that trigger, otherwise you can hang on to that pride that bellows inside until you are met by the pits of Hell.”

Complete silence dominates his conundrum as he thinks about his situation for a minute, then suddenly he turns the gun on me and pulls the trigger, but the only thing exiting the barrel is a clicking noise, resulting in the sound of an empty chamber. Panicking, he pulls the trigger five more times, resulting in the same ominous sound. “What?” he asks, stuttering.

“Looking for this?” I ask, holding the bullet. “You’re like too many other sheep on this earth—very predictable.” I pull out my Beretta and shoot him in the head. Something inside of me has deeply changed now, because the remorse I once felt has gone. I feel lost in a sea of hatred, and I fear it will only deepen as long as this journey continues.

“The evil we face behind these doors will extend you no grace. Show no mercy here; that will be for God to decide,” I say with a rage I cannot contain. “Gabe?”

“Yes?”

“Not one of these motherfuckers leave here alive,” I say with a venomous distaste before we go on a killing spree.

When I kick in the back doors, hell is unleashed as I hold back nothing. Through these doors is the image of pure bondage of sadistic torment. There are women being beaten into submission, paying back a debt to their owner, children about the age of fourteen with dog collars strapped tightly around their necks, tied down by chains, and forced into sexual favors. Hundreds of men of all colors and cultures who are bidding, buying, and breeding, roam the halls. Many are engaged in this sick, twisted act of sexual violence in this sinful warehouse.

I waste no time as I strike down the first victim in front of me and slice downward on his chest, spilling blood and intestines onto the floor. Within just a couple of minutes I have cleared the first hallway—stabbing, chopping, dismembering, even decapitating every wicked and immoral man standing in my way. Gabe takes out those in the first rooms of the hallway with his Desert Eagle firearm, while I make a path for the next hall. Just around the corner, I see federal officers taking advantage of an innocent teen girl tied to a wooden post.

I quickly throw one of my black-widow knives at the back of one of the officer’s heads, splitting his spinal cord. The other officer tries to draw his gun, but I pull one of the daggers from the side of my hip and thrust it up in his thorax, twisting the dagger as I pull it out. The dirty floor turns red within seconds as the officer falls to the ground. I untie the girl and tell her to run as fast as she can.

I hear Gabe screaming my name, so I hurry back over to the first rooms where we came in and quickly notice federal officers trying to escape through the store. I run back into the store and shoot the first two officers in the head, then slash through the remaining three with the swords.

I hear gunshots in the hall and immediately race to see if Gabe is in trouble, but to my surprise no one is there. At the end of the hall, three men run to an adjacent room, but the door is locked. One holds a gun while the others carry an ax and a bent metal pipe. I throw a dagger in the neck of the man holding the gun, which drops him to the floor, gasping. The other two men quickly turn around and rush forward with their weapons in hand, ready to pound me over the head. I stand firm and take a more aggressive posture as I get in a
Jodan-gamae
position.

With my sword high, I immediately strike downward and cut off the arm of the first man, then I quickly crouch to avoid the blow of the pipe. While he strikes at the air with the pipe, I swing my other sword and slice his left leg off. He violently trembles on the ground in agony, until I unwillingly decide to split his skull, putting him out of his misery.

I quickly run back through the halls to make sure Gabe is okay. As I turn the corner, I’m met head-on by six angry brutes with bloodstains on their shirts, and I can only hope the blood is not Gabe’s. I reach behind my back, pull out my scorpion dagger, kneel on one knee, and push the knife in one of the men’s inner thighs. The man pushes his arm back, clutching the wall as he falls backward into the others. I twist the dagger out, making sure the man can’t stand. With both swords in my hand, I go on the attack, slaughtering the other five men.

“Arena!” shouts Gabe from around the corner.

I jump over the bloody bodies and race into the next hall. Gabe is struggling with one of the men. I pull out my gun and shoot. The side of the guy’s head splatters red on the wall and his heavy body collapses to the floor.

“Are you okay? Have you been shot?” I ask, looking at Gabe’s bloody arm.

“I’m fine, this isn’t my blood,” he says.

“Come on, there’s another open room down the hall,” I say. I reload my gun with a full clip and we search down another hall and into an open area. There are about fifty men scattered in the open warehouse, half of whom are federal officers armed with guns. To the right is a forklift loading large crates onto a truck, and to the left is another truck filled with dog cages.

There’s an officer dressed in a very unique uniform standing upon a raised platform, barking out orders to everyone down below. I tell Gabe to get ready for an ambush and gun down the armed officers first. While everyone is running around panicking, we run inside and hide behind some pallets unnoticed.

I didn’t bring my bow, so I will have to take out the man on the platform with my gun at about thirty yards away. I lift the gun and rest it on the pallet, aim for his head, exhale a small breath of air, and squeeze the trigger. A direct hit on his forehead abruptly stops him from yelling orders, and he comes crashing down off the platform.

Everyone is so loud hustling back and forth that no one notices right away, until an officer nearly trips over his body and begins to shout. With both guns drawn, I take down officers one by one until all the armed men are dead—it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. I put my guns away and draw my swords to finish off the remaining swine, while Gabe shoots everyone who’s trying to flee off the dock. As soon as the last body falls to the floor, we hear a truck outside the open dock backing up. I’m completely exhausted, and the muscles in my arms can
barely raise the sword. We both quickly hide to the side of the dock door just as the truck stops.

Two men jump out of the vehicle and are greeted with an absolutely horrific sight of bloody carnage. While they stand there in stunned silence, I grab one by the back of his hair and place a knife beneath his neck while Gabe holds the other at gunpoint.

“So, what are we delivering today?” I ask. The men say nothing, so I force the man that Gabe’s holding at gunpoint to open the truck. He’s so nervous, he can’t find the right key to open back door of the truck, so I pull out my gun and shoot it off the lock.

“Open it now,” I say. He trembles, but when the door opens, a horde of women and children tumble out of the truck, gasping for air. They’ve been smuggled covertly into the country for slave trade and sexual exploitation for wealthy men who have denied any respectable decency or an ounce of morality.

“Who sent you to transport these women?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Tell me now or I won’t be as merciful,” I demand, as I slowly cut around his ear.

“Some military gentleman, I don’t know for sure,” he says, stuttering and panting.

“I reserve the right to judge, and gentleman he is not.”

“Iakov, they call him Iakov,” says the other man.

“How much did they pay you?” I ask.

“No money, they promise us our pick,” he says, referring to the women or children they decide to choose for a slave.

Just then, the man held at gunpoint quickly attempts to grab Gabe’s gun, but before he reaches for the trigger, I shoot him in the side of the head then slit the other man’s throat. We untie all the women and children that are bound together on a continuous piece of rope.

“Run, you’re free now,” I yell, as they file out, nervously looking around for authorities.

“Thank, you, thank you!” a woman hysterically shouts in Russian.

“Don’t thank me, thank God for your freedom,” I respond in Russian. While Gabe walks back through all the rooms to make sure all women and children have been freed from their shackles, I make my rounds, killing the rest of the fallen men who are still writhing on the ground. We leave this place with the walls painted red and slaughtered bodies stacked on one another in pools of congealed maroon flowing into the rusty grates. The bloody carnage that’s left will be a small sign of God’s wrath for those to witness.

People stare at my blood-soaked clothes as Gabe and I exit the premises into the main alley. Because my hands are stained red and my raven hair is dripping crimson, I’m hardly recognizable. We flee as fast as we can down one of the back streets to avoid any other officers strolling around the main areas. They will be all over the place once they see the bloodshed we created. There’s a back alley next to an eatery that looks unoccupied enough for us to hide and catch our breath for a few minutes.

While Gabe crouches down with his back to the wall, I notice a very active-looking shadow sporadically moving about just around the corner across from us. I can hear arguing followed by a scream and can only assume someone is struggling.

I poke my head around the corner and see a burly looking man with his pants down to his ankles fighting with what I know now is surely a prostitute. I sidle up behind the man and cock back the Colt Python that I got from inside the pawnshop. The man suddenly stops and poses like a statue when he hears the click of the hammer being pulled back on the gun.

Instead of pointing the gun directly at his head, I take an unorthodox approach and slide the cold black barrel beneath the man’s groin area between his legs. I’m more disgusted when I see his wallet lying open on the ground revealing a photo of what I assume is his wife and two kids.

“If you want to keep your manhood attached, I suggest you pull your pants up, go home, and apologize to your wife for being a self-absorbed perverted jackass, and pray she doesn’t cut off that sad sorry sight for a penis,” I say.

“It’s average size, thank you very much,” he says, shaking.

“Yeah, if you’re a Hobbit. Hell, you’re an inch away from having a gender change. Now get out of here before my conscience decides to divorce me,” I say, as he scurries off, falling every few steps with his pants sliding down.

I probably should have just shot the man and done his wife a favor, but since both parties were engaged in a consensual and mutual activity, my temptation to kill retreats. I have a moment of compassion when I see the woman crying and wonder to myself how one can do that to themselves, but instead of judging her bad decisions, I simply comfort her. She just needs someone to care for her right now, and if I can be a shoulder to lean on, I will do it.