Rapture Falls (4 page)

             
Cardiff sprawled open before him, the city a confused mix of the improved and the impoverished, the small neon glow from the dashboard clock told him it was 5.23am. The traffic was light but gaining momentum as the workers began their
reluctant
early morning influx into the working day.
Baine stretched his taught frame amidst the confines of the small cars
cabin;
his arm
, miraculously healed,
was
still
stiff from the
night’s
earlier break. Not for the first time he stared at a miraculously healed wound on his body and pondered the mystery, he flexed his fist, working his fingers as even the stiffness began to fade.
Baine had spent his entire life to date wrapped in a fog
of the
inexplicable, he had no comprehension of his own previous existence before eight years ago. As far as he could ascertain one wet Tuesday morning he awoke, he felt no panic or nervousness,
merely naked of clothing and
wearing a calm
demeanor
. T
he bed
that held him was a
modest
wooden double;
the room was
plainly decorated and thinly furnished. He eased himself out of bed and walked
over
to the one window, the curtains, once pulled, revealed the
Cardiff
skyline bathed in the dreary weather.
There was a small rather cheap looking bedside table on which sat a small black mobile phone and a white business card, the card’s message was s
imple, it read “
Baine” in a neat
typeface under the name sat a mobile phone number. He instinctively knew this to be his name and his phone number.
Baine walked across the room and
to the medium sized wardrobe, he paused to review his reflection in the door’s mirror. He estimated his own height at
just under
six foot, his face was smoothly shaven with ordinary hazel eyes, he looked as though he had once been in decent shape but now starting to soften
, his overall appearance was pretty plain and non-descript. H
e pulled the dangling rope pull to turn on the light, the
wardrobe held a selection of non-descript shirts, trousers and suits neatly hung, an assortment of tops and jumpers
folded into cubed spaces, two pairs of plain shoes and a pair of trainers, all of the footwear and clothing looked worn but not old. Baine looked his naked form up and down immediately recognising that the clothes all looked to be the correct size. On the floor of the wardrobe sat a
me
dium sized oblong metallic case, the small light reflecting off of the shiny surface. Baine cocked his head to the left, his face momentarily showed the signs of information processing, he knew what the case contained without opening it, tools of his trade. The understanding of purpose was clear and irrefutable to him, he knew three things, his trade was death,
he was good at his job and business was booming.
             
Baine pulled the car into the underground parking beneath his apartment
block;
the building was a behemoth standing over the city seemingly in
judgement
, offering its superiority to those who could afford it and scorn to those who could not. He parked the Micra in one of his two spaces, the modest car was shamed by those that surrounded it,
Porsches
,
Mercs
and Beamers on all sides, sitting in Baine’s other parking space was a new Dodge SRT-10
, t
he UK incarnation of the Dodge Viper,
the latest model of the SRT-10, SRT standing for Street Racing Technology, packs a 8.3-litre V10 engine and had set him back a little over £70,000, but hey business was good and business paid cash. Baine had
amassed
a small fortune in the last eight years, he killed people for a living, he felt no pleasure in the taking of lives, but he felt no remorse either, this was
n’t what he did it was
simply who he was.
The clients who found themselves led to his pa
th all had one thing in common, hate,
Ba
ine did not find himself troubled by any sense of morality, it was as though his DNA was missing some vital ingredient of humanity
.
In some of the movies that he watched alone in
darkened cinemas mid-
afternoon he often saw tales of heroic assassins struggling with
ideals of moral philosophy’s but he could never feel the
same
tug of empathy with the Hollywood characters. Of his victims
some were men
and
some were women,
he had yet to be presented with a child target but felt no surge of horror at the thought.
T
he ages varied greatly but Baine had never refused a contract, for some
unknown
reason all of the clients that had sought him out did so with great
conviction and ease
.
Baine
did
not
consider himself
an
evil
man, perhaps
not
a sociopath or
even a
clinical
psychopath
;
he merely had a faith and understanding that he was fulfilling his purpose
. H
e
lived a solitary life
and although
the
financial
trappings of his profession
allowed him unlimited opportunities
,
he found that he had little imagination
with which to take full advantage. T
he expensive luxury sports car in his garage was purchased out of a need to explore
the
depths and levels of his
own happiness
, but yielded little s
uccess. At first he found that he took some pleasure in sex but
found that he
preferred to buy his
female affections
,
finding that he
had no desire for
relationships
or
intimacy, he was essentially
alone but not lonely
.

Baine stepped out of the car, he closed and locked the door behind him taking the money case with him, his footsteps strangely did not echo throughout the parking bay as he walked toward the lifts. He reached out and pressed the lift button, his fingertips were smooth and carried no fingerprints, the doors opened and he stepped inside, the bright harsh light of the interior dimmed slightly as he stepped inside,
he pushed the nineteenth button and
the doors closed across him.

             
The three
o
ccupants of the silver VW Golf
had been waiting outside of the apartment block for around an
hour;
none of them
spoke nor fidgeted amidst the
confines of the
cars cabin, merely stared ahead with fixed gazes. All at once
their
heads swiveled to the right in perfect
unison;
their eyes tracked the
diminutive
black car
and its driver
as it rounded the corner and pulled in under the building,
swallowe
d
into the dark gloom. The woman looked toward her
companion
s
their eyes burning brightly with a naked greed and hunger
, their impatience was radiating in cascading waves, despite their desperation they both held themselves under full control and only their eyes gave away an
y sign of  eagerness. The
wo
m
an turned her
attention
to Gerald Wilkes’ package, inside was a simple A4 photograph with a name and address, she looked
back to the building,

“Soon
”
s
he whispered.

             
Baine stepped out onto his floor, he paused on the corridor’s rich plush carpet, his head tilted to the right as his face
processed and
pondered
. The long corridor stretching in front of him was deserted but Baine knew that it was not
empty;
his apartment was at the end, tasteful artworks hung from the delicately decorated walls and expensive brass light fittings hung overhead. The light at the very end suddenly went out, the far end of the corridor went black, bang, one by one the lights snapped out, the wall of blackness rapidly raced along the corridor toward him engulfing the corridor and devouring everything within. Baine felt no fear merel
y a sense of intrigue at first as
the approaching darkness
tore up
to meet him
, suddenly the
shadows took on a solid form, Baine only had time to realise that he had to duck but not time enough to carry through on his realisation. Baine was struck in the chest, the force threw him sailing through the air, the doors of the lift had already closed behind him and he smashed full throttle into them. The initial shock had worn off in the split second that he
had been
airborne, immediately after he collided with the lift’s doors he rolled and sprang back onto his feet assuming
a warriors stance, legs splayed for balance and fists cocked for damage. The dark swirled around him like a furious tornado, shadow branches lashed out at him from seemingly every angle, Baine ducked, swooped and twisted away from most but not all despite his best efforts. The strikes were hard and painful, some were solid blows whilst others were slashing and sharp tearing at his skin, all the while Baine studied his opponent. The blows were emanating from a
spinning
darker nucleus that seemed to control the attacks, Baine ducked low under
one swipe as he moved in close, a raking dark claw split the skin above his eyes as he rose and stepped inside, he had to blink the blood away that ran into his eyes and impaired his vision. Baine feigned left and with a startling speed moved to his right and put everything he had into his right arm, he thrust his hand through the twisting shadows, his fingers snagged a throat, he pushed through
the darkness ignoring the blows reigning down upon him
and slammed the figure into the wall.
The lights began to brighten as the figure’s struggles began to weaken, the impenetrable dark started to clear, Baine found himself holding a smallish man by the throat, he blinked through the blood that was already starting to stem its own flow. The small man was apoplectic with rage, his eyes were wild and spittle flew from his lips, Baine could not understand the language that the small man spat at him
but the meanings were
aggressively
clear
. Baine could immediately see that any interrogation was pointless, the small man continued to spit venom in a strange and exotic tongue, the whirling darkness had now completely
dissipated leaving
a small angry man struggling for air. Baine brought the man
up and level with his own eyes and stared directly into them for a few seconds,
his own head cocked to one side and eyes squinted, his gaze absent in puzzled thought, eventually he
gr
ew
tired of this
and
s
napped the small man’s neck releasing the body as
the figure ran through his fingers like
smoky
sand and disappeared completely
before it
ever touched
the ground.
Baine retrieved the money case from the hallway
and
took a final puzzled look back at where the small man had
dissipated;
he mentally shrugged to himself and headed for home.