Monsters
By
Karen Singer
Chapter 24 – Death Stalks the Night – Part 2 of 2
Carol stood in a dark shadow at the
side of a building as the evening light faded into darkness. Her red and black riding suit and the new
dull black motorcycle helmet blended into that darkness like they were made for
it. The night vision on her helmet
showed her people moving around in various places. The night vision made them stand out easily
in the semi-darkened area. She looked
over at Beastman’s building that she had chosen as her next target. A worse looking dump than the last
place. Much smaller too. As she looked around, she saw a few people here
and there, but what she didn’t see were any sniper rifles sticking out over the
nearby rooftops. Still, after being shot
once in the head already, she knew now that the mercenaries were gunning for
her and even more caution was necessary.
She picked a tenant building a
block away and wandered through it until she managed to make her way out onto
the roof. She found several couples
spread in different places on the roof, kissing, and one naked couple that was
already far beyond the kissing stage.
Seeing no threats from any of them, she ignored them and headed for the
edge of the rooftop.
With her new night vision, she
scanned the rooftops of the neighboring buildings in the area. She saw a few people enjoying the evening
air, but no mercenaries. She
particularly watched Beastman’s building.
She could tell that people were inside.
She saw lights and shadows moving past a few of the windows. People meant she would get to ask questions
about where Brandy was…and hopefully get some useful answers. With a sly determined smile on her lips, she
left the roof and went back down to the street.
She left her new helmet with her bike and checked to make sure the new
gas mask at her waist was secure before she continued on.
She made her way to the back of
Beastman’s building and tried the door there.
It was locked. So much for
sneaking in the back. She walked all the
way around to the front door of the building.
It too was locked. So much for
the easy way in. She went around to the
back door again and pounded on it. She
had to do it several times before someone finally came and opened it. The door was opened only a crack before her
silenced gun shot the man dead. She was
inside closing the door behind her by the time the man finished falling. She expected to see more men there…men with guns,
but she was faced with an empty hallway.
Stepping over his dead body, she
headed for the open doorway on her right where she could hear voices. With a silenced gun in each hand now, she
stood in the open doorway and peered inside.
She saw three black men. Two were
sitting at a table and the third was standing by the window with a bottle of
booze in one hand and a pistol stuck in his belt. She couldn’t miss several different piles of
drugs on the table. The man standing by
the window saw her first and reached for the gun in his belt. One of her silenced guns killed him before
his hand even touched it. With him dead,
she pointed her guns at the remaining two.
“What kind of place is this?” she asked.
One of the men looked at her with
far more bravado than he should have.
“Why the fuck should I tell a fuckin’ whore like…”
The bullet from Carols gun hit him
square in the forehead. “Are you going
to be just as stupid?” Carol asked the final man.
“Are you that other broad that
Vince…”
Carol shot him dead before he could
finish his question. Going back into the
hallway, she pulled in the body of the man who had opened the outer door for
her. She glanced around the room. From everything she could see, she was
guessing that this was a drug distribution room. Money and drugs were exchanged here. She wasn’t interested in any of it.
She moved out of the room and
across the hall. The lights were on, but
the room was empty. A quick search
yielded her no useful information. She
moved on. The door to the next room was
open. Carol stood in the doorway and
quickly killed two of the five men in the room, announcing her presence with
the gunshots and dead bodies. The rest
of the men stopped and stared, completely shocked.
“I’m looking for someone,” Carol
told them, her guns aimed at the heads of two of them. “The name most of you seem to know her by is
Retribution. She’s the one that Beastman
captured a few days ago. Where is
she?” All she saw were blank looks from
all their faces. The guns in each of her
hands spit bullets and the two outer men fell dead. She aimed her gun at the final man.
“I don’t know!” the man told her,
obviously frightened out of his wits. “I
don’t know!”
“Who in this building might know?”
“I don’t know!”
“So you don’t know who here
would? Who’s in charge here?”
“What do you mean, in charge?”
“Is there one man here with more
seniority than any of the others?”
“Yeah. I guess.
Vonaman.”
“And where can I find him?”
“Probably downstairs.”
“Downstairs? Like in the basement?”
“Yeah? He usually hangs out there.”
“Why the basement?”
The man didn’t seem to want to
reply. She squeezed the trigger and put
a bullet in his head. Vonaman. Downstairs.
She’d get to him eventually. Room
by room in the small two story building she went through not just that floor,
but the floor above it. The second floor
seemed to hold bedrooms for the men. She
knocked softly each time, then either killed the men quickly or asked her
questions first. She left none of them
alive but by the time she was done, she had another name to add to her list of
men to find. Another man who was most
likely “downstairs.” Coriman.
Going back down to the ground
floor, she heard someone knocking on the back door. She opened it and found three black men
standing there. They looked shocked to
see her. “Who the hell…” one of them
started to ask. She shot him and his two
friends dead before they could say anything else. She figured them to be men coming to pick up
the drugs.
Leaving them there, she found the
stairs down to the basement. There was a
door at the bottom of the stairs. She tested
it and found it closed and locked. She
knocked with the barrel of her gun. It
was a moment before the door was opened.
Like before, the man opening the door died by the time the door had been
only opened a few inches. Carol hurried
inside, both her guns out and ready. Her
silenced weapons killed two more men just inside the door before she had a
chance to look around.
Behind the men and blocking the
rest of the basement, she was faced with a curtain of plastic. Fearing Beastman’s gas, she pulled on the gas
mask that Susan had gotten her from where it hung from a belt around her
waist. With the barrel of her gun she
pulled the plastic curtain partially aside and peaked through. Not gas, but something even worse. Drugs.
Drugs being cut and processed.
She saw a number of workers with protective masks and suits on, and near
the very back of the room she saw two men with guns, wandering around and
watching over them. She was betting
those two men were Vonaman and Coriman.
With some types of drugs in the
air, she knew a gunshot in the wrong place could set off a massive
explosion. Well, she didn’t plan on
missing. She never did. She pushed past the plastic curtain and
started shooting. One by one the workers
fell to her bullets. She killed four by
the time Vonaman and Coriman had their own guns aimed and started firing
back. Carol ducked back behind the
plastic curtain and hit the floor, rolling to the far side of the curtain as
bullets were fired through it. She
quickly opened the curtain at the far side and shot both Vonaman and Coriman in
their shoulders, knocking them down but not killing them. Moving further inside, she finished killing
the rest of the people in the room.
Knowing that both Vonaman and
Coriman were still armed and dangerous, she approached carefully. It would be so much easier to kill them, but
she didn’t want them dead. She needed
them alive so her mother and Wu Enterprises could get answers out of them. True answers.
There was a long row of tables
stretched down the middle of the room.
Looking under the tables didn’t show her where the two men were
now. She figured they each had to be
hiding behind the furniture cabinets along the far side of the room. She climbed up on the tables where they were
processing the drugs. With a gun in each
hand at the ready and pointing toward the places she figured they were hiding,
she started walking right down the middle of those tables, ready to shoot as
soon as either of them showed any part of themselves.
There! The gun in her left hand carved a chunk out
of the wooden cabinet on the left as just the barrel of a gun had been stuck
out. The gun barrel was quickly pulled
back. As expected, whoever was on the
right popped out ready to shoot her. The
bullet from her other gun found his head.
He was dead before he could try to take a shot. A moment later, she was standing on top of
the table with her gun aimed at the man cowering behind the cabinet on the
left. She didn’t care about the pain he
was in at all. She didn’t care how much
he was bleeding. She didn’t care if it
was Voniman or Coriman. None of that
mattered. “Drop that gun,” she said
flatly.
Slowly, the man set the gun down on
the floor, but not far from his body. He
raised his left arm in the air, his other one with the bullet in the shoulder
he cradled against his waist. Still on
top of the table, Carol pulled her gas mask off and said, “I’m looking for
someone. A woman that most of your
friends seem to know by the name of Retribution.” She noticed the look of recognition on the
man’s face. “I see you recognize her
name. Where is she?” When she got no answer, she shouted, “Where
is she?”
The man shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“But you do know she was captured,”
Carol asked next.
The man nodded. “Y…yes.”
“Good. Well that’s something. Then after she was captured with Vince’s gas,
what did they do with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” she shouted
angrily. “Then why should I keep you
alive?”
The man cowered further into his
little corner, holding his raised arm over his head. “What did they do with her after they
captured her?” Carol asked.
“I don’t know. We stuck her in a car and brought her to
Vince.”
“You were there? You were part of it?”
“Y…yes,” the man managed to reply.
“How did it happen? How did you take her?”
“With…the liquid. I mean the gas. Vince gave us all a little bottle of the
stuff. Just one whiff and it’s lights
out.”
“He gave it to all of you? Do you have some on you now?”
“Y…yeah.”
“Good!” Carol replied. “So how did it go down?”
“One of the guys spotted her
watching Lozano’s building while we were searching it.”
“Why were you there?”
“To search it.”
“For what?”
“Trying to figure out how he gets
his drugs into the city and where he’s keeping them. Nobody knows.”
“Okay. That I get.
Now get back to my friend. So you
spotted her.”
“Not me. Someone else.
And they called Vince.”
“And he came around?”
“No. Like I said he had given us all bottles of
the knockout junk. So we set up the
lobby of the building and poured like every bottle of the liquid out on the
floor. That stuff evaporates pretty
quick. Then while the rest of us waited
out front, Louie went to the back door of the building and took a couple of
shots at her. She came like a duck drawn
to the water. All he had to do was hold
his breath, run though the lobby, and when she got there. Night, night.
Easy.”
“Yeah,” Carol agreed. “Too easy.
You said you’ve got more of that gas.”
“Yeah, but it’s really a liquid in
a little bottle.”
“Show me.”
The man pulled a small glass vial
from his pocket. Carol noted that the
liquid in it was clear like water.
“That’s all it is?” she asked.
“It doesn’t take much.”
“And all you have to do is smell
it?”
“Yeah. Like I said, it evaporates pretty fast. One smell and you’re going down.”
“Open it and take a deep whiff.”
“What? But…”
“Smell it!”
“But that will knock me…”
“I know. Would you rather have a bullet in your head
knock you out instead? Open it, put it
to your nose, and take a good whiff! And
the minute you try to throw it at me, you’ll find yourself very dead.”
The man appeared to be too afraid
to do it. Carol jumped down from the
table and held one of her guns right against his forehead. “Open it, and smell!”
The guy fumbled with the cap as he
untwisted it, but he got it open. Carol
held her breath before he got it off the little glass vial. She pushed her gun harder against his head
and the man held it to his nose and took a deep breath. She watched as his head immediately started
to roll on his shoulders. She dropped
one of her guns and grabbed his hand with the glass vial and held it under his
nose a moment longer as his body went entirely limp. He was unconscious that fast, as she had been
sure he would be. She put the cap back
on the bottle and stuck it in one of her pockets. She pulled out her cellphone and arranged for
the man to be picked up and taken to her mother.
On her motorcycle, she followed the
pickup car all the way back to her mother’s mansion. It had been another good night’s work. But she feared that once again it would be a
useless one. The man she had captured
had taken part in capturing Brandy. But
as far as she could tell, he didn’t have a clue where she was now.
For an organization as bad as
Beastman’s was supposed to be, she had gone through the entire building with
ease. Too much ease. Beastman needed to hire better men! Well, now the openings for them were available.
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