Cartwright was screaming, holding onto his leg. He kept alternating between hitting the trap on his leg, trying to pry it open, and holding onto his leg and screaming. The guy who had hit the one just off the porch had rolled onto his back, holding onto his leg and screaming. Inside the house everyone was yelling.
It took Dave's father a few moments to shout everyone else down as I moved into the woods, got what I wanted, then walked back so I was standing just behind the brush, less than fifteen feet from where that unknown guy was holding onto his leg and screaming.
The door opened and another guy moved out onto the porch, obviously unwilling to be out there.
"Go out there and help them," Dave's father said.
"What if he's out there?" The guy asked. "What if he throws another saw blade?"
Dave's father scoffed. "He missed me, don't worry about it. Go help Cartwright out."
The new guy carefully, exaggeratedly moved in the footprints left by Cartwright. I watched as he got right next to Cartwright. He bent down and tried to put his hands on the trap, but Cartwright, still screaming, grabbed onto him.
"I can't open it with you grabbing on me," The guy said.
The hand-axe was silent, despite what you saw on the movies, as it whipped end over end through the snowfall, missed the new guy by inches, and hit Cartwright. Gore splashed at the blade of the hand-axe split open Cartwright's face, burying two inches of the wide blade into the man's skull.
I'd been aiming for the new guy, but that would work too.
The new guy screamed, jumped up, and ran into the house, leaping over the guy laying there screaming. In the house several people screamed.
I put my free hand in my pocket and walked over to a new spot, where I had a better view of the guy at the base of the steps.
Inside the cabin they were screaming, yelling at each other, yelling out into the darkness at me.
I didn't pay attention. Their words were meaningless.
They'd taken Hannah from me.
I knew, no matter what happened here, that I would accept whatever consequences there were from what I was doing, I would gladly pay them. I wasn't Special Weapons, nobody was going to save me because I was valuable. The military had hundreds, thousands of communication specialists. They had no need to smooth things over, no reason to hide me like they did Stillwater after his rampage.
But Hannah, my sweet and strange Aine, and Tuath du Aine would all know I loved her.
Someone fired the shotgun again, hitting near the bushes I had been standing in when I had thrown the first hand-axe.
I was thirty feet away, standing out in the darkness.
The Sheriff stuck his pistol out the window and fired all six shots from his revolver into the darkness, hitting nothing but blameless trees and show.
I just stared.
"I thought you said he was just a radioman!" Dave's father screamed.
"I checked. He's nobody. He's in some kind of clandestine unit that I was told to stop asking about, but he's nobody!" The Sheriff yelled.
My God, voices really carried in the snow.
"Wait, he's in a clandestine unit?" Dave asked. "Like, special forces or some shit?"
"No, no, I mean, probably not. Who cares, he's just a radioman. It isn't like he's some a fucking Ranger or Green Beret," The Sheriff answered.
I could see them, standing in the window.
The back door opened a crack.
Ah, so they were standing by the window to distract me.
I swept my eyes over the side of the cabin. There, the bedroom window. It had been cracked open, I could see a patch of darkness that had a shape, see the barrel of the rifle they were pointing out of the window.
They were looking the wrong way.
The back door fully opened. I could see one person with a flashlight, shielding the beam with their fingers, and the guy who I'd missed with the axe throw trying to sneak out there.
"Oh, God, James, help me!" The one by the back porch screamed.
"Shut up, that psychos out here," The one who came out, James, hissed.
I glanced around. Psycho? The last thing I wanted to do was go toe to toe with a...
Oh. Me.
I waited till he bent down and threw the hand-axe. It whipped through the snow and air, making the guy, James, cry out and slap his hand to his head.
The axe hit the guy at his feet in the throat. He fell back, clawing at his throat, pulling the hand-axe free. Steaming blood gouted from the wound now that the axe wasn't blocking the wound. He gurgled, air bubbles erupting from his split trachea, the blood steaming in the air.
James screamed, still with one hand clapped over his ear, blood streaming down the side of his head and his neck. He ran back into the house.
I just walked away.
Someone fired off the shotgun again. The rifle fired at a shadow. The Sheriff fired off six paced shots.
My hands in my pockets, I walked around the edge of the clearing, to behind the shed. The snow was falling harder as I walked around the shed to where Cartwright was laying. I grabbed his collar and dragged him into the woods. I stopped by the stump, grabbing one of the hand-axes, then kept dragging Cartwright away. I let go of him and lit a cigarette, then kept dragging my dead burden down to the lake.
The ice was thin, when I threw Cartwright onto the ice to see if it was thick enough to stand on, his body vanished into the dark water.
I walked back, smoking another cigarette.
I was used to the air getting thin when it was cold. Alfenwehr's air could be deadly in the middle of winter, as the thin atmosphere made you pull in more air, the air lowering your core temperature and the microbleeds from the thin atmosphere froze in your chest. I'd coughed up blood more than once on that mountain.
The atmosphere in Kansas was thick to the point it almost felt like soup.
My hands in my pockets I walked up to where the other dead guy was, listening to what they were saying.
"Maybe he's gone," Someone said.
"He killed Cartwright and Jimmy with fucking hatchets," Dave yelled. "You said he wasn't a problem, Gail."
"He, like, totally isn't! He's, like, a radioman or some junk!" Gail shouted back.
I dragged "Jimmy" away, back to the lake. Pausing at the end of the fishing dock to do something, then rolling the body onto the ice. The ice cracked and broke, the body sinking into the dark water.
I walked back, lighting a cigarette, and circling the house.
"He's out there, right now, laughing at us!" someone yelled.
There were five more voices I didn't recognize. Gail, Dave, his father, the Sheriff.
Eight, at least.
That meant they intended on having me be an object lesson.
My death would have been bloody and hard, at the hands of amateurs.
"Do you, like, think he's still totally out there and junk?" Gail asked.
I walked over to the cop car, opened the door, and set down the thing I had carried with me on the seat before walking back to one of the stumps. I sauntered away with one hand in my pockets. When I reached the edge of the clearing I whipped another circular saw blade through the window and kept right on moving.
Inside the cabin there was a thump as the blade hit something besides wood. The lights swung around crazily, and then Gail screamed.
They were babbling, terrified, the blade I'd thrown into the room with them pushing them from fear to panic. I wondered what the blade had hit.
master your fear fear brings panic panic brings defeat defeat brings death
Basic Training.
"Fuck this," one of the strangers yelled. The front door banged open.
"Come back, you idiot, he's..." Dave's father yelled.
The bear trap closed on the guy's leg. It was one of the heavy ones, a full eighteen inches wide, and when it slammed shut it broke the bone, virtually severing the leg.
seven
The guy pissed himself and passed out. Blood squirted from the wound as he fell forward. Face forward onto one of the second line of traps. It closed around his head, crushing his skull.
"How is he doing this?" Dave's father bellowed.
I just shifted position, moving through the darkness and snow. Two rifle shots, a shotgun blast, and another rapid fire set of pistol shots.
None of it came near me. They were firing at shadows, figments of their imagination, or just at nothing to make themselves feel better.
I saw the rifle poke out the window and fire. I decided to see what would happen and whipped one of my last saw blades at the window.
There was a long bubbly scream.
I heard someone start cursing, shouting, from the front, and wandered around to where I could see the front yard of the cabin, one hand in my pocket to warm it.
Someone I didn't recognize stood at the open door of the police cruiser, staring at "Jimmy's" severed head I'd set on the seat.
I whipped the last saw blade at him, hitting him in the base of the spine. He went down, screaming, landing on the saw blade as his knees folded. He vomited out a gout of blood that steamed as it showered his face and chest. He twisted once, gagging, and went still.
six
Dammit. I meant to hit the car and scare him.
I walked back into the woods surrounding the cabin, lighting a cigarette before wandering over to the shed, my hands warming in my pockets.
The emptiness inside of me gnawed at me, my stomach and chest aching as its teeth chewed at me as I went into the shed, passing the pink snow where Cartwright had died.
Hand tools were rusting, scattered around. I needed a few of them and picked them up, carrying them out of the shed and into the woods. I stuck most of them into a stump and sat next to them, bringing out my Leatherman. I opened the file and started sharpening the edge, finishing one and moving to the next.
The sound of brush being disturbed, the crunch of feet in the snow, made me look up by the time I was done with two of them.
Someone was making a run for it.
Right toward me.
I stood up in front of the stump, taking two steps forward.
A hefty guy wearing a flannel shirt under his open jacket burst from the brush and stopped staring at me. His eyes got wide and he gulped loud enough for me to hear two paces away. His face went completely pale and as I watched a dark stain spread across the crotch of his pants.
"Please," he tried.
I just walked toward him. Dragging my feet through the snow, my joints and limbs loose, ready for any attack. If your body is ready to move in any direction, Stokes had taught us, you can move more quickly than your opponent expects.
"No, please," the guy said. He took two steps backwards, hooked his heel on something, and fell on his back. He held one hand out. "I don't even know you," He tried.
"I don't care," I told him.
"Please, I have a family," he begged. "A wife, two children."
I stared at him for a long moment, then pointed toward the road. "Run." I realized my hand was bloodstained, pale, with under my nails blackened by the cold.
He scrambled up, nodding. "I won't come back, man, I promise."
The snow flew off his shoes as he raced into the darkness.
I knew he wouldn't survive an hour. He'd wet himself. His pants would freeze, his core temperature rapidly dropping, and hypothermia would set in within half an hour. He'd get confused, wander the wrong way, and feel like he was overheating. He'd strip off his jacket and shirt and be found half naked, dead, after the animals had finished with him.
five
I pulled out my cigarettes, lighting another, then put my hands in my pockets and sat on the stump, letting my hands warm up.
Once my hands were warm and the cigarette was done I grabbed one of the heavy brush clearing blades and headed back toward the cabin.
The doors on the truck and the cruiser were open, letting me know they'd tried to escape. I check the perimeter. While they'd ran to the vehicles and back, no bootprints except the guy I'd let go had left the perimeter of the cabin.
I could see the barrel of the rifle sticking out the window again. I sighed, moving to the corner of the house, and walking across the clearing.
Nobody had ever trained them in interlocking fields of fire. Looking out a window was all fine and good, but it narrowed the field of vision so you couldn't see the sides of the building or the corners.
I'd learned the hard way, in Africa, how you had to make sure your zones of control, you lines of fire, were clear and provided a clear field of vision to all approaches to the building.
I just sauntered up to the corner of the building and walked along the side of it, to the window that the rifle barrel stuck out of.
I simply grabbed it and yanked. I heard someone unfamiliar squawk as the weapon, a .308 Winchester bolt action, was pulled outside with me. The person leaned out to look. They looked the wrong way at first and my smile got wider. When they looked at me their eyes bulged and they screamed.
Right before I hit them in the face with the brush blade I held in both hands. I felt the skull break under the force of the blow, the brush blade lodging in the skull.
four
I didn't bother trying to pull it free. I just put my free hand back in my pockets to warm it, picked up the rifle with the other. I started walking back toward the tree line, dragging the rifle with me. I heard shouting from the cabin and looked over my shoulder.
Dave's dad was pulling the corpse inside. I heard Gail scream.
They were lucky.
The windows were broken. The dark and cold had been let into their little cabin.
There was only me, Paul Foster, a radioman and nothing special, outside.
It wasn't like there was monsters in the dark and cold of Kansas.