All or Nothing (8 page)

But a woman who was outnumbered.

One of the men aimed his gun and fired. The sound didn’t register with Kathryn at first, all she thought was:
GUN
. She dived to the ground. A split second later a bullet sparked off the asphalt where she had been standing a second earlier.

That was close!

Get the fuck out of here!

Kathryn was up and running before her mind had processed the intention. She ran towards the building that had the multitude of windows in it. She fell over a body lying on the pavement just in front of the steps.
Why hadn’t she noticed that before
? Back on her feet she sprinted past the wall, up the steps two at a time, and came to a rest at the locked door.

Shit!

Didn’t think that one through, did you!

The jeep’s tires squealed as it started to come after her.

She would be dead now, she realised. She had been exposed the whole time running towards the door with no cover from anything other than shadow, and not much of that. She had fallen over too. Now she was at the door, and she had no way in. The card reader denied her escape.

FUCK!

The jeep went past, turned round and came back again, circling the road in front of the building. Taunting her.

The fuckers!

But why aren’t they shooting at me?

Kathryn looked around for anything to use as a device to lever open the door, or to smash the building’s windows, anything would do. Smashing it wouldn’t be such a good idea, for then they could follow her inside.
Mind you
, she thought,
the door didn’t look as if it would stand up to those rifles anyway
.

Moot point there, Kathryn.

The jeep circled around again, staying in sight, the four occupants whooping loudly, guns pointed in the air - they were guarding her. Kathryn wasn’t going anywhere.

The body!

Maybe, could it be used somehow?

Kathryn ducked down, making herself small, and scooted to the tree in front of her. She watched the jeep circle and head off towards the park she had emerged from.

She ran down the steps, two at a time, and jumped. She landed just beyond the wall, using it for cover. The body was two feet away. She looked for the jeep. It was still making its way slowly towards the park.

They knew she was trapped. She wasn’t going anywhere.

This has got to work!

The odds of this body being that of an employee of the organisation occupying this building were about sixty per cent, she reckoned. His suit was lavish, not the clothes of someone working at the theatre or the hotel, and he was too close to the steps to be simply passing by on the wide pavement. Besides, who visits a building with a card lock unless they work there? It only happens on rare occasions.

The body was male, middle aged, and had a hole in his face where, to judge by the rest of him, she was sure there used to be attractive features. She could see the pavement through the hole, his left eye gone. His suit was blue and blood-spattered. The jacket hung loose on his body, his frame too small to fill the material. Maybe he had been expecting to get fit by visiting the gym?
Fitness needs regular workouts,
she thought,
it doesn’t happen overnight, my friend. And it never will for you now.

Kathryn looked for the jeep and saw that it was beginning to turn around.

GO!

Kathryn was out on the path and beside the corpse within a second. She lifted his jacket and patted him down, first his suit pockets, then the inside one.

The jeep was coming back. She could hear the men laughing.

NOTHING!

She slipped her hands underneath the jacket and checked his trouser pockets and then his other ones. She felt flabby flesh beneath the clothes.

Urgh!!

The jeep was speeding up, getting closer now.

NOTHING!

Leave it,
she reasoned,
you’re a dead woman!

She rolled the man’s body over. It wasn’t easy, shifting a dead weight never is, but she rolled it over nonetheless. As she rolled him past the point of no return, momentum took the corpse further than she expected, and it slapped against the pavement, nearer the road. The head squelched on the kerb, maggots tumbled from the rear of his skull and scurried across his torso.

The jeep was twenty feet away. She heard one of the men cock his rifle.

Then Kathryn saw it.

Attached to his waistband below his jacket. A small plastic card, attached to a string pulley so that he would never drop it.

OF COURSE!

Kathryn grabbed it and pulled. It wouldn’t come any further, held there by the restraining tie.

There was the sound of two more rifles being cocked.

Huh?

Looking up, she saw that all four of her assailants had pulled rifles out and were ready to fire.

She yanked the card hard. Still wouldn’t come away.

“Hereby I decree you the holy bitch!” came a shout from the jeep.

“
Holy, ahahahaha, she's gonna be full of holes! I get it!
"

“Fucking dipshit.”

Kathryn yanked hard, and the tie snapped, sending her flying backwards onto the steps.

The corpse erupted in a cloud of viscera, sinew, blood and maggots, as hundreds of heavy calibre bullets hammered into it. The body convulsed violently, its dead arms flapping like a spastic chicken, as a pool of blood formed beneath it. A maggot hit Kathryn in the face, and she quickly knocked it away. Blood followed and splattered her face and chest. A piece of brain landed on her foot.

Kathryn didn’t even have time to vomit. She jumped up, shaking her foot free of the offal, and sprinted back up the steps.

The firing was still going on, until all four firearms clicked uselessly, having used up their ammunition.

All four men were still screaming like maniacs. One shouted:
“Did we get her?”

Kathryn reached the door and fumbled with the card in her hands. Blood made it slippery, but she wiped it on her top and managed to swipe the card reader. The red light turned green and there was a loud decisive click. She pulled the door open and fell through into the corridor beyond. The door closed behind her automatically.

Backing up, her rump against the wall, all she could hear was four psychos screaming.

The screaming was in anger this time, not because of pride or machismo, or whatever they fucking called it.

The jeep drove off. Then all was silent.

She was safe now. Locked in. Alone.

Kathryn vomited.

She laid her head on the floor. Her eyes closed.

***

That was fucking brutal!

Hardcore shit!

I knew she was good.

That's okay, little subject, you can rest now, you did well. Phase Two is just ahead, but don’t worry, it just got interesting now. Time is money, but I can spare you ten minutes. I don’t want you being any less than a hundred per cent for the next phase. A lot depends on you getting there.

After venting his thoughts, the second man popped an E into his mouth and washed it down with bourbon. He placed his glass down next to his open sachet of E tablets which had spilled onto the desk.

He tapped his keyboard and watched his screen light up to show four different room interiors. The entrance hallway where his subject lay on the floor, next to a pool of her own vomit, was one of them. So was an IT room, a locker room and a vast interior occupied by a huge round table. Tapping a second key brought up every room in the building, a total of thirty seven separate interiors.

He sat back and waited.

Soon.

THIRTEEN

Francisco worked fast.

The new shirt he’d put on felt tight, unpleasantly constricting his adrenaline-pumped body. The sweat from his pores soaked the material immediately. He had changed his trousers so that he now wore full length cargo-bottoms with deep pockets. Unbuttoning these, he placed the gun’s magazine clips in them, three in one pocket, and two in the other. He stuck the Beretta in his waistband and tied his hair back with a rubber band. He slid the strap for his samurai sword over his shoulder and across his chest, so that the blade sat neatly along his back. Muscles rippled against his shirt, he could feel the blood rushing around his body, like fire coursing through his veins.

Leaving the bedroom, he headed for the stairs. Maintaining his footsteps so he didn’t make any noise, he reached the bottom in little more than twenty seconds. The gun and sword were heavier than he thought.

CRASH!

His television shattered against the wall ahead of him. Glass, plastic and wires showered him, most harmlessly, while some fragments cut the exposed skin of his forearms. Francisco fell back on the stairs, partially to use the handrail for cover, but mainly as an instinctive reaction to the shock and fear. Putting his arms over his head, he glanced through the gaps in the handrail, looking for his attacker. He felt blood seeping from his forehead.

A dark figure stood in the archway leading to his dining room. Francisco frowned. From his position he couldn’t see if the intruder was armed or not, but he assumed he was safe for now, otherwise he wouldn’t have the chance to look at his foe. He would already be dead.

“What do you want?” he called out.

The figure stayed silent and didn’t move. Francisco swore he could see the person flexing his huge arm muscles. He tried a different tack:

“Take whatever you want, just don’t hurt me, okay?”

Still silence, and again the figure remained motionless. Francisco stood up and walked out onto the living room floor, hands in the air.
Play it innocent,
he thought to himself, don’t let on that you have a gun, and
definitely
don’t let on that you’re up for a fight.

“It’s all yours, okay? Just...”

“Drop your weapons,” ordered his intruder.

The cool gravelly voice alarmed Francisco, it sounded as if his foe had gargled with barbed wire. It alarmed him more that the man knew that he was armed at all. Especially when his weapons were concealed behind him.

“I don’t know what you mean, I’m...”

“Drop your weapons or I’ll gut your wife and fuck your kid.”

“Wha—”

“Drop your weapons, or I’ll gut your wife, probably open her up along her Caesarean wound, using a pair of rusty garden shears. Maybe I’ll use a scalpel dipped in salt, to see how she screams, eh? And your kid sure is pretty!

“You wouldn’t.”

“Just try me. Go on, I dare you.”

Francisco remained silent, scared. His heart pounded in his chest. He felt like vomiting and crying all at once. Reaching down to his waistband he pulled out his Beretta and dropped it on the floor in front of him. The carpet ate up its weight as it landed with a dull thud.

“Now the sword!”

Reaching around, Francisco lifted the sword over his head and dropped it on the sofa beside him. Then he kept his hands in the air, trying to mollify him, not wanting to antagonise the intruder. The intruder who seemed to know so much information about him.

“Now walk over here slowly, keep your hands up, and remember, I think your kid is gorgeous.”

Francisco felt his guts lurch with that comment. What did he ever do to deserve such a fucking sick psycho in his living room, talking about his daughter in that way? No amount of unemployment or family disappointments could ever result in this behaviour on the karma scale. It just wasn’t right. How did this guy know about his ethnicity in the darkness? He could understand if he had turned on the lights, but he hadn’t. His wife wasn’t Asian either, so he couldn’t have assumed his ethnic origin from that. Maybe he had seen photos?

Francisco reached the intruder and just stood there.

He buckled under the force of the punch that rattled his ribs and drove the air out of him. He fell to his knees. He coughed.

“Take that as a lesson. No one lies to me, okay? Now get the fuck up.”

Francisco stood, it took a lot of effort, as the punch had caught him completely unawares. His enemy grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him out of the living room, into the dining room and through to the kitchen. The lights were blazing, and Francisco had to cover his eyes. In one smooth movement, the intruder pushed him down onto the floor and walked across the room. Tears formed in Francisco’s eyes as the lights stung him. He sat up in a crouched position, leaning against his refrigerator, and waited for his eyes to adjust.

He heard whimpers, perhaps betraying someone’s fear, two voices, both female, one sounding older, the other seemingly a child’s cry, that of an infant too young to even comprehend what was happening in front of her. The human voices were muffled, as if they were obstructed by something, words were incomprehensible, the noises were mere reflexes and totally incoherent. He could hear two totally different types of creaking sounds. Francisco began to cry, finally. He tried to compose himself, but failed. Before he even took his hands away and looked forwards, he knew what he was going to see.

An image of his wife popped into his head.

His wife was stunning, as always, and for the hundredth time today he thought how much he didn’t deserve someone so gorgeous, caring and loving. He pictured in his mind’s eye how her dark hair fell across her face, always graceful, giving her an air of innocence, but a sultry look at the same time. Her thin but fit body was to die for, her muscles enhancing her figure perfectly. He had liked her eyes on their first date and then grown to like other small parts of her body; like couples do. Her cheeks, her neck, her toes, the back of her knees and her shoulders. Many a time, cuddling up to her after an unsuccessful day’s job hunting he had thought to himself:
As long as I can come home to this, who cares?
And a lot of the time he also thought:
How much longer can this last?
As he stared into her eyes she probably guessed his thoughts, but she had not once complained, although he had heard her cry herself to sleep on occasion. He hated himself for upsetting her like that.

Francisco opened his eyes.

He saw her bound to a chair with a deep laceration across her forehead. Blood had curdled in her hair, making it stand up on the left hand side, and dry blood caked the right side of her face.

Seeing her like that made him want to take his Beretta and shoot himself.

The cruel gag across her mouth stopped her from even saying anything to reassure him and the rough rope that bound her feet to the chair legs and her arms behind her back, upset him even more. She wore only a set of white knickers and a bra to match: her sleeping attire. They had obviously abducted his family while they were sleeping. Her Caesarean scar was flecked with black specks of dried blood. He loved that scar, it gave her a vulnerable look. He thought he'd lost her that day. It was a reminder that they could overcome anything, against the odds. He remembered stroking it on many a night. He closed his eyes.

An image of his daughter popped into his head.

She had been the spitting image of her mother, with the same hair, the same eyes and the same bubbly outlook on life. The child had inherited his genes too though, her skin being a glorious bronze, which only made her look more radiant. He knew his daughter would grow up to break hearts and win awards. A girl who totally adored going to school, liked learning and getting the grades she came home proud to boast about. And she deserved all those good achievements. He knew the reason his marriage still survived was her. The love and adoration of her parents was obviously the reason she was performing so well in life. Why jeopardise that? He had planned to speak to his wife about it sometime soon. Now it looked as if he wouldn’t get the chance.

“Open your eyes, you fuck, look at what you did to your family!” yelled the intruder. "Take a good look."

Francisco opened his eyes once more.

Seeing his daughter bound in the same way as her mother was made his heart ache. Her innocent face was almost hidden behind another tight gag that hid half of her face, and was probably partly smothering. Her legs were tied to the chair, just as her mother’s were. Thankfully she had been dressed in a blue set of teddy-bear pyjamas when she had gone to sleep. He noticed that they were ripped at the left shoulder, but at least she was dressed.

Their names? Amy De Goya, married, devoted mother and photojournalist, and Sadie De Goya, seven years of age, educational genius-to-be. Both of them were crying piteously.

Tears streamed down their faces, rolling over the gags and spilling onto their chests. Dirt was smeared into their faces and necks, and grime from rough hand marks was visible on their shoulders, on Sadie’s pyjama shirt and on Amy’s bare flawless skin. Sadie’s face was unharmed, but it looked as if Amy had put up a fight: her left eye was almost swollen shut, and the dried blood on her face made her look like a thug. The gash in her head worried Francisco.

“You motherfucking cunt of a fucker!” he shouted at his captor.

“I’d keep your tone down if you know what’s good for you…" The stranger slapped Francisco across the face. “…And don’t swear in front of the kid.”

Francisco’s eyes were adjusted now, but for the first time ever, he wished he was blind, that he didn’t have to witness what he was seeing. He stood up and leaned on the fridge. He looked at his intruder, trying to assimilate what he was seeing.

The man was dressed all in black, the only inch of skin visible was around his lips in the gap in the mask he wore. He wore black clothes covering every inch of his body and a leather jacket over that. He must have been boiling hot. The man just stood, behind his family, holding a knife in his hand. Francisco recognised the weapon as an army issue knife, one with a really vicious looking serrated blade. He gulped, but the saliva wouldn’t go down, his throat was too dry and restricted. He couldn’t even gauge his foe’s intentions, because his eyes were covered by a pair of slim shades.

“So what do you want with us, what is it?” the terrified father asked. “Money? Goods? Sex?”

The figure remained still.

“Money?” the mystery man replied. “No, trust me, I’m getting so much that I can retire in three hours’ time, when I'm done playing with you lot here. And I'd soon as piss all over your shitty possessions here then take any of them with me. Sex? Now that could be fun. Not a bad looking pair you have here.”

“You have no
right
to speak about my family like that,” Francisco shouted.

“I warned you about the tone, didn’t I?”

“You’re all about the threats, aren’t you?”

The figure stepped forward and slipped the blade of the knife under Amy’s bra strap and lifted it. The strap split effortlessly and fell down across her chest, the weight of her left breast pushing it down, almost setting it free. He then flipped the knife up in the air, caught it by the handle and slammed the blade deep into Amy’s back.

The punch of the blade was sickening.

She screamed loudly under her gag, tears streamed from her eyes as they bulged, then they closed, and blood erupted under her gag, splattering her chest. She buckled violently in the chair, her toes rigid, and her leg muscles stretched as she reacted to the pain. Her left breast fell out of her bra as a result of her violent struggle, the material flapping about effortlessly. The chair creaked under her weight.

“Fuck, no, God, no! Stop it!”

“What you reckon, shall I twist the blade? That means I can fuck her in the back…the wound will never close after that.”

“Leave her alone, Get off her!”

The man pulled the knife out, blood dripping from its blade. A geyser of crimson squirted him as the knife was withdrawn. He licked the blade. Then he smiled.

“Now, let that be a lesson to you, don’t fuck with me. Next it’s your kid, and I won’t be nice this time.”

He returned to his perch behind them and leaned against the worktop.

Amy was turning pale now, sagging in her seat, blood dripping from her back onto the floor and from beneath her gag. Tears were mixing with the crimson pool, sending pink rivulets streaming down between her breasts and between her legs. It looked as if she would pass out within minutes.

Tears streamed down Francisco’s face. He looked across at Sadie. Her eyes were wide, and she had stopped crying. She was in shock.

His family were falling apart in front of him.

“Take me instead,” Francisco managed to say.

“What?”

“Take me, let them go. They haven’t seen your face...they don’t know you. Let them go so they can go to a hospital. Take me instead, just don’t hurt my family anymore.....Please!...Just...
just don’t hurt them!”

“No.”

“Dammit....Sorry....Let them go, please, they need help.....have a fucking heart....please....whatever it is that I did, they weren’t involved....There’s no need for collateral damage here....”