Kill Them All

CHAPTER SIX

Friday, 4:32 p.m.

Matt came to but kept his eyes closed. He was inside and could feel cool air-conditioning on his exposed skin. His arm ached-like an IV needle had been badly inserted and then clumsily taped down. The back of his head was pounding. No one could have gotten close enough to hit him without Matt sensing it, so he’d been shot with something, perhaps a beanbag. Cops or military? But why?

“Sleeping Beauty is awake.” A man’s jocular baritone. “Bro, we have been trying to catch up to your ass for a week. This morning we got here ahead of you. At last we meet!”

Matt forced his eyes open and squinted. He was on a gurney but not in a hospital. This was some kind of gigantic van-he could tell by the shape of the walls. Everything around and below him vibrated a bit. The speaker was dressed in black with a web belt and a sidearm. Mercenary all the way. He had a friendly, boyish face and a good-natured grin.

“My name is Scotty, Cahill,” the man said. “And of course we already know who you are.”

The scary stranger Sally had mentioned. Scotty instantly reminded Matt of someone. Someone he knew. His head hurt too much to focus. He rolled his head to the right. There was a needle in his arm. And some kind of a transfusion bottle there, but something didn’t look right. What was it? Matt struggled to make sense of his situation. He felt weak and dizzy. And then it finally hit him. They weren’t giving him fluids or medication.

They were drawing his blood.

Lots of it.

“You hungry?”

“What?”

Scotty repeated, “You hungry? Our medic says you’ll last longer if we give you some fruit and orange juice once in a while.”

Matt felt the world slide sideways and tilt. He was growing weaker by the second. Matt knew he wasn’t like other people-not anymore, not since he’d come back from the dead. No one was guaranteed immortality. How many pints of blood in a human body? Something like ten? How much had he lost already?

They were bleeding him.

“Two things I get off on,” Scotty said. “Football and old movies. You ever watch Laurel and Hardy? Those two old comics from the silent movie days? One tall and skinny, one short and fat. Loved those guys. You know, it turns out the dumb one was the brains.”

“Huh?”

Scotty grinned again. The boyish smile prompted Matt’s memory. “Andy,” he said. His voice was already becoming a desperate croak.

“Andy?”

“You remind me of my friend Andy.” A lifelong friend Matt had to kill after the Dark Man and the rot of evil took him over. And now that same rot was spreading across Scotty’s face, eating away the flesh on his chin. A thin stream of pus dribbled from his right nostril.

“That so?” Scotty seemed pleased. “Cool. Hey, thing is, under other circumstances, we probably could have been friends. Hope you realize this isn’t personal, Cahill. If it was up to me, I’d keep you around. Orders are orders.”

Matt shivered. The air was cold and he felt weak. “Whose orders?”

“Boss man says to take your blood, so we take your blood. Ours is not to reason why.” Scotty yawned. Something ugly and black writhed like a worm of smoke in the back of his throat as if fighting to get out.

“Don’t do this,” Matt said. “It’s murder.”

“War is hell,” Scotty said. And he flashed that Andy grin again. Matt felt fear and a deep sadness, both for himself and for Scotty, who might have been a decent person once but was past saving now. Matt didn’t want to die like this, but he was too weak for much of anything else-and growing weaker by the minute. He closed his eyes.

Scotty slapped his face lightly. “Stay awake, dude. We want you around for as long as possible.”

“Screw you.”

“That’s it! Come on, you don’t want this to be too easy, do you?”

“I don’t want this at all.”

Matt rolled his head the other way. A couple of mercenaries sat nearby. One was sucking on what smelled like a joint. The other was snoozing. The sliding side door to the van was open a crack. Another mercenary stood guard outside, but without much panache or enthusiasm. These men were well trained, but evil was on board, eroding their focus. Individual discipline was sliding. Appetites running amuck. They all reeked of sin. If Mr. Dark wasn’t actually running the show, he was most certainly involved. Had to be in some way.

Matt studied his foe. Tried to speak. “Why?”

Scotty blinked. “Why take your blood? Dude, you’re fucking famous. Matt Cahill, the man who was frozen solid for three months and brought back to life. The word went out among the very, very, very rich that you are Ponce de Fucking León himself, the owner of the secret of eternal youth. It was only a matter of time until someone hired a guy like me to come and find you.”

“Who?”

Scotty smiled. “Guess it doesn’t matter if I tell you. The checks come from some very smart men with money. Old men who contribute heavily to the university where you were first studied.”

“The university?”

“Alumni, shall we say.”

“They think it’s in my blood?”

“They say it has to be, dude. Somewhere in your blood or your DNA. So they figure it’s something money can locate and copy, or at least secure the rights to.” Scotty leaned closer. His breath stank of the rot eating him from inside. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Why not just steal a sample and go to work on that? Why bleed you dry? So I asked the same question. Seems to me we could take some, let you eat and rest, then take some more, and even go on and on for months or years that way.”

“Uh-huh.”

Just let me stay alive long enough to figure a way out of here…

“But no, we’re supposed to get as much as we can over a few days, then punch your ticket and dispose of the body. In case you’re curious, it will be a state-of-the-art cremation. That is, we plan to burn your ass up with a frag and split.”

“Why kill me? Just to leave no evidence?”

“Monopoly, dude. Once we have enough healthy samples, taking your ass out leaves no way for anyone else to compete. Business is murder these days.”

Matt licked his lips. “Water. Please.”

Scotty snapped his fingers. The mercenary with the marijuana sighed, pinched out his joint, and got a small bottle of water. He tossed it to Scotty, who opened it and poured a taste into Matt’s mouth. “Go easy, partner. Wouldn’t want you to get sick. We’ll turn off the drip now, let you get some strength back.”

Matt managed to make his left hand crawl up to grab the bottle. He wanted to handle it himself. He took another sip. “You must feel really proud of yourself.”

Scotty blinked once, then looked away.

A hit, a palpable hit.

The mercenary got up, walked around the gurney, and stopped the blood flow. He put some grapes and orange slices on a paper plate and set it down on Matt’s legs. Something in Scotty’s weakened mind wandered, though, and instead of feeding Matt he began to absently snack on the grapes himself. He looked normal again, and then horrific. These dangerous men were rapidly being taken over by their own mindless appetites.

Matt swallowed some more water, choking a bit but keeping it down. He looked to his right, where the needle protruded, and his mind raced for some kind of answer. He was alone in a huge trailer parked out in the desert, guarded by mercenary soldiers recruited in the cause of evil. Everyone thought he’d left town. The rancher he’d visited was dead, and perhaps Matt would be blamed for the murder. As for any chance of rescue, no one even knew he was here. Only one thing was certain.

Matt was in deep, deep shit.