His brain shuffled his memories into some sort of order. Someone he trusted had shot him. Rules had been broken. He couldn’t recall every point of protocol, but he knew it was a mistake to leave him for dead instead of finishing the job. He never would have done that himself. Bradshaw — that was his name, Bradshaw — wouldn’t normally have done that, either. Confusing. His mind kept working while he ate. Good soldiers wouldn’t leave something like this to chance. They’d come back for him. Staying here to feed would be a risk, but then feeding anywhere would soon become a risk. He’d have to kill them all.
It was a simple decision made in the basest region of his mind. Self-preservation was his sole purpose. Clarke pulled Hinzman’s esophagus out with slick fingers. He knew he had to keep feeding in order to stay alert and heal these wounds. He knew a lot of things other afterdead didn’t.
3 / Drinks at Dusk
“I never win,” Whittaker grumbled into his Captain & Coke. The Captain was being an unsympathetic prick this fine evening; Whittaker could barely feel the warmth of the liquor in his belly, not with the knot of anxiety that grew tighter with every spin of the roulette wheel.
Spending a furlough in Vegas was always an exercise in pain. Every dollar that came out of his pocket went straight into the casino’s, or into his liver — he knew it and everyone around him knew it. They encouraged it. Whittaker was used to rolling with the punches, though. He’d return to the base next week with a few bruises, take some ribbing from his comrades, then it was back to work. In the end, he figured, this yearly gouging in Vegas was better than sitting at home alone getting wasted (although the booze there was a hell of a lot cheaper).
Whittaker watched the last of his chips jump from his hands like he was a leper, then he left the casino-hotel, crossing the street to a strip joint. Ah, warm ten-dollar beer and the plastic smiles of girls whose age was anyone’s best guess in the garish crimson lighting. He took a table near the back of the room. Immediately there was a girl striding toward him. “Hi,” she said in a half-pert tone. It was early evening; Whittaker wasn’t big money. She hadn’t even brought along a bottle of champagne to hock. “What’re you in the mood for?”
“I…” He scratched his beard, leaned back, looked at the shadowy girl in the red lights. “I don’t know. I’m all right. Thanks.” She was gone before he knew it. He wiped a layer of sweat from his brow, opened his jacket, and wondered what the fuck was keeping him from putting a gun in his mouth. Christ, his sidearm was in the rental. Right across the street. He could do himself there in the car, no point in going up to his room. There’s a story for the fellas back at work. Whittaker finally cashed out. What took him so long? He winced at imagined eulogies punctuated by hollow laughter. Fuck that. He knew why he always came out here.
Leaving the bar without a drink or a dance, Whittaker got into the rental car. Like the casino and the strip joint, it smelled of stale cigarettes, and the A/C blew a hot wind across his eyes. He pulled out of the lot and headed north. A/C never got any better; he shut it off and rolled down the windows, cradling his pistol in his lap.
Away from everything, he got off the highway and felt out a spot that seemed right; he stopped and inhaled the air. It was just beginning to grow dark. He reached under the passenger seat for the bottle of Myers Dark he’d kept there. He didn’t need it in order to go through with this. It would just be nice. Getting out of the car, he sat himself on the hood. The door popped behind him — he turned, certain he’d shut it, and a dark blur snatched the gun from his hand. He felt it against his temple and that feeling was suddenly the last thing in the world he wanted.
“Clarke.”
He looked like he was still alive, by God, he really did. His movement was fluid, his eyes glistened red as the sun went down. But there was nothing, NOTHING in his face. No emotion, no steeliness either. Just nothing.
“Who ordered you to kill me?”
Whittaker swallowed a lump of phlegm. “I won’t ask twice,” Clarke told him. Same voice, same cadence. He couldn’t be undead.
“I don’t know,” Whittaker breathed. “B-Bradshaw handed down the order. I don’t know who told him. But it wasn’t you, Pete! Harmon was the target! You were just in the wrong place!”
“I think you’re lying,” Clarke replied. He took the gun away from Whittaker’s head and slipped it into the waistband of his pants. “I’m going to torture you until you tell me what you know.”
“I don’t—” Whittaker’s words and teeth were blown out of his mouth by the liquor bottle. He felt it shatter against his head, a painless, stunning sensation; then fire spread down the side of his face. He reeled and tried, stupidly, to run. Clarke flattened him on the hood of the car and pressed the jagged remnant of the bottle’s mouth between his upper lip and any teeth that were left. “So you know I mean it,” Clarke said flatly, and he sliced the lip off.
Whittaker howled, beat against his attacker and the car, but Clarke held him down with one rigid arm. That’s when Whittaker knew for certain that yes, he was looking at an afterdead. And his entire face was on fire now, hot blood filling his mouth. He spat and whimpered. “Thlease!” He cried. Red flecks misted Clarke’s face. Clarke stepped back and stomped, once, and this time the pain was instantaneous. Whittaker’s shin splintered like a rotted branch. He was thrown to the desert floor.
Whittaker could only roll from side to side, sobbing and choking, waiting for the next blow. Pain radiating from above his neck and below his waist met in his stomach. He puked his guts out in the dirt, Clarke silent this entire time. “WHY?!” the old soldier bellowed.
“I’m going to kill them before they kill me, again.” Clarke didn’t see the point in explaining himself, but he had to work through Whittaker’s shock to get information. Falling silent once more, he watched his victim paw at the ground.
“How dith you geth here?” Was the next question. “We leth you in Congo!”
“Boat. Stowed away. I’m going to ask you questions now.” Clarke knelt beside Whittaker, making a conspicuous display of the pistol. “This wasn’t your first hit, was it?”
“N-no.”
“You and Bradshaw, you worked together? And you say you don’t know who the orders came from?”
Whittaker shook his head madly. Clarke reached down and touched his ruined cheek; blinding pain shot through Whittaker’s skull, blurring his vision. It was a shard of glass that Clarke was retrieving from Whittaker’s face, and he sucked the blood from it before tossing it aside. “If you don’t know anything else, you’re useless to me.”
Whittaker tried to sit up. He was batted down like a rag doll. He said every prayer he knew and begged for mercy. “Thlease don’t!” Whittaker’s face darkened. “Thith ithn’t about protecting yourselth. It’s about REVENTH! You’re juth like me! Juth like—” He was still screaming when Clarke put a round through his head. It wasn’t a mercy bullet; just easier that way.