The Shepherd (26 page)

“How about I keep the gun and the lighter, and I tell you about your friend, Maggie.”

Marcus shivered at the mention of her name.

“She’s a real sweet person, Marcus. Beautiful, of course, but she also possesses a certain undeniable charisma. Quite a catch. I’m sorry I had to take her from you. After you’re finished here, why don’t you come by the abandoned school down on the edge of town and see if you can stop me from turning her insides outside. Come alone…those are the rules. Just you and me. Dark and Light. Yin and Yang. If you break the rules, then she’ll die. I promise you that. And you had better hurry. Patience is not one of my virtues.”

On the last word, Ackerman dropped the lighter.

Within the blink of an eye, the flames quested along the line of liquid to the gasoline-soaked building. The sudden wave of heat nearly pushed Marcus and Andrew off of their feet.

As soon as the lighter left his hand, Ackerman dove toward the alley.

Andrew fired, but the wave of heat and a split second’s hesitation made all the difference. Ackerman was gone.

Marcus watched helplessly as the front of the bar transformed into a churning wall of fire.

The wailing from inside had become a deafening barrage of sound. He imagined that this was what Hell would sound like. Two walls of flame ensnared the bar’s patrons and crept closer to their prey like a pair of hungry predators. The people trapped inside could do nothing more than wait to burn and pray for a quick death.

He thought about Ackerman, but at the moment, he had more pressing concerns. He stared into the blazing inferno, calculating.
React. Adapt, Improvise, Overcome
.

He glanced around, trying to find something that he could use to save them. He felt so helpless. He couldn’t allow those people to die, even if it cost his life. He scanned the area, and then inspiration struck.

He noticed that a car had stopped about a block away and its driver sat enthralled by the carnage. He had an idea. He had no clue if it would work. In fact, he had serious doubts that it would work, but he couldn’t sit by and watch as these people burned.
I have to do something. I have to try.

He took off in a dead sprint toward the car. His footfalls on the pavement seemed to be coming not from his own feet but from somewhere far away. His heart raced, and his body ached from the abuse he had sustained over the course of the past few days. But his mind was clear. Instinct had taken over. There was a time to think and a time to react, and the time for thinking was long past.

When he reached the vehicle, he threw open the door and dragged out the driver. He caught the vehicle’s owner so off guard that the man didn’t even utter a word. The driver just fell to the ground and stared in disbelief as Marcus drove off.

He floored it. He wanted to be sure that his blow would have the desired effect. He had noticed the fire hydrant close to the front of the building, and as soon as he saw it, he knew what he had to do.

When he was about six years old, he had desperately wanted to be a fireman and had dreamt about saving people from a burning building. He always romanticized the experience in his mind, imagining the thrill of running into the flames as everyone else ran out—being the big hero.

Now that the moment he had fantasized about had finally come, feeling like a hero was the furthest thing from his mind. A horrible fear that permeated his whole body and twisted his stomach into knots came much closer to describing the experience. It was screaming and crying and the thought that one mistake could cost someone his or her life.

He hit the hydrant, and the car jerked back. His head smacked into the windshield.

The car’s owner wasn’t going to be very happy, but at this point, the only thing that concerned him was that the collision had accomplished its task. The geyser of water, which shot into the air next to the car, told him that it had.

He shook the stars from his vision and backed the car around into the proper alignment. Then, he swung the car door into the stream of water that shot out from the hole where the fire hydrant had recently sat. The pressure from the water wasn’t as great as the pressure from a fireman’s hose—since it was the fire truck that amplified the flow into a high-pressure stream—but even the reduced pressure combined with the slick pavement made the task difficult.

Andrew ran up next to him and helped to hold the door and angle the water flow toward the building.

The spray of the water stung his skin and fell everywhere like a cold December rain. It was hard to hold the water at one constant angle, and the curvature of the car door made it impossible to aim the stream directly at the building’s opening. But enough of the manmade rainstorm hit the door to quench the flames.

After a moment, the flames dissolved enough to afford those trapped inside a chance to escape.

The patrons fell over each other and knocked one another out of the way, clawing for a chance at freedom. Courtesy, consideration, and chivalry were long forgotten concepts. People swarmed from the bar like a stampeding herd, resorting back to a primal state and acting on their most basic survival instincts.

When it appeared that everyone had been given the opportunity to escape, he and Andrew released the geyser they had been trying to wrangle and retreated into the street. Upon reaching a safe distance, Marcus turned back toward the carnage. He put his hands on his head and tried to slow his thundering heart.

Andrew hunched over next to him, hands on knees. “Where did you come up with that?”

He looked at Andrew and shrugged. “Haven’t you ever put your finger over the end of a garden hose?”

Andrew looked around at the people that Marcus had saved and nodded. “Time to go after Ackerman.”

“No. You’re going to stay here and help these people. I’m going after Ackerman alone.”

Andrew straightened. “Since when are you calling the shots? I’m the FBI agent, remember. You’re just a civilian, and there’s no way that I can let you face that psychopath without me. I would say the opposite and tell you to stay behind, but I’m not stupid enough to go after Ackerman alone.”

His expression didn’t waver. “Guess I am stupid enough, ‘cause I am going alone. He said that if I don’t come by myself, he’d kill her. I don’t know much, but I know that he means to keep his promise if I break his rules. Besides, I can’t tell you how I know it, but I know that I have to do this by myself. Ackerman said that our destinies are connected. I didn’t realize it until now, but I’ve felt the same thing since the first moment I looked into his eyes. I have to face him. I’m meant to face him.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about your destiny. There’s no way—”

With a flash of movement, Marcus stripped the gun from Andrew’s hand and aimed it at the agent’s head. “This isn’t up for discussion.”

Andrew released a slow breath, narrowed his eyes, and gritted his teeth. “Fine.”

Marcus stepped out of reach, lowered the pistol, and twirled it like a gunslinger from the old west. He ejected the magazine and checked the number of rounds. He prayed that he wouldn’t have to use any of them. Satisfied, he thrust the magazine back into the gun and pulled back the slide, jacking a shell into the chamber. “Which way to the school?”

Andrew’s eyes still burned, but he pointed down the street. “Two blocks up. Take a right. Follow that all the way to the edge of town. You can’t miss it.”

He nodded. “I’ll meet you back at Maggie’s apartment. If I’m not there in an hour, don’t worry about me…‘cause I’m already dead.”

With those words, he turned and ran in the direction of the old school building. As he moved away, he clicked on the gun’s safety and placed it in the back of his pants.

He felt the rush of a thousand bad memories swirl around him. He hated guns, even though he had a certain talent for them. Once again, he wondered why all his talents involved violence and death. He wondered if he was really that different from Ackerman. Maybe Ackerman was merely farther along on the path to madness.

He wasn’t sure whether life, death, or insanity awaited him, but he knew that there was no turning back.

As Lewis Foster made his way to Maggie’s apartment, he changed course when he heard what sounded like an explosion. As far as he could tell, the noise had come from the direction of the Asherton Tap. When he reached the bar, he parked down the street and crept close to the commotion on foot. He arrived at “The Tap,” as the locals called it, just in time to see the confrontation between Marcus and Ackerman. He didn’t stay to see what happened with the fire. When Ackerman fled the scene, Lewis followed.

Ackerman was fast, but he stayed close enough to see Ackerman enter the abandoned middle school on the edge of town. He didn’t rush in behind the killer. He took his time and scouted the perimeter, analyzing all points of ingress and egress. When satisfied that he had the lay of the land and that Ackerman hadn’t set any obvious traps, he snuck into the building from the opposite side that Ackerman had entered.

He scanned the interior with cautious eyes. He half-expected Ackerman to pop around the corner wearing a wig and his dead mother’s dress. At that point, nothing would have surprised him regarding the depths of his adversary’s insanity.

He took out his military issue 9mm Beretta and a Surefire 6P flashlight. He utilized the Harries flashlight technique—the back of his support hand, which held the flashlight, pressing against the back of his shooting hand. His particular model of flashlight had the on/off switch conveniently located on the tail cap. This would allow him to keep the light off until he needed it.

He also wore a standard bulletproof vest, which didn’t make him feel much safer when it came to Ackerman. The psychopath used firearms but could just as easily fillet him with a stabbing weapon or rip the life from him with bare hands. The vest provided little defense against these attacks, but it never hurt to be prepared.

He walked up the back stairs and into the main hallway. He paused to listen, but the only sounds were his own heartbeat and rhythmic breathing. The eerie calm made him feel uneasy. Ackerman could have been hiding anywhere. The killer could have been behind any door or lurking in any dark corner.

He walked down the corridor, stopping to look into each room. Ackerman couldn’t have known that he was even here. He had kept his distance during the pursuit, and Ackerman would have expected Marcus and Andrew to have their hands full with the bar fire for at least a little while. Despite these facts, he couldn’t help but feel that Ackerman was waiting for him and that he was playing right into the madman’s hands.

Being a man that didn’t scare easily, he hated himself for what he felt. He tried to push his emotions aside, but he couldn’t deny his fear.

A voice came from behind him.

He tensed and whirled around. The school intercom announced, “Paging Mr. Foster. Paging Mr. Foster. Mr. Foster, please report to the principal’s office. The last time I saw you, Lewis, I told you that I’d make you pay. Time to give the devil his due.”

The voice echoed down the dark hallways of the forgotten school and compounded in on itself. It made Lewis feel surrounded.

He tried to keep his emotions under control, but as he continued to check the rooms, he kicked in the doors with more fervor than necessary. He wanted to put an end to Ackerman once and for all. He wanted him to pay for all of the horrible things that he had done. He wanted him to pay for all of the pain he had caused and the innocent lives that he had cut short.

Lewis never had the chance to confront the man that had murdered his family, and he never would. He would never avenge their deaths, but he could avenge the deaths of other innocents. Ackerman hadn’t killed his family, but he would pay for it, nonetheless.

Over the intercom, Ackerman said, “I had hoped that your boss would come for Maggie, but I guess you’ll have to do. The farther I go down this path, the less I’m concerned with revenge anyway. I’ve been in a sporting mood as of late, so keeping in the spirit, I wanna play a game. The rules are simple, but I believe that honesty is the best policy. So I want you to know up front that I cheat and that you’re probably going to die either way. At the end of this hallway, you’ll find stairs that lead to the second story. Take the stairs up. Then, a quarter of the way down the upstairs hallway, you’ll see two bathrooms on your left. One is a trap and leads to death. Maggie awaits rescue in the other. You have a fifty percent chance of being the hero and a fifty percent chance of dying. At the end of your miserable life, you’ll beg for a showing of compassion and mercy…of which I am not capable. And just to mess with your mind even further, I’m going to admit to you that death awaits in the girl’s bathroom.”

Lewis continued to check each room as he moved down the hall toward the stairs.

“The problem is that now you’ll have to ask yourself whether I’m lying and trying to make you think that I’m telling the truth, or telling the truth and trying to make you think that I’m lying. Should you even consider these possibilities, or leave the decision to chance? Lots to consider. One last thing… keep in mind that I wouldn’t be playing this game if I thought for one second that it wouldn’t end with your death. That being said and considering that dealing with you is taking away valuable preparation time for tonight’s main event, I’m going to offer you a chance to walk away now. You wouldn’t be any less of a man if you just left now and let Marcus save the girl. Go now and all is forgiven, or stay and dance with the devil. The choice is yours. I’ll be waiting.”

Lewis shook his head in frustration and clenched his teeth. Part of him wanted to run, but his ego and male bravado would never allow that. Marcus surely wouldn’t fare any better against Ackerman than he would. He told himself that he was good at what he did. He could be the hero.
This maniac has to be stopped, and I’m gonna be the one to stop him.

He made his way up the stairs and onto the second floor. He paused in front of the doors leading into the bathrooms.
Door Number One, or Door Number Two?
Ackerman had said that the trap was in the girl’s restroom, but after all the people Ackerman had murdered, he didn’t expect him to have any qualms regarding the violation of other commandments. Then again, maybe the killer wanted to throw him off the trail by telling the truth? Either way, Ackerman had succeeded in his real goal of making him doubt and second-guess himself.