Cain's Blood (24 page)

Castillo shot five rounds.
The man dropped from the corner, from the shadows, and onto the
floor.
Castillo climbed down into the small cellar, using the collapsed
rubble as stairs. he looked back, wondering if the copters would ever
show up.
This guy has to be with Stanforth. How had he found them?
he dared touch the body, to confirm what he already knew: The
man was dead.
And it
was
a man. Mostly.
Castillo stared for a while. Tried to make sense of what he was looking at.
The guy wore a modified ballistics vest. Additional armor down its
arms and around the throat and jaw. Just above, the left cheek and ear
had
been shot off. he was charcoal-skinned, black as the darkest African,
but otherwise the facial features seemed more european. But no racial
heritage could account for the too-narrow head. Like a sideshow freak.
Or the too-wide mouth overcrowded with uneven, slanted teeth, or
maybe the two gaping holes where a nose should have been . . . and not
from any recent gunshot wound. An old injury, then, or . . . was this just
the fucking guy’s face?
Castillo kept staring.
Still so eerily familiar. A memory?
from his nightmares.
Is that it?
Something about his nightmares. Something . . .
But any forthcoming remembrance vanished with the next flare of
pain.
he winced. Cursed. Looked away. Climbed wanly out from the dark
cellar, leery of the others: Ted, Al, and Jeffrey. They were probably still
running, though. he couldn’t blame them.
he touched his own side, wet and sticky with blood. kept his hand
against the wound and moved out of the canyon as fast as he could. It
took forever. his breaths were long and slow by the time he reached the
top.
Two helicopters glided swiftly into the canyon from the west. he’d
not heard them over his own ragged breathing. Along the railway again,
toward his car. he felt light-headed, knew he’d lost too much damn
blood. knew well how close he was to collapsing.
Castillo drew close to the car, tightening his hold on the pistol.
“Jeff?”
The car’s windows were busted out. front and back. All four windows on both sides.
They’ve been having fun,
Castillo thought.
Teasing their prey.
Anger crawled through him again. familiar. Not some
damned PTSD phantom anger. Something that suddenly felt more real.
The shattered glass lay everywhere. There was blood on one of the
back windows. his new books discarded in the backseat, Jeff’s duffel
bag in a heap in the front. The tire tracks of a second car were furrowed
deep in the dark ground.
he checked the woods outlining both sides of the dirt road. “Jeff!”
They’d taken him. Jeff’s “brothers.”
Castillo rested against the front of the car, blew his breath against
the chill. The ghosts of Winter Quarters mine whispered in the distance. Or maybe it was the helicopters.
Castillo didn’t know which. Didn’t care.
he just knew he had another boy to find.

ahir likes to watch men die, specifically treasuring the precise moment when the doomed reaches that unique awareness of having
nothing more to give, helpless, and then, in that very personal and
ultimate defeat, almost always a brief, final, futile, clench of life, a

sudden gasp, optimistic, defiant, and the eyes almost always show it all because

no man is ever as truly alive as during his very last breath and, by looking into
their eyes, Zahir can truly see God and so runs his fingers along your face slick
with sweat and blood, and you move your head into the touch.
Well trained,
Zahir thinks, and smiles. Where most would pull away from one who’d already
brought so much pain, you’ve been taught to want the heft of reality against
your cheek, something real to focus on. Zahir pats the cheek. Soon, he whispers
again, promises, and moves again toward his bench of tools, the rusted kerosene
lantern, fluid shadows along the cramped cave, the shadow twisted unnaturally
under the low ceiling. Other men talking in the adjacent tunnels and holes,
someone’s laughter . . .

The first time Zahir sees a man die, he’s maybe eight, and maybe in
Cairo when some car bomb shatters half of some market and, as he cowers on
the ground with the others, a dark shape maybe stumbles toward him from
out of the smoky wreckage and Zahir is still not sure if it was a man or a
woman he sees that day there was too much blood, and part of the head was
missing as it lurches toward him as if every step might bring its final collapse,
and the boy, the Zahir boy, has wiped the burn of the smoke from his eyes to
watch it all. He sees half a face, the right side shards of bone and flesh and the
skull behind almost completely lost. He sees the lone left eye glaring at him,
yes, directly at him, with both amazement and resolve, the boy Zahir knows
then that the bloody thing actually wants to kill him. That, even with half
its face and brains splattered over the street behind, it has determined not to
accept death alone. The man-woman lifts an arm at him, an accusing bloody
stump that ends at the elbow and then it collapses at your feet. Something
wet and hot splashes on your face, Zahir’s face, beside him then, the shattered
jaw and what was left of its teeth gnawing on a lolling tongue and blood
gurgles from the half mouth, the limbs twitching against Zahir’s legs. Still,
the boy focuses on the eager and knowing eye watching him and the eyes shine
like a star. The eye of God. He finds the same look again maybe six months
later when he kills the old man with a brick. Then, maybe once more, when
he strangled Ahmed’s baby sister. And the others. When he joins the Fatah
al-Islam Jihad, it soon becomes his sacred duty to hurt, to kill, and one of the
group, a wealthy girl who goes to Alexandria University, a PhD candidate in
some-or-other bullshitty subject, and she suggests his violent nature is surely
caused by the trauma of that first car bomb, or perhaps the frequent beatings
his father gave him. And Zahir does not think so, and, as he rapes and kills
her, he tells her as much. He simply enjoys it, he tells her, it’s not schtick,
that was all. He’d enjoyed torturing the family in Herát, or the boy soldiers
they’d kidnapped in Qal’at Dizah, or more recently, he’d enjoyed killing the
people in Towraghondi. His team has captured the three Rangers outside of
Towraghondi a week before and slipped them back across the border no way the
Americans come into Iran for them, says “John Penn” and “George Clooley”
would never allow it, and chuckles. A good week after much pain, and much
blood, he’d already seen God twice and he will enjoy this man’s death too.
Already hurt him peeled his flesh, cut down to the bone. The Americans so
damn big he wants to see that muscle up close and truth be told, he’d never
been particularly interested in the politics, or in the spiritual matters of his
effort, these secondary to his true passions, and in that regard, he is probably
no different from this soldier that God has directly sent to him.

Glance over the two emptied chairs. Dark stains of torture pooled below
each, memories of the broken bodies, only their heads remain each propped on
the small wood table watching. Choosing his favorite scalpel the two-inch carbon steel BD Bard-Parker lifted from the Red Cross tent, nice cutting control
and strength, perfect to make some more shallow incisions along the chest and
genitals. Start making garbled sounds not words anymore. Havn’t been for
almost a day now. A pity as Zahir wants to learn more about this man, but
these are not normal men these “Rangers” never once beg for mercy like the
others, they curse and grow angry. He never even learns their real names no
identification on men like these. No man. Oud-eis. Don’t do this. Not yet the
true eye of God. Zahir steps closer and presses his thumb against your mouth
to push back the upper lip. Writhe in the chair, the blood-speckled ropes holding tight. Scream as Zahir raises the blade, brings the scalpel once more to
your gums. Then moves to the body again works quietly before the gunfire. The
gunfire erupted in one of the tunnels. The sound echoes like thunder. Drops the
wet scalpel onto the table beside the two heads and someone shouted somewhere,
the sound of a man dying, and now Zahir reaches for his rifle. One of the others, Hasib you think, bursts into the cave, shouts something, and Zahir almost
shoots him. Zahir grins at this thought. “What is it?” he asked. In reply,
Hasib lifts into the air and then, like a ghost, rises another full meter off the
ground. Zahir stepping back in confusion and blood splashes across the cave’s
rock. Something shiny now out of Hasib’s chest, then he is dropping to the floor.
Something else moves in the shadows. A thin, dark shape that drifts like smoke
directly toward Zahir who is firing his rifle. The strong hands at his throat and
then something very cold sinking deep into his stomach. A large knife glinted
in the dark cavern, stabbing. The man screamed, Jacobson, opens at the middle,
entrails spilling in a splash onto the cave floor. He feels the cold blade moving inside him and the shadow man stands before him and Zahir gazes into
the pitch black eyes that shimmer like oil, like a demonic jewel, but in their
dark reflection he sees his own eyes, too, wide and shining, and recognizes the
sensation of his body splitting apart as he screams, an almost joyful sound, and
then, finally, in the reflection of dark man’s eyes, his own eyes shine like stars,
the eyes of God, he thinks, and then, nothing. The body cast aside knocking
the table and the two heads rolling slowly obscenely almost comically tumbling
over. Watching you. The heads of Second Lieutenant Wissinger and Specialist
Koster. Become, because this is the dream, the faces of Shaya and Jeff. The dark
thing turns next toward you in the chair. Struggling against the ropes. Turning away. Zahir’s top half still squealing in a piercing sound that spreads and
spreads until you wanted to explode from the pressure. The dark skeletal fingers
digging under the chin now. Lifting your head. Blood trickling over one eye,
you have no choice but to look straight into its face. The eyes . . .

Castillo lurched awake, a gasp caught halfway in his throat in the form
of a lunatic’s high-pitched scream, the terrible sound going into him,
not out. The nightmare vanished again, but the pain lingered, as it
sometimes did. he dreamily touched his mouth, and then moved down
to his chest, where his fingers easily found the thick scar tissue. Both
familiar and still alien. his hands moved to the more-recent bandaging
and wounds. here too the bleeding had stopped. his vest had taken
the bulk of things, the cut since cleaned and sutured. The motel room
bathroom was still covered with stained towels and the fresh stench of
alcohol and blood.

It was the same man. . . .
Castillo sat up painfully once more at the small desk over a closed
laptop and his notes. A gooseneck lamp cast the only light in the motel
room, and it glowed hotly, like a rusted kerosene lantern. he leaned
forward and put the heels of his palms against his eyes to rub away the
sleep, the memory. his fingers wrapped around the sides of his head,
a familiar pose. from afar, Castillo often thought, it must look as if he
were literally holding himself together.
Maybe I am.
he felt the fusty
chill of the room’s AC move across his back and shoulders.
The man in the cave . . .
Castillo could hardly think anymore. he checked his watch. 0636.
he couldn’t quite remember when he’d dozed off. he remembered
noting 0500 clearly and then reading more of Jacobson’s damned notes.
Time had become a damning factor. It had been less four hours since
he’d walked out of the Winter Quarters, but the pieces of his past were
coming together, melding with the nightmares of his present.
Jacobson had been murdered by, and Castillo himself had shot and
killed—as unbelievable as it seemed—the man from his own nightmares. The “Dark Man” he’d seen in the cave two years before.
Whether the same man or some sort of clone himself, Castillo
didn’t know.
And how had Stanforth . . . ?
and
What are these men?
and so
on, but none of this mattered now, he told himself.
What mattered now was the boy.
he picked up Jacobson’s opened notebook from the table and read.
from the letters of Jack the ripper: “
You an me know the truth dont we. ha
ha I love my work an I shant stop until I get buckled and even then watch out
for your old pal Jacky. Ps Sorry about the blood still messy from the last one.
”
“your old pal, Jacky.”
Castillo turned the page and reread the words of Ted Bundy: “
We
serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And
there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.
” Castillo ran the words
through his head again. The boys truly had a whole country in which to
hide. They had transportation, money. No ties anymore to real people
beyond the files of the historic killers they’d been cloned from.
We’re everywhere.
Castillo’s mouth went tight.
How long does the boy truly have, left with
them? And are there really any answers I can find in the notes of this madman? Any clues as to where Jacobson’s creations might have gone? Or is this
only more of the same lunacy? The same which drove the eminent geneticist to
such horrors in the first place?
he closed the notebook. Stared at the dark wall over the desk.
he felt he should get up and drive somewhere to do something. But
where? And what? he was too alone now, and as wanted by the Defense
Department, he suspected, as the psycho killers he’d been tasked with
bringing in. And even if he’d had the full support of Command, there
simply wasn’t time.
Castillo pushed back from the table and rose for the first time in
hours. Limply, painfully, he moved toward the mirror in the dim light.
Then, he looked up.
he saw the new bandaging taped around his side, and all around it,
the pale scars that almost completely covered his stomach and chest.
The marks crisscrossed the defined muscles in continuous disfigurement and design, wrapped over his shoulders and arms. Many letters
were Perso-Arabic, naturally. Others something else, symbols no one
had ever determined. The man had cut snakes and trees into him. And
eyes, staring eyes etched in flesh.
The Illustrated Man,
Castillo thought for the hundredth time. he
studied himself awhile. Curiously, almost, as he often had over the last
two years. As if he was looking at someone else. he stared back into
those other eyes. first, the ones that had been cut into him. Then, the
pair in the mirror. Behind him, the shadows of the room assumed their
own shapes. Almost human.
Your old pal, Jacky.
Castillo turned away from his reflection and reached for his phone.
his call was answered on the first ring.
“I’m glad you called,” Stanforth said. “We’re in a new place here.”
“Very true.”
“And it’s not a good one.”
“Also true.”
“you need to come in, Castillo, and you need to come in right now.
This one’s over. That’s an order.”
“Not yet.”
“Shawn, if you continue—”
“Not yet.”
“What do you want?”
Castillo flipped open his laptop. “I want you to release more of
those things.”
“I don’t know what—”
“Sure you do,” Castillo stopped him. “Super-soldier type, genetically fucked with artificial violence. Like the one that murdered Jacobson for you. Or all those kids in Orchard City. The same one you sent
into Iran two years ago?”
“When I saved your damn ass?”
“Do this,” Castillo said. “Or I go to the press with everything.”
“Would you really?”
Castillo honestly didn’t know. “yes.”
“But would they believe you?”
“Considering the current popular opinion of our bosses, I have a
feeling they might. release them.”
“To what end?”
“What end do you think? So they can find the last few boys. Like
the other one did. how’d he track them down before? Made somehow
from the same stuff, I imagine. Some kind of psychic or chemical connection or . . . What the fuck does it matter? Just get it done.”
“you killed him, Shawn. There are no others.”
“Sure there are,
Brad
. you’re the guys who love to make copies,
right? Death’s very own kinkos.”
Stanforth grunted a half laugh. “I don’t know if we can do that now.
you saw what happened in Orchard—”
“We can do it.” Castillo moved back to his laptop. “risk it. And I
need to know exactly when they’re found. I want to be there.”
“Why? To end this yourself? Save the day? everyone told me you’d
lost your fucking mind over there. I should have listened more.”
Castillo ignored him, tapped at his keyboard. “I’m sending you a
private ICr to contact the moment you know something. Do that, and
you won’t have to worry about me ever again.”
“It’s my job to worry. And what about Jeffrey? Do I need to worry
about him?”
“Who?”
“Jeffrey Jacobson. Jeff Dahmer. Whatever name he’s going by.
Jeff/82. his DNA’s all over Jacobson’s house. In your hotel room in
Olney. It was only a matter of time before we realized where he’d gotten to. how long have you—”
“kid helped me do my damn job,” Castillo said. “he’s not an issue.
Never was. Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s already dead.” he almost hoped
as much. “Just fucking get it done.”
“I understand your request, but Castillo . . .”
“yes.”
“If we do this. If we do this your way . . . and if it goes bad, I can’t
help you when this is over. you’ll be on your own. you understand?”
If it goes bad . . . .
“One hundred percent,” Castillo said and ended the call.
“
And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.
” Bundy’s quote
echoed in his mind.
But how many?
Castillo wondered aloud, and his
body trembled in the empty room.
How many?
As he flipped off the light to let the darkness cover him completely,
he could only think of one.