Inside, a father stands consumed by shadow, a motionless figure hunched by circumstance. He counts his breaths. He listens for a sound to rise up from below. But there is no sound. Only a maddening silence crawling across his skin, filling the house with warped panic.
It can't go on this way. Two days have passed already. Two of the hardest days Victor Sanchez has ever survived, and his forty-three years of life have not been easy.
He waits a few moments more, counts a dozen breaths. Then flips a light switch. The room seems odd bathed in light after hours of darkness. All the blinds are tightly closed, many of the windows covered by black sheets tacked to the walls.
Victor has created a tomb, a modern dungeon of secrecy. There are some things you can never reveal ... some secrets you must carry to the grave, and for Mr. Sanchez, the grave looms very, very near.
***
Nathan Holt stands outside the circle of activity.
He already knows the truth that the assembly of detectives and police officers can never know.
The carnage of an Abhorrent is unmistakable. The scent of sour frenzy still hangs thick in the air. There are details he needs, though, evidence that will point him to his next target.
He stands rigid and tall, eyes fixed on the bloody remains of an elderly woman ... False teeth poking through a hole in her withered cheek. The cops glance over their shoulders at him, exchange raised eyebrows and words he can't quite hear. He recognizes some of them, but like the rest of this burgeoning city, most of the faces are unfamiliar. The streets are in constant flux, even the homeless trade alleyways week to week. The mechanics of this place never rest, its gears forever moving people along an assembly line of chance, as though existence itself is afraid of routine.
Nobody wants to wake and admit they are happy being trapped inside a heartless cycle.
Except Nathan. He holds tight to patterns. His days are constructed from the fabric of predictability; it is how he succeeds, it is the way he HUNTS.
"Uhhh, Mr. Holt, sir?" A youthful face steps up, visibly nervous. Nathan instinctively fingers the butt of his Colt M199 through expensive fabric, like a rattlesnake twitching its tail as a stranger approaches.
"Yes."
"I was told to give you this." The nameless officer extends a piece of paper and turns on heels the second Nathan's massive hand takes hold of it.
Old woman last seen exiting the Walgreens two blocks down on Ash Street.
Not much. Its enough to set Mr. Holt in motion.
***
On the dining room table rest an array of items.
Victor Sanchez looks over each object organized on the polished oak surface. His eyes absorb the details, mind trying to register the reality of this situation. Only a week before, his life made sense. He had a caring wife, son, decent job, and enough free time on the weekends to watch a ballgame or two. All of that is gone now.
What remains is an impossible choice.
Victor reaches out and lifts an axe from the table. It is brand new, as most of the other items purchased from Home Depot late yesterday. The weight of the stainless steel blade makes him queasy, its smooth handle sickly comfortable in his hands. Next, he takes up a hard hat with one heavy-duty flash light affixed in front. He clicks the switch on/off several times with his thumb. Gloves. Raincoat. Goggles.
He realizes that this is about delaying the inevitable. Victor has checked the equipment several times today, and always finds a reason to wait ... just a little longer, just one more hour of silence before chaos.
***
Walgreens.
Nathan Holt enters with the authority of a natural disaster. Customers stop in their tracks, clerks freeze at the register, the natural buzz of the grocery store comes to a sudden halt. This is the MAN in full concentration, focused and brutal. He towers over the parallel checkout counters, head motionless, eyes moving left to right in artful slow motion.
He speaks, "I need to see the manager, and all sales clerks that worked two days ago. If they aren't here, get them here." And somehow nobody questions the demands of Mr. Holt. After a brief wrinkle of silence, the occupants of the store simply concede to his will; but this is nothing new. He is accustomed to this role.
Ten minutes later the doors to Walgreens on Ash Street are locked, all customers cleared out. In a small back office, a nervous on duty manager sits at a cluttered desk, surrounded by nine employees. Nathan stands on the opposite end of the 15' x 15' box, head almost touching the ceiling.
"Two days ago, the 11th, an elderly woman by the name of Alison Cozer made some purchases at this Walgreens. Shortly after, she was killed, her body discarded in a back alley dumpster just around the corner." He waits for reaction, gets only stunned blinks and uncomfortable grimaces, "If any of you saw Mrs. Cozer that day, it is vital that you tell me everything you can remember."
"I ... I remember her." A middle-aged woman with leathery skin and a faded tattoo on her arm steps forward.
Mr. Holt doesn't offer a smile or word of encouragement. He simply nods.
The hunt is full-sprung color.
***
So you love. You offer the purest elements of self, empty all the emotional resources you have gathered through the years into this vessel of flesh and nerves. You become a father.
Victor Sanchez has made some mistakes. He can admit that. In the end, no matter how many times he pulls apart the last seventeen years, he knows there was nothing more he could have given. His son was loved. He was given opportunities, he was listened too and respected and disciplined when the situation demanded it.
Victor processes this info and does his best not to break apart inside. For all he has sacrificed as a father, it is impossible to accept it has all come to this.
This moment. This act.
Victor stands just outside the basement door, rigid like a soldier about to set foot on a battlefield for the first time. He wears the raincoat, hardhat, gloves, goggles. In his hands ... the weight of the axe pulls against the fiber of everything he believes in. And Victor knows the truth, suddenly, unexpectedly:
There are times in life when you have made all the right choices, and you still lose.
He reaches for the deadbolt and turns. Clunk. The steel pulls away from its snug seat. He twists the brass handle and pulls the heavy oak door outward, cringing as old hinges shriek.
Beyond the door, stairs descend into darkness. And silence.
***
This is what it comes to. This is what it always comes to. The clock ticking, a sick kind of dread building. Am I too late? Has it already happened? Mr. Holt speeds along neighborhood roads, outwardly calm. the truth is, even he feels pressure in these final breaths before impact.
THE FACTS: Alex Sanchez. Last person to be seen with the victim. Description of behavior fits all known Abhorrent characteristics.
Now Nathan is criss-crossing a middle class residential area, hoping at worst to gather more info about Alex and where he might be found from his parents ... at best ... ( killing someone's son).
There is never a best with this job, not really.
He accepts that.
He drives. One hand on the wheel, the other inside his coat, fingers resting on the chilly steel of his 199.
***
The light on top of Victor's hardhat bounces across darkness, making him nauseous as he slowly navigates the staircase. Armies of quiet pour from cracked plaster. He strains to hear something, anything that might direct him to his task.
"Daddy?"
Victor Sanchez feels vital strength bleed out through his eyes. That's Alex ... his voice, but wrapped in something vile. He takes another step down, closer to the one event he can't imagine.
A hand slips through the dust-filled beam of light from his hardhat. Victor freezes, gripping the axe handle tight, feeling the ache of his fingers around polished wood.
"Daaaaddy."
He swings at a blur of face, but knows instantly he has missed. The blade swishes through darkness and slips from sweaty palms. As the steel impacts cold concrete, a rainbow of orange sparks erupt ... and Victor sees his son Alex for the briefest instant. The child he once held all night waiting for a fever to break. The little boy he taught to swim. The young man he helped over so many hurdles while growing up. There is little left of that person now.
Victor closes his eyes and whispers something near a prayer.
The pain is a dazzle against his eyelids, like a dance of lightning seen from miles away. Muscles are torn, bones break, blood erupts. A father drops to the floor without a sound, lost in a sea of senseless regret.
Suddenly there is thunder to go with the lightning of agony. Relentless. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Over and over it shakes the contents of the basement, each time a flare of yellow stabbing across the darkness. Bullets play into shadow and rip through the flesh of a full Burn Abhorrent.
Alex screams, dead before the floor catches the full weight of his ravaged teenage body.
A voice, precise as chiseled stone, "Mr. Sanchez."
He whimpers something mysterious, the incoherent words of a soul on the verge of escape.
"I'm sorry. I came too late." Nathan kneels down to the dying man. He places a massive hand on his chest, "You did nothing wrong Mr. Sanchez ... your son was being consumed by a genetic disease. You did nothing wrong."
Those words carry Victor up through the stench of dying, away from the fierce buzz of his pain. A dream perhaps, eternal black. Heaven? He doesn't know or care. All he knows is he will hold the words spoken to him close, cherish them through whatever journey awaits. He was a good father. He raised a good son.
***
Nathan stays like that in the darkness of the Sanchez's basement. His palm on the dead man's chest, his hot Colt 199's resting in their holsters, the knowledge of failure pounding his awareness.
Finally, he reaches into his jacket, he pulls one of his guns, savoring the feel of its well-crafted handle, the familiar sensation of power.
He brings the barrel's length to his forehead, and for the first time, Mr. Holt utters his own prayer. Not to any god. Not to any invisible force floating across existence. He speaks to his own heart, and tells it to shut the fuck up.
