Side Story #1 - Colt - Page 22

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The density of the trees in this part of the forest meant that the night sky was completely blocked from view, rendering it so dark here that the beam of Colt's flashlight was an almost perfectly solid cone. Anywhere the light didn't touch was pitch black.

He needed to move quickly while he still retained the benefits of his undead vigor. If he took too long and allowed it to wear off, then this whole thing would become about a hundred times more difficult. Transporting the bodies was the most laborious part, so he was all but running through underbrush in order to get to the exact spot he had in mind.

When he arrived, he dropped the unconscious thug like a sack of a bricks and sprinted back to the car to retrieve the other one.

This guy was wriggling in his bindings and growling through his gag, but it was all in vain. Colt yanked him out of the backseat and threw him over his shoulder, then started jogging back toward their final destination.

Colt tossed the guy down next to his buddy and took a moment to breathe and collect his thoughts.

He knew what he was doing. What he was about to do. And by now, the conscious thug had to know, too, but if he was scared, the guy still wasn't letting it show on his face.

Hmph.

Colt crouched down and removed the gag from the man's mouth. "If you have any last words, I'll hear them now," he said.

"Fuck you! I'll fucking kill you, you motherf--!" The gag was returned to him.

Colt, however, took no further action just yet. He remained crouching, his expression as blank as stone. "I'll give you a minute to think of something," he said. "Make it good, because you'll be speaking for your friend here, too."

The actual method of killing was somewhat difficult to choose. On the one hand, anything would do, really. The concealment of the bodies was more important than the method. But on the other hand, an unnecessarily messy method might jeopardize that concealment in an unexpected way. Forensic scientists were clever bastards. When they were available, at least.

He decided to go with suffocation. Nice and simple. No blood splatter. And perhaps most importantly, it didn't rely on his undead vigor. He would not leave evidence of a killer with uncommon physical strength. All it required was pinching the guy's nose and covering his mouth.

It wasn't the most intimidating or "satisfying" way to kill someone, and it probably wasn't as slow or painful as these assholes deserved, but this wasn't a crime of a passion here. Colt wasn't a serial killer. He didn't give two shits about the "ritual" of it.

He was calm. Detached. Unfeeling. All that mattered was getting it done as efficiently as possible.

Or so he kept telling himself.

The unconscious one was no longer so. He was just dead, now. And Colt had made sure that the conscious thug could see it happen.

He ungagged the guy one last time. "Well? Think of anything?"

"Yeah, I fucking thought of something. I thought of how much I can't wait see you in hell, motherfucker."

Colt barked a laugh. "You believe in Hell? You religious?"

"The fuck're you talking about? Eat shit."

Colt sat down cross-legged. "Actually... since I've got you here like this, there's something else I'd like to know. You're looking for some money that went missing, right? Where did that money come from? And how much is it?"

"I ain't telling you shit."

"Oh, come on. If you tell me, I'll let you live."

"Bullshit."

"Maybe. But what've you got to lose?"

"I tell you anything, I'm as good as dead, anyway."

"Okay, but you can run away from your boss. You can't run away from me. Not unless I decide to let you go."

The thug just stared at him, then at his dead friend a few feet away, then back at Colt.

"Come on," said Colt. "Give me a reason to let you go."

"...What did you want to know again?"

"First, this money that you were searching for--where did it come from?"

"Your mother's pussy."

"Okay, then." Colt grabbed him by the collar and dragged him closer to begin suffocating him.

"Wait, wait, wait! I'll tell you! I'll tell you!"

Colt shoved him back into the leafy undergrowth. He said nothing, just waited with ice in his eyes.

The thug was still trying to look tough, it seemed, but the charade was over. "The m-money... it belongs to my boss. Antonio Muett."

"Yeah, I figured that much. Where did it come from, though? What type of business? Drugs? Guns?"

"Nah, man. It wasn't anything like that. The Muett family is legit."

Colt just gave him a look.

"I'm serious. That money belongs to Mr. Muett. He found it, fair and square."

"'Found it?' What does that mean?"

"It was, like, buried treasure or something. Look, I don't know the full story. I just know it's important to him. And not just 'cause it's money. Has sentimental value to him, I think."

A sentimental gang lord? Colt found that hard to believe, but whatever. "Okay, so how much money are we talking about here?"

"The fuck? You attacked us, went through all this trouble, and you didn't even know how much money it is? What're you, braindead?"

"Not as much as your friend over there."

"You motherfucker! I'll kill you!"

"Doubt it."

"I'll rip your fucking guts out and eat them! I don't give a shit! Let me go, and I'll show you what a sackless fool you really are! I'll fucking murder you and your--!"

Colt smacked his lips with disappointment as he listened to the man ranting. Didn't seem like he'd be getting that last bit of information out of him after all. He'd gotten careless with his taunting, and now this dude was too enraged to be negotiated with anymore.

Oh well.

He grabbed the guy and started suffocating him. The idiot tried to bite him, so Colt gagged him again before covering his mouth and pinching his nose.

Soon enough, the thrashing stopped, but Colt made sure to keep suffocating him for much longer than was necessary. Just to be safe.

The guy had been right, though. No matter what information he gave up, Colt wouldn't have let him go. That had indeed been bullshit.


Part Three
~The Debt~

Colt meditated with his eyes open, trying to keep his mind clear.

The cabin was pitch dark and quiet, the only sound being the tiny breaths of the twins who were still sleeping soundly. They'd barely stirred at all, even after he'd picked them up and carried them inside.

That was good. He'd rather not see their big, innocent eyes staring at him, right now.

It had all gone smoothly. Too smoothly, perhaps. His paranoia was kicking in. He couldn't sleep. He hadn't even tried. The fatigue made him almost entirely immobile, and his shoulder ached something fierce from when he'd tackled that guy through part of a wall, but it didn't matter.

He would get no rest, tonight.

It had always been like this. Whenever he killed someone, he didn't sleep. For whatever reason, his mind wouldn't allow it.

Instead, he just kept going over everything in his head. Reminding himself of every detail. Reliving it.

At this point, perhaps it was just an instinctual thing, a means of ensuring he hadn't forgotten anything important, hadn't made any obvious mistakes. If he did, it wasn't too late to try and fix them. There was time.

He'd buried both bodies at that spot in the woods. With his destruction ability, digging the hole had been trivial. He made it extra deep, probably twenty or even thirty feet. Filling it back in had been a chore, especially fatigued as he was toward the end of it, but he'd managed. He'd concealed the hole with dead underbrush and fallen leaves. Plus, he'd chosen a spot just beneath a natural rock overhang, snugly nestled in a point out of view. He was confident that no one would happen upon it, and even if they did somehow, they'd never dig deep enough to find the bodies.

Those wastes of human skin were gone.

And so was their car. He'd used the path of destruction on it, too, and reduced it to pieces. Then he'd buried them as well, in a similarly well-hidden location.

That had been the biggest pain in the ass of the night, by far. With how tired he'd been, he'd been immensely tempted to go easy on the second hole, to half-ass it a little in the interest of time, but no. He hadn't done that. If anything, the second hole was even better concealed than the first. It needed to be. The bodies would decompose. Those metal scraps wouldn't.

By the time it was done, he'd been so exhausted that he barely had enough energy left to walk--but of course, that was exactly what he had to do. Since he'd destroyed the car that he'd driven to the crime scene, that obviously meant that he had to make the trek all the way back to Bohwanox and the twins on foot.

He wasn't sure he'd ever felt so physically destroyed in his entire life. Boot camp drills might've been worse. Maybe. At least he hadn't puked tonight. Oh, thank the goddess for that. He certainly didn't need another mess to clean up.

Once he'd made it back to Boh, however, things had proceeded more quickly. With his fatigue temporarily extinguished, he was able to go into the house and finally untie the hostages. They were sore--perhaps even to the point of injury--after having been tied up and left on their stomachs for so long, but they at least expressed their gratitude, albeit reluctantly.

Colt said nothing to them, of course. He just returned their phones to them after having hidden them and then left. Bohwanox helped him make sure that he wasn't being followed, and then he told the reaper where the bodies were buried so that he could reap the bastards' souls.

Colt almost decided to sit on that information for a while longer. Letting their wandering souls degrade into a prison of raw agony didn't seem like the worst thing in the world.

But whatever. He didn't care that much, but Bohwanox sure seemed to.

He wanted to think about what he should do next, but he just didn't have the energy for constructive thought, right now. Reassessing the night's events in a dull-eyed haze was about all he could manage.

By the time morning rolled around, he wasn't feeling much different, but when he saw the kids beginning to stir, he felt a sudden and rather unwelcome degree of motivation. They needed to be fed. He needed to feed them.

It was dad time, whether he liked it or not.

So, somehow, he got up, went outside, and hunted down a snake and a rabbit for breakfast. Honestly, he had no idea how he managed to catch a fucking rabbit, of all things. Unless they were already in one of his traps, he never bothered with them, but today, on mindless autopilot, he suddenly found himself returning to the cabin with one in hand, skinning it, and roasting it over an open campfire.

Apparently, he'd grabbed some berries while he was at it, too. He double checked to make sure they were safe to eat. Yeah. Good.

Was this what people meant when they talked about parental instincts? He doubted it.

Eh, whatever.

He ate. The kids ate. He bathed them and gave them fresh diapers.

Things returned to normal.

The kids wanted to play, but he nestled up with them and finally began to fall asleep. They didn't seem to appreciate that much and kept hitting him as if to wake him up. Eventually, he let them down so that they could run around and play on their own. The cabin door was locked, so they wouldn't be able to get out while he napped.

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