Feral Read online

  Feral

  Matt Serafini

  To Mom & Dad:

  Who always told me to keep writing.

  One

  It was going to end tonight. It had to.

  Amanda Church had never been through New England before, and if these current surroundings were an indication of what it offered, this was going to be a one-time stop.

  There was nothing to see as the navy blue Chevy pick-up barrel-assed down narrow two-lane blacktop. The night sky was dark, stretched tight over rows of roving farmland. Darkness was everywhere beyond the yellowish glow of the headlights, strengthening the illusion that she hadn't only crossed state lines, but also traveled back through time.

  Did places like this really still exist?

  She cracked the window as her eyelids threatened to close. A gust of cool mountain air wafted into the cab, chasing away the eager sleep that waited. She cranked the Sirius radio and rocked along to REM's Pretty Persuasion.

  It was all she could do to keep driving.

  The road, Mountain Road, ran parallel to Route 90 East. Unlike that highway, which somehow ran as far as Seattle, this was as rural as rural got. Signs of life were sporadic at best, often coming in the guise of dilapidated pastures or homes that resembled a shantytown in 1930s Chicago. Occasionally, a fellow traveler would zip past, leaving only trailing taillights to disappear into the black void.

  They weren't big on streetlights out here. Hadn’t been one since the edge of New York. Amanda was surprised by how isolated she'd been made to feel by the Massachusetts countryside. Never mind that she'd grown accustomed to living in Los Angeles, where the lack of an hour traffic hold up freaked her out, but the absence of sufficient light in these parts made a motorist's life a living hell. It meant having to kill your speed at every twist in the road.

  Mountain Road was the beginning of a mountain range and, as such, the blacktop rose and fell perpetually. Bad enough that her career resulted in the occasional skirt with death, but one wrong turn out here could send her careening to certain demise.

  An anticlimactic end to this life, she thought while reducing her speed to 35 around the bend.

  There was a lot that needed doing tonight. She needed to do it, and there was no time to die in a car wreck. With fresh air circulating in the cab and her attention pulled back from the brink of dreamland, she flexed her eyes and tapped her palms against the steering wheel.

  Still five hours of darkness left in this early Tuesday morning. That was enough time to get the job done if she could find this fucking place.

  "The Thunderbird, is it?" That's what her contact had said before adding, "You'll know it when you see it."

  Instructions were to follow Mountain Road right to its front door. Amanda assumed that to mean it would be the first motel she'd see, as there weren't many options out here. If Massachusetts had a pulse, and people claimed it did, this road was like checking your ankle to find it.

  Amanda shuddered at the thought of her work. She hated thinking about it beforehand. It aroused a bevy of mixed emotions in her that she hadn’t figured out how to deal with. Anxiety, anger, fear, excitement and, strangest of all, pride. She held a certain satisfaction for what she did, even when it fucked with her head.

  At last, the road wound back into a straightaway. Amanda heaved down on the pedal, determined to make up for lost time. Now she was jamming to The Smiths' William, it was Really Nothing. Morrissey could do no wrong and she sang along as enthusiastically as possible, while the unpleasantness of the day dangled overhead like sinister mistletoe.

  The song fell into a brief instrumental bit and Amanda took the opportunity to take a few deep breaths to steady her nerves.

  Relax. How many times have you done this, anyway?

  But her rationale failed to quell the apprehension chipping away at her cool demeanor. She'd done this before, many times, but that didn’t make it easier. Only psychopaths truly got used to this, and she didn't think she was destined for a straight jacket. Yet.

  Sometimes she wished she was manning a teller window, or answering phones for an allegedly important CEO. What did 8 to 5 life even feel like? Structure and routine were things she craved. Normalcy had been a tricky thing to obtain ever since childhood and, as an adult, Amanda dismissed it as a myth.

  A bright, intrusive light wrestled her attention back to the lonely road. Ahead, a red neon glow beamed just above the tree line. It looked ridiculously out of place against the quiet wilderness. Her contact's words rang true in her head: "You'll know it when you see it."

  Amanda pulled into a small dirt patch off Mountain Road, killed the engine and waited. Her neck lolled from side to side and her heart thumped against her ribs. The hypochondriac in her worried about what this was doing to her insides.

  Through the trees ahead, she could see a motel, or at least, the loud sign used to advertise one. It announced the Thunderbird and incorrectly (she guessed) promised luxury accommodations in every room. Last summer’s trip to Dubai had been lavish, this looked like a dive.

  In that moment, she realized how much she missed the 24-hour masseuse service. After this job, a Caribbean sabbatical sounded like the only option. Days spent lounging on a white, sandy beach, surfing emerald green waters and sipping salty margaritas while enjoying endless back massages. Those were her incentives to survive this.

  Amanda sat in quiet observation while the next hour ticked past. What few indicators of life she'd seen on her way here had ceased entirely. There hadn’t been one vehicle in either direction since stopping.

  A good sign.

  It was impossible to gauge foreign surroundings with true accuracy on this kind of notice, but when a job needed doing, a power hour of observation helped. No, she wouldn't know if the old man down the street got up in the middle of the night to walk his mastiff—the kind of situational awareness she preferred to have—though she felt okay with what she had seen to make a decision.

  Despite the lack of action out here, Western Massachusetts shared many traits with other sparsely populated parts of the country. Commuter traffic typically wound itself down by 7 PM and straggler traffic all but ceased by 9 or 10 during the workweek. Since there's not much in the way of nightlife in these small towns and their outlying areas, the local bars saw the most activity. They were usually found closer to the town center. If there were to be any travelers on a quiet stretch of road such as this, it was likely be teenagers out for a bone ride or a blowjob. But even the dope smokers petered out before now. In these early morning hours, there was barely an excuse for anyone to be here at all.

  Except me, she thought.

  She sat for another minute or so, her mind running over potential strategies. After settling on the best course of action, she nodded. This was the worst part. Anticipation was killer. There was no way of knowing what the 'best course of action' could be. Things didn't happen as they did in the movies: the hero never slips into the enemy lair undetected and finds the self-destruct button, and in this line of work there was no girl to get.

  Not that Amanda wanted one of those.

  Her heart pumped harder and faster as her responsibility loomed.

  There's no better time to do this.

  She tugged at the seat beside her, pulling it down and reaching into the storage section beyond. Her fingers slid around the comfortable handle of an MP5 submachine gun. Fumbling further, she retrieved some ammunition magazines before propping the seat back to its familiar position. She loaded the weapon, listened for the satisfying click, and jammed the spare mags into the deep pocket of her coat.

  Amanda switched off her phone and placed it in the opposite pocket. Then she climbed free of the cab and headed for the neon flash of the Thunderbird's sign.

  She slinked through the shadows, moving
in between the rows of trees closest to the road. She wondered if two extra mags of ammo would be enough. It wasn't too late to cram another one into her blue jeans, but it felt like overkill for what she hunted. A baggy polyester top hung loose from her shoulders, wrapped inside a zipped olive green bomber jacket that hid the holstered Glock—another insurance policy.

  Normally, Amanda wouldn’t be caught wearing such a drab get up. Life was too short to wander society looking like a fashion victim. She did her best to abide by that credo on a regular basis, but today wasn’t about her fashion sense. You had to dress accordingly while in the field. The last thing she wanted was for locals to take notice of the fashionably chic young woman seen walking away from a murder scene.

  She'd be the sore thumb in these parts wearing a designer suit. Best to dress as unremarkably as possible. Anyone would seem suspicious sulking around the woods this time of night, but if anyone did see her, they'd have a hard time recounting someone so nondescript.

  "Um, she was blonde and..."

  Trees loomed on either side of the darkened path. Branches curved and drooped downward, enveloping her as she approached the motel. Amanda wasn't claustrophobic, but this feeling of isolation was so extreme that it bothered her. She was entirely alone out here.

  Fitting, she thought.

  The motel appeared once she stepped free of the brush. Its vacated parking lot and buzzing neon sign only compounded the feelings of isolation.

  She kept to the tree line where the shadows would best camouflage her if someone passed by. There was bound to be an employee on duty somewhere and there was no reason to involve them. She tightened a suppressor to the MP5's barrel as she walked. When it was fully attached, Amanda pulled open her coat and stuffed the gun beneath her jacket flap with her finger on the trigger.

  Casually, she strolled into the Thunderbird parking lot. It wasn’t hard to find the car. It was the only one there. Her eyes settled on the battered Chevy Corsica parked in the lot's darkest corner, just out of the neon sign's reach.

  Hello again, she thought, her boots crunching gravel as she approached.

  Amanda took one last look around to make sure she hadn’t missed anyone. The parking lot was empty.

  The Thunderbird itself wasn't any busier. It was two stories and looked like it offered a total of twelve rooms, six on bottom and six on top. It was your standard roadside accommodation, a dilapidated hole that you'd find on any dying stretch of road while passing through Anytown, USA.

  The first floor was dark, save for the faint emission of yellow light bordering the drawn shade over the door marked "office." The manager on duty was probably asleep and she did not intend to wake him.

  On the second floor, a faint beam of light emanated from beneath a single door. Room twelve. She might not have noticed it if the neon sign hadn't buzzed the parking lot back into momentary blackness.

  Has to be them.

  Their car was dirty; didn't have to examine it to see that. She'd known the color as dark grey from having seen it on the road so many times over the past few weeks. Another flash of neon revealed dirty windows and a mud-caked body. It might've passed for an off-roading vehicle if it had been something other than a Chevy Corsica.

  Its owner, something to be stressed loosely, considering it had been stolen off a murdered teenager all the way back in Valencia, didn’t care about its cosmetic appearance and had been squatting out of it for as long as she'd been in pursuit.

  The desolation of the Thunderbird at last worked to ease her nerves. This was easier when you didn’t have to blend in among a crowd. Amanda tightened her grip on the MP5, heightening her sense of security. She squinted through the dirty windows into the interior, wondering what the next neon flash would reveal.

  Nothing of interest: empty soda bottles, fast food wrappers and porno magazines that helped the car match its exterior grime. The upholstery was littered with strewn clothes and the floor consisted of crinkled up papers caked with mud and dirt. A dire lifestyle choice made more surprising by the fact that one of the travelers was a woman. Why anyone opted to exist in squalor was beyond her, but of greater interest was that she allowed it.

  She turned her attention back toward the motel and crossed the gravel lot, electing to avoid the wooden staircase directly beside room twelve. It was most probably a creaky old relic, and there was no sense in alerting the lodgers to her approach. The element of surprise was one she couldn't afford to forgo.

  She walked to the opposite edge of the motel and climbed the steps there. Her boots creaked during her slow but steady ascent. At the top, she continued to room twelve while stepping on the balls of her feet.

  Amanda ripped the MP5 from beneath her jacket and adopted the stance of a trained soldier: legs bent at the knees, back crouched and weapon steadied at what would be the chest of any approaching hostile. From behind the red, paint-flaked door labeled with a brass twelve, Amanda heard faint moans and cries, a mixture of ecstasy and anguish.

  Here it comes.

  She drew a long breath, wondering and worrying if this was her swan song. No telling what was on the other side of the door. Maybe they were waiting for her.

  How long am I going to keep getting lucky?

  That's all it was, luck. She had no illusions of it being anything more. Dexter liked to say that she was born and bred for this shit, but he was being supportive. Nobody was truly cut out for this sort of life.

  Least of all me.

  Her life would've been over thirteen years ago had it not been for him, and she’d found it difficult to escape the feeling of borrowed time ever since.

  Adrenaline and anxiety swirled through her. Without giving it another thought, she steadied the muzzle of the weapon just above the doorknob and squeezed off two, three-round bursts. The shots were little more than muffled whelps that found their target with a sound no louder than splintering wood. The wounded lock failed as Amanda kicked it, sending the door swinging open into the smoky interior.

  She was inside before the inhabitants knew what was happening, her nose wracked by a bouquet of miserable odors. Through the haze, she took aim at the mass of bodies, two by her count, strewn naked across the bed.

  Her nostrils flared at the noxious scent, a mixture of bleach, excrement and what she vaguely recognized as spoiled milk. It was almost enough to knock her off kilter.

  Almost.

  The man and woman were entangled and just now pulling themselves out of the throes of passion. The woman turned first, startled by Amanda's intrusion. The man got to his knees, his bare body glistening with sweat in the nearby light of the desk lamp. He was faster than his lover, leaping for the intruder in one swift motion. Then he was on the floor and moving forward. Amanda didn’t let it go any further than that. She squeezed off another three bursts, sending nine bullets into his upper chest. They tore into him with a bloody puff and he tumbled, knocking the desk lamp to the floor as he crashed atop it.

  His blood splattered across the nude body of his lover, who now roared with rage.

  Amanda already had the gun pointed at her. She fired off two more bursts, blowing her brains across the mundane decor. The corpse fell to the natty berber carpet. Amanda rolled the corpse over with her boot and took aim, firing again. Her heart stopped beating beneath three smoking and bloody holes.

  All that was left was to make sure the lovers were dead. A quick check of their vitals revealed that they would, in fact, be in hell for breakfast.

  A quick sweep of the room found nothing of interest. These degenerates weren't likely to have anything on them, but it bore checking. Protocol, according to Dex.

  Her boots stepped into a moist spot directly in front of the bathroom. Water seeped into the rug from beneath the closed door.

  Amanda tensed, reloaded and pulled on the sleeve of her shirt until its length overextended the olive bomber coat. She covered her hand and pulled at the door handle. It came free, opening inward. She lowered the weapon and splashed onto the flo
oded linoleum. Water cascaded over the side of the tub, raining a mixture of clear and crimson. Submerged in the bloody bath was a girl that might've been thirteen but was probably younger. Her glazed-over expression indicated that she was only faintly aware of Amanda's presence. Her neck and shoulder were badly mutilated; bone was broken and jagged, poking up through the gaping wound while blood erupted like a geyser. It ran down her naked chest, into the bloody bath water. Her mouth was open; a faint moan came from her throat that bordered on inaudible.

  She was in hell.

  It was much too late for her. Amanda aimed the MP5 at the girl's skull.

  "I'm sorry," she said and turned away.

  The kid tried to speak.

  Amanda’s trigger finger lightened.

  The girl appeared somewhat aware of Amanda now; heavy eyes looked up. Her voice was weak but distinct.

  "I'm going to be okay," she said with a forced smile. "This is what needs to happen before it can work."

  "They killed you. That’s what you wanted?"

  "Yes. It was."

  Amanda felt a swell of sadness and wished there was more she could do. There was no way of telling how long they'd been using this girl, but her wounds were fresh.

  "Just rest," Amanda said. Her finger coiled back around the trigger. "Close your eyes."

  "Will you stay with me? They said this was going to be the scariest part. The nightmares..."

  "Of course I will."

  "I knew it, you seem so nice. Will you..." her voice trailed, taking the last traces of life with it. Breathing was almost nonexistent now, and her face had fallen as still as a statue.

  Amanda watched carefully and noticed the tiniest spark of life beneath those eyelids. They dulled to the point of extinction before suddenly roaring back to life with some sense of forgotten urgency.

  "Will you call my mommy?" Her voice was suddenly animated. "I-I think she might be worried and I want to tell her she shouldn't be."

  The bleeding mess of a girl provoked in her measures of pity and rage. What little of the life she’d lived was over, cut short by creatures so cruel that, to them, torturing a child was just something to do.