Chapter 62
Mark froze. A man clad all in black had run into the mouth of the cave, pulled a gun, and given the command in a voice that cracked like a whip.
Mark moved to his left a few yards, so he could see inside the cave from the bushes where he crouched. As he looked inside, he barely managed to stifle a horrified cry. Heather hung from chains on the far wall, unconscious or dead. The man they called the Rag Man leaned against her body, having just finished sniffing or licking her neck.
Beside Heather, a dead man’s body hung from a meat hook, his limbs twisted like taffy on a stretcher. The corpse’s face was a horror. The skin had been sliced open in great slits like bloody gills. The nose had been cut off, and the eyeballs had been carefully pulled from their sockets so they dangled down the cheeks by the optic nerve.
“Slowly, now, step away from the girl and drop the knife.”
Mark recognized the voice. With a sudden start, he realized the man in black was their parents’ new friend, Jack Johnson. At the moment, he bore little resemblance to the fun-loving man Mark had met at the McFarland house.
Mark’s body almost started moving forward of its own accord, something he managed to stop only with a supreme effort of will. As badly as he wanted to help Heather, it was clear Jack was a professional. For now, at least, Mark would let him handle the situation.
As Mark watched, the Rag Man turned toward Jack, the knife in his hand pressed firmly against Heather’s throat. Time moved in slow motion as Jack worked to get the man to drop the knife. Mark barely managed to control his breathing as his heart hammered his chest.
Then, Jack calmly tossed his gun out of the cave into the dirt and rocks near the entrance. Mark felt his heart stutter in shock.
The Rag Man closed the gap between himself and Jack in an instant, the hunting knife in his hand sweeping into the spot where Jack’s throat had been. But as fast as the Rag Man was, Jack was quicker. That wasn’t quite right. Jack didn’t move as fast as the Rag Man; he just seemed to anticipate where his opponent’s move was going to end up and countered it.
Mark thought he was getting very good at aikido, certainly far better than the local black belt he had watched in town, but Jack made him feel like a novice. As the Rag Man’s blade swept through the air, Jack shifted his weight, adding his own force to the maniac’s forward momentum. The Rag Man’s body arced through the air, flipping head over heels as it slammed into the nearest wall.
Almost simultaneous with the impact, Jack closed with the Rag Man, his hand suddenly filled with a wicked-looking knife of his own. But again, the Rag Man reacted with insane speed, kicking off the wall and propelling himself back at Jack. Metal clattered against metal as the knife blades brushed against each other on their way to their prospective targets. For several seconds, the two fighters whirled around each other, shifting, darting, hammering with knives and feet.
Suddenly the Rag Man stumbled backward, a look of dismay on his face as he gazed down at the gaping wound in his stomach, a gash that extruded several feet of entrails. Jack was also bleeding from a long cut down his left arm, but he continued to glide about easily, almost lazily, as he moved toward the dying man.
As the Rag Man’s knees buckled, Jack’s foot moved like a striking snake, snapping the Rag Man’s knife arm and sending the hunting knife spinning out and away.
The Rag Man sagged and then raised his eyes heavenward. “Lord. What is this? Am I not your new Gabriel?”
Jack kicked him in the stomach, reaching in to grab a handful of small intestine as the Rag Man fell. With a couple of quick swirls, which reminded Mark of a calf roper dallying around a saddle horn, he wrapped the intestine around the Rag Man’s neck and pulled, his knee driving forward into the small of the man’s back.
“Shut the fuck up, you crazy son of a bitch.”
The Rag Man’s body quivered and twitched. Then, with several final spasms, it lay still.
Ignoring his own wound, Jack fished through the Rag Man’s pockets until he extracted a key ring. It took him only a couple of seconds to cross the room and unfasten the handcuffs from which Heather hung and then lay her gently on the floor. Jack worked quickly but confidently, checking the pulse at her neck and then wrapping her in his large, black shirt.
Beneath his shirt, Jack had some sort of shoulder pouch fastened along his left side, not quite a shoulder holster. From where he crouched, Mark couldn’t tell its purpose. Jack also wore a dark gray T-shirt, which he now ripped off, quickly tearing it into strips with which he bound his wounded arm. With that done, he picked Heather up and carried her from the cave.
As Jack moved out through the entrance, Mark received another shock. The firelight played across Jack’s bare chest and back, revealing a crazy quilt of scars, the like of which Mark had never imagined. Then he was gone.
Suddenly Mark remembered what he had forgotten to do for some time now. Breathe. As he stared off into the darkness in the direction in which Jack had disappeared, he muttered to himself, “Who the hell are you, Jack?”