Frothy spittle foamed on Petrov’s quivering lips, and each drop that hit Yuri’s exposed skin felt like tiny pieces of red-hot shrapnel slicing deeply into his flesh. Then the coldness that had been growing inside him fled rapidly and was replaced with an intense heat, a searing heat, becoming hotter and hotter by the second. Through it all, Yuri could not move a millimeter on his own. He could no longer even blink. He could only stand there and take it while the horror that was invading his mind set every one of his nerves afire and caused him to wonder if those same fires were crisping and melting the very flesh from his bones.
He was panicking on the inside. He wanted to move. Wanted to so badly. More than anything in his life. But his limbs would not budge a millimeter.
Petrov’s eyes opened wide, and he shouted nonsense at Yuri again. Then, stumbling, the younger man fell to the ground once more and struggled to lift himself. When he did, he twisted heels to toes and bolted away. Yuri wanted to call his friend back, wanted to tell him just what was happening. He wanted to make the pain stop. Whatever it took, he would endure it and overcome it. His eyes moved, but he was no longer in control of them. They followed the disappearing Petrov, who was quickly swallowed by the darkness of the mineshaft, leaving Yuri all alone with Daynov.
Yuri could still see, could still hear, and could still feel, but he could do nothing to control his actions. He was like a marionette hanging on a string and waiting for someone to take control. He wanted to let go of the object in his grip, but he could not command his fingers to loosen.
Time passed. How much time, he did not know, but the intense, burning pain slackened somewhat when he stopped fighting it. Then Petrov was returning, waving men closer to Yuri. Crisscrossing beams of yellow light filled the shaft and reflected off facets of the black stone walls.
Perhaps they can free me. Perhaps they can take this from me.
Perhaps they can help.
As he wished for this small boon, he trembled with effort and was momentarily able to battle back against the invading paralysis.
Then the pain regrew to unbearable levels.
Spetsnaz.
I am strong. Spetsnaz tough
.
A true warrior never succumbs.
Through teeth-grinding pain, he found he could move his eyes again. He could move his head. But it hurt so much to do so.
I. Will. Not. Give. In.
More men arrived. Their headlamps bathed Daynov in a flood of light. The young man was still at Yuri’s feet, jerking about and trying to rise. Daynov’s mouth was opening and closing. Bloody foam dribbled from his lips, and he had bitten off much of his tongue. Blood also streamed from his nose and ears, and his eyes were white orbs staring skyward. While he trembled spasmodically, his fingers flexed into claws and tore away the heavy cloth of his overalls and raked the flesh of his chest into angry red gashes as his fingernails bent and folded back.
The terrible, searing heat that held Yuri in its firm grip intensified.
No.
His lips moved involuntarily, or so he thought. His gums receded, and his teeth exposed and were being prepared for something terrible. He was not sure for what, or why. The heat inside him was intense and unrelenting. His entire body was trembling violently, uncontrollably, and for the first time in years, he was straightening to his full height. His spine cracked and popped, and his joints dislocated and shifted out of place.
No.
But with a growing dread, he realized he could no longer fight back against the invading presence. Whatever will he could raise to fight back against it would never be enough.
It
was winning.
The shakes redoubled, and he lost all control over his body again and knew that his bowels had loosened, and he had wet himself like an invalid. The world around him became a hazy, streaking, crystalline blur. Unable to balance himself any longer, he toppled over. It seemed to take forever to hit the ground. Though, when he landed, he landed hard, striking his forehead against a rock and experiencing every bit of the amplified and distorted pain from the blow.
Around him, the world slowly shrank into a darkening circle tinged by red. Then the pain slackened for a moment, and Yuri was certain that Death was coming to claim him.
I am Spetsnaz.
Yes, he was once Spetsnaz, but even that had not been enough. He relinquished all control, hoping to hasten his death. His breathing slowed, and his body calmed as the pain vanished.
Am I dead?
Somehow, he realized he wasn’t dead. He was conscious and aware of what was going on around him. He could still feel all the aches and injuries he’d suffered over his lifetime, but they were now intensified as if his brain had been rewired to shunt all pain to his consciousness.
Such terrible pain.
He knew that he was no longer alive, but he was not dead either. He was just a passenger trapped inside his own body. He sensed that the new presence in his mind with him had almost no understanding of the world that surrounded it. It was a newborn babe in the woods.
But it did have one savage desire—
to feed.
~2~
Jackson Cutter opened his eyes. Then he closed them. The sunlight streaming through the round porthole window above his head was entirely too vivid. His head hurt. Really hurt. But that was nothing new, at least for the past year. Today, he just wanted to lie in bed, wanted very much to sleep for another score of hours—but nature, being something even he couldn’t ignore, begged to differ.
Damn.
Grunting, he fell out of bed and stumbled naked past piles of clothing littering the gritty fiberglass floor of his Catalina 445, stopping briefly to grab a white terrycloth robe he’d swiped from the nearby two-star hotel. As he continued to stoop to avoid bumping his head on the low ceiling, he searched for something else to wear. Through the blur, nothing other than a pair of slippers caught his eye, so he slid his feet into their fuzzy coolness and stumbled his way out of the forward stateroom.
What was that?
In the narrow connecting hallway, he paused for a beat, closing his eyes and resting one hand on the bulkhead while running his fingers through his unruly hair. All wasn’t right with the world, and it took a moment for his foggy brain to work up enough steam to understand exactly what that was. There had been another shape on the bed beside him. One that was familiar, and yet not so familiar, all at the same time.
He returned to his bed and peeled the sheets away slowly, exposing a tanned, completely nude, well-proportioned woman.
And that was partly a problem.
Who are you?
He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, almost wishing he hadn’t inhaled so deeply. He placed a closed fist against his forehead. The competing drummers playing fills in his mind went into overdrive, playing cymbal after crashing cymbal. He rubbed his temples to relieve the nagging pressure while continuing to work on figuring out who in the hell the woman might be.
Still breathing. Good.
She was his type. Maybe not his type a year ago. But, yes, based on her generous curves, she was definitely his type. In all honesty, though, he couldn’t remember a damn thing about the night he’d spent with her.
And that was a real shame.
With a sigh of resignation, he shuffled to his nightstand next to the bed and located a roll of twenties he kept hidden inside a fake beer can. Peeling off six bills, he grunted, then peeled off another three for good measure, folded them neatly, and stuck them between the woman’s fingers. She moaned and rolled over, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, yawning. She continued to turn until she was lying on her stomach with one arm dangling limply over the side of the bed and the money clamped professionally between her slender fingers.
For a moment, Cutter stared at the tattoo above her apple-shaped derrière. The inked lines seemed to have all bled together, and he couldn’t tell if it was his vision that had gone bad or the ink job had been subpar. He blinked to clear his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Ink.
It had to be the ink job. He was still far too young for his vision to already be going.
“Great,” he whispered to himself. “Now, who the hell are you?”
Figuring the answer would come to him eventually, he let her sleep and headed topside, ascending the short ladder in fuzzy slippers while tying his robe closed. On deck, he grabbed his Marlboro Reds from a shelf next to the helm, tapped out a single soldier, and lit it in his cupped palm. He let the cigarette dangle from the corner of his mouth while blinking furiously and making his way forward along the deck. The sunlight was still entirely too vivid, and the ocean sparkled like a million tiny diamonds, or in his case, a million tiny shards of broken glass.
Arms up for balance, he stopped long enough to take a satisfying drag from the cigarette, savoring the way the hot smoke rolled on his tongue, then closed his eyes and waited for the quick burst of nicotine to jump start his alcohol-saturated system back to life. That burst never came. But he had committed himself already. He’d endure. It wasn’t as if he had a choice.
Once he made it to the bow, he lifted himself up on tiptoe and opened his robe. Leaning back, he relieved himself over the port side of the boat, watching as the dark yellow stream came out in an almost perfect laminar flow and arched gracefully through the air before splashing into the clear blue waters of the bay.
Vivid
.
A tourist couple happened to pick that moment to stroll past on the docks. Both were dressed keenly in white cotton sailing outfits and ready for a daylong excursion on some of the very best waters in the entire world. Behind the couple was a small blond-haired kid. The little guy was quickly clutched closer as the trio scurried along a bit faster. Cigarette dangling from his lips, Cutter nodded his friendliest hello and good morning, and took another puff from one side of his mouth and blew it out the other.
The wife and husband ignored him, but the kid looked back and giggled.
Finished and feeling slightly better, he laced his robe shut and stumbled back to the bridge to begin one of his other daily rituals. After turning over bottle after bottle of rum and tequila—all empties—he swore a few choice words to anyone who would listen. But then he realized there was still hope. A half-filled beer bottle was sitting amongst the dead. He lifted it and shook it and heard sloshing liquid and didn’t see anything moving about through the cloudy brown glass, so he took a swig.
Other than warm beer, he tasted gritty cigarette ash. Nasty, gritty cigarette ash. With a flick of the wrist, he tossed the bottle over the side of the boat and looked for another as he worked to get the awful taste out of his mouth. Choking into his closed fist, he stuck his other hand in the pocket of his robe, and his fingers brushed against the roll of twenties. They were his only saving grace. But, with annoyance, he glanced at the path he would need to take to get to what his body required most.
Sighing, he remembered a song from childhood.
Just put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking out the door.
And with a belabored groan, he tossed his nearly-to-filter cigarette and jumped from the boat to the dock. A bad landing forced him to his knees, and he had to grab a metal pole and recover against it for a couple of beats of the drummers in his head. Then he let go and set off on the long journey up the slatted pier to his ultimate destination.
Andy’s Bar & Grill.
He sidled up next to the NO SMOKING sign located beside the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign and paused to light another cigarette before continuing into the outdoor seating area. As he went, his robe fell partially open, exposing him to the early morning crowd already there and breaking their fasts. With a grunt, he cinched his belt tight again just before reaching the bar under the eaves of the restaurant.
Dignity matters
.
The man behind the six-stool bar was a native of the islands he liked to call “Kiki.” It probably wasn’t the guy’s real name, but it worked well enough. Kiki threw him a pained look, shaking his head from side to side while grinning with a huge set of perfectly white teeth. Cutter slid onto a barstool and took one more puff from his cigarette before stamping it out on the scratched wood of the outdoor bar. He blew a stream of smoke above his head and held up four fingers and pointed at the bottle of tequila just over Kiki’s left shoulder—the expensive stuff.
“No, sir, Mr. Cutter. It’s breakfast time, sir. Bar’s closed. Just like always.” Kiki wiped at the bar with a rag, concentrating on what he was doing.
Cutter spun on the barstool and eyed the crop of morning patrons, widening his legs a little to let in a cooling breeze. Plates of eggs and ham and bacon and sausage and pancakes were being consumed by fat tourists, which at the moment didn’t look very appetizing. Only a few of the locals were awake at this hour. They usually slept in late unless they had a charter to run, or a group of beer-swilling fishermen to corral and snap pictures for. Among all the trappings of the hearty American-style breakfasts, Cutter picked out a few in the crowd daintily probing at fruit cups or slurping down oatmeal or granola or whatever the hell that crap was. He’d always figured that life was too short to spend it eating granola or fruit, or even vegetables. Not when God provided thick juicy steaks and good whiskey to all His blessed children.
He spun around and raised three fingers and pointed to the tequila bottle again, this time pulling his wad of crumpled twenties from his pocket and slapping them all on the bar, thereby igniting a new fire under Kiki and completing their daily dance.
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir, Mr. Cutter,” said a smiling Kiki.
Cutter downed the tequila in two swallows before wiping his mouth clean on the sleeve of his robe.
Kiki, bucking for his usual large tip, engaged, saying, “It’s going to be hot today, Mr. Cutter. Real hot. Need anything else, sir?”
Cutter ignored the man’s weather report and obvious pandering.
Hot?
It was always hot here.
That’s why he had come to the God-forsaken place in the first place.
Barbados reminded him of Hell—but with a nicer view.
He glanced at Kiki and smiled. The man smiled back. Then Kiki’s eyes refocused on something just past Cutter’s shoulder.
“You look terrible, Jack,” a woman’s voice said.