“You’re only about four blocks away
from the abandoned warehouse on Grier Street. Swing on by and we’ll get you
trending on Twitter.” The voice told him before hanging up. Keith shattered his
phone in his hand, somebody had gotten ahold of his information and was trying
to threaten him. As the shards of his smart phone began hitting the pavement he
started running through a list of people who had his number and how they could
have been got to.
The
mask slid over his face as it has thousands of times before. In that moment he
went from being just another man walking on a street to the protector of the
city of Oceanside. Keith dropped into a deep squat as he fought to calm his
mind. The soreness in his body begged him not to go forward, to wait for a
better time to go after whoever it was that had made this call. A series of
deep breaths still didn’t convince him to get up and walk towards the
warehouse.
Finally
he pulled himself up and walked the final block. The shattered windows and
colorful graffiti tags made it clear nobody had occupied the building for
legitimate reasons for years. It was the type of place that existed for
homeless squatters to find warm and for criminal scumbags to find cover from
the law. Keith hoped it wasn’t the place where an asshole killed a hero.
“I’m
not going to die in this shithole.” Keith muttered under his breath. He steeled
himself and walked to the knocked down front door of the building and stepped
inside. The place was practically pitch black but he could make out lights in
the distance to his left. The walk towards those lights revealed a man in an
all-white suit, even white dress shoes. Two bound and gagged men were sitting
on the ground beside him. Keith scanned the area for threats in the darkness.
He could see a man hiding in the shadows to his right and there was a catwalk
above him but no signs of anyone there.
“You
made it. That’s just great.” The man began his speech. Assholes like him always
had speeches to give. Keith debated drawing his Glock 22 and just emptying the
clip into him right there and then and being done with it, but out of
professional courtesy to the criminal underworld he stayed his hand.
“You’re
the Ghost of Oceanside. Or the Oceanside Savior. You’ve got many names, but the
one thing that’s certain is that you’ve been doing this for forty years. Which
means that either there is a team of you and the mask is being passed around by
a gang of do-gooders, which I doubt very much.
Or, and this is the option I’m banking on. You’re old as fuck now.”
Keith
fought to keep his shoulders from sagging. He suppressed the urge to take a
deep breath. He never showed weakness in confrontations like this but having
somebody call him out for his age and knowing they were right hurt. It had been
long time since somebody had gone after him rather than just viewed him as a
problem to be dealt with while they did their crimes. Everything about the situation was bad and it
felt like it would get worse.
“So
look pops, I want to make this easy on you. These two men here.” The man
gestured to bound and gagged men on the floor beside him. “They fucked me over.
Supposed to do a job for me and they screwed it up. You put one in the dome of
each of them and I’ll bring over a suitcase full of cocaine and it’ll look like
you cleaned up a drug deal and put two pushers out of business. The local press
will love it. Your brand of extrajudicial violence will be back in fashion.”
Keith squinted
as the man paced back and forth as he spoke. “I want you on the payroll. I want
you to be the velvet glove that holds my iron fist. You will be the public face
of my wrath, all the other criminals who fuck with me, who try to take business
away from me on my turf. I’ll put them up on a tee for you to blow away. I bet
you’re asking what’s in it for you. Well lots of money. I got more than I know
what to do with. You’ve been fighting crime for all these years and what has it
ever gotten you? I’ll make you rich beyond your dreams.”
The man
turned on his heels and stopped walking. “The other thing is that if you
refuse. I will kill you.”
Keith
let the silence hold, he wanted to see if the man would get nervous from the
quiet or if he’d start barking demands at him. Keith seethed as the asshole
remained cool and composed the whole time, his brown eyes calming holding his
stare upon Keith’s masked face.
“Why
shouldn’t I just blow you away right now?” Keith asked him. Keith slowly
started to reach for his Glock.
The man
flashed a wide smile. “First of all I’m sorry. I’ve been quite rude this whole
time. My name is Patrick Silver, but everyone calls me Doc. Second of all if
you even flinch to hard my good friend James Garfield up there will put a .50
caliber bullet in your back. I know bullets have a tough time getting through that
flesh of yours, but I’m thinking a high powered rifle and a big bullet will do
the trick.”
“Bullshit,
there’s nobody up there.” Keith snapped back at him.
Doc
pointed to one of the two men on the ground and a moment later the man’s head violently
exploded. A horrible spray of gore erupted from the man’s head with a large
amount of blood, brain and skull fragments landing on Doc’s suit. The still
living man began frantically wimpering and thrashing as the blood began to pool
around him from the head of the other man.
Keith
quickly looked up at the catwalk and now he saw the metal plates that had
composed the sniper’s nest the man was hiding behind. He couldn’t believe he’d
missed it before and his uncertainty about things made him feel his heart rate
elevate. It had been years since he’d felt panic or nerves and now it was all
bubbling up. He was grateful that the mask kept his face hidden as he could
feel the warmth of his skin and knew his face was reddening.
“That’ll
cost a few bucks for the dry cleaning.” Doc said with a smile. “Named for a
fallen president, obsessed with the death of another, James is an odd man, but
he’s a great shot. He likes taping the shootings.” Doc said as he pointed to a
clunky box of a camera on a tripod nearby. “It’s the same camera type as the
one that filmed the shooting of JFK. He’s going to go home and watch how this
guy’s head exploded and compare and contrast it with that Catholic fuck. He’s
like those 9/11 truthers only about JFK. A JFK truther I guess.”
“You
mean he’s a conspiracy buff.” Keith replied.
Doc
paused as if he’d never heard the words before. “I like JFK truther better.” He
looked at Keith for a moment. “So you taking the deal? Can I make you rich? I
really want to make you rich.” He said. Keith could tell there was a bit of a
pleading tone to Doc’s demand.
Keith
wondered if he had a choice in the matter. He knew that he didn’t trust Doc and
that the offer he was giving him sounded preposterous, but the real question
was, could he refuse it? “I don’t trust you.” Keith said. “And I don’t work
with criminals, so thanks but no thanks.” Keith told him. It took everything he
had to sound confident, even defiant as he spoke, but deep down he feared he
might have just said his last words.
Doc
pointed to the still living man on the floor. Keith screamed “No!” but it was
too late, the man’s head exploded and he slumped to the ground dead. Doc
kneeled down and lifted the man into a seated position. Blood began to soak
into the knees and sleeves of Doc’s suit.
“I want
you to look at how fucking dead this guy is. Motherfucker here is real fucking
dead. I can kill you whenever I want to. I mean this guy’s skull is in pieces.
I can see what’s left of his brain. You would rather suffer that fate than be
rich and live a life of luxury?” Doc shook the man’s body a few times, chunks
of gore fell on the floor all around him. “Or maybe you think there’s a catch,
maybe you think there’s something I’m hiding from you. Maybe it’s just a lack
of trust that keeps us from being partners. That’s fair.”
Doc’s
face scrunched up and he dumped the body on the ground. “Fucker shit himself. I
hate that. So tell you what, let’s take a few days and better get to know each
other, start finding common ground.” Doc flashed a smile that pissed Keith off.
“First thing you need to know about me is that I don’t like it when people
refuse a deal with me, so for that you need to get the shit beaten out of you.
Draw your gun slowly, keep it pointed down and drop it. Anything else gets you
shot.”
Keith
seethed. He’d walked into a trap and now he was at the mercy of a lunatic. He
pulled his Glock from his waistband and dumped it on the ground.
“Good
man.” Doc told me, and with that the man Keith had seen in the shadows walked
into the light. He was a little bit over 6 foot tall with tan skin, a shaved
head and broad shoulders. He was a heavy direct from central casting. “A wise
man once said the one thing that makes great fighters is poverty. That’s so
true. I run a fight camp on the boarder of Texas and Mexico and all those poor
people just scraping along to get by, they all fight for anything they can get.
You pay them for their kids to fight and they’ll sell ‘em to you. Those kids
fight every day of their lives. Those that make it to adulthood, we call them
the Immortals. This young man’s name is Carlos, he’s twenty three and he’s
going to teach you some respect.”
Keith
smiled, a fist fight was still something he was extremely deadly at. The idea
of being challenged to a fight appealed to him since it was the one forum he
was still confident of his skills in. Carlos circled him and Keith kept his
hands low. He wanted Carlos to hit him in the head, to find out how dense Keith’s
bones were. His skull had broken many a hand in brawls before.
The jab
Keith was hoping for came and glanced off the side of his head. Carlos’
reaction was exactly as Keith expected, nobody is ready for his brick of a
skull. Keith fired off a one two of his own but Carlos was to slick and avoided
the punches and then drilled Keith with a double right hook to the body. Keith
didn’t feel pain from the blows but he knew they had landed. Keith bull rushed him
but the charge was sidestepped easily by his opponent.
Keith
took a deep breath and kept his hands up. Carlos snapped a kick to his lead leg
and another. Keith had never been attacked in such a way before, he’d seen
fighters do it on TV but it had never happened to him in person. He charged at
Carlos again and again Carlos sidestepped him, only this time Keith was left
exposed and Carlos cracked him with a hard right to the jaw.
Keith saw stars and needed a moment to get his balance, he
knew he was in trouble, but the scream Carlos gave indicated he wasn’t in good
shape either. It had to have been the instinct of a lifetime of fights that
made him throw that punch but now Keith was sure his jaw had broken the man’s
hand. Keith turned and threw a punch right into the midsection of Carlos. The
punch dug in hard to the body and Carlos’s grunted in agony. A left hook to the
face shattered Carlos’ orbital bone and sent him sprawling to the ground. Keith
dropped to a knee and thought for a moment about if he wanted to crush the man’s
skull with one final punch, to show Doc he wasn’t the only one who could
shatter a man’s head.
Right before he raised his hand to
bring it down on Carlos’ skull he felt the pain, it shot through his whole body
and was completely unbearable. He could hear himself screaming but couldn’t
understand it was his voice making the noise. The pain lasted for an interminable
amount of time before finally it relented and he collapsed face first on the
ground. He could hear a device charging and knew it was the weapon that had
disabled him.
He’d
never felt so powerless before, never had his body been damaged to the point
where he couldn’t use it. A low hum kept getting louder as the Taser or
whatever the hell it was loaded up for another blast.
“I’m
going to break you Ghost man.” Doc’s voice sounded distant, almost other
worldly as he spoke. “You will do what I want or you will die.” He finished and
with that a second blast hit Keith square in the back. It only took seconds for
the sweet grip of oblivion to take his pain away.
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