Cutter
Cutter had been a lot of weird creepy places. Crack houses, cartel grow ops, meth labs, brothels, even back alley surgeries for the occasional stray bullet. But this place took the cake. Maybe it was because he'd spent forty hours a week here for nearly four years, but there was something about the big, sprawling building with its graffiti on the lockers, fallen ceiling panels, and broken beer bottles everywhere that gave him the heebie-jeebies as he pressed himself against the wall and made his way down the hallway.
He stopped, his feet crunching on a piece of old dry wall, and listened. He heard voices ahead and, as he peered through the darkness, he could make it out the flickering light of something like a kerosene lamp coming out of one of the old classrooms. He held his breath, tried to listen more closely.
“West ain't shit, man,” a gruff voice said. “Fucker thinks he's got us lock and stock on this, boys, but once he gets the rest of the money, we're gonna take care of him.”
“Think we can really pin it on hem BB fuckers?” asked another man.
“Hell, yeah, man. Cutter is the only one still out. We take the money, take the drugs, then we kill West and blame it on Cutter. Then, we move in and pick up the pieces, taking all their territory and business.”
So, that was their plan. They were working for Wyland on this, but then they were going to double-cross him. If he just used the shadows to sneak by, the problem could take care of itself. Nothing screamed bad DA like being killed by a bunch of bikers over a bad deal. Of course, that would still leave the Bolt Riders out, running around, trying to pin everything on the Vanguard, and Cutter in particular. The men inside the room laughed, and Cutter counted three, maybe four guys inside. He gritted his teeth. Even with a surprise attack, that would be dicey to handle on his own. Plus, if they got a shot off, he'd alert anyone else still in the building.
One of the guys inside the room piped up. “I say we take the girl back to the clubhouse when we're done with the DA.”
“Yeah, chief, let's get the girl,” one of them added, excited. “We could keep her as a real clubgirl, like a pet or something. After a few nights, and some China White in her veins, we'll have her begging for all of us.” All the bikers in the classroom laughed cruelly, their voices filtering out into the hallway. “We get a collar and everything for her!” The men laughed again, encouraging him.
Cutter didn't hear the rest of their words. A spike of rage-fueled adrenaline entered his veins. His vision narrowed, his eyes clouded over. There was no way in hell these scumbags were going to touch Liona. Not a fucking chance. Their words were a burble in the background, barely audible over the sound of rushing blood in his ears.
He reached down and grabbed the canister of DIY tear gas off his belt and began to inch closer, along the wall. He got to the edge of the door, makeshift grenade in one hand, silenced pistol in the other. He pulled the pin on the canister and banked the tear gas against the open door of the classroom, arcing it inside. Just like pool.
“What the fuck?” one of the guys asked as the hissing can bounced one, twice, three times, before rolling to a stop in the room. Then, the coughing began. “Motherfucker! What is this shit?”
Cutter raised his pistol to chest height, gripped it in both hands, and took a deep, grim breath. The men came running out of the room moments later, uncontrollable tears streaming down their red, blistered faces. “Jesus fucking Christ!” one of them nearly yelled as he ran out into the hallway, his hands frantically rubbing at his face. He turned left, passed right in front of Cutter.
He was the first to go down, heavy as a sack of potatoes. A quick singular bullet to the head from the Vanguard president's silenced pistol. He was a human one moment, a corpse the next. The other men streamed out behind him, all with cries of confusion and shock coming from their lips. Cutter dropped them all, one after the other, still not saying a word as he seethed with anger.
“What the fuck?” the last man cried as he dropped to his knees. “What the fuck's going on?” Clearly, he could hear the shooting, but he couldn't respond in any meaningful way. He put his hands in the air, and sobbed. “Please, don't. I'm barely even with these guys.”
Cutter walked around him, still not saying anything, a cruel grimace on his face. He could see from the patch on his back that he was lying. He was a full member of the Bolt Riders. Granted, he didn’t recognize his voice as one of the guys who had joined in on the conversation regarding Liona's fate. He put his pistol against the back of the man's head.
He started to sob. “Please, man, I got a little girl at home. Lemme live, okay? Lemme live.”
Cutter sighed. Maybe the guy was lying, maybe he wasn't a father. He was still someone's son. Now, as Cutter paused, the blood-rage subsided a little. He took the barrel of the pistol from the man's head.
“Oh, man, oh thank you. Fuck, thank you so much!” he cried out, shaking his head from side to side, not believing his luck.
Cutter whacked him on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol, whipping him into unconscious with the big hunk of tempered steel. As the man dropped to the floor, he heard something else. It sounded like gunfire, like two shots fired one after the other. He looked around. It had come from one of the nearby air vents.
He ran over to the closest one and put his ear against it. Screams drifted up from below the school, from the basement where they kept all the maintenance stuff. He knew that scream. Liona.
Cutter scrambled, trying to find the door he knew was around here, the one that would lead him to the stairwell that would take him into the bowels of the school. He reached down to his belt, pulled out a mini Maglite he'd been avoiding using, and flicked it on. He ran down a hall, found it, and threw it open. In the pitch black, with nothing but a round of pure, white light to guide him, he took the steps two at a time, running over detritus and kicking bottles of out of the way.
“I'm coming, Liona,” he breathed to the silent high school. “I'm coming, babe!”