The kid looked around the place. The old cabin looking like a palace compared to the streets.
“Nice digs, kinda way out in the nowhere but cool. You got a guest room?” she asked.
“I got a couch.” Mike said with a yawn. “Don’t touch the record player or the rifle, don’t go in my bedroom if i'm in there."
“So did you make a mile plus headshot with this shitass little 22 you keep unloaded over the fireplace?” She asked,
“Ignore the gun, look at the scope. That scope is worth more than the rifle. The 200 dollar used rifle is basically a display stand for the 1500 dollar scope. You think that’s the gun I use? A little Ruger 10-22? Come on back to the van. Let’s see what kind of toys I got lying around.” He grinned.
He lifted the table-top off and got out his new MP5 clone out, magazines and ammo, placing it back and locking it into place.
“Holy shit. That’s a real damn MP5." Tanner gasped.
“Arms deal in the woods, I’m guessing they were asking 30 to 40 grand for the 4, and calling it a steal like it was a favor. Modded MP5k. Way too good for gangbangers. Of course, both of the survivors are probably in prison right now. Their boss and the 3 arms dealers went back to hell with a double tap 45 soft point to the torso. They’re very dead. I just picked this up because unmarked guns like these are rare and useful in my line of work. Shame it wasn’t a 45. I really would have preferred a new 45. Maybe they make a conversion kit.”
“You serious right now? Are you killing 4 people per worknight?” She asked.
“Most work nights I get 1 or 2. Getting 4 and a free gun is a good night.” Mike chuckled. “Very good night.”
“You some kind of retired secret agent, turned hitman?” Tanner asked, half impressed, half nervous.
“Secret agent no, hitman, yes. And my boss apparently thinks you’d make a good replacement for me some day. I am turning 51, it may not be that far in the future. You and I have similar sins, we don’t regret. Defending yourself wasn’t a sin, what I do isn’t either. Still think you’re a bit too young for this. What are you…16, 17?” he asked.
“AH!” she gasped dramatically. “I am very offended and flattered, but also I get that a lot, I’m almost 20, but looking young comes in handy when you’re homeless and turning tricks, and it comes in handy when trying to lure in creeps. Makeup and attitude is, like, half the trap. First time was self-defense. Got a rush, Kinda into it, second time was an opportunity, and then I actually had to plan shit, euugh, gross. Prepwork." she rolled her eyes.
“Obviously not enough, You’d be in jail if I wasn’t tracing your steps and fixing them. Man upstairs saw potential, I just followed orders. Frankly, I think you got the spirit and the instinct but your planning is terrible.” Mike critiqued. "I basically saved your ass."
“Okay, thanks or whatever. What, do you want, a free blowy so we can call it square or you just wanna lure that over me for leverage for the rest of your life?”
“Leverage.” He nodded.
“Fuck…that takes so much longer than a blowjob. So the man upstairs running things, thinks I’m raw potential? You work for the government or something?”
“No, I told you. I get my orders from God.” Mike shrugged.
“See, now were getting back into the part that worries me. I know we’re both serial killers, but do we really have to add voices to our reputation and tarnish the whole stereotype?"
“What are the odds I hit a random girl who doesn’t get hurt, who happens to be the girl God told me to find? And how did I know you were a killer? Felt good didn’t it? Felt powerful. You don’t regret it, because he deserved to die. In fact, he may have not even been human, but if you killed him with a knife he likely was, or at least mostly.” Mike said
“Just get weirder every sentence with you old man, don’t it?” She marveled.
“Oh, we’re just getting started. See, I was scared shitless to meet you, because if I found you, I’d have to train you. Then you stepped in front of my van. I kill monsters that hurt people because someone has to, or they keep doing it. You do the same thing, you weren’t looking for me, so what made you step out into the road? Just took a weird step, felt a nudge, didn’t see the headlights? Do you even remember? Was there a strange push? You believe in God?”
“No, but I’m getting more open-minded.”
“Do you have any experience with a gun?” Mike asked.
“Yea, tons. Call of Duty, Doom, Borderlands. Played all of that shit till I ran away. Stole this sexy little snatchgun from a pimp, I’ve fired it 3 times at a tree, hit about where I wanted.”
“Can we call it something other than that?” he sighed.
“No, Mister fancy guns. It’s a snatchgun and her name is Carrie…like concealed Carrie, and also I fucking love that movie and this gun has red accents. That’s just poetic genius on multiple levels of creativity.”
“I hate to ask, but I assume you named your knife?”
“Stabby.” She said dryly. “Or Stabbitha if you wanna be proper.”
“Are we sure she’s the one? Stabby the clown is my replacement?” he asked the ceiling with annoyance.
“Oah, whoa, hold the phone, Pope Magnum the 4th. Stabby the clown? The fuck? Do you know nothing of culture? I’m a geisha, not a clown. Stabby is my Tanto butterfly knife, I know that’s not traditional, and I got it at Hot Topic, but it’s pretty and it’s small, and I got really good with it, and it’s totally what a killer geisha would rock. Respect the drip.”
‘What is that, an STD?” Mike asked.
“Oh…your God! My Sensei has lived under a rock. Did you have internet under your rock, gramps? Are you gonna teach me the ways of the mile-plus shot from our rock?” she asked, crossing her arms adorably.
“You’re gonna learn a lot of things. I believe God would send me a fast learner since he knows I’m a busy man and getting up there in age for this.” Mike sighed.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“You actually wanna train me to kill people for God?” Tanner said, looking baffled. "Like for real?"
“Not exactly. Sometimes I kill, but these people aren’t people anymore, kid. There are a lot of things most people don’t understand about this world. Tanner, have you seen the world we live in? Celebrities and crooked cops, political giants and rich bastard that get away with everything; and the system doesn’t ignore it, it works FOR them. There’s being an asshole sometimes, we all do that. Being human, making mistakes, and then there’s something truly evil. In an evil world, True evil is power, and there’s a whole organization of them. Illuminati, dark underground billionaire clubs, you think Epstein Island was just a fluke? I don’t understand all of the details because I don’t need to, it’s not my job. I’m not a leader, I’m the cleanup crew. There are more of us out there acting for God than you know. We just never cross paths or speak about it. Talking gets you caught.”
“They’re just people. Evil, sick people, sure, some of them deserve what they got, but how do you know who’s bad enough? Isn’t that playing God, making that decision? Defending yourself is one thing, I’m just acting as bait for predators. If they don’t bite, I don’t stab. Most of my clientele leaves happy and still with a head attached, minus some cash. You’re actively hunting randos.” Tanner noted.
“I don’t make the decisions on who dies. I just listen, and confirm, and then execute. Here, you know what this is?” mike asked, tossing something small and heavy.
“Night vision goggles.”
“Specifically, Thermal goggles. That’s why I checked your temperature. Human beings are warm living animals full of blood and a beating heart, they show up 98.6, give or take a little. No different than a deer or a stray dog, they have warmth. You know the humming bird has the highest natural body temperature, at 108 degrees. Some lizards in the desert can survive with a body temperature of 115, but not well, or for long, it’s still lethal. It’s lethal for humans too, you die at 109 unless you get very lucky and to a hospital immediately, you won’t even be functional over 105, you’d be delirious and an absolute mess. Last week I tracked a group of people running a small drug operation. Young wanna-be gang bangers, People. Human beings like you or me, who made bad decision and hurt others, but human nonetheless. 97-99 degrees, all 6 of them, except one.” He said grabbing his notebook. “127 degrees. He was having a conversation and watching the news, drinking a beer and watching porn. Casually living his life as if nothing was wrong, ten degrees above ER admission levels. Nobody runs that hot.”
“Are you trying to actually tell me, that you are hunting possessed people, and that God is guiding you to kill the evil people based on body temperature?”
“No, he gives me clues and a voice in my head, the thermal just confirms the target. When in doubt, thermal. I never killed a man that wasn’t medically dead from heat stroke ten degrees ago, and they’re always the worst people you ever imagined. Every time God tells me to kill someone, they’re always running hot. I check the papers and the police reports after. Never a decent human being, not in 77 kills.”
“That’s specific enough to know you keep track. When did it start?” she asked.
“Right after my wife and kid were murdered. Random break in, I didn’t have a gun in the house. See, I didn’t like guns. My grandpa was a gunsmith. He went nuts and killed himself when I was 12, and my father was a preacher that didn’t like me very much and thought that the best way to share God’s love was with a belt and an empty stomach if you did anything the book didn’t like. The book doesn’t like anything when someone hateful is reading it. Can’t imagine why mom left him so early. Kicked me out at 18, got a job at a church cleaning up after hours. That’s when God started speaking to me. Not often, but the voice was always right. I followed that all the way to my own little congregation, the whole bit. Sermons, volunteering, fell in love with a gal named Gwen, had a daughter, Rachel, perfect life. She was about 15. And then the voice told me to go back to my grandfather’s house. You know what I found there?”
“Dead bodies.” Tanner said dramatically.
“No. A gun. He was a gunsmith, not a murderer. The place was abandoned for decades. But I found blueprints and gunsmithing books and a hidden safe in the garage wall with some cash and a very strange folder full of drawings. He was obsessed with this military rifle he had been designing for years, built a prototype of it. Turns out he actually did work for the government, maybe they were after him. The voice told me to take it. Take the gun. Of course, guns kill people, like school kids and store clerks and my grandfather. So I left it there. I gave the money to a charity and didn’t think much of it. Next week my family was dead because some assholes decided to rob a preacher who didn’t own a gun. God warned me, I didn’t listen. Our wonderful justice system didn’t have enough evidence to convict a man who killed 2 innocent people, just breaking and entering.”
“So... you killed him.”
“Not immediately. I got the gun taken apart and cleaned up, and took it to the middle of nowhere and the damn thing still worked. Barely. Jammed like a son of a bitch, every few shots, but it always fired the first round after a magazine change. I went to a gun store and asked for the best scope they had. Couldn’t afford it, asked for the best I could get for what I had, and they guy hands me this thermal scope. I had no idea what it was, but I bought it. Put it on the prototype, took some practice shots and again, it always fired once and jammed after a few more.
One night God told me to take it out and lead me to an abandoned building. Guess who just happened to be there? The guy who killed my wife and daughter. Selling some stolen shit to some random assholes like you and me, who made mistakes and were in the wrong place and the wrong building. I didn’t wanna kill the wrong guy. God said nothing, so I turned on the scope and prayed if I got one shot, I got the one I wanted. And there in the scope was a cluster of red warm bodies, and one white-hot glowing target like a damn signal flair. I knew it was him. I fired one shot, right to the face, and the gun jammed, the son of a bitch dropped, and someone else started firing, and I ran like hell with a jammed gun. The satisfaction was indecribable, like a drug addiction. So when the voice came back again, I listened. I kept hearing the voice telling me to hunt, and I always find one of these glowing fuckers. My grampa was onto them somehow too, but I don’t know how, and he thought they were government operatives from some secret project. Area 51, Kennedy assassination level nonsense, but through the craziness, he knew something was going on and nobody believed him. But the voice has never lied to me, it knows things I can’t know, and it leads me to people with sketchy ties to strange places and money, organized people, and they glow in the thermal, every time. I’ve taken shots of faith, cried myself to sleep thinking I made a mistake, and then found out the next day in the news the dead guy was selling off young boys to wealthy clients, or planning to bomb a hospital. Horrendous people, inhuman, beyond evil, beyond the kind of tempting sins we normal people would ever even consider. Even you.”
“Oh blow me, Padre. But seriously, keep going.”
“Now I don’t question it anymore, and I’ve gotten good at it. The prototype is perfected, the process has become an art, and I love my job. God is a strict boss, but he gives you what you need. Once you start listening and doing it.” Mike said with a look of achievement.
“What if, hypothetically, you’re just crazy and killing bad people like me, and delusional because you couldn’t save your family?” Tanner asked.
“Then I guess I’m the luckiest hitman alive, and I have inhuman hunches that never seem to fail. I even hit you, and I wasn’t aiming for you or holding a gun.”
“Mostly why I’m still open-minded. So let’s say I don’t believe most of it. If I don’t even really believe in God, You still wanna train me to kill horrible people? Because every guy I killed was a rapist. If you’re insane and they still go down…I don’t give a damn about faith and voices. If it works, it works.” Tanner shrugged.
“I had the same stubbornness at your age. You’ll mature, and understand. I have faith that some day you won’t need me, you’ll hear his voice too. Just listen to it.”
“Oh I really sure do hope so.” Tanner smirked. “Whatever helps you sleep. Now let’s hit the range with that HK. I wanna put some suppressed 45 rounds in some sick bastards.” She grinned. “Not that I don’t also love Stabbitha.”
“Oh you won’t be using any 45 rounds. The 45’s get you caught.” Mike said.
“So I have to my Snatchgun?” She asked.
“No. You’ll be using the HK45.” Mike corrected coldly.
“Yea, you lost me, again, Holyman the hitman.” She pondered. “We’re using the 45 gun but not using 45 bullets because 45’s get you caught, so you carry a... 45…I just ...can’t with that tonight. Maybe you hit me harder than I thought. Do I have a concussion?”
“It’s gonna make sense. Give it some time and faith.” Mike smiled, "but tonight we both need to crash and reset. It’s been a long day. Bed or couch?” he asked.
“Wherever you want me, Captain. No biting, 500 bucks cash.”
“Different wording of the question. Pick one, I’ll take the other, and I don’t charge you for breakfast.”
“Okay, that works too.” She nodded.