Balance Of Darkness

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1:

CRIMINALS AND CRIME KILLERS

One evening, seven months later (which was May, next year), near an abandoned building, a van and a silver Ford stopped. Across them there were two black Mercedes. Two people got out of the Ford – a boy and a woman, and there was only one man in the van. Eight men got out of the two Mercedes and walked towards them.

“Is everything in order, Robert?” said the boy named John – around 25 years old, 6'1 feet tall, with long black hair and stubble.

“You could say that...” said the leader of the others.

“How many guns do you have this time?”

“Well, the van is almost full.” said the woman named Liz – around 40 years old, with dark hair to the shoulders (a little shorter than John’s).

“I know we used to bring more, but the business is getting slow.”

“The business? Is that what you call it?” he chuckled.

“For us it’s exactly that.”

“Okay... Anyway, may we see the guns?”

“As soon as we see the money.” said John.

“Oh, yeah, the money... Boys!”

His other seven associates opened the doors of the two Mercedes and grabbed guns.

“What the hell is this?!” said Liz.

“Well, it’s business, like you said. Ours is kinda slow too, so we can’t afford the price you want for the guns.

“Then you can’t have them!” said John.

“We have these guns.” everybody pointed their guns to John and Liz. “Tell him to get out of the van!”

“Marv, come here!” said John, and the van driver stepped out.

“What’s going on?” said Marvin.

“A little setback.”

“Not really.” said the leader. “Here’s the deal: you give us the guns in the van, we let you walk; or we shoot you with these guns, and we take those anyway. What’s your call?”

“My call? Well, uh... This is my call...” said John, turned aside, removed his hair from his right ear and there was a headset – an earpiece and a microphone. Their opponents were surprised, Liz also had one they did not see, and in a second four smoke grenades flew from the dark and fell by the two Mercedes. John, Liz and Marvin got back in their vehicles as quickly as they could, and the grenades created a smoke screen. The eight double-crossers started coughing, choking and falling on the ground – three were already down, the rest five started shooting in all directions. The leader moved outside the smoke covering his face with his forearm, and shot a few times at the Ford. The bullets hit the windshield, but not John or Liz. John got out with a g*n and shot him in the shoulder. He fell groaning, and the others were already down and out from the gas. Three men with gas masks appeared from the dark building, and Liz shouted:

“Let’s get outta here!”

One of them went in the van, the other two in the Ford. John approached the wounded guy (the gas was more than 50 feet away from them) and said:

“You’re lucky we’re not killers, otherwise you wouldn’t get away with just knock out gas and a bullet in the shoulder!”

He tried to get up, but John stomped his other shoulder and forced him back to the ground.

“Better don’t let me see you again!” said John, got in the car, and they all drove off.

Not too long after that somebody was watching the building, the surrounding tracks, and the thugs who started to wake up. Whoever he was, he was wearing a black suit, sunglasses… and he was carrying an automatic weapon.

The Ford and the van were travelling with John and Marvin on the wheels, and Frank – one of the other guys in the car, said:

“Why the hell did they do that?!”

“Greed, buddy. That’s all there is. Good that we’re always ready for anything.” said Wes – the third guy in the car (Liz was the fourth, but she was not a guy).

“Well, there’s no one you can trust these days.”

“These days? What do you mean by that, Frank?” said John.

“Nothing, it’s... just an expression.” “Okay...”

“Come on, you’re not suggesting that---” said Wes.

“---those guys could have been them?” finished Marvin in the van.

“I don’t think so, Marv.” said the last guy named Ernie sitting next to him. “If they attack us, I bet we won’t even see them coming. Well… at least that’s what they say on the news and in the papers.”

“Maybe they’re exaggerating.”

“I hope so.”

In the car John said:

“I gotta admit… When they set us up tonight, I actually thought for a moment that they were---”

* * *

“The Crime Killers Strike Again” – it was the title of the newspaper that a man in a red Volvo was reading. His name was Kevin, around 50 years old, with glasses, brown hair turning grey; he was in his car watching an expensive restaurant across him for maybe two hours already. It was two days later, in Los Angeles Downtown; it was crowded around noon, and so was the restaurant. Soon, a man in a black suit and with sunglasses entered, but he was one of many and no one would notice him... especially his face. As Kevin was sitting in the car, he heard an automatic gunfire coming from the restaurant for a few seconds. He threw the newspaper and ran over there. There was a panic inside, people were screaming and running; seven people were lying murdered on the floor. Kevin went inside, looked around, but he did not see anything. He got out on the street, looked around and again – nothing. It was like whoever did this for maybe 20 seconds, simply vanished. When Kevin heard police sirens from a distance, he ran to his car and drove away.

By the evening this story was all over the news, along with more stories like it. The reports were:

“The vigilantes known as the Crime Killers don’t seem to get tired. A restaurant was attacked today around 12 a.m. and seven people were killed. All were identified as members of a g**g, suspected of d**g dealing…”

“The alleged black market trafficker Robert Cox was shot and killed near an abandoned building, along with some of his men…”

“…so far no person without a criminal record was killed or hurt, which appears to be the trade mark of the Crime Killers…”

“…and yet, no one seems to know who these people are or anything at all about them. The police refuse to comment on any leads in these cases...”

“...they seem incapable of stopping or even finding the mysterious people.”

The newspapers were also filled with these stories with titles like:

“The Mysterious Crime Killers Attack For The 11th Time”

“Crime Killings Continue”

“No Criminal Is Safe”

“The Crime Killers: Heroes Or Villains”