The Shack series

AN IMPLACABLE MAN

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A small wooden house stood in front of a metal workshop labeled "Bailey's Welding." I moved as quietly as I could toward a corner made blind by aging stacks of lumber and a couple of old couches that sat oddly on the front porch. I slid toward the house, past a rusted, smoking kettle barbeque standing awkwardly on an uneven platform of cinderblock on the side of the house. As tall and dry as the uncut grass was, I still didn't have to worry about being heard. I could hear laughter and shouting over the blasting sound of a television.

If anyone walked out and saw me, I'd ask if I could bring a hay rake by for a weld. If that didn't work, I'd start shooting and hope I ran out of assholes before I ran out of bullets. That had worked for me a few times before. Though that plan did get me stabbed in the face 'em if they can't take a joke.

The house had apparently been built with two bedrooms, but one had been taken out to expand the living room. It was a sea of armchairs, mismatched and wedged in arm-to-arm. Guys were passing food around while they watched the start of the second half, rather than get up and try to move around. They had to have jammed the chairs in there for the game, which was probably why the couches were on the porch.

At least I was in the right place. Every neck had an NCWB tattoo. I sat against the house next to the crawlspace door, listening.

Most of the talk was standard macho bullshit, but one conversation caught my attention. Two of them were talking about the "after-game entertainment." The words "fresh meat" caught my attention. A lot of the guys near them joined in, laughing about "Cody softening them up."

That couldn't be anything good.

A sound caught my attention; Delaney was skittering towards me. In a second she was clutching at my arm, yanking hard. I stared at her for a half second. "What the holy Damn? You need to get your butt back in the goddamn..."

I stopped as soon as I saw her face. She was shock-white pale with tear-filled eyes. Her lower lip was quivering spasmodically. "We have to... to... help."

I let her pull me away, glancing back towards the crowded house. The game had a long ways to go anyway. It'd Damning keep for a bit. She pulled me around back, to the welding shop. She pointed wordlessly towards a side window, but cringed away from it.

I pulled myself up, listening to the noise from the football fans in the house. As soon as I looked in, I knew why Delaney was struggling to keep herself together.

Three cramped wire dog kennels sat in the middle of the concrete floor, n***d figures cowering in them. A pig of a man walked almost carelessly around the cages. The women recoiled, as much from him as from the cattle prod he using to tap the cages.

He was laughing as they scrambled to keep away from the jolt of the prod.

I looked over at Delaney, then slid along the wall to the door. Unlocked. Once he had his back to me, I rushed him and slammed the .45 against his temple as hard as I could. Something gave in his skull and he folded to the ground. From the blown pupils and spasmodic twitching, "Cody" wasn't going to be torturing anyone again.

I stood over him and glanced out towards the house. No movement at all. Delaney was struggling with a small padlock on the kennel. "We need the keys. Does he have the keys?"

I managed to find his cell phones and a set of car and house keys, but that was all. Delaney stared at me with tears running down her face. I shook my head then pointed to the work bench. "We don't need them anyway. Bring your wrench, and grab another open-end off that bench. Maybe 11/16ths or so."

She came back with them and I quietly showed her how to slip one jaw of each wrench through the shackle of the lock and use them against each other to leverage the lock open. The woman inside shrunk away from me when I opened the door. I backed off. "You open the others and get them out."

Delaney forced herself forward, face almost green. While they flinched from me, they had no problems with her and came out quickly and quietly as she popped the other two locks.

"Get them to the car. If I don't show up in thirty minutes, or if you hear a bunch of noise or shooting, you get back to Sheree's. If I don't call by morning, call the police."

Her eyes were hard-bright and the tears had stopped as she looked over the burn marks and whip scars on the women. She stared back at the house for a long second. "Damn them." She wasn't green anymore; her face was a mask of ice-white rage.

I nodded slowly. "Yeah. Damn them."

We both knew what that meant: what was going to happen now.

After they slipped out, I looked around. I couldn't stop myself from smiling when I saw the wheeled rack of green k-bottles, the tall gas cylinders used in welding. I'm sure it was more like bared teeth than a real smile, but it was close enough.

Quietly moving the k-bottles over to side of the house took several minutes, and through it all, I could hear the assholes joking and laughing about the game. With all the noise they didn't have a chance of hearing the hissing of the oxy bottles emptying, one after another into the enclosed crawlspace under the house. Bags of shop rags and old clothing from the welding shop back room went in as well, but I left the tiny access door open.

I slipped around the house, checking the bedroom, but it was empty. Only the NCWB assholes were in the house, and from what I could hear, I was sure all of them knew what had been happening in the welding shop.

I opened a couple more k-bottles of oxy and two of acetylene in the shop, stepping over the still twitching body of the Damnhead on the floor on my way out.

The hardest part was quietly sliding one of the couches to block the front storm door. It wasn't perfect, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't have to hold very long.

I tilted the barbeque grill on its side and watched for a second as the coals spilled out. The overgrown yard caught almost instantly from the smoldering charcoal, racing towards the house with insane speed. The orange flames flared nearly white as they found the oxygen streaming from the crawlspace, leaping after it hungrily along the dry grass. There was an audible "thump" as flames shot out from the foundation on every side of the house at once.

The oxygen had seeped up into the house through the floorboards, flooding the floor of the house. Oxygen by itself isn't terribly dangerous; it doesn't burn or explode on its own. If you enrich the atmosphere even a couple percentage points with it, though, things change. Fire, in that kind of atmosphere, moves like a living thing, something huge, ravenous and unstoppable. Old wooden flooring, foam in furniture, clothing, hair, all become nearly explosively flammable. Overstuffed easy chairs burn nightmarishly fast and hot, even without the added oxygen. With it, they became instant incinerators for anything near them.

Panicked shouts erupted from the house, rapidly turning to screams as I jogged up the hill. I paused to glance back, but nobody even reached the front door before the old wooden house was a towering pyre of living flame.

One window broke out, and a blackened hand reached out for a second, but that was all. I'd nearly reached the road when the flames reached the workshop.

Oxygen isn't explosive.

Acetylene mixed with oxygen in an enclosed space is.

The concussion of the explosion knocked me forward and I rolled, ears ringing, to my feet. Through the forty-foot flames, I could see that what had been a house was an enormous crumpled bonfire. It looked like all that was left of the workshop was a blasted cracked foundation.

A few seconds later, Sally pulled around the bend and slid to a smooth stop in front of me. Delaney hopped out of the driver's seat. "I figured that had to mean you were done. Jesus." She stared down into the inferno. "None of those Damnwads could live through that, could they?"

The three women, huddled under a blanket in the back seat kept looking between me and the fire, caught between fear and hope. "I don't think so. Let's un-a*s this place before the cops show up."

Delaney watched for a second longer, then gave a tight, grim smile. "Damn them."

We were nearly five miles down the road before the first police car blazed past us.

I let several miles pass in silence. "You have to start listening to me Delaney. You aren't trained for this shit."

She never took her eyes off the road. "I know. I just..." Her eyes squeezed shut for second. "Pretending it was some kind of game and sneaking around was easier than waiting." I could see her suppress tears. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright, just listen next time." I glanced in the mirror and looked at our charges huddled in the back. "You did good, anyway."

She turned in her seat and looked at them. "We did good, didn't we? Like real hero shit."

"I'm no hero, Delaney."

"Whatever you are, I want to be like you."

"A Damned-up d**g-addicted junk-yard owner?"

"You forgot 'with serious anger issues.' Besides you don't use drugs anymore."

"Doesn't mean I'm not an addict; that just means I've got control for now."

"Whatever. You rescue people. I want to do that."

"Tara's a lawyer or..."

"No. I want to do it your way. You don't just talk about shit." I could hear it in her voice; she meant it. "I'd never get though all the schools, anyway."

That was true. Delaney had all the will and drive in the world, but there's no cure for dyslexia, and that would stop any traditional route to success. College and the military were out, but there were other ways.

"Maybe, if you prove you can listen, maybe you can go to Texas."

"Where we send all those beater cars?"

"Those cars are for a driving course for bodyguard training. It's called a 'crash-bang' course."

Delaney's eyes shot open and she stared at me. "Really?"

"A friend of mine, Kurt, and his wife own a security company down there and they owe me some favors. But I have to talk to them first. He may say you have to wait a while."

She sat back. "Like driving and shooting?"

"And first aid and a bunch of other stuff, but only when you're ready. You have to prove you're ready."