I saw the Broadhead Securities SUV in my rearview mirror. They weren’t trying to hide. Shortly after that I saw the other one further back on the highway gaining on their friend and me.

  Beside me for an instant there was a chariot with a driver and a crazed man about to throw a spear at me. That wasn't real.

  I started psyching myself up for an altercation on the road, adjusted my seatbelt, put the gun on the seat beside me with a spare mag in the cup holder for easy access, and waited for the inevitable high speed chase and attack.

  Sixty seconds later I was feeling like an idiot as I remembered we were not in a warzone, and Broadhead wasn’t stupid enough to recreate every bad James Bond chase scene in history on I-35 on a Wednesday afternoon. Having caught up to me, they got in the lane behind me and followed.

  Now it was up to me. I could speed up and try to lose them, but I figured they found me with GPS or something, so they probably don’t need to be in sight to follow. This gave me a little bit of a pause. If they didn’t need to be in visual, why did they let me know they were following me at all? I can’t imagine it was anything other than psychological because it was actually a bad piece of fieldcraft to let me know they were there, but Broadhead has a lot of pull and connections, and I’m positive they already had my file pulled and knew who I was and what I used to do.

  So why do something so stupid? What the hell was I missing?

  Uneasy, I pulled out my phone and dialed Sarah. Well, I started to, but my phone suddenly rang in my hand, surprising me so much I almost dropped it. Normally, I don’t answer my phone if it’s an unknown number, but this was not a normal day, so after staring at the phone for 10 seconds or so, I answered, “Hello?”

  “Hello Dru. In a bit of a pickle, eh?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Not super important right now. Right now, you should be worried about those two SUV’s behind you.”

  I took a deep breath and willed myself to remain calm. “Nah, I think I’ll worry about the strange guy on the phone. The SUV’s are pretty well behaved so far.”

  “That’s a mistake, Dru. I’m on your side, but not much interested in chit chat right now.”

  “Yet you called me. You are real, right? This isn't my imagination?”

  “Seriously?” he laughed. “You’re going to act like this in the middle of a fucked up situation? Man, I might actually enjoy this!”

  “You know talking on a cell phone while driving is really dangerous. I’m going to hang up unless we get to the point here.”

  The strange caller burst into what sounded like a genuine belly laugh and took a few seconds to get himself back under control. “You’re wonderful, Dru. So here you go - the point. You got mixed up with Broadhead by accident when you killed Jo. Frank got mixed up with Broadhead because you killed Jo. And now that you announced yourself to them, it’s only a matter of time until they kill you like they did Frank.”

  I paused for about eternity. “Frank’s dead? This is known fact?”

  “Mmm…let’s say I’m about 90% sure. I haven’t seen the body, but we were working closely on this until he disappeared.”

  I exhaled a little breath of relief. LT isn't dead until I see the body. “So, who are you?”

  “Oh no, Dru. That’s not in my nature. I don’t work like that. You’ll have to figure out who I am the old-fashioned way. Go think back to your childhood and ask yourself who would you least like to see again? That will lead you to ask the right questions about the right types of people. Have fun!”

  Oh fuck no. We’re not going down that rabbit hole. My childhood? No way. “Wait a damn minute! You don’t know shit about my childhood. What the hell is this? Why are you calling?”

  “Oh! Right. Almost forgot! Broadhead is obviously afraid there’s a group of people you’re working with. They’re following you and monitoring your phone. Not this call, obviously; I’ve got skills, but if you call Sarah, she’s dead. What the SUV’s are doing is hoping you make decisions under pressure.

  "Run little rabbit, run. Get it?

  "If you decide to stay away from your “group”, they will monitor your communications and track them down, and kill you when you get somewhere more isolated than an interstate. If you go for help, they’ll see who you have, call in appropriate reinforcements, and kill you all. It’s pretty hilarious that you are NOT with a group, actually.”

  “Well,” I said, squeezing the steering wheel as hard as I could, “this sucks.”

  “Why? You’ve got a gun and there’s only six of them in two vehicles. I’m sure you have some ideas of what to do. I’ll even help a tiny bit- take the next exit towards Lorena and turn east under the overpass. It’s pretty isolated about a mile out. Look for a warehouse that looks empty. Good hunting, I’ll be watching with great interest!”

  “Oh! One more thing, Frank and I talked about you many times. I know a lot more about you than you think.”

  And with that, he hung up. Shit.

  Looking at my cell phone’s map, I quickly located the exit and road my mystery caller was talking about. The only real question is should I listen to the weird caller and do what he recommended? I mean, honestly, why should I? I don’t know what the hell is going on or who the caller is, and taking advice from strange voices over the phone doesn’t strike me as smart or even particularly sane, but…Goddamn it, fuck me if I wasn’t actually smiling! I mean, I know I’m not the most put-together guy around, but dammit, was I actually starting to have fun?

  Yes I was! I’m sitting here driving down a side road into the desolate Texas countryside with a shit-eating grin on my face as six guys follow me with the express purpose of killing me and anyone else they find who might be working with me. Assuming the voice on the phone isn’t full of shit, of course.

  But I’ll let you in on a little secret. I just realized I don’t care. Taking out those two thugs back at Broadhead hadn’t bothered me at all as it was pure self-defense, but these guys in the car are declaring war. I kinda like war. I’m going to find out what's going on here and I’m going to figure this weird shit out. I don’t know how yet, but I know it starts with those two SUV’s that took the same exit as me. I fished in my pocket for two painkillers and took them dry, my grin becoming a full-on expression of joy.

  As I drive down the two-lane blacktop that winds its way out of the small town, I see some Ravens circling a large series of warehouse-like structures surrounded by a fence, but with a large, open parking lot where I can assume the employees park every morning. That smile slips a tiny bit. I have a flashback of a raven sitting right next to me laughing. What the fuck?

  Ravens. Not the best sign if you’re a little superstitious and you spent a lot of time hanging around creatures out of myth and legend. And I remembered it’s the second time I’ve seen birds circling around since I got to Texas. I had forgotten seeing a few flying around near Sarah’s place.

  Ravens or Crows have a place in every supernatural pantheon where the birds naturally exist. North America, Europe, everywhere, actually. And they’re almost always associated with a God or a person you’d definitely rather avoid if at all possible. And while there are no “Gods” on the Earth, there are plenty of personal reasons I don’t like them. Most have to do with fields of battle and the aftermath when the birds feast on the slain. Mostly.

  I slow down to get a better look and see that the parking lot wraps like an “L” shape behind the three largest buildings. Slamming my foot on the gas, I turned hard into the parking lot and raced around the back side of the building, leaving the startled drivers in the SUV’s to react far too slowly to keep up with my surprise move. Forget the Ravens, I need to focus on surviving the next 2 minutes.

  By the time they slow down, make the turn into the parking lot, and speed up to go around the back, I’ve already passed a row of concrete traffic walls I always called a Jersey wall (but I think are actually called “K” rails), turned the car around, put it in park with the engine still running, and sprinted out the door and over to the concrete barrier. Whatever you call them, you see them all over America - about 8 feet long, three feet high and lining every highway construction zone you’ve ever drove past.

  So when the SUV’s come tearing around the corner of the parking lot, I’m kneeling down behind concrete with my pistol braced on the top and in two hands. Both drivers seemed to see me at the same time.

  Both drivers were very different people. The first SUV saw me and panicked, slamming on the break and swerving out into the open parking lot space to my right. That action saved his life, for the moment.

  The second saw me and the gun aimed right at him and decided to keep the pedal to the floor and aimed straight back at me, presumably to smash me into putty with his vehicle. That action killed him.

  For most people, facing down an accelerating SUV moving and bouncing on a crappy parking lot pavement would make for a challenging shot with a pistol, even braced on a wall for support. I’m not most people, remember?

  Orienting on the SUV, I put two rounds through the windshield into the head of the driver from about 20 yards away. The utter destruction of his head caused the body to jerk and collapse and the car drifted a little bit to my left. I sprinted out to my right and put 6 more rounds into the SUV as it went by and slammed into the K-rail, which had a disastrous effect on the SUV.

  Nothing exotic like an explosion or a flip happened, it smashed into the rail and stopped almost dead as it stood up on its nose and the back wheels left the ground, but it didn’t flip over. The K rail disintegrated, but not before inertia sent both characters in the backseat into the front seat, one of which kept going right out the front windshield and onto the pavement.

  All three were already dead as I knew my shots had found their targets, and nobody without a seatbelt was surviving that impact.

  I had nine rounds left in the mag, which was three per person in the second SUV if my mysterious phone friend was accurate. More than enough. So I turned to the SUV which had screeched to a stop and as the doors opened up, I had a moment to realize I was standing alone, uncovered, in a parking lot. Oops.

  The K rails weren’t going to offer me much protection from this angle, but there was a trashed SUV sitting there that would give me concealment and little cover. It could work long enough to give a little lesson in the difference between the two concepts.

  The men in the SUV had swerved around while breaking and wound up with the vehicle pointing back at me, and the operators were smart enough to know that sitting in a vehicle without armor was a death sentence, but they had all seemed to forget that car doors are only concealment, not cover.

  Wanna know the difference? Here it is.

  I popped up over the hood of the crashed SUV I had run behind and put three fast rounds through the passenger side door. The man behind it fell down bleeding from three bullet holes in his chest. I couldn’t see him because the door concealed him from view, but the door wasn’t any real protection. It ate up a lot of the bullet's velocity and kinetic impact, but my rounds punched more than enough power to lodge in his chest. No cover from fire.

  I, on the other hand, dropped down behind the front quarter panel of the SUV where an entire engine was between me and the return fire. Sure, a smart man might think to drop down and look to shoot my feet or legs, but I was concealing myself behind the front wheel. Not perfect by any means, but a damn sight better than a door.

  Employing a simple rule I have of never shooting from the same spot twice if I can help it, I leaned out around the front bumper while still in a squat and, you know what? I am a smart man, so I decided to shoot out the legs of the second guy hiding behind the driver's side door. My first round blew out his left ankle and he fell screaming to the ground where my second shot took him neatly in the head.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  One bastard left. Four bullets. Nice.

  He blasted my SUV with a surprisingly accurate rapid fire of about 10 rounds while screaming at me, “You motherfucker!”

  When his gun ran out of bullets and he went to switch his magazine out for a fresh one, I popped up to take a look and found that bad guy number three had the brains of the bunch, he was all the way behind the SUV and I couldn’t see his legs. Well concealed, and with a lot of SUV to provide cover.

  “Hey,” I yelled, “all your boys are dead. What the fuck, huh? Why are you all so hell-bent on killing me?”

  “Fuck you! Backup is coming, and you’re fucking dead, asshole!”

  “Now wait a second,” I said, "you started this shit. I just wanted to know what happened to Frank, and you guys started trying to kill me.”

  “Above my paygrade, asshole. I don’t know what the hell you did to piss off my boss, but you killed my fucking friends and I’m going to fucking put you down like a dog.”

  A fucking dog. He had to say it. Dog. Goddamn, that pisses me off. Not his fault. He couldn’t know how much I love dogs. Hell, in my early days, I was proud to be called a dog of war. We soldier types love that shit. Dogs are better than people, and that’s a fact. A dog even saved my life once.

  “Alright, asshole. I got your Dog right here. You want a piece of me? You think you’re man enough to put me down? Come fuck around and find out!”

  His response was 5 rapid shots that slammed into the side of the SUV followed by a thunk sound that reminded me of a frying pan hitting a kettle, and a sound suspiciously like a body hitting the ground.

  I shuffled towards the back of the SUV in order to change my position and peaked around the rear bumper to see a tall, thin man in faded jeans and a ragged white t-shirt that read “Free Leonard Peltier sooner next time!” in red letters standing over an unconscious Broadhead securities guard with a huge grin on his face and an honest to gods cast iron frying pan in his hand.

  He stood a solid six foot plus in his well-worn cowboy boots, and his long, black hair was pulled back into a ponytail showing off the high cheekbones and dark complexion of a man native to the Americas. His eyes were filled with mischief as he turned to me with a smile inviting me to join in on whatever joke he was pulling.

  “You looked like you could use some help,” he said.

  Standing up, I aimed my pistol at the new guy and started walking toward him. “Drop the pan, take two steps back, and put your hands behind your head! Now!”

  “Really? Is that any way to greet a friend?”

  “I don’t know who the fuck you are, or how the hell you got here without me seeing you. Drop the pan! Take two steps back! Hands behind your head!”

  Frowning, he made it seem as if I somehow let him down. Shaking his head side to side, he dropped the pan onto the head of the downed shooter and took two dancing steps back like he was in a musical.

  “That better, Dru?”

  “No, dammit! Who are you and how do you know my name? I’ve never seen you before. And put those fucking hands behind your head or I’m going to shoot them off your wrists. Swear to God.”

  He grinned wide and barked out a laugh, “Remember you said that. It’s going to be funny real soon.” And with that, he put his hands behind his head. “Now what little doggy? You gonna bark all day or are you going to bite?”

  “What?”

  “Reservoir Dogs? Tarantino's masterpiece? You had to have seen it!”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “You can call me Sam. Sam Dodson. But I’d also like it if you’d call me friend, because hear my words Dru, you need a friend bad.” And with that, he pointed at the guy on the ground and said, “Don’t you think we should take this guy inside one of these empty warehouses and ask him a few questions when he wakes up?”

  I slowly lowered my gun and asked him, “Why, exactly, are you my friend, and why should I trust you?”

  He lowered his hands to his side, “Because Frank did. And now we both need you to finish what he and I were trying to do before he died.”

  “Well Sam, this is about the most fucked up thing to happen to me ever.”

  He shook his head, “No it isn’t. Not even close. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Dru.”

  “Fuck it. Fine.” I popped the nearly empty mag out of the gun and swapped it for a fully loaded 17 rounds and tucked it away in the holster. “Pick that guy up and move him inside, and afterward you and I are gonna talk a little bit before he comes around and I start questioning him.”

  “You’re not going to help?” He looked genuinely upset that I wasn’t going to walk over and pitch in.

  “No, Sam. I’m not. I don’t trust you that much and it's the fact that you seem to know a whole lot about Frank that is keeping me from shoving this gun in your face while I ask you these questions. So lift, my frying pan marauder, lift. I’m going to destroy some cell phones and see if I can find a GPS device on the SUVS.”

  “No need. I already took care of it. His call for backup didn't go through either.”

  “How the hell did you do that?” I asked.

  “Trade secrets, but trust me, it’s taken care of.”

  “Trust you,” I laughed, “For real?”

  “Obviously it’s your choice, Dru, but what are the chances you’ll find anything anyway? Are you some super sleuth? Do you even know what to look for on the vehicle? No, you don’t. Stop being silly. I took care of it.”

  “Christ on a crutch.” He wasn’t wrong. What was I going to do, call up my imaginary science and tech guy?

  Letting it go, I walked over to the warehouse to see if I could break in. It was easy, the door didn’t even have a deadbolt.

  Sam dragged the body up behind me and stopped at the door. “Well that was lucky,” he said deadpan.

  Yeah. Yeah, it was. “This a trap, Sam? Cause I promise you, you’ll die before I do.”

  “Awfully dumb and convoluted trap if it is. I send these guys, call you up to tell you how to beat them, help you beat them, and even allow myself to become your manual labor - typical exploitation of an Indigenous person, by the way. I had hoped for better from you - all so I can get you in an abandoned warehouse in order to…what? Kill you? Nah, Dru. Not my style.”

  This was getting ridiculous. Everything was spinning out of my control and becoming chaotic. My thoughts were trying to catch up to reality and my temper was disappearing fast. Taking a deep breath, I counted to four in my head and then let the breath go for another count of four. It was my favorite "don't kill everyone in the room because it's bad for morale" breathing exercise and I tried to focus on what was in front of me.

  I rubbed my eyes, this lunatic was going to give me a migraine. I turned as I heard a thud and saw that Sam had dropped the thug in the middle of the open floor and was walking over to a small office that had a desk and chairs plainly visible through the windows.

  “Want me to grab the chairs, boss? Maybe find some rope, a hot poker, razorblades, a car battery and cables?”

  “Sam, and I mean this sincerely, what the hell is wrong with you? This isn’t funny. Get the fucking chairs and bring them out here. We need to talk seriously and you need to explain what the hell is going on.”

  “Well in that case, no.” He abruptly plopped right down on the floor cross-legged and stared at me. “Get the chairs yourself, tough guy.”

  “Christ, I don’t have time for this. Fine. You sit there like a child in time out. I’ll get the chairs.”

  “Damnit Dru, you are not nearly as much fun as I thought you were going to be.” He seemed genuinely saddened by the concept that I wasn’t going to treat this like a party or something. How crazy was this loon?

  I went into the office, grabbed two chairs, dragged them out next to the unconscious guy, and sat in one. “You want to sit in this chair here and talk to me like an adult, Sam?”

  He grinned and quickly stood up, walking over to the chair and sitting down as he said, “Now we’re getting somewhere! You ready for a serious conversation that’ll blow your mind?”

  Sighing, I said, “Yes.”

  “So, Dru, this is where we share info.”

  “No,” I replied. “This is where you spill your guts and tell me everything I want to know so I don’t shoot you in the face.”

  “Ha!” He barked. “Okay, maybe this will be a little bit of fun after all. Alright, Dru, ask a question, but I feel it should be noted that I’m only going to tell you what I want to, and I think you’d be well served answering my questions as well. I’d like to work together, but if you’re not going to trust me, there’s no way I’m telling you everything. Sorry.”

  I stared at him with my best death stare. He smiled and stared back, grin getting wider and wider.

  Sigh.

  “Alright Sam, let’s start easy. Who the fuck are you, how do you know Frank, and what the fuck is going on?”

  He started laughing hysterically. “Oh my! Ha! Oh my. Start easy he says! Oh my. Dru, you are simply marvelous.” Wiping his eyes, he slowly regained control of himself and looked up at me.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to need a story to make sense of this Dru. But this is a group participation story. I’m going to tell you this tale, but you’re going to have to fill in some blanks and give me some detail. In fact, we’re going to be telling this story to each other. And you know what? You’ll have to go first! Ha!”

  “Why me? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m actually quite sorry. Sincerely. But this story starts - for you - with the day you butchered Jo.”

  My heart froze in my chest and I couldn’t breathe. Jo? No, he couldn’t know about that. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “No, Dru. I’m sorry, but we either do this right, or not at all. I wish it was otherwise, I honestly do, but you need to know this, and I can’t tell you everything unless you share. Unless you can start at the beginning, you might as well pull out that gun and shoot me now. This all started with you killing your squadmate, and honestly, Frank and I don’t know precisely why. You wouldn’t tell him.”

  Wouldn’t? More like couldn’t, I was so close to losing myself forever into insanity at that point, I actually couldn’t talk. It took a week under supervision before I woke up screaming strapped down in a bed in the field hospital. Until then I had been a nonverbal killing machine. A danger to most everyone. Three months after that I was quietly discharged and sent home. No longer a trusted resource for killing the enemy.

  “Dru.”

  I looked up into Sam's dark eyes. In them I saw understanding and even a little empathy. “I’m not sure I can talk about this.”

  He refused to let me look away. His eyes held mine like a magnet and I felt myself being drawn deeper into his gaze. I was locked in. I couldn't turn away.

  “Let it go, Dru. Let it out. Talk and let’s see if we can help each other.”

  Amazingly, astonishingly, I began to do what I would have sworn I was incapable of doing. I began to talk about the last day I spent in the war. Repressed memories popped back to the surface.

  “There were two teams out of the nightmare squad working together. Frank, Jo, and I were working alongside Tony, Juan, and Keith. Tony was the squad leader and was about 6 feet tall and 5 feet wide. And he had one eye. He hadn’t lost one. One eye was all he’d ever had. Right smack dab in the middle of his forehead. Of Greek descent, he was what legends called a cyclops, albeit without the massive height Odysseus had to deal with. Extremely smart, pretty strong, and with a real weakness for drink, Tony was a great guy and a seriously good tactician.

  His “shooter” was Juan, a tiny guy legends called an Anchimayen - who looked like a Chilean child, ran faster than an Olympic sprinter, and was perplexingly obsessed with Jo in our crew.

  His driver was Keith, a Japanese American soldier who had red hair, a red face, and was the single person on the planet who could drink Tony under the table. He was what they referred to in Japan as a Shojo. His story about his family emigrating to America was one of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard.

  Two crews were overkill for a simple job like this, but what the hell. Beats going in by yourself, I guess.

  We were converging on the outskirts of this small Afghanistan village about three klicks from a larger village on the side of Mount Noshaq that had been the main focus of our attack yesterday. It was a total clusterfuck, as usual. Yesterday, we had gone in with exceptionally good intelligence that a group of three Taliban insurrectionists were working with an Extra commonly mistaken in history as a yeti or a bigfoot. A nine foot tall beast of a humanoid that ranged across the mountainous areas of the world and had a nasty temper and a real taste for human flesh.

  The good news is that they were essentially big and tough but with no real other advantages. In fact, they tended to be rather stupid, as opposed to real Sasquatches of North America, but it was easy for them to thrive in the mountains of Afghanistan. With the war they were becoming more brazen in their behavior, venturing out, joining hunting groups, killing and eating American soldiers, you get the idea.

  That’s exactly the kind of thing that gets the monsters out there targeted by us. If you start killing people in a way that will get you noticed, we go and kill you before you end up on the news. Extras are one thing, real, honest to goodness monsters are another. The general public can’t handle that level of truth and honesty in their worldview.

  So we went in to eliminate the group and kill the bastard. Should have been a simple elimination job. I would have set up in a good sightline, sniped the Extra, and Jo and Frank would have killed the other three with me on the hill as cover. Only he wasn’t there and neither were the insurgents. It took all day, and most of the night, but we were able to figure out through questioning the villagers that the bad guys were up the mountain a few clicks away in this tiny little group of huts. Hiding out, or so we thought.

  So that morning, we all went to mount up, but bizarrely there were new orders merging our squads together. While not unheard of, the particulars were bonkers. Jo was to stay behind with Juan to secure the village until Broadhead contractors showed up to question the villages and make sure we got the maximum amount of intel out of the locals as possible, while Keith and Tony took their humvee and I got to be driver for once and motor Frank and I to deal with the Extra and his Taliban friends. It was ridiculous since Tony could have kept his team with him and we could have gone on to do the work as an unbroken team, but we all figured, "that's the military for you".

  Of course, halfway there I broke the damn vehicle. Pulling over, it was quickly decided that I needed to go back and get Jo to help me fix the damn thing, but Frank decided that he, Tony, and Keith were more than enough for 4 assholes on a mountain, and we didn’t want to spend another 24 hours out there if we didn’t need to. So back to the village I went. It was about two clicks, so I left my gear inside the vehicle and ran back to the village.

  What I saw when I got there.. what I saw…”

  “Dru. This is extremely important," he said in a whisper. “What did you see?”

  “I…all the people were dead. Every adult in the village. Executed.”

  “What else?”

  “What else? What else does there need to be?” I yelled, standing up and knocking my chair over. I was shaking all over. I was staring at Sam, but I couldn’t see. My vision was tunneling. From a long way off I heard the cry of the Raven on the battlefield - the chooser of the slain? Reaching out to me, “Remember” it seemed to cry.

  All at once, I remembered. Oh God help me, I remembered.

  “Children. The children. I ran into buildings looking for Jo and Juan, sure they had been killed. Instead, I found them with the children. Some kids were dead. Dismembered, staked out, bodies cut open. Some were still alive, crying out in agony, screaming for help. Begging for mercy. Confused, stunned, uncomprehending why this was happening to them.”

  From a million miles away I heard Sam groan, “Oh shit. Too late. We might be too late already.”

  “I turned the corner of the doorway screaming for Jo and Juan, hoping they were still alive, and they were right there. Unharmed.

  "It was them. Butchering children! Why were they killing the kids? I…I snapped. I can’t remember what happened next, but the last thing I do remember, I was pounding something that used to be a body…Jo’s body…I was covered from head to toe in blood and someone was grabbing me, trying to pull me off the corpse of my squad mate that…that I had butchered like she had butchered those kids."

  I was gasping for breath, fighting to say the words stuck in my throat, "Frank. LT was trying to pull me off and I turned on him, putting a pistol…where did I get the pistol? I put a pistol to my best friend's head and screamed at him. DID YOU KNOW?!?! DID YOU KNOW?!?! Then everything went black.”

  Then everything went black again and I crashed to the floor in front of Sam, unconscious.