E j deen, p.1
E. J. Deen, page 1
Primal
E. J. Deen
Piv otal B ooks
Also by E. J. DEEN
Covenant
Malevolent
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This is a work of fiction. All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Piv o tal B oo ks
www.pivotalbooks.com
Primal
Copyright 2000 Cassandra D. Blizzard
ISBN 10: 1-9310-6220-X
Published in the United States of America.
PRIMAL
E. J. Deen
1
The year 14 A.R. After the revolt….
As he crept through the woods, the crackle of dead leaves crunching beneath his feet sounded
disturbingly loud, like a blast from a shotgun. He frowned as he paused to listen, his senses alert, his body charged and ready for any consequence the noise of his footfall might bring. It could come from any side. Silent, deadly. His shoulder muscles bunching from the tension, he strained to hear anything that might alert him to the enemy. No sound came. Nothing but the ragged wheeze of his own
breathing, unusually harsh in his ears.
Christ, why had he agreed to this perilous mercy mission? What if they were out there, just waiting for him? He would be one man against many. It could cost him a lot of pain. Pain was something he was no stranger to, but he didn’t exactly relish an onslaught.
He reached up and fingered the jagged scar on his left cheek. He remembered how it had come to be there, remembered what those heinous men had done to him so long ago. He could still feel the agony.
It was hard to forget. They had made sure of that.
A tiny flicker of fear sliced through him, and he found himself peering nervously through the trees, half-expecting the worst. They could be out there, all around him, boxing him in, waiting.
“Don’t think about it,” he muttered to himself.
No more what ifs. Just get the girl and get out quick. Don’t even think about the dangers. There was no time for it.
Steeling himself against the panic that threatened, he forced himself to move again, creeping forward through the brush, his eyes and ears keenly tuned to any traps.
Crouched low so as not to be seen, Zach hovered just inside the tree line, blending with the landscape.
Focus. He had to stay focused. He needed to be alert.
It was a blistering summer in Louisiana. He was damn hot, too fucking tired, and thirsty beyond reason.
Still, he pushed on with a singular purpose. He couldn’t stop. Not yet. Soon he would allow himself a drink, but right now he only had one thing on his mind. Getting the job done, getting paid, and retreating back into the hills, where he could disappear for a time. At least until someone else came hunting for him, begging for his help. Or until he felt the need to be on the move again. Then he would come down out of the mountains and make himself available to whoever could pay him enough to
make it worth his while. Weapons, ammunition, fuel. Whatever he could scavenge from them.
Zach paused on the edge of the clearing and touched the dagger he kept hidden in his right boot. Christ, he’d never wanted to come back here. But he had good reason. There was a little girl out there who needed him.
He was close now. He could feel it. His instincts were humming, almost painfully, and his heart had begun to beat a little faster. Soon he would be there, in the middle of it.
A quick look at the battered photograph he carried in his pocket assured him that he hadn’t lost the anger that drove him. He could already feel the adrenaline beginning to course through his veins and up through his heart, giving him that constricted feeling in his chest that was so damn familiar to him now.
It was a power-pump that had gotten him through many a difficult situation, situations when his life had almost been snuffed out of existence. He was certain it would get him through this mission, too. It had to, if only for the girl’s sake.
He stared at the picture, burning the image into his mind. Once he was there, he wouldn’t be able to look at it again. He would have to identify his target and act without hesitation or uncertainty.
A photograph was a rare treasure these days. Cameras were not easy to come by. But the girl’s father had once been a wealthy man, and the camera had most likely been in his possession for many years.
The snapshot had been taken during happier times. She was a sweet-looking child, with a smile so beautiful, so full of hope that it could soften the hardest heart. She had fine blonde hair and wide, innocent eyes. It touched him, that innocence. It was so impossibly uncommon in these hellish times.
It’s what had clinched his decision to find her, to take her back to her parents, to give her what she deserved. To give her a chance.
If she was still alive. There was a possibility she wasn’t. She’d been taken, kidnapped by the Pirates, most likely for their sexual pleasure, and it wasn’t their way to keep a girl for long. When they were tired of her, they would kill her and then discard her without even bothering to bury her. But there was a slim chance she was still alive, a chance she’d been traded for profit, traded to one of the hole houses that were so famous in Louisiana, in what had once been known as New Orleans.
New Orleans. It had changed. Most of the levees had been destroyed, and with no one to monitor the elaborate pump system throughout the city, it had become nothing short of a mosquito-infested swamp where the great Mississippi flowed. In fact, that was very nearly the only way to identify the region, simply by following the Mississippi river until it zigzagged close to Lake Pontchartrain.
The city had become a wasteland of gutted buildings, the structures in the ninth ward completely flooded out now, destroyed by the unnamed hurricane that had blasted the gulf a few years back. It had been a fifth category hurricane that hit without warning. There’d been no way to track the damn thing.
The satellites were still up there, somewhere, presumably still operable. But no one on the ground gave a shit about them anymore, and no one possessed the intricate equipment that had been used in
conjunction with them. Most everything attainable had long since fallen prey to the Pirates, those looting, murdering vandals that were everywhere. They were dangerous men, psychotic. Men to be avoided whatever the cost.
Like a sleek forest cat, he moved through the woods. The only audible evidence of his presence was the sound of dry leaves crunching under his heavy boots. Snake boots he had taken from a Pirate he’d killed. He was one of the few men who had the balls to take them on. Still, he was hoping he didn’t encounter any of them today. Locating the girl had been no easy feat, and he didn’t look forward to any further complications.
As he approached the little wooden shanty, he could hear raucous laughter coming from inside. He looked once more at the photograph of the girl. Would he even be able to recognize her? The
photograph had been taken when she was just six. He’d been told the girl was twelve now. She would have changed quite a lot.
A twig snapped beneath the weight of his boot. He paused, listening intently for any sounds to follow.
Had he been spotted farther back by a scout? Did they know he was coming? Would they be waiting for him? It was a paranoid thought. This wasn’t exactly Pirate quarters. They only seemed to frequent such places when they were in need of a woman, which wasn’t often considering they raped anything that moved whenever the mood struck them. Strangely enough, the threat of acquiring the plague through sex didn’t seem to bother them. Satisfying their appetites was all that mattered. They had made a life of living on the edge of destruction. They lived for the moment, for the high, the devil and everyone else be damned.
Still, whatever he met with when he opened the door of that shanty, he needed to be prepared for it. An ill-prepared man always had one foot in the grave, and he didn’t intend to die this day. He would find the girl, if she was still alive. And if she wasn’t…. He’d find out who had killed her, and woe to that man because he’d take that individual to hell with him.
At the edge of the woods, he paused and checked his gun just to reassure himself that it was loaded. It wasn’t something he often used. The ammunition was too damn hard to find and even harder to make without the proper equipment. He hoped he didn’t have to use it today, but it was always nice to know that it was there if he needed it, especially if his sheer brute strength, or any of the myriad of weapons he always carried with him failed to get the point across. But he didn’t anticipate failure this day. Not when he’d been so careful at tracking the girl, and not when he was armed with a dangerous mood.
He took a deep breath. It was time now.
Pumped and ready, he sprinted across the clearing, and within seconds, he was on the front porch of the shanty. He opened the door in one powerful yank, nearly jerking the flimsy thing off its hinges in the process. The force of his swing sent it banging hard against the outer wall, garnering several gasps f rom inside the room. He stepped into the gloom of the shanty, ignoring the way his pupils protested as they adjusted to the sudden change in light. The door barely missed his heels as it ricocheted back inward to slam against the frame with a deafening crack. Although it sounded as if the wood had splintered behind him, Zach never even blinked. His mouth set in a grim line, he swung his gaze around the dank interior, cruelly assessing the dozen or so people inside.
The boisterous laughter had stopped and all eyes were focused on him in wary surprise. He regarded those closest to him, sizing them up before passing them over as trivial. The occupants of the shanty were mostly women, half of them only partially clothed, although he didn’t pass them over on that account. He’d learned long ago never to underestimate the ferocity and determination of a woman, especially a desperate one.
Only a handful of men were present, all of them hanging on to a girl or two, and all of them bleary-eyed from spending the afternoon drinking bad booze that had most likely been made in the still he spied sitting in one dirty corner. None of them appeared to be more dangerous than a slug, but looks could be deceiving, and he wasn’t foolish enough to lower his guard.
Music blared from a jukebox in the opposite corner. A surprising commodity. Electricity had long since become a thing of the past, yet someone had obviously found a way to bootleg fuel for a generator. He wondered where their resources were. Perhaps he could take advantage of it. At the very least he could look for their holding tank. It had to be somewhere nearby.
Perhaps this trip would prove more lucrative for him than he’d imagined. It was an intriguing
possibility, but the girl’s life was his first priority. Once she was in his possession, he would take a closer look at his options. At the moment, he wasn’t foolhardy enough to compromise his identity.
“A man!” one particularly filthy looking woman squealed, detaching herself from the grubby cajun she’d been clinging to and crossing the room to get a better look at Zach.
He eyed her with little interest, his face devoid of any emotion despite the disgust he felt. She would be the first hitch, the first complication he would have to deal with. It angered him that she was getting in his way.
He didn’t pull away or even flinch when she lifted a work-roughened hand and swept a heavy lock of black hair off his forehead. He just stared straight ahead. She didn’t seem daunted by the dangerous gleam in his eye, the hard set to his unshaven jaw, and it made him all the more leery. She was a little too bold.
“He doesn’t have the brand,” she told the others. “He’s clean.”
She smiled up at him, a smile that was meant to be provocative but could only be repulsive, since it showed a row of teeth that were rotted beyond repair. Before Zach could take another step, he found himself surrounded by women. They clung to his arms, his legs. One of them even tried to yank the zipper to his trousers down. He ignored the grumble of complaint in his gut and continued to stare straight ahead, as if the women weren’t even there. The men had taken a greater interest in him now, largely because he had commanded the attention of all the women. The useless whores! That would be the next snag, dealing with the anger of the men.
One of the women had gotten his zipper down and was already feeling around for his dick. With a motion so swift that it surprised a startled gasp from the others, he grabbed the woman by the hair and coldly jerked her to her feet before she could lay her disease-ridden fingers on him. His move summoned an answering chuckle from the men. They obviously found the bitch’s discomfort amusing.
Paying no heed to the cajuns, Zach twisted the woman’s head back at a painful angle until she was staring him straight in the eye. He made sure she understood his expression so he wouldn’t have to reinforce it with a quick jab to the jaw that would set her on her ass. He wouldn’t hesitate to strike her if he needed to. He had no compunction about hitting a whore.
“I want a blonde,” he growled through gritted teeth.
It was early in the game yet, and he was already having trouble controlling his anger. What he really wanted to do was blow everyone in the shanty to kingdom come. He had enough small artillery on him to do it, but for now, he had to keep a level head and maintain his cool, at least until he’d found the girl.
But, dammit, this loathsome bitch was turning his stomach. He was positive she had the plague. Even if she didn’t, he wanted no part of her.
“None of you are blonde,” he grunted, sweeping his gaze over the other women. They had all stepped back, a little in fear of him now.
“I can pretend to be a blonde, honey,” one of the braver ones suggested, caressing one droopy breast as if that was enough to get him horny for her.
He narrowed his eyes in anger and released the other woman’s hair, pushing her away from him so hard that she fell back against the bitch behind her. Both went tumbling to the dirty floor of the shack.
No one said a word. No one dared. By now, they’d pegged him as a dangerous man, and these cajuns weren’t about to defend a couple of whores.
“I can pay well for a blonde,” he told the man behind the bar.
He pulled a long gold chain from his pants pocket and dangled it in front of the man’s face. The women stared in obvious lust. They still liked a pretty bauble. The men only turned their backs on him, going back to their putrid drinks.
The bartender, apparently the man who operated this particular hole house, only laughed. “Take a hike, asswipe. We don’t want yer fuckin’ gold. Ain’t ya’ heard? Nobody pays with gold no more.”
Zach had known the gold was worthless. He only used it for effect, to make them think he was
ignorant. And it worked. They were already taking the bait.
“Then maybe you’d be interested in this.” He pulled two sticks of homemade explosives from the pocket of his leather jacket and held them up for everyone to see.
“What the fuck is that supposed to be?” the bartender snarled, trying to sound disinterested. But his eyes betrayed him.
“Modern-age dynamite,” Zach replied, his gaze sliding over to where the rest of the men sat. It was easy to see they weren’t a threat. They were either too drunk or too cowardly to make a move on him.
“I’ll pay four sticks for half an hour with a blonde.”
The bartender hesitated for a moment, eyeing the sticks with undisguised greed now. Such things obviously weren’t often available to him. He wanted them. Zach could see it in his face. He wanted them bad.
“How do I know they work?” the man demanded.
Zach didn’t answer. He merely pulled an old flint striker from his pocket and struck a spark close to the sticks he held clenched in his other fist. The women’s eyes went round with fear, and they quickly scurried away into the corners of the shanty, as if that would help them. Zach laughed at their pathetic attempt to protect themselves from the imminent danger. It was a low, guttural sound that only made him seem all the more dangerous, perhaps even a little insane.
“One stick would blow this entire shack sky high,” he mocked for the benefit of the women.
“Don’t let him light it, Jimmie! Are you fucking crazy? He’ll blow us all up,” one of the whores shouted.
“If you’re so afraid, then why don’t you just leave,” the bartender answered.
The woman glanced warily at Zach, then looked away. His considerable bulk blocked both doors, and she obviously didn’t want to take the chance of having to pass him to get out. He was too unpredictable for her taste.
“He’s just bluffing,” Jimmie said, his eyes on Zach.
His gaze challenging, Zach squeezed the flint striker. Once…. Tshook! Several sparks flew out and extinguished themselves on the way to the floor.
“Give him the bitch, Jimmie,” one of the whores wailed. “She isn’t worth it.”
“Shuttup, cunt! I’m tellin’ you he’s bluffing,” Jimmie snarled, his eyes never leaving the flint striker in Zach’s hand.
Twice…. Tshook! A third time…. Tshook! This time the sparks hit the cloth tip of the fuse and ignited with the fuel Zach had soaked it in. A small flame erupted and then died down to a burning ember that began to make its slow way up the fuse, crawling steadily toward the dynamite.
“She’s in the shack out back!” one of the women screamed.
