Rage: The Reckoning Read online

  Rage

  Book 1: The Reckoning

  A novel by

  Christopher C. Page

  Copyright Christopher C. Page 2014

  For my parents.

  “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Prologue

  The Decider awoke from a fitful daydream, the scent of burning flesh and the taste of blood on his lips. Although it had been two years since his last kill, his memories of the event were so strong he could still hear the man’s screams. It was a good kill; a schoolteacher who had stuck his nose where it didn’t belong, but the level of risk involved had been far higher than he’d ever allowed before or since.

  Normally he’d have spent weeks, even months, planning out the event to the finest detail. Crimes of passion were for amateurs. He wouldn’t have normally considered doing something so rash in a public place, but his instincts told him the conditions were right, and he always trusted his instincts.

  Who to kill, when, how and where, all came from a place deep within that he suspected was his heart. It wasn’t something he could put his finger on but somehow when the time came to kill, he just knew it. True, he hadn’t mastered his craft yet, there was still much to learn, but he was already carrying out his work with an exquisite precision that he knew would continue to serve him well for many years to come. His work up to this point had been decidedly impressive as far as he was concerned, even bordering on the sublime. With four kills under his belt, he estimated that he’d really come into his own by his eighth or ninth kill, that was when the real work would begin.

  And work he would.

  Every day he saw people, if one could classify them as such, who deserved to die, and die they would. Every living thing he came across was run through a series of filters in his mind with the speed and calculation of the quickest of computers. Method, timing, availability, target sensitivity, location and disposal were the meat and potatoes of his craft. It kept his mind sharp and also it helped break up an otherwise dull day.

  He waited and he watched. Months would pass during which he’d consider literally hundreds of targets and methods, but he wouldn’t give in. He couldn’t. Not until the perfect target presented itself. The teacher had been killed out of necessity, and executed with haste, but he tried not to beat himself up over it. That was in the past now and he’d gotten away with it, as he knew he would. The next time was going to be perfect. His next series would be a brutal masterpiece that would shock not only his community but also the province and possibly even the entire country. And when he felt he had made his point and purged the burning fire that was growing steadily inside of him, he’d rest a while. He’d rest and laugh as the so-called ‘people’ around him writhed in misery over the torn up corpses of their offspring.

  Then he’d begin again.

  He would leave a mark on this world that none of the pathetic miscreants would ever forget and go down in history as a destroyer of worlds, a decider of fate. More powerful than the fictitious gods his targets prayed to on Sundays and begged forgiveness from for what they called their sins. Those fools, packing themselves into houses of supposed worship and apologizing for their wants and needs as if doing so magically made them feel better about the fact that were nothing more than decomposing bags of meat. He was the one they should have been praying to. He was the one they should have been begging for mercy for he was the one who could snatch away their very existence in a simple act of will, no more complicated than deciding to blink his eyes.

  They’d learn, as four had already, dozens more would surely follow.

  Not yet.

  The conditions weren’t right. But things were coming together, pieces were falling into place at a steady rate and soon, very soon, he would unleash Hell on them all. Unfortunately, his other self, the one that had to co-exist with his targets, was always getting in the way. And the temptation to ignore his public self and move ahead with his work was dangerous to him. He couldn’t allow himself to make that mistake. That was how they caught you. And he had no intentions of following in the footsteps of some of those who preceded him in the game because he was better than they were. He suspected that many of them actually wanted to be caught, maybe not to the extent of turning themselves in to the authorities but perhaps on a subconscious level the game couldn’t be finished until they were locked in chains, being interviewed by battle-worn detectives and psychiatrists.

  They would never catch the Decider. Like the Green River Killer, the Zodiac, even Jack the Ripper, people would be talking about his work for decades to come. Wondering; who was he, was he still active, how many lives did he claim and when would he kill again?

  Let them wonder.

  The Decider didn’t require the shock and awe of the ‘people’ to define himself. Better that he went about his work in secret, even allowing others to be blamed for what they called his “crimes”. This way he could go on.

  And go on he would.

  One

  John Stevens angled the rearview mirror to see if his son, Mark, was still asleep on the back seat. It had been a long night of packing and final preparations followed by the long drive north from Toronto. Even with the help of the movers, they had a long day ahead of them so he was glad to see his son getting some rest, even if it meant making part of the trip without a seatbelt on so he could stretch out. They had reached the end of the freeway more than two hours ago and were continuing to travel north, leaving all traces of city life in their wake. It would be the boy’s first real trek away from his accustomed surroundings and comforts, into a markedly different life than either of them had known before. John’s stomach had been tied in knots for days leading up to this morning, now that they were on their way, closer to their new home than their old one, the tension he felt seemed to have diminished considerably.

  The day of the move to Ratcliff marked exactly six months to the day that they had buried John’s partner, Jimmy Hackerman, and he still thought about him more times a day than he cared to count. Whenever he found himself actually able to focus on something else for a few hours, something would remind him again, and again. And then there was the dream. Like a nightly showing of a film that never seemed to end or change, John would watch helplessly as Jimmy fought his way through traffic, running red lights, and weaving in and out of traffic, all the time trying to will him to stop. It never worked. He kept on driving toward their final destination; a run down tenement on the West End of Toronto. It was on the ninth floor in unit 902 that his partner had lost his life.

  The morning it happened, they had been after the worst kind of man. Bryan Walsh was the President of the PFWC; an organization dedicated to promoting hate and bigotry among small-minded individuals who share a common hatred for anyone different than they were. The Patriots for a Free White Canada was made up of thousands of like minded individuals spread all over the country. For the most part the members were law-abiding citizens who went to church and paid their taxes, but the organization’s founding member was another animal all together. Walsh had a long record of assault, weapons charges and was suspected to be involved with the manufacture and distribution of crystal meth.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, three months earlier, he had beaten his live in girlfriend, Crystal Lee (her actual name), within an inch of her life. Luckily, the neighbors had heard her screams and called 911 but as the police were dragging Walsh off in cuffs, he swore he’d get back at her if it killed them both. Not that she heard him, at the time, she was lying on the floor with most of her front teeth knocked out, a dislocated jaw and six broken ribs. She was laid up in intensive care for over a month before she was well enough to return to h
er home, which police advised her would be a very bad idea. Walsh was sent back to jail for violating the terms of his probation and spent the next eight months in the Don Jail finishing off a sentence for carrying a concealed weapon. Three days after his release, John and his partner received a bombshell from the medical examiner.

  The previous summer, three prostitutes had been found brutally murdered in the Don lands. The perpetrator apparently lured them out there with the promise of money and drugs before viciously attacking and raping them before strangling them to death. Police were at a loss and due to the transient nature of the victims, the cases weren’t given a high-priority rating. That is, they weren’t right up until Bryan Walsh’s DNA came back as a positive match. The only problem was the news had come too late, they had already let the sonofabitch out of jail and nobody had seen him since.

  John and his partner “Jimbo” had spent countless hours talking to street walkers and dealers, showing them Walsh’s picture and trying to nail down his whereabouts, but it seemed as if nobody knew where he was or were too scared of him to say. Then, they caught the break they were looking for. One of their Confidential Informants, or CI’s, had been picked up for attempting to sell a bag of weed to an undercover cop and had dropped John’s name. Anxious to get off on the charge and get back to his business, he asked the cop who picked him up if he’d like to know where Bryan Walsh was.

  The night before, both men had been off duty and John had taken the opportunity to do something he rarely did; he sent Mark to stay at a friend’s house, drove to a local bar frequented by law enforcement officers and proceeded to get quietly drunk. Several months earlier his wife of seventeen years, Audrey, had left him suddenly, without warning, leaving him to raise their son alone.

  The long hours, the late night phone calls that got him out of bed, the violence and depravity John witnessed day in and day out, were all common sources of tension and made it hard for him to relate to his wife who sold high-end art for a living. Added to their clash of wills, they had come from completely opposite sides of the economic tracks to begin with. Audrey’s father was a Bay street wizard that made his first million by the time he was twenty-five. At twenty-five, John was making ten-grand a year as a security guard while saving for his college education. As children, while she was attending private schools and taking trips to Europe, John had been out on his front lawn having fist fights with his father who was rarely sober longer than a few hours a day. Her father’s head must have been ready to explode when his little girl told him that she intended to marry a beat cop with no more than two cents to his name. Naturally, his lawyers made sure the prenuptial agreement was airtight but if John agreed to sign it then the wedding, the honeymoon, and an expensive executive home in Rosedale were all gifts from daddy. If not, Audrey would be cut out of her share of the family fortune.

  She had planned to tell her father to go to hell but John talked her out of it. To his mind, what did it matter since they planned to spend the rest of their lives together? John signed it, they married, and two years later Mark was born.

  Fifteen years later she decided that she’d made a mistake. She met a man at the gallery, they had an affair, fell in love. When John started asking too many questions, she decided to end their marriage. For the first few months, he kept up some pretense of her imminent return. They had a history together, a child, plenty of happy memories. He was sure she’d come home eventually and then they could try to start over. It took a while, but eventually, John finally clued into the fact that she wasn’t coming back. That was why the night before Jimmy died, John had gotten so plastered that he could hardly stand on his own. He rarely drank, yet he had managed to rack up a considerable tab at the bar, which included no food whatsoever. Jimmy paid the tab, helped John into the back seat of his car and drove him to his empty home. After lying him out on Mark’s bed (his bedroom set being the only furniture left behind) and taking off his shoes, Jimmy had taken his service weapon out of its holster and stashed it in one of the kitchen cupboards beside the coffee.

  Six short hours later he was back, pulling John back off of the bed and dragging him out to the patrol car, half-conscious.

  By the time the two men reached the ninth floor of the building with the reek of piss and marijuana all around them, John had retched his guts out twice in the stairwell. Jimmy had to stop several times, waiting for John to catch up with him.

  "You going to survive, partner?" he had said, concerned. "Come on, we’re almost there."

  Almost there.

  Almost GONE.

  Just then, through the steel fire door that opened into the hallway, they heard a woman scream. Before John could speak, his partner had yanked open the steel door, bashing it against the wall in the stairwell, and disappeared down the hallway. He caught up with him at the apartment door where the screams were much louder and more anguished. The two men positioned themselves outside the door, weapons drawn. The knob turned fully, it was a lucky break. They thought that Walsh had been so concerned with his revenge that he hadn’t thought to lock the door behind him, lucky because both men together couldn’t have broken in the heavy steel-plated door. If only they had thought of the security bar. John pushed the door open, only to have it bang against the security bar after six inches. Both men bumped into the door and froze in their tracks hoping Walsh hadn’t heard them over Crystal Lee’s screaming.

  But he had heard.

  Less than a minute later, James Patrick Hackerman and Crystal Lee were dead and Bryan Walsh was critically wounded.

  Thousands of police officers and emergency responders from all over Ontario attended Jimmy’s funeral, people even wore ribbons and made donations to Jimmy’s widow. She refused to speak to John, although he had been a guest in her home on dozens of occasions, on that day she acted as if she didn’t know him. It was John’s fault, and they all knew it.

  Professionally the department had been desperate to put a positive spin on the situation and tried to promote him. John hadn’t worked a single shift in any capacity since the shooting and they were anxious to get him back out on the street. But the idea of getting behind the wheel of their patrol car with a new partner in the passenger’s seat, rumbling through Regent Park or facing gunfire out in the west end, was inconceivable to him. In fact, the idea of ever pointing a weapon of any kind at another human brought back the horrible sickness he felt on the day he lost . . . killed, Jimmy.

  His superiors finally made him an offer worth consideration. Ratcliff was a small rural community of about twenty thousand people, located several hours north of the city. Their division employed only eighteen full-time officers and logged less than a hundred arrests per year. They had no Detectives on the payroll, so the position he was accepting meant a major drop in pay as well as going back to uniform. They did their best to talk him out of it, but John didn’t budge. With Audrey gone he was all Mark had left in the world and he wasn’t about to risk his life to bring in some wanna-be gangster just to see them back on the street a few hours later.

  Not anymore.

  - - -

  Glancing down at his watch, John saw that it was only a quarter past nine. They were making good time, perhaps too good. The realtor had agreed to meet them at ten and the movers wouldn't be arriving with their belongings until around ten-thirty. He estimated that they would be reaching Ratcliff in another twenty minutes so he further slowed the Jeep Cherokee down to the legal limit and tried to relax.

  The air seemed different up here, cleaner somehow, easier to draw into his lungs and as refreshing as stepping outside on a crisp winter morning. At forty-eight years old, he’d spent most of his life living in the city, where the constant noise of traffic and the associated smells had become as natural as looking upwards and seeing the sky. Up here, everything seemed to move slower. People went about their business as if they were on vacation whereas in the city, people would just as soon run over their own mothers than arrive at their destination five minutes later than
intended.

  Fields of green and yellow seemed to go on forever, interrupted only by dirt roads branched off from the narrow highway leading out to the large farmhouses and barns that speckled the landscape. Though it was only the second week of September, the seemingly endless rows of corn had already ripened and the edges of their leaves had begun to brown as they dried out. By the end of the month, huge machinery, some as large as a house and costing as much as John earned in ten years, would ravage them until they were barren of any signs of life.

  The upcoming winter, he’d been told, would be unlike anything he had seen before in all his lifetime spent as a city dweller. Like most Canadians, he accepted the winter season as a simple fact of life. Most people, it seemed, even enjoyed the cold season, even embracing their ability to handle the cold the way New Yorkers embraced their toughness and residents of Detroit took pride in their resiliency. But from what he was told, soon the temperatures would drop to more than forty below and between three and six feet of snow would bury these fields. John had never seen six feet of snow before unless it was on television. Apparently, Toronto’s skyscrapers, and their proximity to Lake Ontario, prevented the conditions necessary for any real accumulation. He could hardly believe it when they told him that his options for winter transportation in Ratcliff were limited to either a four-wheel drive or a snowmobile.

  As John turned off of the highway and drove past the sign that read: Ratcliff Welcomes You, Mark stirred on the back seat. After a long yawn, he slowly pulled himself upright and his face appeared in the rearview. He fumbled clumsily with his eyeglasses and took a look around at his surroundings.

  "Put your seatbelt on," John said to Mark’s reflection.

  "What for?" he said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

  "It's the law, that's what for." John heard his son sigh and waited until he heard the click of the belt before asking; "So, what do you think?"