Page 32 of Hiding In the Dark (The Righteous 4)
“Great, I’m happy for you, I really am, but you still can’t follow me.”
“Kes, please….”
Kes stopped and whirled around to glare down at the girl. “Zumi, there are things that I do, adult things, that you cannot be a part of, now go home. I’m not joking, go.” He pointed down a side alley toward the busy main street.
Her lower lip trembled like she might cry, but the rest of her face was a ball of fury. “Fine! I didn’t want to hang out with your stupid ass anyway.” She ran down the alley and disappeared around the corner.
Kes pinched the bridge of his nose. Great, now he felt bad. Shaking off the crazy morning it was shaping up to be, he continued on to his destination, which would hopefully put a big old smile on his face.
Kes was like a sewer rat. He knew every tunnel and long-lost secret entrance. He could even list nearly every abandoned building in the state. Was that a broad declaration? Maybe, but he’d spent time making his way from one end of Cali to the other, and he wasn’t visiting for the tourist sights.
He currently was sitting on an empty crate with his feet crossed, giving his new friend some space to ruminate about the situation he was in before taking the next step in tonight’s soiree. If it wasn’t for the high-pitched screaming that would start and stop like a broken record, he easily could’ve meditated in the otherwise-quiet and spacious warehouse.
“Please, I promise I’ll change,” the man blubbered. “Just take me to a hospital.” Tears and drool ran down the front of Slim Jim’s face as he continued to beg.
The hospital was the last place he intended on taking the useless piece of human garbage. Kes glanced up at his hanging friend. The skin along Slim Jim’s naked, overindulged body was slowly burning away. He was hypnotized by the sight and lulled into calm by the sounds of his shrieking. He’d seen this done to one of their own overseas, but this was only his second attempt, and he had to admit, it was amusing and deliciously morbid.
The young soldier, Stew, had been nineteen, just a kid, still wet behind the ears with grand ideas of saving the world—a world that didn’t want to be saved, but he hadn’t figured that out yet. In reality, Stew hadn’t been any younger than when he’d ended up in the Sandbox, but he was so much more naïve than Kes could ever remember being. Stew was out doing patrols when he disappeared. They had no idea how he was taken away from his unit without anyone noticing. A group of them had volunteered to do a search of all the local abandoned villages. Kes was sure some of those that found him just like Slim Jim was now and wished they never had to see such a thing.
He’d been stripped naked and hung outside by his wrists from a makeshift flagpole. They’d used a cocktail of old battery acid and hydrochloric acid dripped all over his body at a deliberately measured pace to maximize pain. There was no helping Stew when they’d arrived. He was barely alive and in excruciating pain, begging for someone to end his life. All of his skin had been slowly burned off his body. The abductors left him alive, his muscle tissue exposed to the elements. Near death, but not quite there yet. Birds had started to swoop in and take their fill of Stew’s ruined flesh. It was one of the most disturbing things he’d ever seen, and the image of Stew’s face, or what was left of it, anyway, was forever burned into his mind. Stew’s sergeant had been shaken, his eyes wide as he stared with a horrified expression at his young soldier. Being the only other sergeant with the group, Kes had taken it upon himself to put the kid out of his misery.
Clawing his way out of the memory, Kes squeezed his shaking hand and then shook out the tremble like he was shaking off water.
Fucking memories.
A sharp, piercing scream reached his ears, and he glanced up to see that Mr. Slim Jim was thrashing around in the bindings, his skin, mottled with different stages of damage from reddened to blistered, beginning to bubble and slough off. A few drops of the liquidized skin lay in speckled droplets on the concrete floor. Deadly vapors rose into the air every time his little invention released another drop on Slim Jim below. The stench of the corroding flesh would’ve churned his stomach if he hadn’t smelt the scent of burnt flesh for months. Now, that scent was a part of him as much as any of the scars he wore.
He’d made sure to sit far back from the show, a mask on his face. He figured he must look like a character out of the movieDunewith his hood pulled up in place like an apocalypse had descended upon them.
“Please, make it stop, please just kill me already. P-please.”
Kes cracked his neck, his eyes finding the desperate eyes of Slim Jim. He knew his real name, but it didn’t really matter at this point who he was. After tonight, he would be no one.
“Why should I grant you a fast, painless death?” He folded his hands in his lap, his eyes finding the pleading eyes of Slim Jim. “Tell me one good reason, and I will put a bullet through your head right now.” Kes held up the gun lying beside him on the large crate.
“Because I’m….”
“Don’t say sorry. We both know you’re not sorry for kidnapping, raping, selling, and murdering young women and children. If you are sorry for anything, it’s that I found you. I am giving you an opportunity to give me one solid reason to free you from this agony. Don’t screw it up by saying sorry.”
Slim Jim licked his cracked lips, a corner of which had already been hit by the deadly acid, leaving a dime-sized hole and exposing his jawbone. “I can fix what I did.”
Kes laughed the sound coming out very much like Darth Vader from behind the mask. “Okay, you have my attention, continue.”
“I can stop all shipments, I can cancel all contracts, and I can set the girls here in the city free. I will do all this before you kill me. Just please, give me a quick death.” The blubbering and screaming echoed off the walls as another drop fell from the slowly rotating container above Slim Jim’s head. It was actually quite brilliant. He’d placed the slowly dripping contraption on a small track, so the acid hit in a different location every time a new drop was released.
Kes patiently waited until the screaming subsided and only ragged breathing remained to accompany the steady whimpers.
“So here’s the issue with that offer. If you do all that, then I don’t get the opportunity to get my hands on all those you’re working with. And trust me when I tell you, I’m looking forward to it.” Kes lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Besides, I already have all your contacts and appointment dates, thanks to this baby.” He held up Slim Jim’s phone before tucking it into his pocket.
Slim Jim’s lower lip trembled, his head sagging in response.
“How do you do it? I’m genuinely curious.” Kes sat up straight and rolled out his shoulders. It had been a few hours since he settled himself on the box, and his body was announcing that he’d been still for way too long.
“Do what?” Slim Jim glanced up at him, his cheeks and eyes glossy with tears.
“How do you traffic and murder young children like they are cattle and then go home and fuck your wife and kiss your children goodnight?”
Slim Jim looked away from his steady glare but failed to answer the question.
