Brink of Extinction Read online

  Brink of Extinction:

  Nicholas Ryan

  Copyright © 2016 Nicholas Ryan

  The right of Nicholas Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  LG, A – PBS&ST

  This book is dedicated to my great and loyal friend, Stacie Stark Morton.

  Author’s note:

  I spent considerable time in America researching this novel. I would like to acknowledge the support I received and the generosity of those who shared their inspirational stories, and their expertise. Thank you.

  I would also like to thank my great friend, Dale Simpson, for his help with the combat sequences of the manuscript. Dale, with his vast military experience and expert knowledge, always makes me a better writer than I fear I actually am.

  Prologue:

  “Are you sure they’re still inside?”

  “Yes… yes, sir.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many – exactly?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Exactly?”

  “Yes… yes, Mr. Gideon.” The woman was trembling, her body shaking with fear. She snatched a grubby notebook from the pocket of her jeans and rifled nervously through the pages. “Eight males, four females and a couple of children.”

  The man she was reporting to nodded. “Tell me about the women.”

  “Four. There’s four of them.”

  “Ages?”

  The woman shrugged. Her face was harried and flushed, and she was perspiring heavily. The collar of her blouse felt like a strangulating noose around her neck.

  “A couple of young ones,” she shrugged. “Maybe aged in their twenties. Another in her thirties or forties.”

  “And the last one?”

  “She’s old.”

  Gideon Silver nodded the hideously deformed mask of his head thoughtfully. The melted flesh of his face was horribly scarred into a stitched patchwork of mutilated burn marks, joined together so that the skin was stretched thin across the bones of his cheeks, and hung in folds of dead flesh below the lidless eyes. His nose was a coarsened bulge of boiled mush and his mouth just a stretched gash between gnarled bloated lips.

  “What about the males?”

  “All good,” the woman standing before him was relieved to report more pleasing news. “They’re all able bodied.”

  Gideon Silver became contemplative. He lifted binoculars to the bland rims of his eyes and stared once more from the wooded rise atop the gentle slope, down into the quiet street.

  The derelict house stood on the corner of an intersection, the windows boarded over, paint peeling from the rotting walls, and straggling weeds choking through the cracked pavements. There was a blackened burned-out shell of a car on the front lawn, surrounded by mounds of rubble.

  Gideon Silver lowered the binoculars but did not turn back to the woman to ask his next question.

  “You understand the terms of our arrangement?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am a man of my word. If your information is correct, and if everything goes to plan, I will give you your freedom.”

  “Yes,” the woman choked on a sob and her slim body trembled again. “I understand.”

  Gideon Silver inclined his head. “Very well. Bring your daughter to me,” he said harshly.

  The woman brought the young girl forward and she came reluctantly, filled with superstitious dread and loathing. She was eight years old, wearing a tattered jacket and dirty grey pants, her eyes brimming with tears of fear.

  Gideon turned then and stared at the little girl.

  She let out an involuntary yelp of horror at the monstrously grotesque face. She moved to cringe back against her mother, but Gideon’s hand lashed out like a claw, and the pink swollen tongue slithered reptilian from between his hideous lips.

  “Has your mother told you what you must do?”

  The girl nodded, not trusting her voice. Her legs were shaking.

  “Don’t make a mistake,” Gideon warned. His glittering snake-like eyes drifted like loathsome fingers over the girl’s tender body and she felt her flesh crawl. The girl shook her head vehemently.

  “If you do make a mistake,” he went on, speaking very slowly, “I will shoot your mother dead, and then I will have my men hunt you down. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

  “No,” the girl squeaked. She was crying piteously.

  “No,” Gideon Silver crooned. “Because if they catch you, I will have you brought back to me, little girl. And then I will eat you alive.”

  * * *

  Gideon Silver stood with the poised animal patience of a predator and watched as the young child came tottering along the street below him. She ran flailing on tired legs that wavered from exhaustion, her arms swinging as she went, stumbling over the sidewalk and the long grass that grew on the verges of the tarmac.

  He put the glasses to his eyes, even though the derelict house stood just a few hundred yards away, and focused on the broken front door of the building. The child went lurching up onto the porch. She swayed and gasped for breath. She hammered her tiny fists against the door and then Gideon heard the thin desperate pleading of her voice, carried clearly on the still icy air.

  “Let me in!” the little girl cried out. “Please! Let me in!” She pounded on the door, and the tearful, terrified strain in her voice was very real. “Help me, someone. Please!”

  There was a long moment of delay, and then cautiously the front door cracked open a tentative inch, and Gideon felt himself stir.

  He refocused the binoculars, saw the girl’s tear-streaked face lifted up, and then she began waving her arms wildly, pointing away back down the road and dancing from foot to foot with urgent anxiety and panic.

  The door opened wider and in the darkness Gideon recognized the haggard bearded face of a man, and behind him, peering over his shoulder, the white pinched features of a young woman.

  Gideon straightened, tensed. In his right hand he clutched a small mirror. He angled the glass to catch the watery sunlight, and then sought out the distant dark shapes of the three trucks, concealed at the intersection of the block behind where the house stood.

  He glanced back at the doorway. The figure in the opening was reaching through the gap, trying to snatch at the little girl’s arm to drag her into the house, never stepping out onto the porch to reveal himself, like a man on the edge of a dark precipice clutching desperately to snag the hand of one who had fallen over the edge. The little girl backed away, still crying.

  Gideon grunted. “Careful now, child,” he spoke to himself in a whisper. “Draw them out a little more… They’re suspicious. They won’t come out until you set the hook, damn it.” He flicked the mirror with his wrist, poised to semaphore the signal to the hunters – and then looked up with a sudden hiss of seething fury and dismay. Already he could hear the engines of the big trucks bellowing in throaty growls, skidding on the snow-spattered road, and charging towards the back door of the house. The hunters had not waited. They had commenced
the attack without his signal.

  Gideon Silver swore bitterly under his breath and watched in a silent simmering rage as the trucks roared in to close the steel jaws of the trap.

  * * *

  The deserted street seemed to erupt in a deafening clamor of confused noise and snarling engines as the lead truck in the convoy steered straight for the back of the house, jounced wildly over the sidewalk, and then rammed like a missile into the wall of the building at full speed. A rending crash of metal and splintering wood tore the air apart and then settled into a billowing cloud of dust and debris. For a moment afterwards there hung a stunned, incredulous silence – followed by cries of hysterical terror and barked shouts as shooting broke out.

  There were armed crews in the second and third trucks. Both vehicles braked amidst screeching blue clouds of smoke out front of the building, and the dark shapes disgorged across the snow-frosted ground. The hunters fanned out in the long grass and then two of them raced forward at a crouch, bounding up onto the porch and firing rifles from the hip as they pushed past the screaming little girl.

  The front door of the house sprouted dark gunshot holes in a wild pattern of dusty puffs, and then one of the hunters lifted his boot and poised to launch his weight against the front door.

  Suddenly the scene dissolved into an ear-crushing roar, and the wooden door exploded outwards, ripped apart by the answering blast of a shotgun. The hunter on the porch was picked up by the massive impact of the shot and flung cartwheeling over the side railing. His partner returned fire through the ragged hole and then danced lightly to one side, spinning as he went, and flattening his back against a wall. Two more hunters leaped up from out of the grass and came forward, dashing in zig-zag patterns along the side of the house.

  At the back of the building there sounded more shooting, and more confusion. One of the boarded-over windows blew out, and two terrified figures leaped through the breach, down into a pile of crumbled building rubble and broken glass. It was a man and a woman, both of them dressed in grubby jeans and thick coats. Their faces were contorted into white masks of blinding fear. The man was carrying an old AK 47, turning to fire at the hunters with a single-handed grip. His aim was wild. A hail of bullets tore into one of the parked trucks, punching ragged holes through the bodywork. The driver of the vehicle slumped over behind the steering wheel, and then the attackers returned fire into the shroud of swirling dust and smoke.

  The running man suddenly flung up one arm in a macabre parody of a salute and then went rigid. For a moment it seemed that he must fall, but the woman beside him clutched despairingly at his arm and dragged him on. The couple disappeared into the burned out maze of surrounding houses, the wounded man staggering and slumped against the woman to stay upright, trailing a spatter of bright red blood.

  “Hold your fire!” an authoritative voice amongst the attackers shouted, desperate and urgent. “They’re no good to us dead.”

  From inside the building there was a staccato of more ragged gunfire and then ominous silence.

  * * *

  From atop the gentle rise, Gideon Silver stared down into the street and shook his monstrous and mutilated head with slow regret. Two of his men lay dead in the snowy grass, and one of the precious vehicles was damaged.

  He turned away in a cold hollow rage, and his gaze locked upon the figure of the woman.

  “Come here,” Gideon demanded.

  The woman lifted her eyes and through the mist of her tears she sensed the menacing energy of the hideously deformed figure. His shoulders were squared and stiff, weight thrown onto one leg so his hip was thrust forward in a pose of arrogant superiority.

  As if by magic a pistol materialized in the man’s hand.

  “Please!” the woman pleaded. “I did everything you asked. It wasn’t my daughter’s fault – ”

  Gideon Silver grinned, and the cold leprous slash of his mouth twisted. He ejected the magazine from the weapon, made sure it was full, and then slapped it back into place with the heel of his palm. The sound was cruel and intimidating. The woman flinched and her eyes flew wide.

  “I’ll do anything you want,” pleaded the woman. “You can use me in any way you want. Just spare my daughter, that’s all I ask.”

  Gideon’s face was gloating. He chambered a round, pulling back on the weapon’s slide. The distinctive ‘snick’ of the action made the woman shudder.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Just let my daughter go and I’ll give you anything you want.” She had been standing with her fingers entwined in front of her hips, and now, brazenly, she brushed the hair away from her eyes and let her hands hang at her sides. A flicker of terror flashed across her face. She saw the man before her frown with a look that might have been amusement, or even surprise.

  The woman arched her back and thrust her hips forward. Slowly, with her dread rising, she raised her head and looked into the dangerous black eyes.

  “Anything,” she said again thickly. “In exchange for the life of my child.”

  Gideon stepped close to the woman and ran his fingers along her arm. The woman shuddered with secret revulsion and closed her eyes. He reached for her breast and she did not pull back. His palm closed around her and the warm flesh filled his grip. His hands were rough and coarse, his fingers dug into her and she bit down on her lip to stifle the groan of pain. Gideon watched her with detached clinical scrutiny. “Kiss me,” his voice sounded hoarse.

  The woman opened her eyes and saw the mangled ruin of the scarred face close to hers, that hideous distorted slash of a mouth edging open, and the loathing of it filled the back of her throat with acid vomit. She was trembling uncontrollably, her body stiff and swaying away. Gideon snatched a cruel fistful of the woman’s hair and she cried out. His mouth clamped over her open lips and she felt the slither of his tongue, reptilian and rank with the foulness of his breath. He kept his mouth pressed down over hers, and it was a nightmare from which she could not escape. His teeth gnashed painfully against her bottom lip and then the taste of her own blood flooded salty across her tongue. She felt herself suffocating and she clawed to get away. Gideon hit her back-handed across the cheek and she sprawled hard to the ground.

  The gun came up.

  The woman was on her knees in the mud. She threw her hands over her face as if to hide from the horror, and Gideon felt her fear as an almost sexual thrill.

  “Let me try again,” she pleaded desperately. “I… I wasn’t prepared I didn’t know what you wanted…”

  Gideon took a pace closer to the woman and extended his arm, pressing the cold steel of the muzzle against her forehead, thrilling in the giddy intoxication of absolute power.

  “Beg me,” Gideon insisted. “Beg me for your life, and for the life of your child.”

  “Please!” the woman sobbed. She began to weep. Through the cage of splayed fingers over her face she made one last desperate appeal. She felt her urine squirt uncontrollably down the inside of her thighs as the terror became a burning blackness that clamped down on her mind and pressed like a crushing weight.

  “Please what?”

  “Please spare our lives.”

  “I will… but first I want to see your smile,” Gideon’s voice was gently persuasive. “Put your hands down.”

  “No!” the woman wailed.

  “Do it,” Gideon insisted reasonably. “And I’ll put the gun down.”

  The woman choked back a ragged sob. “Do you give me your word?”

  “Yes,” Gideon vowed.

  “Do you promise?”

  “Yes. I promise.”

  Reluctantly the woman drew her hands away from her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks glistening with her tears. The press of the gun to her forehead was like the pain of a lingering migraine. She lifted her face and forced her trembling lips into a small smile of hope and reprieve. “Thank you,” she croaked.

  Gideon felt a flare of savage triumph, and then shot the woman between the eyes. She was flung backwards
and the jelly-like contents of her skull were splattered across the snow. Her heels were still kicking in a gruesome dance when Gideon fired again, his arm jerked by the recoil, as the echoing sound of the shots rang out like the peels of a great tolling bell against the low white sky.

  * * *

  Gideon Silver stood on the crest of the rise and dabbed at the spatters of blood and gore that had stained his clothes.

  “Come with me,” he ordered the bodyguard who stood discreetly to one side.

  “Yes, sir,” the man stepped over the woman’s corpse. Flies were already crawling over her body, big metallic blue flies that clouded and buzzed around the black oozing wound in the center of the ruined forehead. Her eyes were wide open, her face frozen in an expression of shock. Crusted in the rims of the woman’s nostrils, and at the corners of her eyes, were the tiny clustered rice-like grains of flies eggs. The bodyguard fell in behind Gideon, maintaining a respectful distance.

  In the middle of the street a band of his men were gathered, chatting quietly amongst themselves. Gideon examined their faces as he passed. They were blackened with dust and dirt, and sweat had streaked their appearances into dark rivulets around the contours of their individual features. One of the men clutched his arm to his side like a broken wing, and his teeth were clenched in a fierce grimace against the pain as he called out.

  “Congratulations Mr. Gideon,” the man’s voice was still reedy with the adrenalin after-effects of combat and thin with the agony of his wound. “We got twelve of them.”

  Gideon stared at the man, and the tone of his voice was brusque and savage, bereft of any triumph. “You let two of them escape,” he snarled. “Your incompetence has cost me a great deal of money.”

  Somewhere in the surrounding maze of ruined buildings he was certain the two escapees were hiding like rats. And Gideon wanted them cornered.

  The last of the captives were still being herded in single file from the house, their hands tied behind their backs with knots of wire. Gideon walked to where they were being paraded in a kneeling line along the sidewalk.