Primary Valor by Jack Mars (booksvooks TXT) 📗

The whole area here seemed closed,a wasteland. There were beer cans strewn all over the unused road. They passedan old sofa, the stuffing ripped up and exploding out of it like some weirdvolcano. The warehouse building was just up ahead, small, nondescript, and goneto seed.

It was two stories high. Brokenwindows were covered by wooden boards. Grass grew through cracks in theblacktop of the parking lot. Overhead sodium arcs gave off bleak yellow light. Mostof the lights were out.

“Doesn’t look like they’re usingit anymore,” Ed said.

Luke shook his head. “No, it suredoesn’t.”

There was an old box truck in theparking lot, but no cars. The truck had no obvious markings on it, other than afaded serial number at the rear. The lot was fenced in, the fence topped withbarbed wire, and the gate had a thick chain looped through it, with a heavypadlock.

Swann had alerted them to the lockedgate ahead of time.

“Nobody home,” Ed said.

“No.”

“Guess we should let ourselves in.”

Luke clipped the chain on thegate. The gate was on rollers and was rusty. With a little effort, they pushedit aside.

Now they were trespassing. Theyhad driven up here on the say-so of a former human trafficker who had giventhem the information because they kidnapped him and threatened to kill him. Theyhad flown here under assumed identities. They were well outside the rules ofthe game.

When they did black operations,they were usually in some other country. That didn’t make this right or wrong,just different.

As they crossed the parking lot, amotion detector light came on. It was very bright, glaring. Luke shielded hiseyes. He knew that motion detector lights were meant to keep the amateurshonest. Kids, graffiti artists, vandals—a sudden bright light to the face keptthese types out. It did nothing to Luke and Ed but annoy them.

Luke glanced at the truck as theypassed it. The door to the box was also secured with a heavy chain and apadlock. That caught his eye. He thought of truck rental places, many trucks ina row, the back doors open, the box swept broom clean.

The box of an empty truck usuallywasn’t locked. Why lock it when there’s nothing inside?

“Let’s check the truck before wego in the building,” Luke said.

Ed shrugged his big shoulders.

“All right.”

They went to the back of the truckand Luke clipped that chain with the bolt cutters as well. He let the heavychain snake to the ground. Ed turned the handle and yanked the door up.

The smell hit them both rightaway. It was subtle, no longer overpowering because it was from a long timeago. Even so, they both recognized it instantly. The fact of it was like apunch in the face. The smell of rot. The smell of dead things.

Ed groaned.

“Oh no,” Luke said.

They climbed into the truck. Itwas dark inside, and they flashed their lights around. The inside of the boxhad been lined with foam egg crate material, the kind used for soundproofingmusic studios.

Against one wall was an oversizedchest, four or five feet long, like something people would put ice in for afamily gathering at the beach. Two strong men would carry it, one on each end,and it would be filled with beer and soda, and hot dogs and hamburgers forgrilling.

The chest had a lock on it. Thiswas the smallest and easiest of the locks to clip.

Luke felt a rush of dread as hecut the lock.

Ed lifted the lid.

“Dammit,” he said, his voice low.

The remains of a person wereinside the chest, submerged in filthy water that had probably once been ice. Thebody was badly decayed, dressed in a skirt and what Luke thought must have beena tube top. The skin of the corpse was sunken and dark, and rotting away. Chunksof it were floating free in the water. It had a full head of long hair, fannedout in the water like seaweed. It was impossible to say much about it, otherthan it was the body of a child.

“I’m going to kill somebody,” Edsaid.

Luke stared at it, the horrorsinking in. He had spent a lot of time in war. People were killed in war. Childrenwere killed in war. This wasn’t war. This was something else… premeditated,thought out. This place was abandoned, and no one came here anymore. The childhad been left behind, like an afterthought.

Like garbage.

Someone got what they wanted,a voice told him, and left this here.

Without warning, Ed lurched andjumped out the back. The sudden movement of his massive frame made the entiretruck shudder.

Luke watched him go.

Ed stumbled a few steps away, thensank to his knees. He was in shadow, outside the range of the motion detectors,but Luke could see him raise his fists to the sky and shout something. Thesound was unintelligible. There were words in it, but all Luke heard was theshriek. Then Ed vomited.

He was on all fours now, his bodyspasming as he wretched up the Taco Bell they had picked up on the way here. Edhad eaten a lot of it. It all came out.

Luke closed the lid of the chest.

He reminded himself that the childwas already gone. Whatever fear and loneliness that child had known was over. Thereal child was not in that chest.

He climbed down and walked towardEd.

Ed had been to war, done thethings Luke had done, seen what Luke had seen. He had never seen Ed react likethis. But Ed had a child on the way, and he had been acting out of characterfor weeks.

An image of Gunner flashed in Luke’smind. A big, fat, happy baby.

He shook his head to clear it. Gunnerhad nothing to do with this. Nothing like this was ever going to happen toGunner.

“Are you okay?” he said.

Ed was on his knees now, wipinghis mouth. “Do I look okay?”

“No. That’s why I ask.”

Ed looked up at him. His eyes werered. Not only had he puked, but big Ed was crying. It wasn’t a lot, he couldspeak through it, but it was there.

“You and I don’t talk much, do we?”

Luke considered that.

“Like, in a real way,” Ed said. “Realshit.”

Luke supposed they didn’t. Thatwas true. They had been on some heavy metal operations together, and Luke thoughtof Ed