Funeral at Port Early

If you were craving a blood-soaked diversion...

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Funeral at Port Early

Even the cars crammed into the parking lot of the dilapidated church looked miserable to be there, spackled by cruel sleet falling out of a sky so grey it touched the steeple.

Port Early had been a ghost town for decades, but that was where the old man was born, and that was where he would be buried. Everyone at the service, down to the frail and worried-looking priest, were from parts elsewhere.

Darcy Bishop stood in the back, close to the big wooden doors half dislodged from their hinges. Close enough to hear the icy rain slap the slick concrete outside. Close enough to feel the bitter draft, biting away the scant warmth of all those collected bodies.

She tugged her denim jacket more tightly around her, and pushed a damp strand of hair from her forehead. She kept the left side of her head shaved to expose the curved scar she had gotten on a job from seven years ago — her first as an independent contractor.

The people filling the pews wore expensive tailored clothes and somber expressions. Either they were here to honor the old man, or they feared potential retribution.

For Darcy, it was a matter of self-respect, a reclamation of personal dignity. For all the old man had given and taken, for all he had built and broken in her, she was her own now. She could be here, and not be his.

On the rostrum, next to the fractured remains of a wooden lectern, the casket lay open. Even from where she stood, Darcy could see his face, still pinched and spiteful through deep lines of age.

Well, she thought, I know spite well enough, too.

Just then, the crooked old doors opened and Arden McBride entered, accompanied by a fresh gust of hateful air. As though Darcy’s thoughts had summoned them both.

The poor priest stumbled at the interruption, and for a moment, there was silence. Arden surveyed the room while the doors swung shut behind him. He was immaculate, in a charcoal suit, powder blue shirt, and no tie. It didn't look like the sleet outside had touched him.

Haltingly, the priest continued.

"...on--on this day of mourning, the Lord smiles to see a gathering of f-friends, who knew this man in life, and come now to honor him in death..." Words probably written by the old man himself long before the cancer took him.

Darcy allowed herself one deliberate glance across the scarred threshold of the entrance, and was met with Arden's knowing smile.

This can be fast... his voice whispered out of the dark halls of her past. Or slow. Your choice.

Old, thick rage, numbed and cooled by the years, began to warm again in the deep place she kept it. But Darcy kept her face blank, and returned her gaze to the priest, who shined with sweat despite the chill.

"If you will now, all of you, kneel," he said, lowering himself to the floor, "and join me in the Lord's Prayer."

The priest knelt alone.

As his quavering voice made its way through the familiar liturgy, Darcy Bishop curled her fingers around the hilt of her knife. Men outside had confiscated any weapons they found before the so-called mourners went inside, but Darcy kept this one strapped to her upper waist in a way that made it easy to miss in a pat down. She doubted she was the only one who had snuck something in.

A plan formed in her mind. As soon as the service concluded, at the end of the priest's prayer, she would cross to Arden. She would get him alone. And she would kill him.

"...forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us..."

That was when the casket exploded.

Darcy regained her senses to smoke and screaming. To her left, a man gurgled, a piece of wood sticking out of his throat. To her right, Arden and several other people were piled against the wall. Everyone within three pews of the alter was dead or dying.

This was how it started.

The crooked front doors, already half-broken, burst inward. Men with fully automatic assault rifles followed. The same men who had disarmed everyone outside earlier. They began cutting down one shocked and disoriented person after another.

In one smooth motion, Darcy drew her knife, rose up behind the nearest one, and forced the long thin blade straight up under the man's ribs and into his heart.

She loved that knife, but this was no time to get sentimental. She left it there and grabbed his gun.

As he fell, one of others swung toward her, but not before she squeezed the trigger, dragging a short burst from his belly to his nose.

There were four of them left, each methodically murdering anyone who had survived the casket bomb.

Darcy had questions. They would have to wait.

As Arden struggled to get to his hands and knees, a gunman noticed, but too late. She drew a diagonal line across his back with bullets.

Now there were three, and Darcy had become their top priority. She dove behind the nearest pew as lead chewed up the brittle wood all around her.

Two shots from what sounded like a pocketbook pistol confirmed her suspicions: she wasn't the only one who had gotten a weapon in. She used the brief moment of distraction to get better cover.

Tense equilibrium settled into the chapel. Most of the screaming and cursing had been silenced. Some people must have hidden, and some fled. Most were probably dead.

She checked her mag. On full auto, there were maybe two bursts left. She switched to semi. That bought nine single shots.

The three remaining gunman maintained a tight triangle in the middle, firing on anything that moved.

Two more men came in from outside. They carried cans of gasoline.

No thank you.

Darcy used six of her remaining shots to drop them, then dove behind a pile of dead people. She knew from unpleasant past experience that if you could get at least two bodies between you and anything less than a high-powered rifle, it was a bit better than kevlar.

Now the three gunmen had to decide whether following through with the plan to burn the building down was worth the risk of breaking ranks. "Shit!" one of them noted. "Move out," he concluded.

As the three made their way toward the gaping front entrance, Darcy caught a hand signal across the room. It was Arden. He was holding the weapon of the man who almost killed him a minute earlier. The one she killed first.

Arden pointed to his right, and she looked to see a bald grizzled guy wearing an elaborately embroidered sport coat (ruined, of course, in the mayhem), and holding a huge silver pistol, polished to a mirror finish.

How the hell did he get that in here? she thought.

Not that it mattered. What mattered was that together, the three of them might be able to take down three who were picking their way toward the exit.

Bishop nodded.

Arden nodded.

The man with his ridiculous gleaming showpiece nodded.

In unison, they broke cover and attacked.

At that distance, Darcy spent all five remaining rounds without managing to close the deal on anyone. And wouldn't you know it, the clown pistol misfired.

That left Arden, who took out two out of three on his own before he was also empty.

Screaming like a barbarian, Darcy lunged at the last one and managed to grab his gun before it fired, bullets snapping into old plaster nearby like wet ice.

Darcy yanked him forward into a headbutt, then smashed his chin with his own gun before wrenching it free of his white-knuckled hands.

She emptied the clip into his body before it hit the ground.

Darcy stood over the man who hadn’t been paid enough, panting and wild with adrenaline.

"Jesus Christ, Bishop," Arden said, wiping a bit of dust off his suit as though the whole thing weren't already covered in dust and blood.

The bald guy muttered curses as he fiddled with the silver gun, trying to get it to work. "Yeah," he said, looking up briefly. "Hell of a show."

Darcy threw down the gun with its empty clip and went to find the first man she'd killed.

"Hell of a show," Arden agreed as he watched her pull the knife free of its erstwhile sheath.

Suddenly, the third man's tinkering produced a satisfying click. "Aha!" he shouted, holding the silver gun aloft.

BLAM

He fell where he stood, half his face lost to a swift-settling bloom of red mist.

Darcy and Arden dove for the nearest door, hounded by more shots that narrowly missed.

Together, they tumbled down into what turned out to be a basement.

Edging backward carefully over loose planks of wood and the rotting remains of disused chapel furniture, Darcy felt a rat or two scurry away from her feet. There was no light, because you typically need electricity for that.

With a grunt and a curse, Arden discovered the other thing the basement was short of: a way out. Thanks to the slow but relentless work of termites and water damage, at least half the basement had caved in. They might as well have been in a cellar.

"You think they'll follow us down here?" Arden asked.

Darcy shrugged.

"We need a plan," he said.

Darcy made her way back to the stairs, into the weak pool of light filtering down through the door above.

"What are you doing?" He sounded vaguely bored.

She shushed him, and listened.

After a few long beats, she jerked her head toward the door.

"No thanks," Arden said from the shadows.

"Then give me the gun."

After another beat, Arden stepped out of the shadows. They regarded each other.

He rolled his eyes and started up the stairs, one at a time, each groaning loudly under his weight.

At the top, he hugged the inside of the door.

Darcy went halfway up the stairs after him.

Arden peaked around the corner, then jerked back as a chunk of the frame exploded where his face had been. He gave Darcy a nasty look and readied his gun.

"Don't fucking shoot me!" he shouted out the door.

"Don't fucking shoot me!" someone answered.

"Why would I shoot you?"

"You've got a gun!"

"Looks like we have that in common," Arden observed.

"...y-yeah," whoever-it-was said.

"Are you alone up there?"

"I think so? Couple other guys ran off."

"OK, that's good to know. What's your name? Who are you?"

"Creighton," he said. "Creighton Darling."

"You shitting me?"

"No," Creighton Darling said. He sounded very much like he probably looked -- young, scared to piss, and covered in blood.

"Well alright," Arden said. "Here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna throw my gun out there, so you can see it, but not so you can get to it before me. And then you're gonna throw your gun, so I can see it. And then I'm gonna come out, and we're gonna try to figure out what the hell happened here. Sound good?"

Darcy could practically hear the boy swallow. "Yeah OK," he said.

"Great, thanks. But hey listen, Creighton?"

"Yeah?"

"If you try something tricky, I'm gonna have to kill you. OK?"

"OK," he said.

"Alright, here we go." Arden tossed his gun through the door, and it clattered a few steps away. Sure enough, Creighton tossed his after.

Arden pitched his voice down so only Darcy could hear it, "Thirty seconds, you come out and take care of him."

Darcy nodded, and he went through the door.

Arden talked loudly to hide the sound of Darcy climbing the stairs. At the silent count of thirty, she bent to see if Arden had the kid in position.

They stood near the blackened crater where the casket used to be. Carnage everywhere. Both of them with their backs to her.

Silent as a ghost among fresh ghosts, Darcy crept forward.

"Did you know the old man?" Arden was asking.

The boy shook his head. "Never met him."

Arden glanced around in a casual way that let him confirm Darcy was on schedule, then let out a big sigh.

"My guess is this is how he wanted it to go. An Egyptian pharaoh having all his servants buried alive with him."

Creighton shook his head slowly. The fight had gone out of him, letting the shock set in.

Arden might have been observing ducks drift across a still pond in the warm sunlight.

Disappointed at how easy this was going to be, Darcy took the last stride and brought her knife to its mark.

Creighton jerked back — he obviously hadn't heard her coming. Arden didn't register a single instant of surprise.

Which was annoying, since it was his neck at the point of Darcy's blade.

"Hey there, Bishop,” he said. “Creighton and I were just talking about ancient history."

"I heard," she said.

"We've got some of that," Arden said. "Don't we."

Creighton looked back and forth between them like a cornered animal. It was nice to have an audience.

"Arden here was the old man's right hand," Darcy explained.

"If you think I had anything to do with this--"

"No, you just had a lot to do with me."

"Ah," Arden said.

Shhh... he whispered to her from dark memory.

"Who here thinks we should let go of the past," Darcy asked the room, "and move on?"

The wide-eyed Darling kid raised his hand.

Arden gave a little half smile, cocked his head, and raised his, too.

Darcy took the knife away from his neck, and noticed a tiny chord of tension leave his shoulders. Just as he started to lower his hand, she slid the knife between his ribs just below the arm, all the way to the hilt.

At that, finally, Arden McBride’s eyes went wide.

"This is me letting go," Darcy said as she let go of the knife.

He let out a gasping cough, then half turned to face her, before lowering himself unsteadily to the ground. His left hand loosely clutched the handle of the knife kabobbing his torso.

She looked over to wide-eyed Creighton Darling and said, "If you're thinking of running, there’s no one here to stop you."

The boy tripped half a dozen times over corpses and shattered pews on his way to the ruined front doors.

Darcy crouched next to Arden, who sat slumped and wheezing on the debris-strewn floor.

"This can be fast," she said, and nodded to his left hand still resting on the hilt. "Or it can be slow." She traced a line across his chest over the length of the blade inside, and finished by tapping the spot where it ended, right over his heart.

Arden drew in a sharp, rattling breath. He tried to speak, but it just came out as a wet cough. Blood spilled over his bottom lip.

She stood up. "Your choice," she said as she walked away.

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