Blood Men (18 page)

Midnight comes and goes.

I get changed at one o’clock. The shirt has dried out from last night and is stiff and scratches at me and smells the same as it did this morning. I drive through the early-Thursday-morning streets, most of them deserted until I get toward town, where there are sparks of life from the drunk and disorderly. In suburbia Christmas lights flash at me from windows and roofs and trees, the dark air illuminated by the reds and yellows as well as the pale light from the moon. If Jodie were alive it would all look fantastic. Instead it’s gaudy and cheap, the decorations coming from sweatshop factories in third-world countries. It makes the people in these houses seem desperate to cling to happiness.

If map reading was one of Darwin’s tests for survival of the fittest, I’d have been screwed long ago. It takes me a while, but I manage to find the address. Draw a straight line on a map and plot the neighborhoods on it, and they go steadily downhill, nice homes near
town, okay homes further away, homes that can only be improved with the introduction of a Molotov cocktail further out again. This is where the map takes me, into a neighborhood you’d normally see on the news where the insurgents are fighting off an invading army. I keep a steady pace, not wanting to risk slowing down. I pass beaten-up cars, old washing machines parked on the sidewalk, random pieces of timber, split-open rubbish bags with waste spilling out. The street I want isn’t any better. Every yard is covered in brown grass and dog crap. Half of the streetlights don’t work. Only a few of the homes have fences, and those that do have about a quarter of a fence at most, every third or fourth paling stolen or used as firewood. A few years ago a neighborhood like this wouldn’t have existed. There were bad areas but not to this extent. Study the line I plotted on the map, and you’d see this neighborhood is spreading, it’s like a virus, touching other suburbs, infecting them, finally consuming them before moving further on. Gerald Painter’s wife is right to move her family away. They live maybe five kilometers from here in a nice street with nice cars and nice trees, but it’s only a matter of time before the virus parks up outside their house and moves in.

I drive past the house I want, my heart racing, my palms sweaty, but all I’ve come to do is see the house, maybe catch a glimpse of Shane Kingsly, then drive home and . . .

Well, drive home and do something. I don’t know what. Maybe phone the police. Maybe go to bed. Maybe write his name down next to Dean Wellington and the life insurance guy.

Then why is Sam’s bag still in the backseat?

“I forgot to take it out,” I say. The killing kit is still stuffed inside.

Then why’d you get changed?

“How about shutting up?”

I park a few houses down under a busted light, this time on the opposite side of the road, this time with the house ahead of me so I can keep watch. That’s the plan. Sit for a while. Watch for a while. Then leave.

Yeah right.

Immediately I realize the problem. This isn’t the kind of place I can sit for a while. I stand out here. Soon one of the neighbors will
come to mug me, or kill me. I’ve seen all that I can safely see, and now it’s time to leave.

Like hell it is. Let me help you.

“No.”

Fine. Have it your way. Let the men who did this to Jodie go free. Go back to your life and move on. It’s not long until you hear that from everybody you know. Move on.

“What do you need me to do?” I ask.

We climb out of the car. I turn a three-sixty looking for somebody, anybody, but there is nobody. I grab Sam’s bag and carry it tightly.

We move onto the edge of the property. The dry grass crunches underfoot. I hunker down and pull on the hat and the gardening gloves and take a knife out, then move closer to the house. There are no lights on inside. None of the houses in the street have any Christmas lights. Santa doesn’t even know this place exists. Kingsly’s house is government subsidized, maybe sixty years old, made from wood siding that hasn’t seen fresh paint in all that time. The guttering is covered in dark mould and sags in places where it’s all cracked and busted. There are clumps of grass growing out of it. There is a run-down car parked up the driveway, another one on the lawn, and if you combined all the bits that worked you’d have a car that probably wouldn’t get you anywhere. I slowly approach the house and try to peer in through the windows. I can’t see a damn thing.

I head easily around the side of the house, walking slowly, careful in case there are dogs here, but so far nothing has barked at me. I thought a neighborhood like this would have a thousand dogs. Maybe the virus got them.

I look through the back windows and get the same result. The back door is locked. I don’t know how to get inside. I guess knocking on the door is the way to go.

No it’s not. We don’t know how many people are inside. We don’t know who will answer. It’s easier than that. Just follow my lead.

There aren’t many places in the backyard to hide, but I find a gap in a mangle of hedge that’s overgrown in the corner. We move toward it, searching the ground for something to throw. I take aim and fire a stone hard up onto the roof. It thumps heavily, and I duck in behind
the hedge, the branches scratching at me and snagging my clothes. I stay absolutely still. Nothing happens. I throw a second stone twenty seconds later.

A light comes on inside the house. Just one light in a bedroom. Could mean the other bedrooms are empty. Could mean the others are better sleepers. A few moments later I can hear the front door open. Twenty seconds after that it closes, and not long after that the back door opens. A man, silhouetted by the hallway light, steps into the backyard. He’s wearing pajama bottoms and nothing on top. Tattoos that probably have violent stories behind them climb up his body from under the waistband. He’s skinny and tall and looks like he’s spent too many years in jail and the rest of them on drugs. He takes a customary glance over the backyard, shrugs for his own benefit, then goes back inside. I wait until the lights go off, then I wait another few minutes, then I throw a third stone, same speed, same place, same kind of sound.

The light comes on much quicker this time. Still just the one light. Front door. Nothing. Then back door. He walks out into the yard.

“Fuck is out there?” he asks, and he probably asked the same thing out the front and got the same answer, but he’s probably thinking he’s talking to a cat or a possum.

We don’t answer him. He doesn’t walk far, stays near the door, wondering if the sound was an animal, or a pinecone falling from somewhere. Only difference between this time and the last time is this time he’s carrying a flashlight. He’s not using it as a flashlight, though, he’s using it as a weapon. It’s not even switched on. It’s black and steel and about the length of his forearm and I figure if he had a better weapon he would have brought it out here. Nobody brings a flashlight to a gunfight. He heads back inside. The light goes off. Silence.

We give it ten minutes this time. Long enough for him to think the sound isn’t coming back. Long enough that he might be falling asleep again.

This time the lights don’t come on. The front door doesn’t open. Only the back door, and it’s fired open quickly and he storms outside, the meat of the flashlight slapping into the palm of his hand. He’s dressed this time, black jeans, black top, black everything.

“Who’s out there?” he yells. “That you, Reece? This ain’t funny.”

He moves deeper into the yard. He switches on the flashlight and spotlights random areas. He passes it over the hedge but he doesn’t squat down or move branches aside or come any closer. He doesn’t circle behind it. He thinks whatever is being thrown on his roof is either some random event or it’s being thrown from outside his yard. He walks one way, then the other way, and he comes back to the doorway and he stares out toward us awhile without seeing us, then he closes the door. His bedroom light turns on and off, but he’s not in there, he’s waiting inside the doorway, waiting for the next sound, ready to burst out at a second’s notice.

I move away from the hedge, slowly, confident slow movement will be less likely to draw his attention in case he’s watching from the window. I put more distance between the house and us, backing into the neighboring property, a similar house in similar disrepair, same warped wood siding, same dirt-packed yard, probably the same kind of person living inside. I keep the hedge between me and Kingsly. I head slowly down the side of the next-door house and make it back out to the road. My car is still where I left it. All the wheels are still on it. I figure it’s like winning the lottery out here. I move to the front of Kingsly’s house and walk up the pathway, staying low, moving slow. I stick the bag on the path halfway between the house and the road. I reach the front door and squat down and take a few moments to calm down, drawing strength from the monster.

I knock. Twice. Two loud, heavy knocks. Footsteps pound down the hallway. I run, staying low, back to the side of the house before he gets the door open. I can hear him saying something but I’m not sure what, something that sounds like “what the fuck.” I reach the back of the house and put my hand on the door handle and trust in Kingsly’s desperation to get outside as fast as he could. Sure enough, the handle turns and the door opens. I can’t see a thing inside. The hallway has a bend in it, so I can’t see Kingsly either. He’s outside. I can hear him walking around out there, asking who’s out there, when he should be asking an entirely different question. He should be asking who’s in here. I close the door. I head into the bedroom where the light was turning on and off before, using my hands to lead the way, almost
tripping on rope lining the floor. Kingsly stays outside for another minute before returning to the hallway. The front door closes.

We wait in the dark for him to come into the bedroom.

Kingsly heads out to the backyard. He moves around out there for a minute, swearing loudly, unsure of what he’s looking for. He knows he’s not dealing with pinecones anymore. He finally comes back in. He walks up and down the hallway a few times with the lights off. I’m not sure why, but as he does, it comes to me that I’ve already made my first mistake. The knife won’t make him talk. He isn’t going to come in here and see the steak knife in my hand, then start talking.

I can’t see anything, but I can hear him. All I can see are the numbers from the clock radio and a small glow coming from the power button of a stereo. Kingsly knows the layout of his own house, knows where to walk without banging into anything. He has the flashlight on which helps him, I guess, but helps me too.

The flashlight beam comes into the room from the hallway, lighting up part of the bed from the angle he’s on. The light grows in size the closer he gets. I squat down and wait for him, the knife out ahead of me. As he comes into the room, he twists the flashlight toward the light switch and reaches for it.

He switches it on at the exact time I move forward. I can’t kill him. I need him. I need names and addresses and information that he can’t provide if I stick the knife into his throat. So I aim for his shoulder. He hears me coming and turns and lifts his arm. It throws off my aim. The knife bites into his hand and pushes it back to the wall, but the knife goes into the wall too, right through the drywall, the blade burying down to the hilt, extending all the way into the wall and ripping into the wiring behind the light switch.

Every single muscle in my body tightens, my head crashes up into his chin, my right arm numb and in pain. I can’t let go of the knife. Every muscle in Kingsly goes tight too, his arm with the flashlight swings up randomly, the metal casing hits me hard in the shoulder and pushes me back. My hand comes off the knife and I fall down and quickly back away, hitting the bed and pushing the mattress askew.

Then nothing.

Kingsly stands almost still. There are veins standing out in his
neck and forehead. He’s still holding the flashlight, his arm straight up in the air like he’s asking a question. He isn’t screaming. Isn’t trying to pull the knife away. I can hear a low hum, and a couple of sparks fly from the wall from behind his hand, but nothing else. No crackle of electricity. Almost perfect silence—except for the low hum.

Then I realize he actually is moving. Small, shallow movements, almost every part of him swaying minutely back and forth, convulsing almost, as if he’s having an epileptic fit but doesn’t have the energy to give it his all. He can’t break the contact, all he can do is this death dance as the power flows through him. His feet seem bolted to the floor. The lights in the bedroom fade, then come on real bright, then fade again. One of them blows, the other one brightens, dims, brightens.

Kingsly’s face is in a tight grimace, his lips are pulled back and his teeth have clenched tight on his protruded tongue. The tip of it, a slug-sized piece, sticks out between them. His body keeps shaking, harder now, spasms rolling up and down his tall frame, blood splashing up onto his nose and face and down his chin. The tip of his tongue comes away, the bloody side of it hits the wall and grips a little, sliding down the wall like a pickle on a window at McDonald’s. It hits the floor. The front of his pants darken. I can smell shit. I can smell barbecue. His eyes bulge from his face. No smoke anywhere.

A small flame jets out from the wall and equally as fast goes out. The humming comes to a stop. The light goes out. The flashlight hits the ground and stays going. Slowly, Kingsly slides down the wall, following his tongue. He slides as far as his pinned hand will allow, which is enough for his knees to bend and his face to press up against the doorjamb, his upper lip snagging on the latch and stretching out before tearing on the way. His head lolls over his shoulder, his eyes staring at me, no smoke coming from them. Other than the torn lip and bloody stump of a tongue, he’s not in too bad a shape. Of course one look into his now-empty eyes is an immediate giveaway that things aren’t good for the guy.

Something in his hand gives. I’m not sure what, exactly, but his
hand forks open in a V as his body weight pulls it down past the blade, and then the rest of him slides down the wall and he tips onto the floor, covering the flashlight and blanketing me in darkness.