Primal Scream (25 page)

The Mountie raised the lid of the altar box.

Within was a carved duplicate of the fetish in the Adidas bag photographed in the garbage can out back of Flood's apartment. A similar Janus head with two small back-to-back demonic faces, protruding from the lips of which were eight-inch, rounded, upward-arcing tongues. DeClercq had heard the devils' tongues called the Horns of Venus in their generic form. The dual licks rested on saddle braces at both tips, with another pair of braces waiting for a missing twin.

The killer's on the hunt tonight
, Robert thought.

Nestled around the fetish on a pillow of their own hair were dozens of shrunken heads hacked from hapless women. Asian, Caucasian, and African, with lips pierced by rings.

A sound upstairs caught Robert's attention.

He reached for his .38 and found it gone.

Lock by lock, the door from the Quonset hut was unlatched.

He must have lost the Smith in his tumble from the shaft.

He retraced his steps as hinges overhead squealed open.

He killed the flashlight and blindly felt around in the pool of blood for his gun.

Flickering glow from a hurricane lamp spilled down the stairs.

Devoured by darkness, Robert watched as the killer descended.

Boots, then pants, then hands . . .

Both hands full ...

The hurricane lamp in one hand with the beheading knife . . .

And in the other . . .

A bloody satchel hanging limp . . .

A twin for the fetish in the altar box

And a severed head gripped by the hair

Oh, my God!

He recognized the head.

Razor-head

The North

Shhhhewwww
. . .

The Razor-head sank deep into Ghost Keeper's thigh, low enough to miss the body armor protecting his torso, but high enough to almost castrate him. His leg buckled and he tumbled from the sled, almost spiking his eye on the arrow sunk in Vern's back. The Mad Dog was about to blitzkrieg his team up the bank and into the bush after Winterman Snow when he saw the Cree go down in a spray of blood.

Shhhhewwww
. . .

The second razor-head poked the Mad Dog dead center in the chest, then bounced off his armor as if he were Superman.

Ghost Keeper opened fire on the woods, blasting at the pines from which the arrows flew, snow puffing from branches hit by the shots, as moonlight glinted off the casings his pistol ejected.

A hail of gunfire ripped across the river, bullets zipping around them, hurling chips from the ice, five of the dogs pulling Ghost Keeper's sled yelping as they were hit, Wrangler snarling at the rebels coming toward them while trying to drag the dying malamutes forward to attack.

"Get him!" the Cree shouted, waving Rabidowski on after Winterman Snow. He fed another clip into the grip of his Smith and struggled around against the arrow to fire at the rebels.

The muzzle flashed.

Caught in a vise, the Mad Dog was forced to prioritize. A Member was down. There were rules. Unwritten but understood. Saving George was job one. Two sleds of weapons idle on the ice waited for the approaching four to haul them off to camp. The goal of this mission was to intercept and destroy these arms. That was job two. Winterman Snow was low man on the totem pole. Storming him

Shhhhewwww
. . .

was no longer an option.

The third razor-head sliced clean through Sitka to drop the leader of the Mad Dog's team. With both sleds out of action, the Mounties were pinned down, caught in a hotbox of cross fire. Ghost Keeper's wound could bleed him to death.

The Cree toppled his sled to form a barricade, and drew the AR-15 from its waterproof pouch. A variant of the M-16, the assault rifle used by the U.S. Army, it sprayed a clip of thirty rounds—
Pffdrdrdrdrdrdr!—
at the rebels in three seconds. The four snowshoers hurled themselves prone.

SIG/Sauer in his fist and eyes sweeping the forest for any sign of Snow—was that the sound of retreating shuffles he heard in the lull while George reloaded?— the Mad Dog moved gingerly forward from the sled to the dead leader, each step a gamble he'd break through the crust and be leg-pinned as a target.

Clip after clip, as fast as he could reload, Ghost Keeper loosed a withering barrage of machine-gun fire. Only a fool out there in the open would raise his head to shoot back.

The Mad Dog cut the harness and tow rope to free the dead husky, then, gripping the collars of the first pair, led the surviving dogs across to the toppled sled of the other team. There he pulled the belt from his pants and cinched it around the Cree's thigh just above the arrow, a makeshift tourniquet that stemmed the flow of blood.George kept firing until he was out of clips.

The Mad Dog passed him the magazine cache from his provisions.

A burst of shots from the rebels pounded the slats of the overturned sled like xylophone bars, splintering through.

The Cree opened up again.

Heads out there ducked, and someone gasped.

On his belly the Mad Dog wriggled across the snow to the closer weapons sled. Cutting the tarp revealed a line of explosion signs: containers of high-octane fuel for flame throwers. Crawling back to cut Wrangler free from the dead dogs of Ghost Keeper's team, he gripped the malamute by the collar and led it over to lead his team of huskies. A good leader not in harness will lead anyway.

These were competition dogs.

Used to starting guns.

"In the basket!" the Mad Dog yelled to the, wounded man, who kept on firing as he was helped onto the sled. The Mad Dog slammed a clip into the other AR-15, then slung it over his shoulder while he yanked off a glove to hang two Thunder Flash grenades from his fingers by their pins. Climbing on back of the sled, he yanked the pins and tossed the bombs at the closer toboggan of weapons. "All right!" he ordered Wrangler and the team, the command galvanizing the dogs to jump forward and be off at full gait. The Cree braced himself for the jerk by stretching out on the sled. The Mad Dog turned and emptied the magazine of the AR-15 at the cans of flame-thrower fuel.

FOOOOOOOOM!

BOOM! BOOM!

The world behind exploded.

Suddenly it was summer and the brightest high noon of the year. Wrangler blitzed the team up the bank and into the woods, no need for a command to seek shelter from the heat and glare. George gripped the sled as the Mad Dog threw his weight from side to side to steer, or lifted up on the handlebars to help it over bumps, or shifted the rear end to give it new direction, or held it steady to prevent upsets. He would have jumped off and pushed uphill had the snow been harder, jumping on to ride the flats and brake downhill, but that was out of the question. The most difficult feat in sledding is breaking trail on a slope, but somehow they reached the top.

Halting on the crest, the Mounties gazed back down to the river.

Black smoke billowed toward the moon from the hole in the ice where the sled had exploded, melted through, and sunk.

The wounded rebel limped away.

From the haze, the other three emerged.

Behind them, undamaged, they lugged the remaining weapons sled.

When the Mounties tried to call Zulu base to order a backup strike, they found a bullet hole through the Mad Dog's radio phone.

Ghost Keeper's phone was down there.

So all they could do was watch the rebels haul the sled away and wonder what weapons were hidden under its tarp.

Horns of Venus

Richmond

Screaming . . .

Moaning . . .

Grunting . . .

Groaning . . .

Suzannah's House of Pain.

Wherever else hell might be, it burned in Sparky's mind.

House of Pain.

Bomb shelter.

Past
and present.

Hell then.

Hell now.

Inextricably mixed, as memories from Mardi Gras in New Orleans bled into perceptions from here and now so many decades later. Flash back. Flash forward. The killer's psychosis florid.

The bloody satchel hung limp in one hand. The same hand gripped the severed head by the hair, and held the Horns of Venus twin from the altar box. The beheading knife and hurricane lamp grasped hi the other hand, the Headhunter descended the subterranean steps to the bomb shelter.

Screaming . . .

Moaning . . .

Grunting . . .

Groaning . . .

Suzannah's House of Pain.

"Will you be coming to Mardi Gras for Gesasserotik this year? Your Gauleiterin is waiting with her bridle, saddle, burs, and spurs. What guilt you carry from what you did during the war, Mein Heir General, so lay those diamonds you smuggle in from Paraguay at my feet, and I will ride you around below like the horse meat you are, until your plump white crupper is one ruby Mensur scar. Did you know my father in Vichy France? He collaborated with your ilk, when he wasn't fucking me in the stables of our vineyard. I don't have him, but I have you, Mein S.S. Assman, so Gesasserotik it shall be with my Horns of Venus. ..."

Flickering glow from a hurricane lamp spilled down the stairs. Devoured by darkness, Robert watched as the killer descended: boots, then pants, then hands coming into view. One hand gripped a severed head.
Oh, my God!
He recognized the face.

The Headhunter's trophy was Dr. George Ruryk. Poor George must have stared death in the eye, Sfor his eyes bugged from their sockets like those of a fish, and his mouth was frozen in a silent O of shock. Tears of blood ran down his cheeks. Lamplight danced along the razor-sharp edge of the blade that had claimed Ruryk's head. Blindly, Robert groped in the blood pool on the floor for his gun. The Headhunter's chest and throat came into view. One more step and they'd be face-to-face. Then the machete would come for him, hacking off fingers, hands, and arms thrown up in defense, until relentless cutting thwacked off his head.

Wind down the open tunnel snuffed the lamp.

Sparky's mind.

The flashback:

"If only he were your father," Suzannah snarled at the rack, under which, crablike, Sparky scrambled for safety.

"Daddy! Where are you, Daddy! Help me, Daddy! Please!"

("i'm here, Sparky, i am you.")

The general shrieked as the dominatrix mounted him again. The flickering flame of the hurricane lamp cast their humping shadows up the dungeon wall. They bucked amid surrounding shapes formed by the brazier dangling branding irons from its rim, and the spiked door of the iron maiden in the corner. Lamplight brushed the ivory grins on the skull rack overhead, and glittered off the surgical instruments below. The general wore the black uniform of the Nazi S.S., the dreaded Schutzstaffel that had run the extermination camps. Death's-head badges graced his collar. On hands and knees he bucked like a horse on the dungeon floor. A black and silver bridle cinched a bit between his teeth. The black saddle lashed to his back had spiked burs beneath. His black riding breeches were torn along the rear seam, exposing a bottom stark white above black jackboots. Spurs gouged his buttocks when Suzannah sat in the saddle, grinding the burs into the Nazi's back, but now the dominatrix rode her horse farther behind, yanking the bridle to pull him back for each deep thrust.

The screams became gibberish when the broken bronc collapsed.

Suzannah cried out in orgasm and crumpled on top; a hump or two more shuddered out like the primal climax of a satisfied male.

She unplugged the general.

And staggered to her feet.

And turned toward the rack.

And snarled with misandry.

That snarl expressed a lifetime's worth of revenge against every male who had fucked, used, or objectified her. That snarl said, I grind your piggy leers to powder with my bit between your teeth. That snarl said, I flay your bony spine to scourge patriarchal rules that made me your slave. That snarl said, I ravage your plump ass to drive this home: when rape is inevitable, crawl
and enjoy it.

Suzannah was a woman a decade before her time.

The ultimate feminist.

Looming over Sparky was a hermaphrodite from hell, a Frankenstein monster stitched together out of warring sexes. Boots, spurs, and stockings rose to white thighs down which ran red garter lines. Bare below the corset where thighs joined, her black bush glittered with gold rings. The rings that pierced her labia were laced shut with a black thong, sealing her sex around the phallic Horns of Venus. One horn was buried deep in the womb that had carried Sparky to term, the other jutting from her crotch as proud as the engorged prong of any sexist male.

The twisted mouth beneath the bald head high above spat words:

"Are you your father's spawn? Or do you belong to me? Prove you're mine, and no one will hurt you. Unlace me, Sparky. Pull it out. And kiss your Mother's loving lips."

Wind in the smugglers' cavern off the Mississippi snuffed the lamp.

Flash forward:

. . . snuffed the lamp.

"Freeze! Police!"

The rearming of the Mounties had yet to work its way up to DeClercq. First to get the new Smith & Wesson 9mm sixteen-round semiautomatic were Members on the street: the thin red line. The higher in rank, the less likely a cop would need a gun, so a chief superintendent was almost last to rearm.

The dying flame of the hurricane lamp burnished the .38 on the sanguinary floor. DeClercq's fingers closed around the butt as the vault darkened. He still had the advantage of surprise, though the gun in his fist was a six-shot relic the Force had used since 1954.

"Freeze! Police!" he ordered.

Switching on the flashlight, he shone it directly at the Headhunter's eyes.

Earlier tonight flashed through Sparky's mind:

"I'm dead, child, yet I live on. Death is a door to afterlife. If he comes for you, come to me. Promise you won't let him take you alive."

"I promise, Mommy."

"Good. Give 'em hell."

Sparky dropped the blade, head, sack, and dyke's prong. She ducked out of the blinding light and whipped the Smith semiauto from the holster at her waist. Black was the void before her unadjusted eyes, but the flashlight blazed as bright as an exploding sun.

There was the target.

The flashlight in DeClercq's hand.

The 9mm barked in Katherine Spann's fist. A fiery tongue licked the darkness enveloping DeClercq. A sonic boom thundered in the close confines. The slug ricocheted off the bunker walls,
ping . . . ping . . . pinging!
around the hellhole. Before the ejected casing hit the floor, a hail of lead erupted at the black halo ringing the white, bullets blasting as fast as Spann could pull the trigger.

The flashlight exploded.

DeClercq cried out.

Shards and blood sprayed the dark.

The sun extinguished.

Into a black hole.

As Spann pumped more lead at where the light had been.

DeClercq was there.

He was hit.

And if he wasn't dead, this volley would take him down.

Superior firepower.

The reason for rearming.

The round from the .38 was lost in cannon booms. A popgun fart compared to the semiauto's blast. The slug, however, found its mark: the face of the Head-hunter lit by rapid muzzle flashes. The slug drilled the inspector between the eyes, dropping Spann from her crouch at the foot of the stairs.

Five shots left.

It took just one.

For Spann was up against a military strategist.

DeClercq had taken a hit, but he had held the line, drawing enemy fire into the void where he should be but wasn't.

He stood in the dark with his gun arm extended out front, his wounded arm extended straight to one side at ninety degrees, the shattered flashlight held as far away as possible.

Corporal Alfred Spann had taught him that trick.