The Reckoning (23 page)

But Cliff had managed to attach himself to Royce’s back. Howling, Royce lugged the man onto the loading dock, screamed when Cliff bit deep into his shoulder. Panicking, Royce lost his footing. Together, they tumbled down the stairs, heaping on the bottom, human flesh pressed to incinerated crust.

Royce was stunned; there was a sharp pain at his side when he breathed, and two fingers on his right hand were snapped back and swelling as plump as all-beef franks.

Lungs heaving, Royce whipped the knife back and forth with his left hand and started dragging his body away from Cliff. He got to his feet as Cliff thrust upright, his destroyed flesh chafing, splitting open and oozing fluid.

Cliff limped towards him.

“Pain is the ultimate motivator. I’m coming for you, buddy.”

Royce reached Darth, sheathed his knife and got in.

Tucked into the bucket seat, he quickly felt at the passenger seat for the wooden fence post and mallet. He then had to jam his wounded right hand into his trouser pocket for the car keys. The broken fingers caught on the edge of the pocket, bending up, and he screamed.

But he got the keys, only to fumble and drop them in passing them to his left hand.

He clawed at the floor mat, cursing.

Slants of harsh yard light captured Cliff on his trudge towards the car and Royce.

“Left us for dead, you fuck! It’s payback time, Royce! You, your horsy wife and the little shit. I’ll slowly drain each of you of blood, so you’ll be acutely aware of everything as you die. But I’ll do you individually, so you’ll die alone. Maybe I’ll do the others first and tape it, then show you the tape, Royce, while your life drains away. Then Carly will filet your flesh and eat you alive!”

Royce located the key, jammed it into the ignition and Darth ignited. He turned on the bug eyes, firing white light at Cliff.

But Cliff, half blind, didn’t flinch, kept shambling.

Now he was at the front bumper.

Royce took the pillows from the passenger side seat, wedged them between himself and the steering wheel. Homemade air bag, courtesy of Kmart.

Cliff mounted the hood.

Royce floored the pedal. The Porsche roared forward, smashing into the loading dock. Royce’s forehead kissed the windshield as his intestines tried to climb up into his lungs. His body jolted back, spine twisting violently.

The car was at rest, engine idling, most of its nose accordion-crunched, tires blown. He turned off the ignition and feared combustion, yet he was paralyzed until his body rebounded from the shock.

Pressed against the windshield was Cliff’s singed face, inanimate now. Looking at him with a dead Cyclops eye. Royce forced open the sprung door on his side, stiffly got out, neck and back complaining big time. He fell to the gravel on palms and knees, whimpering, and rose up, then retrieved the knife out of the car.

Cliff’s upper torso reposed on what was left of the Carrera’s hood. The rest of him, everything below his waist, was melded into the wreckage.

Royce climbed onto the hood and straddled Cliff’s shattered body. He had a good look at what was left. Cliff’s remains had all the aesthetic appeal of an overdone baron of beef. Royce quickly gazed around. Thank god, no sign of Craig.

Cliff’s busted nose twitched. “I can smell Carly’s pussy. Sweet.”

“Good for you.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Pound this stake through your heart.”

With incredible effort Royce positioned the point of the fence post at Cliff’s heart and raised the mallet in his fucked-up right hand. He took a shallow breath and slammed the mallet down. The vibration of mallet striking wood was clearly more painful for Royce then Cliff.

Royce took another whack, finally breaking Cliff’s armor-like skin. Another whack drove the stake deeper.

“You’re giving me a bad case of heartburn, old buddy.”

So much for Eastern European myths
. Royce angrily pitched the stake and mallet away and pulled the knife. He pressed the knifepoint to the base of the vampire’s throat, wrapped his left hand around the handle and pressed down with his badly swollen right, putting his spavined back into it. Grunting, warm breath fogging from his nostrils and broken mouth, he pierced the flaky tissue. It felt like stabbing tough Greek pastry.

Cliff coughed. “We had some good times, old buddy.”

“You know it.”

“I just wanted to be like you.”

The blade drove deeper, striking the collarbone. He twisted the shank. A gusher splashed Royce’s face. The blood was warm.
The zombies in the Romero flick didn’t bleed.

A gurgle from Cliff: “So cold…”

The torso struggled to levitate. He sawed.

“You were wrong, Cliff. I do believe in something. I believe I will send you and Carly back to hell and save my stepson’s life—and die trying, if that’s what it takes.”

“Good for you.”

Cliff exhausted fetid gas from somewhere below his waist; it sounded like a flatulent balloon.

“Daisy…Daisy…”
Gurgle.

Royce grinned. “Always the smart-ass.”

One more tremor from Cliff and finally it was done. The head rolled down the hood and dropped onto the ground. Royce, exhausted, dismounted from the car. With his right foot he kicked the sooty head away, watched it roll a few feet and come to rest on its side.

Still, that one fucking eye stared at him.

He went to his knees, catching his breath in short gasps because of the pain at his side, sharper because of the collision. He checked his broken fingers, now obscenely bloated and thrust up at an oblique angle. The man spit blood. He yearned to pass out, bag it.

Merry Christmas, Mr. R.

One down…

He saw that his watch crystal was cracked and wept.

“I kept my promise,” he told Leslie.

Shivering, he wiped his face with the back of his left hand, sniffed the air—diesel, the bay, the McCormick spice factory…

Something else. He searched the gloom for Craig.

What had Cliff said? Now he smelled her, too.

A beeping phone sounded off. Royce flinched. It was coming from the Porsche’s crunched passenger compartment. He crawled to the car, reached inside and retrieved the cellular phone.

“Yeah?” he wheezed.

“Guess who…”

Royce’s body convulsed.
The fucking bitch.

He eyed the wreckage. Somewhere in all that buckled steel was the bottom half of Cliff and—he prayed—the keys to the Cavalier in his old buddy’s pants pocket.

21

Come Home to Momma

White light laser beamed off his rearview mirror, blinding him.

Royce blinked and glanced in the side mirror. He grimaced in reaction to his own gruesome image and angled his view to look behind him. The cop, still with his powerful spotlight on the Cavalier’s rearview mirror to disorient its occupant, was yakking into the radio, no doubt cranking up those points, if not a jail term.

Driving a vehicle with stolen California plates (Cliff had just swapped the Chevy’s with the Porsche’s).

Driving seventy-eight in a thirty-five-miles-per-hour zone.

Driving a vehicle without proof of registration.

Driving a vehicle without proof of insurance.

Driving while under the influence of God knows what (was pain considered a controlled substance?).

Driving a vehicle with busted fingers and ribs, a concussion and a Halloween mask of a face.

Driving with a Rambo knife and a Molotov baggy secreted in your pockets.

Being abusive to a police officer (“It’s an emergency, asshole!”).

The officer left his unit, strode slowly—warily—towards Royce’s car with his right thumb and forefinger resting on his Sam Brown belt above the holster.

Royce waited until the cop was even with his door before starting the car and jacking the automatic gearshift handle in reverse. Royce, unable to turn his neck, gunned backwards using the side mirror to guide him, banking on a good fender shot—a shard of chrome spiked into one of the cruiser’s Goodyears, if he was lucky.

The Chevy weaved and struck, busting chrome, plastic, glass. For Royce, this collision was cake, compared to the previous one. The policeman was rushing him now, drawing his service revolver.

“Halt!”

He threw the shifter into drive. The vehicle moaned, freeing itself from the coupling, then bucked forward. Royce cut the wheel to the left, crossed two lanes of traffic and jumped a concrete median. The Chevy was still absorbing the shock nearly a block down Alceanna when he slammed onto Ann.

The Cavalier veered dangerously, screeched and shimmied, limping fast to Gaylord Street. A block from Naughty’s, he gunned the car into a dark driveway, left it and hobbled the rest of the way in.

The lights were off in the shop, but the door was ajar. His nostrils flared from a bad odor, the smell of blood on hot iron.

“Carly?” he said softly, and cautiously made his way to her bedroom.

The red lights were on and Carly had left behind a snack.

The heat of the woman’s boudoir made the odor from the partially devoured bodies (Christine’s—still wearing leather boots—and tender Allison’s) a heady perfume that overpowered even Carly’s own scent. The corpses’ sickly white skin was blighted by dark bruises and flesh-flayed gashes reminiscent of shark-bite photos he’d seen; a great deal of the girls’ blood had drained from their bodies and made a large black patch on the floor.

Royce searched the room, lit up like a whorehouse crib and as warm as a dry sauna. Then he saw it. He rushed past the bed to the pillory, relocated from the basement dungeon.

“Craig…”

He gently touched his fingers to the back of the boy’s head, was relieved to sense warmth from the blood-matted hair. There was still a pulse at the boy’s neck and his eyes fluttered wildly beneath his closed eyelids. Out cold, or staying undercover in a safer dimension. A blessing, probably. Royce carefully lifted the boy’s face. More than bruises now, deep scratches, too. Like the ten-year-old had tangled with a tiger. No, a tigress.

The boy was locked in by a padlock.

“Takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’.”

He spun to face her.

“And to think,” she continued, “he might have been ours. I always thought I’d make a good mother, until a certain someone I won’t name sent me to a vivisectionist.”

Carly was reposed on the bed, nude, her lips raspberry-jam red. She’d dyed her hair blonde, had it cut short, like in the old days. The bitch dipped an Oreo into a glass of red-tinted milk, chewed on it.

“A little dessert, after Allison.”

She set the glass down on the night table, seductively posed her toned body and jiggled her beach-ball boobies, showing them off to him. Now, the breasts didn’t look so hot—held together with wide strips of ugly gray duct tape.

“You look like shit, Mr. R. What’d you do? Crack wise with Cliff?” She really thought she’d pulled a funny and giggled. “And that jacket. Yuck. Where’d you buy it? Kmart?”

“Please, Carly, let the boy go. The key!”

She pressed her breasts together. The key, on a gold necklace, was buried between the mammoth cleavage. “No,” she pouted.

Royce took the knife from his pocket, pressed its blade against Craig’s throat and tensed.

Carly wasn’t moved.

“Oh, go ahead, Royce. Do it. I know what you’re thinking. Do the right thing and put the little shit out of his misery. Frankly, I wasn’t going to take the little shit with us anyway, except as a snack. So go ahead. I dare you. No, I double dare you. Make it easy on him. If you don’t, I will, and believe me, I think he’d appreciate it more coming from you. My methods are less humane.”

He seethed, “You’re a…” But he couldn’t finish it. Sweat stung his eyes.

She smiled, flashing her brown eyes at him. “A cunt, right? Isn’t that the epithet of choice among all you red-blooded American males? A woman shows a little spunk and suddenly she’s a cunt. Fine, well this cunt doesn’t want Craigie boy—or anyone else—to come between us, Royce. It will be easier with the kid gone. Cliff, too. Cliff had such a puppy dog crush on me, and you can’t say he wasn’t loyal. He dug me up, after all, freed me from that cold, black nothingness. To tell you the truth, I regret not letting him get into my panties back in the good old days. You remember those times, don’t you, Royce?”

He nodded.

“Unfortunately, Royce, I don’t think you could have handled a
menage a trois
—then, or now. You thought you were so sophisticated. You and your precious job. Your precious Porsche. The deals. The drugs. The power.”

Swooning, she went on all fours, her bizarre breasts hanging like udders, bed rolling and pitching. She held the jugs in her hands, offering them to him.

“All yours,” she whispered. “Just the way you wanted them. Forty-four double D. I looked up old Doc Foglesong not too long ago, had him finish the job, with Cliffie pointing a gun at the asshole’s head.” She flicked her nose. “Got him to do a little rhinoplasty, too. Then I sucked the eyes out of his skull. You don’t think the doc rushed the job, do you?”

“No, Carly, you’re perfect. Just…the way I wanted you.” His body vibrated with shame.

She now drew herself up, legs tucked under, and, with a haughty expression on her face, showed him the wedding band on her finger. His wife’s.

“It’s not Tiffany’s, like you promised, but it will just have to do—for now.”

He was at the edge of the bed, sputtering, threatening her with the knife.

“Why did you have to kill her? Why?”

The zombie smiled, clownish with the thick, pancake makeup. She wiped her left cheek and showed him a scar.

“Look what that bitch did to me, Royce. And all I wanted was what you promised—your undivided attention, forever. Till death do us part.”

Sharply twisting his wrist, she won the knife from him. His cracked ribs complained. Terrified, in pain, he drew back.

“You’ve got me, Carly. Forever. Kill me, take me to hell. Whatever. Just let Craig go.”

She thought about that.

“Yes, I’ll let him go,” she said, smiling. “But first, chi chi.”

With a flourish, she produced a foil condom packet from beneath her satin pillow.

No choice now. He’d have to go through with the most extreme of his plans.

“Oh, get comfortable first.”

Moaning, he removed the parka, setting it carefully on the carpeting beside the bed. Unbuttoning his sweat-soaked shirt was an ordeal for him—his fingers like distressed Venetian blinds—so Carly just split it off him, buttons flying. She clawed off his T-shirt as well, leaving pink furrows down his chest.

“You and Cliffie must have had quite a row,” she commented, noticing the purplish, nipple-to-waist bruise on his left side.

Next, she managed to get the pants off him without bothering with the zipper. Compared to Carly, Cliff had been a wimp. Working out had really paid off for her.

Fearing her wanton strength, he slapped her hands away and peeled the bloody shorts down himself. Immediately, her sharp nails went to his torn scrotum.

“Ah, shit,” he wailed.

“Let me kiss it and make it well, darling. Don’t worry, I can be gentle.”

She flickered her bloody tongue and tenderly licked his scrotum—Royce wincing when she swathed his wound. The woman now hooked her mouth up, snaring his manhood as if it were an early morning earthworm. Royce shuddered, feeling the metal stud in her tongue against him.

Carly blew him, gently at first, but then with furious sucking on the order of a car wash vacuum. He experienced a head rush of pleasurable pain, and his penis steeled.

Yeah, eat me, baby.

A big, swinging dick he was ashamed of.

“Super,” she said, inspecting the results. Her dark, glossy eyes shined at his organ. “My, this will be quite a stretch.”

Don’t patronize me, bitch.

She peeled the prophylactic packet open and rolled the condom down over his penis. His member pulsed at a keen state of readiness.

“I hope you’re not offended, darling, but I know absolutely nothing about your recent sexual history, how paltry that may be.”

“Fuck you,” he said, and pushed her down on the bed, Me-Tarzan-You-Jane style. Carly simpered. Royce crouched over her, erection at the ready.

“I just love a man who takes what he wants.”

He fired a quick glance at Craig—saw the boy was still out—and joined her on the heated satin sheets, his raincoated hard-on waving with each pitch of the bed. Snarling hateful lust, he brought his face to hers, smelled her skanky breath.

She rolled away from him so that she now sat cross-legged, her voluptuous backside to him.

“Massage me, darling.”

With his busted digits, it wasn’t much of a massage, but the zombie didn’t seem to mind. His fingers snuck under her smooth armpits, teased her swelling bags. Moaning, she drew her head back, closed her eyes.

Carly reached behind with her right hand to keep him hard.

“Yes…oh, the dreams I had during my big sleep. Sometimes they were of us, together in our house with the white picket fence, with our little boy and our little girl, and our little dog. We loved them so. Were so happy.”

Carly’s face went dark. “And sometimes, the dreams were very bad.”

Royce cupped the breasts in his palms, hefting their weight. They felt awesome.

He asked, “Feel good?”

“Mmmm. Don’t stop.”

He kneaded the flesh of her nubile hips, stroked along her muscled thighs. One of his fingers teased at her hairless vulva.

“Ouch,” she said, flinching. Carly squeezed so hard on his penis he feared the glands would uncork in the rubber’s reservoir tip. “I’m very sensitive there.”

“So I noticed,” he said.

Royce looked over at Craig, assessing how much damage he was about to do. The pillory was approximately ten feet away. Royce would have to hold her tightly to him in order to contain it and protect Craig.

Drastic as it was, he knew it was the only way. Carly was a vicious, relentless adversary, far more dangerous than Cliff. She wasn’t going to spare the boy—ever. He could wait for the cops, no doubt on his trail. But they would only put him in jail for killing his wife, while Carly vanished, probably offing Craig before she left, or taking him with her. Years later, while Royce was dying of boredom on death row or locked up in a rubber room, she might reappear into his demented life and taunt him all over again.

No, it had to end here and now.

Fear paralyzed him for a brief time, then he worked out of it. The water in the bed just might save him—or her, unfortunately.

“I want you to make love to me. Now.”

“Oh, I’m having so much fun, playing with your luscious body,” he minced.

“I hope you like my breasts. They’re all your doing, you know.”

“I know,” he said, sobered.

“Forty-four double D. Or did you already know?”

“Yes.”

Keeping his left hand on her, he stiffly reached with his right, located the baggy of Sterno in his coat pocket, and the lighter.

Now he opened the bag, pouring the purple jelly all over her backside from her shoulders to the cleft of her firm buttocks, massaging it in.

“Oil,” she cooed. “Smells funny. Burr!”

Last, he poured the remaining fluid on her hair.

“I want you inside me—now!”

“Yes, my love.” He spread his own legs wide, around her. “Just ease your lovely bottom up, okay?”

“Mmmm, I like that. Kinky.”

She lifted her bottom, and with his guidance managed to capture his up-thrust erection in her vagina.

She moaned. He clenched his teeth, gasping.

“Oh, yes, Royce. I want you inside me forever.”

“Me too.”

Royce touched his mouth to her wet back, kissing her. He tasted her toxic-flavored skin and prayed. She ground her hips.

He hugged her tightly to him with his left arm. Sirens wailed, far off. “I did love you.”

It was at that moment that he lit the Bic and touched its flame to Carly’s backside. The inferno flared with a loud
whoosh
, went off like Napalm.

He hooked his right arm around her, thrust his fingers between her breasts, seized the key and yanked. He flung the necklace away and watched her backside blister.

Screaming, she fought to escape his coital lock. Her back cooked brown.

“
Bastard!
”

Royce shivered, held her tighter. Her tits melted and dropped like stringy goo buckets. He clenched his eyes; blackness burst to red and red to bright white as his eyelids cooked away. He breathed fire into his nostrils, superheated oxygen igniting in his lungs. Convulsing now, he felt searing, pervasive agony incinerate his soul. He jammed his penis deeper into her.