The Skunge (14 page)

There was shaky phone video of a Skunger trudging down an empty sidewalk. One arm was bare of the infection, shocking pink against the dark mat of the Skunge covering the rest of his body.A man with a heavy black mustache darted out, shotgun held at the waist, and pulled both triggers. The Skunger's head exploded, spraying bone, brain, and Skunge everywhere. Mustache ran back, fist victory-pumping like a quarterback running back from throwing a touchdown.

Another site, another video. This time, the camera quality was almost professional, the lighting perfect, the color so good it was almost occult. A Skunger lay strapped to a plastic serving table. Sugar thought she'd seen one just like it on sale at Costco the week before. The video zoomed in on the Skunger's eyes: terrified and shaking. It was a woman—or had been, anyway. A keening, eerie noise emerged from what had been the mouth. Now it was filled with a spiky mass of vines.

A man stepped into the frame. He wore a bright yellow apron with a red pocket, and no shirt underneath. He held a meat cleaver in his left hand and an electric carving knife in his right. He smiled so broadly that the tears running down his face dripped into his mouth.

He raised the electric knife and sawed into the screaming figure. Dark blood flew. Every few seconds the blades would become stuck in the bloody Skunge, and the knife would sputter to a stop. One minute the cutting man would be laughing, and the next crying as the knife buzzed. He hacked at the writhing figure with the cleaver, leaving gaping wounds like raw red smiles. Sugar swallowed, her stomach lurching. She willed herself to look away,
told
herself to look away.

The Skunger thrashed, emitting frantic grunts. The gowned man brought out pliers and tore at the vines, yanking out long wet pieces of them, holding up his prizes for the camera. He let the light play across the bloody lengths. He cut off three of her fingers, her nose, an ear, while the camera lovingly captured every second. He wiped the lens clean when it got too splattered with blood.

Finally, the man reached behind himself and whipped his apron away. Beneath, he was nude. The Skunge had eaten his penis and testicles, leaving a broad swatch of red-rimed fungus and two twisted, hard-looking roots where his balls had been. He left the gloves on and stepped away from the scene for a moment. The Skunger's eyes, bright with panic, pleaded to the camera.

He returned, stone-white buttocks pumping as he hefted a large hand-held circular saw onto the table. He dropped it with a bang next to the Skunger, and turned back to the camera. Tears dripped down his face, smearing the blood. He lifted a photo into the camera's eye. A woman, eyes bright, smile white. Beside her, holding her hand, eyes tipped up in laughter, the man with the saw. Before the camera's unblinking eye, he ripped up the picture, and turned back to his wife.

With a bright electronic laugh, the saw whirred into life.

Two minutes later, when she heard a knock at her door, she was almost relieved.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Sonch lit another joint and clicked the play button. Metallica's 'Dyers Eve' blasted out of the Jeep's speakers.

"How many of those are you going to smoke?" Arneson asked. He twisted the volume down, then grimaced as Sonch cranked it up again. He shouted something to Arneson, but it was lost over the pounding drums.

"What? I can't hear a fucking word your saying," Arneson shouted. He left the volume dial alone, but closed the windows to kill the road noise.

"I said, I'm gonna smoke them
awwlll
, man." Sonch motioned to the breast pocket of his polo shirt, where two more joints stood like soldiers at attention. "Every last one."

Arneson scowled out the windshield. He was already on edge, and Sonch wasn't helping. Sonch sober was nothing if not reliable—he was a prick, and a sadistic asshole, but at least he was predictable. You could count on him to do a job and no surprises. But if Sonch got too high he was liable to pull any bullshit move that occurred to him. He had the attention span of a cat and the inventive curiosity of a monkey. He was a loose screw, on a day that Arneson wanted everything buttoned down tight. Ah, hell.

"Well at least give me a puff off the goddamn thing," Arneson said. Sonch whooped and passed the joint, which was roughly the size and shape of a decent Cohiba. Arneson took a medium hit, and his head began swimming immediately. Even after two years working for Maas, he still wasn't used to the kind of high-powered stuff that grew in NorCal. Maas had his own R&D team for weed. They bred strains with higher-THC counts, smoother flavors, brighter colors. That constant innovation helped him maintain his stranglehold on the West Coast 'purple highway'; the long stretch of I-5 that stretched between the state of Washington and Southern California, where truckloads of marijuana traveled back and forth, delivering full and retuning empty for more.

Sonch pulled out a flask and took a long pull, and Arneson rolled his eyes.

He parked the Jeep in a stand of Western Larch, and they struck out through the brush. Sonch began complaining almost immediately about the heat, the sun, the goddamn bugs. He also smoked the remaining two joints, and by the time they arrived, he was so stoned he could hardly get through a sentence. He was hitting his flask hard, too.

They stopped at binocular range and watched the trailer.

It was a gently dilapidating double-wide, boasting sun-bleached green siding and dirty windows. A cinderblock fence enclosed the back and side 'yard', which featured fun accessories like rotting piles of dog-shit and sage bushes. The back left corner of the fence was unfinished, nothing but a tumbled collection of crumbling blocks and an old wheelbarrow. The sheriff had jurisdiction out here, but he stayed out of business he was paid to stay out of. A few old pickups were scattered around, most of them held together with rust. A pair of Doberman Pincers paced the yard, tongues lolling in the heat.

"Time."

"One forty pee em, boss," Sonch said. He sounded excited. This was also bad news: when Sonch got excited, situations had a way of growing hair.

"OK. Any minute now."

They sat and waited. Sonch fidgeted. "Wish I had a smoke."

"Quit complaining. Once we're done, you can smoke 'til you choke."

"Listen to the man rhyme. A regular Kenny West, that's what you are, man."

"I try my best. Now shut up and get ready."

"Oh come on, I was born ready. There ain't nothing going on we don't already know about. Rubalcava talked so fast and so long I thought his lips were gonna fall off."

Arneson said nothing, squinting through the binoculars at a plume of dust rising in the distance.

"Here they are."

The car pulled up and parked. A sedate blue Toyota sedan featuring a bright yellow Baby on Board sign affixed to the back window. The dogs sat up, alert, but didn't bark. The first guy to get out was a skinny, dread-locked dude in tie-dyed shorts and a Bad Brains t-shirt. The second guy looked like someone from the IT department at an insurance company: chubby, thin blond hair complete with a shiny patch starting on the crown, a wispy blond goatee and chinos he was constantly hitching up over his flat ass.

A woman emerged, toting a bassinet draped with a cheery pink blanket. Arneson scowled and Sonch snorted as the woman entered the trailer behind the two men.

"Shit."

"Ain't that a kick in the ass. Got to be a psycho bitch to bring a baby along."

"Yeah."

"Well?"

"Shut up, I'm thinking."

"Well don't think too long; Maas wants this done, and he wants it done today."

"I know. Fuck.
Fuck.
OK, we're still on, but for Christ's sake watch out for that kid."

Arneson went first, loping down the hill-side and into a clot of trees huddled several hundred feet from the grounds. Sonch followed, moving quick and easy. Arneson saw the dog's heads come up, scenting the air. Sonch carried a long canvas bag that clanked when he dropped it. He pulled out a long metal tube and a few black alloy parts, and began screwing them together. Soon the shape of a gun emerged. He tightened the last piece and handed the gun and a flat box to Arneson. The wind was gentle, the air clear as a newborn's conscience. Arneson loaded the gun with two aluminum darts from the box.

Arneson fired twice, the shots no louder than a cough in church. Both dogs dropped to the dust.

"Nice shooting, Tex." Sonch said.

"Thanks." Arneson set down the gun then stared at Sonch. "Oh for
Christ
'
s
sake, what is that?"

Sonch had pulled something else from the bag. A long wooden scabbard decorated with red silk tassels. "What? It's a Samurai sword. You got to have seen one of these babies before."

"Of course I have," Arneson said. His hissing whisper was painfully loud in the stillness. "In chop-socky movies on channel eleven. What the fuck is it doing
here
?"

"Well, Maas sent us to put the fear of God into these bozos, right? Are you telling me this isn't the right tool for the job? Look at the goddamn thing. I'm gettin' a boner already." Sonch pulled back on the hilt, exposing two inches of gleaming steel. He grinned like a demented kid.

Arneson sighed. "Fine. But if you get shot, it's your own fault."

"Oh come on. These dipshits ain't so dumb as to wear straps on a road job. Quit your belly-aching and let's go already. This thing is thirsty."

Arneson moved down the slope, keeping low, stepping slowly enough not to draw the eye, but covering ground. "Who carries a fucking sword?" The ghostly sound of Sonch's chuckle followed him down the hill.

They moved in a circle, angling toward the back. Rubalcava had given them an admirably complete idea of the layout, allowing Arneson to plan their route down to the inch. The trailer backed up to a hoary old patch of woodland, which extended back a mile before meeting a wooden fence. That marked the border of a massive swathe of BLM land that had lain unmolested for decades. Rubalcava had told them that no one in the place had even considered the idea of someone coming in through the back.
They lack a certain imagination
, the fat man had said, smiling up at Arneson with chubby, implacable calm.
They only think in one direction—straight ahead. If you come from some other direction, it wouldn't even occur to them to look. These guys aren't thinking about security, they're thinking about money.
Arneson believed him. Brass knuckles and a pair of pliers were great incentives to truth-telling.

They reached the back wall, and carefully climbed through the hole. Arneson shook his head again at the boarded up back windows. Rubalcava hadn't been kidding; this was beyond amateur, bordering on the ludicrous.

They crept across the dirt, avoiding the crunch of the sage brush and the piles of dog shit dotting the yard. The hot silence ticked over. They halted when a rough peal of laughter burst out of a nearby window. After a three count, Arneson drew a pistol and they kept moving. Sonch snorted at the pistol, and Arneson gave him the finger.

The place was laid out in Basic American Trailer: a tin rectangle, cheap paint, two doors—one up front and one on the side. According to Rubalcava, the front door had some cheap webcams set up, with motion sensors that would sound an alarm inside. That was OK—they wanted the side door. From there, they could spread through the house. The action would be in the kitchen.

They stopped on either side of the wooden steps leading to the raised front door. Arneson held up a hand, and Sonch paused obediently, his eyes slatey with blood-lust.

Arneson counted to three, and they went in.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

The water felt cold enough to stop her heart. Sugar swam downward until her fingertips brushed the bottom of the pool, then opened her eyes. Someone had dropped a dildo in the water, and it shimmered like a mirage in shades of blue, silver and pink.

She'd forgotten how much she loved swimming in Maas' cold pool. In the two weeks since she'd come to stay at the compound, she'd spent at least half an hour each day swimming in the icy water. Her lungs began to ache as the itch under her skin disappeared. The sun was an unreachable golden coin hanging overhead. Finally she made for the surface, stretching for the sun, lungs burning. Her nipples stung from the frigid water. Unwanted memories scratched at her mind like claws on a wooden door; she covered the noise with the thunder of her heartbeat, pounding in her ears. Nothing could touch her under the water.

She broke the surface.

Maas stepped between her and the sun, leaving him a negative shape scissored into the golden sunlight.

"Hey, you. How's it going?" His eyes dipped to her chest, then back to her face.

"Good." She paused, and the silence began to eat at the peace she had felt in the water. "Thanks for letting me stay here."

"No problem," he said. He began to pace, like she remembered, unable to stand in one place for long. His glances were like insects, alighting on her skin for a moment and flicking away. She felt them like fingerprints. "I see you still like to swim naked."