The Skunge (15 page)

She pulled herself out of the pool and stood facing him, forcing herself to keep her arms to her sides. "It's been a long time. I'm surprised you remember."

He sipped from his drink, and she caught the warm, boozy scent of him. He gestured with his drink. "To the good ole days, eh?" Warmth pooled in the lower part of her belly like she had been the one to drink. He stepped closer, running his free hand up her arm. His palm brushed the side of her breast. "It pays to remember the past. It always seems to come around again. Don't you think so?"

"Yes." Her voice sounded very small to her own ears, not loud enough to cover the pounding of her heart and the thunder of blood in her ears. Maas walked around her, close enough for his clothes to brush against her bare skin, raising gooseflesh where he touched.

His voice was very close and warm, and the tiny hairs on her neck rose in sympathy. "Do you remember the game we used to play?" His hand slide up her back, to the base of her neck.

"I do."

"You do, what?"

His hand tightened painfully on the back of her neck. Her body trembled. "I do, sir."

He moved sinuously around her, his hand keeping contact with her throat, tightening, then relaxing, before clamping down with an iron grip.

Nostalgia flooded her, churning in her gut. She felt an answering wetness in her pussy. He stared into her face, his eyes dancing with some kind of madness, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth. Saliva glistened on his lower lip. He held her there, pinned like a butterfly, and reached down to play with her. She opened her legs. He cupped her cunt and squeezed. She felt his wedding ring, still there after so many years. She bit her lip against the sensation.

Just as she began to move, to push against his hand and start to find a rhythm, he pulled away. She felt an immediate, flooding panic, and her first unbidden, unwanted thought was:
don't go. Please don't leave.

His hand locked around her wrist, his fingers grinding against bone. The pain lit a bright flare of memory, lust and shame. When he pulled her along behind, leading her to the house, she followed without a word.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Arneson scanned as he moved, his mind running through Rubalcava's description, overlaying it onto what he was seeing.

The kitchen: walls painted a nauseatingly bright yellow, windows tinfoiled over and nailed shut. A chemical stink strong enough to make his eyes water. A skinny guy in yellowing underpants stood at the sink, daisy-colored rubber gloves above his head, his mouth a small round
o
of fear. Across the kitchen, the broad back of a man disappearing through the bat-wing doors at the far end of the room. Beyond the doors, a dark hallway.

To his left: the living-room. Through the entryway he could see a midden-heap of empty plastic jugs, peeled blister packs and cardboard pill boxes. A stained sofa under a ratty velvet portrait of rodeo cowboys busting broncs. One of the cowboys was the spitting image of skinny Elvis.

"Oh
kids
," Sonch cried in a sing-song voice, whacking the flat of his sword against a wall, "Uncle Maas says it's time to close up shop!" Arneson pointed his gun at the man in the underpants, who gulped and raised his hands higher.

From the hallway, a minute pinging noise and a metallic click. Arneson looked at Sonch.

It's only in movies that shotguns need to have the slide ratcheted before firing: in real life, so long as it's loaded and the safety's off, anyone can pick up a shotgun and let rip. It's only then that you have to jack the slide, to eject the expended shell and chamber the next. The sound Arneson heard was the safety, clicking off.

Arneson grabbed the front of Sonch's shirt and yanked him to the floor.

A shotgun roared, the blast magnified by the low ceilings and cheesy faux-woodgrain walls. The batwing doors blew out in a dusty cloud of shit-brown veneer and particle board. The man in rubber gloves howled in pain and dropped to the floor. He babbled in Spanish, sprinkled with a liberal helping of good old-fashioned American imprecation.

Arneson and Sonch crawled in the living-room on hands and knees and took position on either side of the entryway. Sonch squeegeed sweat off his forehead with the back of one skinny arm, grinning like a maniac.

A muffled voice from the hallway. "You motherfuckers don't get outta here now, you're dead!" A ratchet of the shotgun slide, and another blast that shook the house. Rubber-Gloves sobbed.

"OK, so maybe I was wrong about the guns." Sonch sounded like a kid at opening day of the fair. "I guess I didn't figure they kept them in the house."

"Why don't you wave that big, bad sword at them? I'm sure they'll drop down, no problem."

"You don't think I will? I'll chop their fuckin'
balls
off, man." Sonch uttered a wheezy giggle.

A new voice sounded from the hallway, panting as if the speaker was out of breath. "Get out of here or we're going to kill your ass!" The stink of spent gunpowder drifted into the living-room.

"Not a chance, fuckos!" Sonch cried in an ecstasy of delight. "Dennis Maas wants you out of this trailer, out of this town, and out of this county. We're here to escort you on the way. By the way, you just earned yourself a swift kick in the ass for your trouble." He looked around for something to break. He reversed the sword and brought the hilt smashing through a glass coffee table. Glass splashed like sharp water.

"You're the only guy I've ever heard of psycho enough to actually
enjoy
getting shot at while waving a sword around," Arneson said. "You have some serious issues, you know that?"

Sonch smoothed back his hair. "It's been mentioned, now and again. Teachers, jail-house headshrinkers, my dear sainted mother. I'm at peace with it."

Hissed conversation from beyond the batwings, and scuffling noises. "Tell Maas to suck cock in hell!"

"If we have to drag your ass out of here, you'll be waiting there to tell him yourself," Arneson said. "And he may not take it well. You know the rules. No one sets up shop anywhere around here unless he says so. Doesn't matter what it is. And he sure as hell didn't give permission for this shitty little operation."

More whispered conversation from the hallway. It sounded like they were arguing. "Listen, man, we're locals. We've been here our whole lives, you know what I'm saying? We got every right to be here." Two men's voices; nothing from the woman, so far.

"Are you seriously telling me that you have the right to run a meth house because you were
born
here? That's got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. And I spend a lot of time with Sonch, so that's going some."

Sonch giggled. "Hey, fuck you
compadre
. I was going to let you take a turn with the sword, but now you can forget it."

"What a shame."

"Chicks dig a guy that can handle a sword, that's all I'm saying."

"I hear they're also pretty wild about guys who aren't filled with shotgun holes."

"Aw, what, is the big man scared? Speaking of pussy, man, you see that hot little piece visiting Maas? Shoo
ee
, ain't she something?"

"I noticed. Now pay attention."

Arneson groped around the corner, fishing for something. After a few seconds, he found what he was looking for and dragged it back. It was the guy in the rubber gloves, moaning and gabbling and rubbing at a series of raw red pockmarks where the buckshot had ripped into his ass. He was young, maybe fourteen or fifteen.

"Shut up." Arneson slapped him across the face. The kid cried harder. Arneson rolled his eyes and smacked him again, this time with the back of his hand. Rubber gloves sniveled, but this time his eyes focused. "Paying attention? Good. Are these guys killers?"

"W-w-what?" He had a weak, wobbling chin and an asthmatic wheeze. "What do you mean?"

"I mean have you ever seen these guys kill anyone?"

Another blast from the shotgun, another rack of the slide, and another round of shouted imprecation. Sonch yelled at them to shut the fuck up.

The kid huddled against the wall like a kicked dog. "I don't
know
! Just let me out of here, please, I don't—"

Arneson slapped him again, and now the kid did start to cry, big snotty gasps for air like a long distance runner at the finish line. Arneson grabbed him by the face, holding him there. "Are they killers? Yes or no?" He raised his hand again.

"
No
! That's my cousin Rennie, he ain't no killer man, he's afraid of my Pekingese dog! The other guy, Jescoe—he tells stories about shit he's done, but Rennie says he's full of it and not to listen to anything he says. Now please, man, let me go. I'm hurt, man, just—"

"OK, OK, shut the fuck up," Arneson said. "I have an idea, but you're not going to like it."

Sonch shook his head at the kid, eyes pretend-sorrowful. "Oh man, I don't like the sound of that.
Hombre
here isn't some city-dick urban cowboy out here playing around. When he makes plans, people get hurt."

The kid, looking between the two of them, burst into tears again.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

TEENAGE SEX/DEATH SKUNGE CULT—SHOCKING VIDEO—CLICK HERE!

Sugar clicked the link.

The page loads, a black window with a bright orange time stamp in the bottom right-hand corner.

Las Vegas, 12:02 A.M.

The video fades in on a pretty young girl, large brown eyes, coffee-colored hair tied back in a ponytail. Her voice trembles, like she has just finished running. Or like she's afraid.

"Hey. My name is Alley Hernandez. I'm a journalism student at UNLV. First year. My blog...well, shit, my blog isn't important. It can't handle the hits anyway. I'm posting this to Reddit and Facebook and YouTube. It'll spread from there."

The orange flicker of streetlights, the droning hum of traffic passing. She sets the phone down on the passenger seat, starts the car and begins to drive. She turns her music up, tapping her fingers on the wheel, checking her mirrors every few seconds. After a few minutes, she sees something in the rear-view, and clicks her signal. She pulls to the side, eyes wide and nervous.

"People need to see this. You, your friends, kids at your school. Get the word out."

Headlights flash in the rear window as another car pulls in behind her. She leaves the engine running.

"Tonight, I'm meeting with a group of Skungers who call themselves 'The Doorway'. Some people call them a cult. The cops would love to know where their headquarters are."

A lean figure in a hooded sweatshirt, face obscured by shadows, approaches the car. Hernandez films his approach in the side mirror.

"Hey. You Hernandez?" The guy's voice is rough, grating. By the look of him, he is probably about twenty-five, and heavily infected with the Skunge. Tendrils of the stuff wormed in the shadows inside the hood.

"That's me. What's your name?"

"My name is Legion."

"Very funny. Seriously though, I'm recording this, so if you want to be famous, you may as well—"

The hood doesn't move. "My name is Legion."

Alley pauses. "Fine. Lay on, Macduff."

The Skunger leaves, Hernandez follows.

"I'm freaking out. I don't think I've ever been this scared. Not since I came out to my parents and they threw me out of the house. Those first nights on the street were rough. I was scared like this all the time." She drives another moment, then signals. "Pecos Road exit. Here I go."

Another five minutes of driving, and they arrive at a warehouse. It looks no different than any of the surrounding warehouses, except that there are lights on. As Hernandez exits her car, figures peel themselves from the shadows surrounding the building and approach. They resemble Legion; hoodies, jeans, sneakers. One has long hair, entwined with Skunge, hanging out of the hood, and small but evident breasts. None of them speak. She follows them inside, her camera on the broad back of the Skunger in front of her.

"Holy shit." The place is teeming with people. Young people. They cover the floor, and blanket the walls. They stand, hands in pockets, hoods up, some wearing club gear, some in street wear. There's goths, jocks, skaters, jerkers, twerkers, stoners, preps.

"These kids are here for something they aren't getting anywhere else. Something they
can't
get anywhere else." Hernandez says, whispering into the camera. Her voice is just audible over the murmur of the crowd. Legion leads her through the cigarette haze, pushing his way through clots of young people. They give way readily. She films them as she passes; the camera records the open, innocent faces as well as the closed off, the doubtful, and the blank looks of those here for no reason they can explain. If you asked them, they might say they're here because their friends came here, or they read about it on the Internet, or they just wanted to check it out. But most of them would probably say they didn't know why they'd shown up. Just…because.