You Only Die Twice (15 page)

“I’m so
sorry.”

“You
don’t need to apologize to me, Kenneth,” Ted said, turning to his left and
looking down the road, where he thought he could hear something, though he
wasn’t exactly what.
 
“It’s not
about me.
 
You need to admit your
guilt and promise to God that you will never repeat the sin again.
 
Are you willing to do that?”

“Of
course, I am.”
 
He started to
weep.
 

Now Ted
understood the sound.
 
A car was
coming in their direction.
 

“I
didn’t mean any of it,” Kenneth said.
 
“I’m just caught up, that’s all.
 
I know we work well together.
 
I’ll never do it again.
 
I
promise.
 
And I do repent.
 
I do.”

“Kenneth,
I need you to stand up.”

But
Kenneth didn’t hear him.
 
He was in
touch with God.
 
He was in the in
between.
 
He was on a higher plane
and his soul was dizzy from it.
 
“I
know I did wrong by You today.
 
I’m
so sorry to You and to Ted.
 
Please
forgive me, Father.”

“You
need to stand up.
 
Now.”

“What
Ted and I have created has helped to cleanse the world of its whorish
sinners.
 
We’ve made a
difference.
 
Not nearly enough, for
sure, but we’ve done things that no one has done and we will soldier on.”

Soon,
the car would crest the hill far off to their left.
 
“Get up,” he said to Kenneth.
 
“Get up!”

But
Kenneth, in the full throes of the Lord and how he had sinned against Him,
lowered his face to Ted’s boots.
 
He
pressed his cheek against them, he kissed them, he lifted his hands to Ted’s
calves, he leaned his face against his knees, and he cried.
 
When he did so, the car came over the
hill and Ted nudged Kenneth with his foot.
 

“
Get
the fuck up!
”

But it
was too late.
 
The sight of a grown
man on his knees in front of another grown man in a barren place like Monson
was enough to get that car to slow down and for its driver to take notice.
 
As if in a fog, Kenneth turned to it
slowly, tears streaming down his face as the car rolled to a stop beside them.
 
It was a gold LeBaron, probably from the
early eighties, with barely any treads on its tires and eaten through with
rust.
 
A portion of one of the rusty
holes was covered with a bumper sticker that said, “Honey Boo Boo is Ma Boo.”
 
Inside were three men, all wearing
orange vests and orange caps.
 
Rifles
probably in the trunk.
 

Hunters.

The
passenger, an obese man with a thick, grisly gray beard that was so bushy, it
concealed his mouth, raised his eyebrows at them and pressed a button that
rolled down the passenger-side window.
 
Sitting in the passenger seat was a skinny man half the driver’s age
with a thin black mullet.
 
He was
chewing something that wasn’t gum or food.
 

Tobacco
, Ted
thought.

The
passenger sneered down at Kenneth, who was still on his knees, and then he
looked over at the man who was driving.
 
Ted noted that the driver’s gut was so big, it sagged upon the steering
wheel.

“What’s
goin’ on?” the driver said.

“My
friend here just got the news that his daddy died.
 
He’s not taking it well.”

“That
so?” the driver said.

Ted
nodded.
 
“Just got the news on his
cell.”

“Well,
if that’s true, that sucks.
 
But
between us?
 
It looked like he was
about to give you a blow job.”

“A
what?”

He
raised his voice.
 
“I said, it
looked like he was about to suck your dick.
 
Right out here in public.”

Everyone
in the car broke into laughter.
 
Kenneth stood and faced them.
 
For a moment, it was clear that they were assessing his size and his
sheer muscular bulk, and that they were surprised by it.
 
Then something else flickered in their
eyes.
 
Recognition.

“How do
I know you?” the driver asked.

“You
don’t.”

“Not
true.
 
I’ve seen you somewhere
before.
 
Recent.”

“You’ve
never seen me before.”

The men
in the car exchanged glances.
 
“He
look familiar to you two?” the driver asked his friends.

They
nodded, but all agreed they didn’t know why.
 
“It’s not as if we hang around with a
couple of fags,” the man with the mullet said.

“What
makes you think we’re a couple of fags?” Kenneth said.

“Because
you were on your knees about to suck him off.
 
Looked pretty fuckin’ obvious to
me.”
 

“I said
he lost his father,” Ted said.
 
“I
told you he was upset.”

“Why
don’t I believe that?”

In Ted’s
jacket pocket was his Glock.
 
It
would be easy to grab and to use, provided they didn’t have guns in their laps,
which they might.
 
“I don’t give a
shit what you believe.”

A
silence stretched.

The
driver stared at Kenneth’s face.
 
“I
know you, boy.”

Kenneth
stepped forward.
 
“Want to know what
I know?”

“Enlighten
me.”

“I know
that sloth is a sin.
 
And so is
gluttony.”

“Gluttony?
 
What the fuck is gluttony?”

“Greedy
and excessive indulgence.
 
Since you
probably don’t even know what that means, let me bring it down to your
level.
 
It’s eating everything in
sight.
 
It’s not stopping.
 
It’s gorging yourself full of food and
then eating more.”

“You
callin’ me fat, boy?”

“Are you
suggesting that you’re not?”

“He’s
callin’ you fat, Roy,” the man in the passenger seat said.

“Actually,
I’m saying that Roy here is a lazy fat fuck.
 
And as for you, Smokey, it looks like
Satan himself ate away at your diseased teeth and rotten gums.”

“You got
a mouth on you, boy.”

“And
least I can see mine,” Kenneth said to the driver.
 

“Nobody
calls me fat, motherfucker.”

“I
believe I just did, Roy.
 
That, and
you’re a disgrace.
 
You’re a
sinner.
 
And the rest of these
beasts in this shithole of a car with you?
 
They’re all the same, because sinners attract sinners like flies to a
piece of dog shit.
 
You all breed
sin.
 
I can smell it on you.
 
It reeks of filth.
 
It’s spoiling the air.”

“Can you
believe this shit?” the man in the backseat said.
 
He was somewhere in his fifties with
short, wavy blond hair.
 
His skin
was pockmarked and had a reddish complexion.
 
“That cocksucker is tryin’ to take us
on.
 
What fag thinks he can take on
the three of us?
 
Couple of fruits,
that’s who.
 
Boys, we got us a
strawberry and a dingleberry thinking they can give us shit.”

They
started to laugh again.

While
they did, Ted Carpenter pulled his Glock out of his jacket pocket and pointed
it at the driver.
 
“Hands up, Roy,”
he said.
 
“That also goes for the
rest of you.”

But
nobody moved.
 

“You
think no one is gonna hear a gunshot, asshole?” Roy said.
 
“Or
three
gunshots?
 
Or
twenty
?
 
Because that’s what it’s going to take
to take us out.
 
This place ain’t
nothin’ but a pool of silence.
 
They’ll
hear it all, they’ll call the police and you’ll roast in hell.
 
Fuck you if you can’t take a joke.”

“So, now
it’s a joke?”

“Sure, it’s a
joke―on you, shitfuck.
 
Go
ahead.
 
Shoot.
 
Or do you even have the balls to shoot
us?
 
When someone hears it, your
asses will be hauled to prison, and in the end, even if you do kill us, you’ll
die in court, you’ll be sent t
o prison, and right there, all of your
faggot dreams will come true.
 
Your
asses will be fucked long and hard by dozens of other faggots, which I bet is
just how you’d like it.”

“Have
you noticed that my gun has a silencer?” Ted asked.

Three
sets of eyes looked on the barrel of the gun.
 
By their blank expressions, they hadn’t
noticed.
 
They looked back at him
and said nothing.

“Put
your hands up where I can see them.”

The
driver, Roy, looked at the man beside him.
 

“I asked
you to put your hands up.”

“Just do
it, Jimmy,” Roy said.
 
“Fuckin’ do
it.”

“You’re
name is Jimmy?” Ted said to the man beside Roy.

“You
don’t need to know my name, faggot.”

Ted
cocked the gun and pointed it at the man’s forehead.
 
“I’ll ask again.
 
Is your name Jimmy?”

The man
looked at the gun and swallowed hard.
 
“Look, we didn’t mean to cause any trouble, OK?
 
We’re all just a little drunk.
 
We spent the morning at Judy’s in
Bangor.
 
Beer and eggs, but I ain’t
gonna lie.
 
It was mostly beer.
 
Shootin’ the shit, watching some TV.
 
Now
, we’re going huntin’.
 
Yearly tradition.
 
That’s all.
 
No need to take any of this
personal―”
 
He stopped short
and turned to Kenneth, his eyes wider than they were a moment ago.
 
“The TV,” he said.
 
“You’re the guy in the drawing they
showed on the news.
 
That was your
face.
 
That’s how we know you.”

“You saw
my face on the news?” Kenneth asked.

Roy
leaned down and looked at Kenneth.
 
“That’s right,” he said.
 
“That’s you.
 
You’re the one
this whole fuckin’ state is lookin’ for.
 
You’re the one wanted for rape.”

“So,
there goes your faggot theory,” Kenneth said.
 
“And just so you know, when I raped that
whore, I pounded the shit out of her.
 
I made it hurt.
 
And right
now, behind me in those woods, is her friend Cheryl Dunning, another whore
we’re going to kill because that’s what we do.
 
We rid the world of diseased sinners
like them and, frankly, like you.”

Knowing
this had to end now, Ted Carpenter pulled the trigger and Jimmy’s head, with
its ratty mullet and his ruined teeth, exploded onto Roy’s face and his balloon
of a gut.
 
He yelped in horror,
pushed Jimmy off him and scrambled to put the car in gear while the man in the
back seat started to scream.

Ted
aimed his gun at his screaming mouth, shot and silenced him.
 
Then, before any other car could appear
on either horizon, he took aim at Roy, who was trying to get the LeBaron’s
thankless transmission into gear, and blew a hole through his temple, which
sent his head smashing through the side window.

But he
didn’t die.
 
At least not then.

Like
some sort of massive, maimed animal who couldn’t be brought down with a single
shot, he started to convulse.
 
His
jaw yawned open and his tongue darted out as the shock of his own impending
death pressed down upon him.
 
No
part of his body knew what to do with itself.
 
His hands quivered as his arms lifted
and slammed against the dashboard.
 
His legs raised and fell.
 
Because of his enormous, rock-hard ball of a stomach, which was wedged
against the steering wheel, he couldn’t really move.
 
He was imprisoned by his own
gluttony.
 
When his head turned
sharply in Ted’s direction, the man’s eyes seemed to have doubled in size.
 
From the bottom of his bottomless gut,
he let out some kind of roar.
 
Was
it anger?
 
Fear?
 
Didn’t matter.
 
Whatever the sound was, he was certain
it was Satan speaking to him, and so Ted put a bullet through one of those
bulging eyes and Roy, who had a Honey Boo Boo bumper sticker covering a hole in
the side of his car and who had eaten himself into a four-hundred-pound
birthday suit, slumped forward, dead.