by Jack Quaid
Knox cocked his head. “Expecting somebody else?” Corey asked. “I heard you had yourselves a slasher problem,” Corey said, lowering his hands and stepping into the station.
“How’d you hear that?”
“You left a message on my machine.”
Belinda, with the blanket still wrapped around herself, took a couple of steps forward. “We called Parker Ames.”
“Well,” Corey said, “Parker Ames has been missing for years.”
“Where is she?” Belinda asked.
“If I knew that, she wouldn’t be missing, now would she?”
Knox lowered the shotgun but still let it linger in his hands. “So who the hell are you?”
Corey set fire to a cigarette. “I’m the guy that turned up to sort out your slasher problem. Lucky for you I was down in Butte, getting one of those bison burgers I like, when I picked up your message. Now do you want my help or not? Because otherwise, bison burgers await.”
Knox looked him up and down, sizing him up. “Have you dealt with this kind of thing before?”
Corey took a couple of steps forward and slowly rolled up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal a couple of dozen skull and crossbones tattooed on his arm. “I’ve got one for every slasher I’ve sent back to hell.”
Knox raised his eyebrow; it pulled up half his face. “Do you have a plan?”
Corey smiled. “Yeah, dude. You’re going to love it.”
Ten
Nope. Nobody loved it. Belinda didn’t love it—that was for sure. She shuffled down the main street of Columbia Falls, thinking to herself that it was the worst idea in the history of ideas.
It was the middle of the night. She had no weapon or backup, and from experience, from everything she knew, she had no chance in hell of surviving in one piece. She looked over her shoulder back down the street with stores that were all closed, empty, and dark. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
“Stupid plan,” she muttered to herself, turning back around. “You’re an idiot. What the hell are you even doing?”
Right behind her, right exactly where Belinda had been looking only a moment earlier, Hurricane Williams stepped out of the darkness and into the street. The machete in his hand was so long that when he held it low along his leg, the tip scraped along the road as he walked, sending a screech into the night.
It was that screech that made Belinda stop in her tracks and look back. “Here we go,” she said.
Just as those words left her lips, Hurricane Williams took off running, and there were no two ways about it—Hurricane Williams was coming straight for her.
Belinda didn’t waste any time. Her Doc Martens pounded the pavement, and within seconds, she was running as fast as she possibly could. She peeled off Main Street and into an alley, and Hurricane was right there behind her with his footsteps hitting so hard the thumps reverberated off the walls and echoed around.
Belinda busted out onto 1st Street. She looked over her shoulder saw Hurricane right there, still right on her tail, and by the look of him, he wasn’t slowing up anytime soon.
Covered in sweat and out of breath, Belinda pushed through the pain in her legs and ran through the open gates of Darnell’s Auto Junkyard. Empty carcasses of Chevys and Cadillacs were stacked fifteen or twenty feet high, creating hallways of metal and chrome. Belinda raced through those car-made halls, but no matter how fast she ran, Hurricane Williams was gaining on her. It was just a matter of time before he was within arm’s reach, and when that happened, it would be all over for Belinda.
She ran into a clearing surrounded by a wall of cars. She looked left and right, but there was no way out except for the way she’d come in and with Hurricane right behind her, that wasn’t an option.
She ran as far as she could, turned, slammed her back against a wall of crushed metal, and waited. She was out of breath and out of options.
Hurricane had her, and he knew it. The slasher slowed his run to a walk, and as he approached his prey, he gripped that machete tightly in his hand. At best, Belinda had seconds left.
Then just as he was about to move in for the kill, Belinda yelled, “Wait! Wait! Wait!”
Hurricane paused and cocked his head, trying to work out what she was up to.
“Just wait right there.” Then she looked up and shouted, “Now!”
Right above him, dangling from a crane, was a 1984 Lincoln Continental.
“Now! Now! Now!”
If Hurricane had any ideas about running, jumping, or simply just getting the hell out of the way, he didn’t have the time to implement any of those things because up in the crane was Knox. When he heard Belinda yell, he pressed one of the buttons on the crane’s control panel and released the Continental from the grasp of the crane.
For a brief moment, it looked to Belinda as if the car was just hovering in midair for a moment or two before it came hurtling down and crushed Hurricane into the ground as if he were made of paper.
A cloud of dust kicked up and engulfed the entire clearing for a couple of seconds, and when it dissipated, Corey Hayes was standing there with a chain saw in his hands. Belinda went to stand alongside him, and by the time she was there, Knox had climbed down from the control box on the crane. All three of them looked at the crushed wreck of the Continental.
“Is that it?” Belinda asked.
“I’ve seen a slasher walk through a burning house while on fire, and I’ve seen a slasher chase somebody on the stumps of their bloody legs. What I’ve never seen is a slasher walk away from being crushed under a two-ton Lincoln Continental,” Corey said.
Then what was left of that Lincoln shuddered, shifted, and moved. There was something clearly and undeniably shaking and moving under what was left of that car.
“Come on?” Corey said. “Get out of town.”
Metal-on-metal grinded together as what was left of the car shook, then out of the middle, Hurricane Williams tore through what used to be the car’s roof and climbed on top of the wreck like a hero who had just conquered some vicious enemy. He aimed his head to the moon and screamed out a war cry that made the hairs on Belinda’s neck stand up.
“I’m going to be honest with you both,” Corey said to the others. “This is not how I thought this night was going to go.”
“What do we do?” Knox asked.
“The way I see it, we’ve got two options,” he said. “The first option is to scream at the top of our lungs and run and hide somewhere.”
“And this other option?” Knox asked.
Corey cranked up the chain saw. “Start taking body parts.”
He stepped forward, ready to go toe to toe with Hurricane. The slasher jumped off what was left of the Continental and hit the ground with a thud.
Corey revved the chain saw a couple of times. “It’s on like Donkey Kong.”
Hurricane Williams took off running toward Corey Hayes, and Corey stood firm, ready to take on that beast of beasts. Belinda and Knox wanted no part of what was about to go down and stepped as far away from Corey as they possibly could.
They were almost about to collide when Corey swung the chain saw back, ready to strike. He squeezed the trigger. The chain spun around quickly, and when Hurricane was in range, Corey went in for the attack, swinging that chain saw right at the slasher.
Without any hesitation whatsoever, Hurricane caught the chain saw blade in his bare hands. In. His. Bare. Hands. He ripped it away from Corey as if it were nothing more than a toy, snapped the bastard in two, and tossed it aside.
Shocked, Corey paused, then he shot a look at Knox and Belinda. “It’s probably a good time to go with option one.”
They were still struggling to come to terms with what they had just seen, and neither of them could take their eyes off Hurricane.
Then Corey snapped them back into the nightmare they were in. “Run!”
And the three of them hit the road as fast as they could through the maze of broken cars, chrome, and metal. Not one of them had the guts to look ba
ck. In fact, they didn’t even need to look back because each of them could hear the heavy and god-awful thumps chasing them out of the corridor of dead cars in Darnell’s Auto Junkyard and out into the street.
As soon as their feet hit the road, Knox made the biggest mistake of his life. He tripped over an uneven bit of road and fell flat on his face. In the terms of who was winning in the race out of the junkyard, it was a close call for first and second with Belinda and Corey, but it was as clear as day that Knox was coming in dead last.
Belinda turned. “Get up! Get up! Get up!”
But there was no chance. He was down for the count, and within seconds, Hurricane was on top of him, machete in hand and ready to get to work.
Knox and Corey caught each other’s eyes. It was the end of the line, and they both knew it.
Hurricane raised that gigantic machete into the night sky, where it caught the moonlight briefly, before slamming it back down so hard and fast that it cut Knox’s body in two! Horizontal. Right through his torso.
Belinda screamed, and when Hurricane heard the horror in her voice blasted down the street, his attention shifted from the corpse at his feet and refocused on Belinda and Corey.
“You should probably get out of here,” Corey said.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” he said as he turned to face her. “But if I were you, I’d totally get the hell out of here.”
Eleven
Belinda got the hell out of there. From the sheath hanging off Corey’s belt, he pulled out the machete. Written alongside the blade in bright white paint were the immortal words “Come as you are.”
He gripped it tightly and shifted his eyes back up to Hurricane. “Let’s go, slimeball.”
Hurricane didn’t need to be told twice. He stepped over the two separate pieces of the former sheriff of Columbia Falls and made a beeline for Corey.
Corey tried to swallow, but his throat was dry, which never a good sign. Then he pulled a lungful of breath into his chest and pushed the fear down into the depth of his belly. ran straight at the slasher. He gripped the machete tightly and close to his body.
Hurricane saw the attack coming, and he wasn’t going down without a fight. He swung his own machete back, and when Corey was in range, he swung that big hunk of murderous metal Corey’s way.
Corey jumped right over it and swung his own blade—not once, not twice, but three times—before landing right behind Hurricane with ease. By the look of the half-American Ninja, half-Chuck Norris move, Corey had used that acrobatic stuff to send many slashers to hell before.
He looked over his shoulder back at Hurricane and was half expecting the big bastard to fall and say goodbye to the world, but nope. Although he was bleeding, Hurricane didn’t look ready to keel over and die anytime soon. In fact, he looked stronger than ever.
Corey wiped the sweat from his brow. “Do you think we could maybe get a time-out?”
Very slowly, Hurricane shook his head from left to right.
“That’s a shame,” Corey said. “I was really hoping we could.”
Hurricane swung his machete at Corey. It was going to be a massive blow, and Corey could see it coming a mile away. There wasn’t much he could do about it except for throwing up his own blade to block the blow. It worked… kind of.
Hurricane had so much power behind his attack that Corey’s weapon was smacked clean out of his hands, leaving him standing there with nothing but his charming personality to protect him—but really, that wasn’t going to get him far.
Without skipping a beat, Hurricane swung his foot upward, slammed it into Corey’s chest, and sent the young monster hunter flying across the road, where he crashed down hard onto the concrete.
Dazed and confused, Corey needed a couple of moments to catch up to the situation, and once he did, he opened his eyes and saw Hurricane towering over him with that machete dangling by his thigh. Corey saw his whole life flash before his eyes, and he had to admit it wasn’t great, but he didn’t have time to think much more about it right then.
Hurricane slammed his machete down, and it looked like it was all over for Corey Hayes—then at the last millisecond, he rolled to the side.
The blade struck the road with a flash of sparks and cracked the pavement. Hurricane pulled back to attack again, but again, Corey rolled—this time in the other direction. Hurricane’s blade hit into the concrete, and again, there was a flash of sparks.
Enough was enough. Hurricane lifted his big, dirty boot and pushed it down on Corey’s chest, pinning him firmly to the ground. There was no more rolling around for Corey. He kicked and thrashed, and he was almost out of breath with the heavy boot crushing his chest when he saw headlights punch out of the darkness of the empty Columbia Falls street.
Behind those headlights was a sheriff department Bronco, and behind the wheel of that Bronco was Belinda Hastings. The Bronco hit Hurricane Williams hard and fast and sent the slasher flying across the street. He came crashing down onto the road and rolled half a dozen times before coming to a stop with his body all battered and disjointed, with all the bendable parts bent in the wrong directions.
Belinda backed the Bronco up as Corey stumbled to his feet, then he climbed inside.
“Thanks,” Corey said, wincing in pain. “I needed that.”
Belinda peered through the windshield at that the mangled mess that was Hurricane Williams. “Is he dead?”
Corey leaned forward, and they both watched and waited. For a moment, it looked as if they might have just done it. Then a disjointed arm up shot up. It started to crack back into place, along with the rest of his body as it put itself back together.
Belinda winced at the horrifying scene she was witnessing. “What do we do?”
He had battled dozens of slashers all over the country. He had taken out the Backstab Killer in Kentucky and the Mincer in upstate New York. He’d even gone toe to toe with Crazy Jane Roberts, but some slashers were more persistent, more powerful, and just downright more evil than others. Hurricane Williams was one of those slashers.
He had only ever known one person to send Hurricane Williams to hell.
“There’s only one thing left to do,” Corey said. “We need to find Parker Ames.
Twelve
Corey Hayes hadn’t laid eyes on Parker Ames in close to ten years. Every once in a while, he’d heard a rumor about where she was, and like most rumors, they’d turned out to be bullshit told by bullshitters. That said, Corey needed to find Parker Ames pronto, which meant he need to sift through the bullshit to find the truth.
Corey called every number in the little black book that he kept in the glove compartment of the Eldorado, and for the most part, he got disconnected numbers, hang-ups, and answering machines. He must have left close to sixty messages over seven days, and not one person had called him back. But not everyone in their line of business had a phone. And not everybody in their line of business was easy to find.
Moe Crazy was one of those people.
Corey and Parker had come across Moe Crazy down in Florida sometime late in 1990 or 1991—Corey couldn’t remember exactly when, but he remembered exactly what had happened as if it were yesterday.
Some people said Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to be able to play the guitar like a badass. Some said David Hasselhoff sold his soul to the devil to get the role of Michael Knight in Knight Rider. It turned out that people selling their souls to the devil was a real thing. The problem with selling a soul to the devil is the devil actually expected the seller to live up to their end of the bargain. At the conclusion of the deal they absolutely must, as pursuant to the contract, deliver their soul to the devil. And the devil had a habit of “cursing” anyone who didn’t deliver. Now, Corey had always thought the wording in the contract was a bit vague, and the term “curse” was open to any number of interpretations. Apparently, a lot of the folks who made a deal with the devil tended to skim past the fine print, and in the ear
ly ’90s, Kristy Cameron was one of those people.
Kristy Cameron had wanted to be the most popular girl at South Miami High, and after she’d sold her soul to the devil, Kristy was. Within the short space of a few weeks, she had become the head cheerleader, started dating Chris Winters, the most popular boy in school, and was voted homecoming queen. It was everything she’d ever dreamed of, and after she had it all, she conned herself into believing that she had all those things not because the devil had given her a helping hand, but because she actually deserved them. So when it came time for the devil to collect the soul he was contractually entitled to, Kristy Cameron gave him the middle finger and told him to go to hell.
She should have read the small print. The devil didn’t take her popularity or homecoming crown away. He didn’t make everyone in her school hate her; he didn’t even make her ugly, which was what she’d feared most. The devil simply cursed her with an overpowering sense of paranoia. Within days, Kristy thought everybody was out to get her. She thought all the girls on the cheerleading team wanted her position as head cheerleader, that all her friends were out to steal her boyfriend, and that everybody in the school hated her guts. None of it was true. That didn’t matter, though. All that mattered was that Kristy Cameron thought it was true.
And she made damn sure that every last one of those girls would pay. It didn’t take long for those feelings of paranoia to turn murderous, and after that, it didn’t take long for the bodies to start stacking up at South Miami High. First were Melanie Hernandez, Hayley Cox, and Vanessa Perez on the cheer squad, then every girl in Chris Winters’s US History class in third period. And all of that happened within three weeks.
Like Parker and Corey, Moe Crazy read the papers, combing for details of slasher killings, and that particular story about a bunch of girls from the same school all dying in “strange accidents” or “unusual circumstances” had piqued both their interests. So when Parker and Corey arrived in South Miami, they arrived at roughly the same time as Moe Crazy.