18 Wheels of Horror

by Eric Miller

  These trailer-trash King Shits, these gangster-wannabe King Shits, these muscle-bound King Shits with their chains and cages and fight rings. They were rapists of the animal kingdom, Old Man Gardner with a god complex.

  Thinking about Jimmy, Clay realized his war was only his boyhood self still searching for redemption. A mask he hid behind, like the truck he spent so much time inside, a mask he couldn’t take off.

  He should have driven away, he should never have followed those men from the bar. What he had seen today, written on those pit bulls’ faces, was the end of every King Shit in Grimsbo, population about to drop. Even Meat’s three-story headquarters looked like a King Shit house.

  Blue sky, a day promising to top a hundred, a day for glaring sun and bug splats on the windshield while he tore up the interstate, and Clay sat in his truck picturing the .50-caliber Desert Eagles he kept in a briefcase. Nasty way to send a man to the underworld.

  Little by little, like dawn breaking over years, Clay had made peace with death. He knew that for every man he hunted, he brought death closer. Chasing down foes in his 18-wheel King Shit chariot, Clay the ultimate King Shit, a King Shit killer of King Shits. That, he’d learned in his forty-one years, was how the universe worked. When shadows peeled back the world and all you saw were your sins, reflections of reflections, mirrored to infinity. Whether he died in the next few minutes or lived to fight another day, a King Shit killer was coming for him.

  So bright the sunbaked asphalt, so sour-sweet the gummy bears he chewed while he stared at the opened side of the van where the pit bulls had been. Thinking about them, about Jimmy, voices from the past chattering in back of his mind—and then:

  “Don’t move, Clay,” David, still thirteen years old, making Clay wait after all those years. Some wisp of foreknowledge sampling from his worst memory, guiding him into another dark forest.

  Minutes later, Meat pushed out the front door.

  “We’re heading out,” he said to someone inside.

  So that was why Clay’s subconscious urged him to wait. Meat would lead him to Sin Mountain.

  Clay watched over twenty people stream out of the house and disperse into vehicles. Beach Ball and Frankenstein’s Monster and Pencil-Neck. Van Driver and Dog Walker, minus the dogs. All dudes except for a skinny blonde in a Jeep convertible, turning out of the cul-de-sac onto the lane intersecting with the dead-end street. Clay started the truck and followed the procession to a freeway on-ramp. A mile out of town Meat’s Escalade turned right onto a rural road and led the convoy up a steep, golden hill. Clay followed, hanging back so he’d have plenty of room to pull over when they reached their destination. This turned out to be the gravel drive of a big white farmhouse.

  The only house within miles, atop a blaze of arid land known as Sin Mountain.

  Through his binoculars he scanned the trees and fence obscuring the property. Place like that, they didn’t want you crapping in their backyard.

  “Well, Jimmy,” Clay said, “looks like we’re finally gonna pay back Old Man Gardner.”

  ***

  Over the top didn’t begin to describe them—the hand cannons under his armpits. Bought from a guy on the Internet at a reasonable price, if your tastes included signed Picassos and rare Scotch. Over four pounds each, ten-inch barrels, titanium gold finish, custom gold-plated grips featuring a black dog with glowing red eyes. Hellhounds. The seller gave them funky names from Welsh myth, but Clay just called them Jimmy One and Jimmy Two.

  So far, the Jimmies had only shot pumpkins. The exit holes so big Clay could put his fist through them.

  Truly a King Shit weapon, how a shotgun blast must have felt to a twenty-pound dog taking a crap. Clay’s “Rebirth-day” gift to himself came with the custom double-gun shoulder holster and leather briefcase. The seller had a flair for the cinematic.

  Long shot of Clay driving across open field, his big rig black as dreamless sleep, a shadow growing under the eye of the sun.

  No plan, just jump down, point, shoot. Dumb as Chrome Dome’s stick fight technique, but it was now or never, he should’ve been on the road by now.

  The Jimmies hungered for more than pumpkin seeds and pulp.

  Anyway, probably the whole town knew what Meat’s gang was up to and all they worried about were law agencies spread too thin for some Podunk animal abusers. Last thing they’d expect was a battle with a long-haul truck driver.

  Sin Mountain: Dead land ready to catch fire and a King Shit party at the far end. It could have been some farmer’s family picnic, people drinking beer and standing around or sitting in lawn chairs. But then there was that pavilion-type thing back by the trees, like a wooden carport built around a large, empty sandbox. Cars parked around it, except where a wooded trail sheltered some dozen dogs chained to overturned barrels, some lumped on their sides, not moving.

  Now Meat kicked something in the sandbox—the fight ring—something too small to see over the low wall. He went after it and kicked it again, while a buffed shirtless dude in a doo-rag jerked the chain on a pit bull in one corner.

  Those Hellhounds, they were the most decadent purchase Clay ever made, but he knew someday he’d need them.

  His last delivery: Pain and humiliation, right on time.

  He rolled in slowly, honking thunder as if the crowd were kids pulling on an air horn. By now everyone was watching him. The skinny blonde grabbed something from her Jeep, and Meat vaulted from the ring, striking his best college bouncer pose in a gap between parked cars.

  Clay killed the engine. Jumped down from the cab. Heat and parched grass smells hit him.

  Meat’s sleeveless T-shirt said, “Do you even lift, bro?”

  “Jesus,” Meat said, “it’s Jim Carrey—”

  BAWWWWMMM!

  That was Jimmy One, and the blonde on Clay’s right fell behind the Jeep, shotgun pointed skyward.

  BAWWWWMMM!

  Jimmy Two barked left at a redheaded guy reaching down the back of his jean shorts. Blood and entrails showered the tree behind him. He collapsed next to a dog lump.

  Someone screamed. People ran for cover. Jimmy One followed Pencil-Neck around back of the ring, turned his face into a menstrual explosion. Guy in a feathered pimp hat had made it to the trail when Jimmy Two turned his chest into a porthole, flashing a gap in the trees ahead.

  Hellhounds.

  Silly, Clay knew, giving his guns personalities like he was a hit man in the movies. But then, they were his muscle, weren’t they, like Chris Kezzlewick had David and Quinton? And this was his rape stage, his forest.

  These metaphors of male potency, extensions of the rapist’s will, forcing themselves on people where holes weren’t supposed to be.

  Clay heard screaming inside the ring. Doo-Rag had let the pit bull loose, and instead of charging Clay it seized in its teeth the thing Meat had been kicking. The small, fawn-colored dog thrashed in the pit bull’s jaws. Flopped behind the low wall and swung up again, its cries so shrill Clay felt his blood turn to crushed glass. Jimmy Two put down both animals with a bullet through the pit bull’s muzzle.

  To the right: Chakk-chakk… BOOOMMM!

  Beach Ball with Blonde Girl’s shotgun, nicking a corner post of the ring.

  Jimmy One and Jimmy Two tore into him, his third-trimester gut.

  The spent cartridges whipped past Clay’s face.

  Hellhounds.

  “Anyone else?” Clay pointed them, side by side, at the crowd. “What about the house?” to Meat. “Anyone in there?”

  “No, man.”

  BAWWWWMMM!

  Jimmy One saw Cell Phone Guy before Clay, scalped him with his sunglasses sitting on his head. He crumpled out of sight between a Corvette and a Buick.

  Where he fell came a ring tone: Wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka.

  Pac-Man, eating.

  Meat hit a biceps shot, palming his forehead.

  “Everyone put their hands up,” Clay said. “No one uses cell phones. Sure there’s no one in the house?
”

  “No, man. I mean yes. Fucking yes.” Then, “What is this? You were parked back at the house, right? What the hell do you want?”

  “I want your people to get in back of my truck.”

  “What for?”

  Jimmy Two pointed at Meat’s chest. The part that said, “bro.” “Everyone but you.”

  Meat scowled. “You got six rounds left.”

  “That’s right.”

  Not including the magazines in his cargo pants pockets.

  “Anyone want a piece of my Jimmies?” Clay shouted.

  Wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka

  Meat said, “You’re something, man.”

  “Someone should answer that phone.”

  “But you said no—”

  BAWWWWMMM!

  “Five rounds left,” Clay said, Doo-Rag, still in the ring, pulling his hand back from his right boot.

  “You want something to do, big man, open the trailer door on my truck. Let’s go, people, form a line.”

  Doo-Rag went to the back of the truck. Meat next, everyone else filing after him, hands raised, the Jimmies tracking them. “Used to drive long haul myself.” Doo-Rag, arms akimbo, stared up at the empty trailer. “It’s going to be hot as hell in there.”

  “Like those dogs you got chained.”

  Doo-Rag turned to Clay. “Man, those are dogs, four-legged things, this is what they do.” Nodding toward the ring. “You, you’re killin’ people.”

  “People, huh?”

  “Heat stroke, starvation, whatever you got planned—it’s monstrous.”

  Doo-Rag was a monster himself. Chiseled, in olive-drab fatigues and black boots—Clay hadn’t forgotten the piece hidden in the right—tattoos on front and back like giant monk script, illegible against the dark canvas of muscle. Knife scar where the right pectoral tied in with the front deltoid. Bad dude, but he had a point. Clay with his Hellhounds and trailer-cum-death-chamber, like some King Shit Nazi…he hadn’t thought what to do when the shooting ended.

  “Two-legged things,” he said finally. “Okay, here’s what we do. First, everyone else gets in the trailer. Then you shut the door and go to the ring. You, too, bro,” Jimmy Two pointing at Meat, “and you three, Frankenstein.” Jimmy One waving at the sleepy-eyed brute near the back of the line. “Let’s go, people, this isn’t a spectator event.”

  Dog Walker, last inside the furnace, glared down at Clay. “You’re gonna get your ass whupped.”

  Doo-Rag shut the trailer door.

  Meat, Doo-Rag, and Frankenstein’s Monster went to the ring. Clay approached from the trail side, the chained dogs eying him, ears forward, brows furrowed. He kenneled his Hellhounds, removed the shoulder holster and laid it at his feet. Stepping over the low wall, he took a spot behind the dead dogs, conjoined at fang and face. The warning he’d fired at Doo-Rag through the low wall had ripped a hole in the pit bull’s underbelly, pooling guts and sticky stuff on the killing floor.

  Lined behind the dog mess the three men exchanged glances.

  “Two-legged things,” Clay said. “This is what we do.”

  The ring was infernally hot, a miasma of old contests and fresh kill. Adrenaline gripped the men in place, unsure how to triple-team their opponent.

  Two-legged things, doing what four-legged things do.

  Outside the ring, two-legged and four-legged things dead or dying under the eye of the sun.

  Hop-stepping around the dogs, Clay threw a shield up—elbows and front knee covering groin and midsection—and blocked Frankenstein’s Monster’s roundhouse kick. He chopped the man’s windpipe, then bent his arm back so that Doo-Rag, knife flashing from the right boot, bayoneted a corpse. Doo-Rag threw a hook around the human obstacle in his face. Clay straight-arm blocked it, released Frankenstein’s Monster, and stabbed his fingers in Doo-Rag’s eyes.

  For an instant he felt a phantom, a flicker of temperature behind him as he finished Doo-Rag with an elbow to the temple. For an instant he became a child again, back in the nightmare forest. Chris Kezzlewick snaking over him, breathing on him. “Don’t move Clay.” David’s ghost, freezing him.

  For an instant. Then he felt a death grip on his shoulders, and teeth tear into his earlobe. Clay twisted with elbow out, knocking Meat off balance.

  Stepping around the dog mess again—now a heap of four- and two-legged things—he thrust his fingers into Meat’s mastoid process.

  Clay didn’t fight people, he dissected them.

  But now training turned into something other than self-defense.

  Like his Hellhounds, he hungered.

  A four-legged thing descended on Meat’s sprawled body. A digestive tract in the guise of a man, boiling with pain and blood lust. There was a script to it, the feeding. Clamp hands around prey’s neck. Smell its fear. Bite off piece of prey’s upper lip, like tearing open a bag with your teeth. Create an entry point.

  Clay spat out the chunk of lip—Meat wouldn’t be able to pronounce “lip” after that—and bit off pieces around the mouth. Speech, what two-legged things do. Then he bit off part of the tongue—Meat wouldn’t be able to pronounce “tongue” after that—chewing, rending, working through the eyeballs, ears, nose cartilage. Meat kicked and flailed under the onslaught, shrieking like the little fawn dog. He tried to whip Clay with the chain around the pit bull’s neck. Clay slammed Meat’s arm down, then dug his fingers in the nose holes of the face beneath Meat’s face.

  Monstrous.

  It was a red skull Clay left when he walked back to the truck. “An eye for an eye,” an ear for a face—a face for every animal that had perished where Meat now lay screaming.

  Meat, he hadn’t even bitten all the way through Clay’s earlobe. Mistake like that would have cost him if he’d been one of his own fight dogs.

  Clay started the truck.

  He hit the accelerator, Meat crawling toward him, at the front of the ring. One arm over the low wall, teeth gritted in that anatomy-chart face—at the last instant he jerked up and seemed to blink his lidless, eyeless eyes. Then the semi plowed through him and the low wall and clove the roof down the middle, slamming to a halt on the jumble of dead men and dead dogs in a cloud of dust and falling wood debris.

  Clay dropped down from the cab, sunlight pouring in where holes weren’t supposed to be, yelling and pounding and bumping inside the trailer where people weren’t supposed to be, and the floor around the tractor unit streaked with gore. Meat’s body laid out in a smeary contortion of limbs and spine and what looked like a raw ham hock with hair and, “lift, bro?” more identifiable than the rest of him sticking out under the fuel tank. It reeked of slaughter.

  End of the line.

  Clay staggered out of the ring where he’d entered, strapped on his shoulder holster. Doleful eyes watched him. He was always amazed at how tender the world could be in the aftermath of violence. Odor of gunpowder, corpses, and spent cartridges strewn around the field and the chained dogs gazing at him like sad mothers. Sun blazing down on the rape he’d made of man and earth.

  Sin Mountain, Clay’s masterpiece.

  I’m everything I hate, he thought.

  He wandered through the carnage.

  I’ve turned my truck, my sanctuary, into a weapon. I’ve turned Jimmy into a weapon. I’ve turned my body into a weapon. I’ve disgraced my teacher, my art. And I’ve walked on four legs, I’ve tasted the flesh of my enemy.

  For the second time that day, Clay dropped to all fours.

  His bowels seized, and conscience shot from him like it would never stop. It erupted with the force of weeping held back for years, racking gut-sobs of inestimable loss. His body wept for itself, every monstrous thing he’d made it do and remember. A river of death, sludgy and putrid, flooded from his mouth, bounteous and indifferent to his torment. He clawed the earth, hands soaked in mud and the pain of men, until only drool came and he fell on his back. Blue throbbed in his vision, death sky-written where no birds soared.

  Then he slipped into dr
eamless sleep, black as the prison where Meat’s people cried out.

  ***

  Wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka

  The Pac-Man ring tone jerked Clay awake.

  Wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka

  He got to his feet and drew Jimmy One.

  Something caught his eye near the trail. A figure fleeing toward the woods. He had the impression it wasn’t clothed, and didn’t know how to run. Arms flailing, feet slapping down like clown shoes. Body of a lanky, undersize youth, how Clay was when he was twelve, swallowed by another forest. Only this stranger seemed eager, even desperate, to plunge into the woods.

  No visible musculature, no butt crack, no hair even. The dogs saw it, too, watched it dash past, this live mannequin. They looked at Clay then. Their eyes said, What are you going to do?

  He holstered the gun. Whoever it was could have attacked him and opted for escape. His gut—what he hadn’t puked, what was left of it—told him he had a mess to clean up.

  Morbid curiosity made him check the mountain he’d heaved, only to find the ground was clean. Not a scrap of Clay’s moral bulimia remained in the puke-yellow grass. Like the first time Jimmy barfed and when Clay brought paper towels it was all gone, Jimmy licking his paws.

  The chained pits, still staring.

  What are you going to do?

  The sun was still high in the sky. He hadn’t been out for long.

  He had five rounds in the Jimmies and four magazines in his pants’ pockets. Thirty-three rounds left, and seventeen people he’d counted climbing into the trailer. Some pounding the wall now. They would be his last kills. Then his war was finished. The massacre here, it would expose him and he deserved to die as he lived, by his own vengeance. Jimmy One would get the privilege, nasty way to send a man to the underworld.

  Sin Mountain, Clay’s self-portrait.

  His swan song.

  He fed the Hellhounds fresh magazines and went to the back of the truck.

  Then he heard tires and saw a car coming toward him. He stepped out to meet it, Jimmy One drawn. The pounding in the trailer doubled. People shouted. Through the cracked, dusty windshield, Herc met his eye.