Cat laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Lindsay and Brianna, they have to watch out for themselves now. We can’t help them. We have to help ourselves."
One of the mudroom windows shattered.
Heidi shrieked, ran across the room, and crouched inside the closet, where she buried her head in her arms.
More shattering glass. A giggle.
"Shit," Cat said. "Sorry, Steve."
He managed a smile. "Stay here. If anything happens to me, if there’s a bunch of them, run out the front door."
"Fuck that," she said and started toward the back of the house.
"Wait," Steve said. Shit, this girl was too tough for her own good. He pulled her shoulder and moved into the lead, holding the stick in both hands across his chest, like a quarterstaff. There wasn’t a lot of room in here.
The giggler came out of the shadows, filling the room with laughter, and sprinted face first into Steve’s kick. Steve had played some soccer as a kid—before he realized getting high and getting laid were much more fun—and his kick blasted the guy, sent his head back over his shoulders. The rest of him followed, pitching him onto his back. Steve gripped the stick like a Louisville Slugger, and when the asshole sat up, Steve let him have it just over the left ear.
Home run. The stick thocked on impact. The guy slumped sideways and didn’t move.
"Good job," Cat said.
"Shit, is he dead?" Steve said, poking the guy with the stick. The guy didn’t move. "Did I kill him?" He really didn’t want that on his conscience.
"No, he’s breathing. Be careful. He might be playing possum. Let’s see." She flicked out a quick jab that sunk an inch of steel into the guy’s leg.
Steve winced.
The other guy didn’t.
"If he’s acting, he deserves an Oscar," Cat said, wiping the blade clean on the guy’s pant leg. "We need rope. There." She pointed at a hanging basket.
"Smart," Steve said. He pulled the plant off its hook, worked the basket free, and handed Cat the twisted nylon.
"Help me roll him over," she said.
The guy wasn’t very big or very old. Probably a high school kid, Steve figured.
"Guys?" Heidi called.
"Shut up," Steve called back. "We’re okay." No thanks to you, you crazy bitch. Things had been rough enough without her, but now? She was loud, vicious, irrational. She had drawn the giggler to them and refused to defend herself. Fuck her. With Heidi around, he could kiss the Vespa goodbye, and worse still, it meant he wasn’t getting laid. Sure, that might have been a bullshit thing to worry about right now, but it was real, just as Cat had been real—real and warm and firm—under his hands.
The thought of splitting flickered into his mind but couldn’t find a place to root. Glancing at Cat, who worked the rope now, winding it around the guy’s wrists and tying them to the belt at the small of his back, he realized they had been through way too much for him to ditch her now. He really liked her, and he wanted to see where things would go after all this crazy shit was over, even if she needed months of counseling before they got around to sex. He really dug her. He wondered vaguely if she would want to go somewhere with him, start over. There’d be time for all that later, assuming there was a later.
Heidi stepped into the doorway, quiet again, afraid. For as much as he’d wanted her to shut her mouth earlier, Steve wasn’t sure he liked this change in her.
Cat slapped the kid on the ass. "That ought to slow him down." She’d tied the kid’s shoes together, too, and even in his adrenaline-addled state of mind, Steve had to grin at her ingenuity; that little grade-school trick would work just as well as leg irons.
"Something’s going on out front," Heidi said. "I heard people on the porch."
At the front of the house, the door banged open. Cat cursed
"See?" Heidi said, coming into the mudroom.
Steve heard voices, female, more than one. A male voice, too. Just one? He couldn’t tell. "Come on," he said.
The kid on the floor moaned. Then he came to, straining against his restraints, and turned his head so that Steve could see one open eye and half a green grin. He started giggling again, and in the hall, in reply, high pitched laughter sounded.
"Go!" Steve said, and Cat shot out the door and into the backyard.
Heidi didn’t budge. "What if it’s Lindsay and Brianna?"
"Move!" Steve said. He grabbed her arm, swung her in front of him, and pushed her through the door. They were halfway across the yard when the kid they’d trussed started screaming. It was an awful sound, an impossible blend of laughter and shrieking that forced Steve to look. A pair of girls crouched over the kid, arms rising and falling as they stabbed him with something. All the kid could do was lie there and take it.
Steve shuddered. Shit, I should have killed the bastard after all.
Then his mind said: In a way, you did.
Bullshit. Get your head straight.
The door banged open, and a tall guy, stark-fucking-naked, came gibbering out of the house. He saw Steve, whooped, and sprinted toward him, his erection wagging back and forth as he charged, holding what looked like a bent barbecue fork overhead.
It’s the Naked Chef Gone Wild, Steve thought and, deciding he didn’t really want to fight some big, naked bastard with a hard-on, ran after the girls. They disappeared down a narrow strip of gravel between a garage and a brick building. Steve ran as fast as he could, but he heard the naked guy coming up behind him. Fast. He heard the guy already hitting the gravel.
At the end of the garage, where the narrow path opened into a paved lot, the girls cut left and ran toward a shadowy bank of houses. Good, away from town. Instead of following them, he cleared the gravel path, swung left, and flattened himself against the garage.
Forty feet away, Cat stopped at the edge of the houses, looking back and calling his name.
Steve wanted to shout to her, tell her to keep running, but then the guy was coming through the opening, and Steve stuck the stick out at knee level, ready for the jolt as the crazy tripped over it.
The jolt never came.
Instead, the naked guy whooshed past, leaping the stick, never breaking stride as he charged the girls.
"Hey!" Steve yelled and took after him.
The guy either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. He was all about the girls. And he was a lot faster than Steve.
Cat crouched, knife out. There was nothing Steve could do to help her.
The crazy let out another war cry, lifted the fork overhead, leapt at Cat. For a terrible moment, he eclipsed her. Steve watched in horror as the crazy crashed down on Cat. She screamed. The crazy screamed. Steve screamed, closing the distance in a full sprint. He saw Cat fall to the ground. The crazy stiffened and rolled away, then stood and staggered backward a few steps, roaring down at the knife jutting from between his ribs.
Cat made it to her knees, shrieked, and turned away, raising an arm defensively as the crazy swung the fork. It looked so stupid, so pitiful, when Steve had first seen it, a fucking barbecue fork, for crying out loud, but no longer seemed laughable when Steve saw the tines sink into Cat’s arm. She cried out, falling, and the crazy followed her, raising the fork overhead again.
Then Steve was on him, swinging the field hockey stick down with both hands like he was splitting firewood. The first blow thudded hard into the crazy’s back, knocking him flat across Cat’s legs. Steve hit him again and heard a rib break.
"Fuck!" Cat screamed, and Steve realized the guy was biting her leg. Cat hammered punches into the crazy’s head, but it did no good. Meanwhile, Steve switched grips and used the stick like a tamper, driving it into the guy’s head, targeting the eye, the ear, the hinge of the jaw, over and over, watching divots of flesh calve away, blood mixing with green foam.
When the crazy finally let go of Cat, he launched, snapping and foaming, at Steve. It happened quickly. With so little time and space, Steve could make only a short jab. The crazy bit the jabbing stick, locked i
t in his teeth, and yanked so hard the stick tore free of Steve’s grip, spun through the air, and clattered on the ground several feet away.
Steve took a deep breath and put up his fists.
The crazy hitched forward, drooling more than green now, dark blood draining from both corners of his mouth. Just move on him, Steve thought. Just stick and move, and let that knife wound do its magic.
The crazy leapt forward lashing at Steve with the fork.
Steve ducked the blow, spun sideways, and turned just as the return stroke drove the fork into his gut.
He felt the tines enter him. He folded with the blow, fell. Pain exploded in his stomach, and the crazy followed him down.
The next thing Steve knew, he was on his back, and the crazy was choking him. The big, crazy bastard was kneeling on top of him and choking him to death, leering down with wild eyes and a huge smile oozing green. Steve grabbed at the crazy’s wrists, but it was no good. He swung wild punches, but they just hammered off the bone-hard body with no effect. Panic filled him as he struggled, choking, suffocating, dying…and he was vaguely aware of Cat, kicking the crazy with no effect.
Then, as from a distance, he heard her whistle.
Ten feet away, Cat was blowing kisses. "Come on, baby. Come over here." She lifted her shirt and bra, and squeezed her breasts together. "Come on over here and fuck me."
Air rushed into Steve’s lungs. The crazy sprung to his feet and started for Cat. At the last second, Steve lashed out, caught the crazy’s ankle, and yanked it backward. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. In mid-lurch, the crazy tripped, fell forward.
Cat rushed forward, and Steve scrambled to his knees.
The crazy had gotten onto all fours, too, but then Cat chambered her knee to her chest and stomped down hard. The stomp crushed down on the top of the crazy’s head, and he fell again and rolled to his side. As he rolled, the knife handle came into view. Steve dove for it.
He landed on the crazy’s legs, and his fist hammered down on the knife handle, hard, once, twice, and then Steve palm-heeled it up into the body of the crazy, who squealed and stiffened. Everything was wet and warm, a gusher of hot blood geysering up and out of the crazy and hitting Steve full in the face so that he was forced backward, swatting at it.
Rolling away from the spray, Steve wiped at his eyes and watched and listened as the crazy completed a short series of convulsions. By the time Steve had wiped the rest of his face, the geyser had played out, and the seizure had slowed to small twitches and sporadic jerks. The crazy growled. One arm stiffened skyward, its hand clawed and gripping nothing, and then, with dreamlike slowness, the crazy rolled to his side and lay still.
Chapter 25
Herbert had a good laugh about shooting the guy off the library wall. He went on and on about what a shot he’d made, snapping the guy’s line in half, lamenting that he hadn’t gotten his camcorder set up in time to catch the footage. Not to worry, though, he assured Joel, and turned to the laptop. "I’m sure we’ve been loading plenty of worthwhile footage." Joel shifted against his restraints, staring out at a nearly cloudless sky glittering with stars.
When Herbert had the laptop up and running, he turned it so that Joel could see. The split screen showed webcam views, one downtown, the other on campus. Downtown looked like a war zone: junked cars and twisted corpses, skirmishers running here and there, smoke billowing from the corner quick stop. Campus was calmer yet no less horrific, the camera taking a live feed from what looked like a quad in South Halls. Bodies—most of them belonging to young girls, Joel was unhappy to see—lay everywhere: the grass, the walkways, poking out from hedges. He wondered if any of them were faking it, trying to ride out the storm.
"No shit," he said, maintaining his conciliatory, we’re-pals tone. "You really prepped for this thing, huh?"
"Oh, you’d never believe how much," Herbert said. "I knew I couldn’t see everything, even from up here. This way, I can enjoy the fruits of my labors, even as I’m working, and if I end up surviving this whole thing, I’ll have hours of pure entertainment logged."
He cycled through views. Downtown, the corner of University and Lincoln; downtown, just outside the Cougar’s Den; downtown, the corner of Pug and Kildare; and all across campus, multiple shots of the various dorms, views from outside classrooms, inside eateries and Rec Hall… it went on and on, dozens of cameras, each of them giving a novel glimpse of the local apocalypse. And watching this grisly sideshow, it really struck Joel, the enormity of the thing, the totality of it. There was no way the school was going to bounce back from this, not for a long time. It was a total disaster. And that meant the end of the beautiful thing he had going here.
Everything had been going so well, and then this crazy bastard had blown everything up. In Joel’s little world, it had all started with that goddamned Mr. P and his pals, tearing Jenn to pieces. God, that was awful. She’d been his best girl, the one the guys always asked for. She might have become a star, made him some real money.
All of that was gone now.
But Joel was no quitter. He’d always been a businessman at heart. At least I’m web-based, he thought. It would just be a matter of finding new girls. Hopefully some of his girls would survive this, and he could keep in touch with them, use them to draw in new girls, then set up an HQ in Philly or Pittsburgh. Most of his footage was backed up remotely, so he could just loop that for the time it took him to get shooting new stuff again. There would be a drop off in sales, sure, but that wouldn’t last. Or so he hoped. The internet was such a fast-paced monster of a market, and nowhere did it move with the speed of the porn sector. If you bored a guy, he moved on, and with approximately ten billion new sites and new girls online every day, that lost customer would have no incentive to hunt your site again.
Maybe he could find a way to make all this tragedy work for him. The whole world would be Googling College Heights for months to come. This was big. He had to think this through, turn this into an opportunity.
But first, he had to survive. He had to keep feeding this crazy asshole whatever he wanted to hear until he was free and clear of the situation. Otherwise, all this business talk was so much pie-in-the-sky bullshit.
"Oh, look at this," Herbert said. On one side of the screen, two topless girls in one of the dining halls circled each other with forks, apparently having agreed to lose the shirts and fight to the death. Herbert tapped the keys, and the girls filled the screen.
Joel laughed, doing his best to sound amused yet incredulous. "Now that’s entertainment."
One the girls lunged forward, jamming her fork into the shoulder of the other girl, who responded by raking the tines of her fork across her opponent’s eye. The eye went blurry and seemed to smear, and then the girls were at each other’s throats, utensils forgotten.
"That had to hurt!" Herbert said.
Joel agreed, wondering how hard it would be to zoom in on that eye without losing resolution. Not that hard, probably…
"Wish I’d put a little delay on these cameras," Herbert said. "That would have been beautiful, setting up a lag so we could watch the quad from a different angle, just after stuff happens, watch my handiwork right after the fact. Shit. Next time, I guess." And he laughed aloud.
Once they’d cycled through views, Herbert narrating each scene like a tour guide through hell, Joel made his play, asking Herbert if he’d like to see the girls Joel could call. At first, Herbert seemed not to notice. Then Herbert asked for the URL, and Fratfuckin filled the screen.
"Wow, Joel," Herbert said. "Very professional. I’m impressed." The screen vibrated with teaser clips. Herbert wanted to go straight to the members’ area. "Give me a password. Yours."
Joel hesitated. In his world, you didn't give up a password unless someone had a gun to your head. This qualified. "Whoremonger," he said.
"Whoremonger!" Herbert launched into another fit of donkey-braying laughter. He typed in the password, the laptop chattered, and the screen filled with Jenn, loo
king beautiful and very much alive, staring and smiling out at all those paying customers in tug-land. Encircling her in bubbly graffiti script, was the site’s name: Fratfuckin.com; Frat overhead, fuckin.com at her feet.
Jenn looked absolutely gorgeous. She was one of those rare girls that managed to look like the all-American, sweetie pie from next door and the top bill stripper, all at the same time. Seeing her, Joel felt a pang of loss. God, what a waste!
At the base of the page, in flashing script, a link read "Live Feed".
Live feed, Joel thought, remembering Mr. P. pulling away a mouthful of Jenn’s thigh, Jesus.
Above and below her, thumb nail loops jerked with motion, Jenn and three other girls going at it with a variety of old assholes.
Herbert clicked the live feed.
Again, the laptop chattered. An hour glass appeared. Then the error message filled the screen, the live feed currently unavailable. The site automatically redirected them to the main page, and Herbert slid his cursor over to the right hand corner, where, in a looped five-second clip, Lucinda repeatedly jerked heavy ropes of cum onto her pink tongue.
"Geez Louise, Joel," Herbert said. "You run this site?"
Joel did his best to sound genuinely comfortable and confident without coming off as cocky. "Oh yeah. I mean, a friend of mine helps me film, and then I know this guy and a girl who do a great job editing—that's for the clips, not the free streaming stuff—and then, of course, another guy does my webmastering for me. But yeah, I guess I'm the guy behind everything."
"The whoremonger," Herbert said. He clicked the Lucinda link, and the complete scene, a hot, fifteen-minute suck-and-fuck Joel had attended in person, filled the screen, Lucinda in clothes, beckoning an unseen participant into the frame.
Herbert clicked the progress bar at the bottom of the page, and the scene leapt forward into heavy action.
"Whoo-eee. Look at her!" Herbert said.
"Like her, huh? That's Lucinda. Good taste, bro."
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