Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 3

by Cheryl Mullenax

  ‘It’s up to you now, Private. You, me and the Sergeant Major are all that’s left of the regiment. We’ve come a long way together, and though I’ll always be superior to you—as an officer and a man of better breeding—I think of you as a friend. Sort of.’ The Captain had a coughing fit. A fine aerosol of blood sprayed from his mouth. ‘Can we rely on you, soldier?’

  ‘Sir!’ Wilbur saluted smartly. ‘Yes, sir!’

  The Sergeant Major wept openly. ‘God damn it! That’s why Jerry can’t win. You can’t keep a good Englishman down.’

  Wilbur checked his weapon. He had six clips of ammo in his pockets, a half dozen hand grenades and an abiding hatred of Nazis. ‘Let me at ‘em!’

  Without further ado, he came out of hiding, machine gun blazing.

  The enemy spotted him straight away. Lethal lead whistled past his ears. He was buffeted by explosions that caused rubble to rain down on him.

  The dirty bastards were out to kill him. Well he’d show them.

  A glint of sunlight on a Mauser betrayed the presence of a sniper in the upper floor of what was left of a warehouse. In a move he had practiced a thousand times, he simultaneously dived for cover and fired. There was a satisfying scream as the sniper tumbled from the building clutching at his chest.

  Wilbur celebrated by jumping to his feet and letting rip with a single shot that caught an advancing Nazi on the forehead, causing his head to explode.

  With a whoop, Wilbur leaped onto the burnt-out shell of an armoured troop carrier and fired with wild abandon. To his left, he caught a glimpse of helmet. A second later, the helmet and the head it was supposed to protect were shredded by his expert gunfire.

  ‘Englischer Schweinehund!’ One of Hitler’s finest broke cover and came charging at Wilbur. He was blond and blue eyed, aged about fourteen and armed with a broom handle. Wilbur took great delight in cutting him down.

  A whistling sound warned Wilbur that a mortar bomb was headed his way. Instinctively, he somersaulted off the troop carrier and dashed through the door of a ruined house. A split second later, the troop carrier exploded.

  The concussion knocked him against a wall. Briefly, he was stunned, but quickly recovered. He tasted blood in his mouth and was impressed by how real it tasted.

  Machine gun fire raked the wall. A piece of debris hit the back of his hand, numbing it and causing it to bleed. The pain was brief but intense.

  Luckily his trigger finger was unaffected. He could still kill Nazis.

  One came running in through the door. Wilbur shot him in the eye.

  The Nazi’s companion wasn’t about to make the same mistake and lobbed a grenade into the room. Wilbur thought briefly about picking it up and throwing it back, but decided not to take the risk. He ran into the adjacent room and immediately spotted a set of wooden stairs leading to a cellar. As he began descending, the grenade went off. His ears rang from the concussion but he was otherwise unscathed.

  He stood still and listened. There were no footsteps, nor anything else to suggest he was still being pursued. The enemy must have assumed the grenade had got him and were no doubt hurrying back to their bolt holes.

  He would deal with them later, but right now he was hungry. Hundreds of hours of urban fighting had taught him an important lesson. Namely that when cities are besieged, the occupants have a habit of stashing their food and other valuables in the cellar. With luck he could score at least a chunk of cheese and maybe even some ham.

  Half the cellar wall and the ground beside it had been blown away, allowing daylight into the cellar. A group of German civilians cowered in the corner, arms round one another, eyes wide with fear.

  Wilbur trained his machine gun on them.

  There were three of them: a woman, a boy who couldn’t have been much older than six and a teenage girl. Almost certainly a mother and her children.

  The little boy began to cry. His mother babbled in German. She dropped to her knees, hands clasped before her. ‘Barmherzigkeit!’

  Wilbur recognised the German word for mercy and was outraged.

  Mercy? How dare she ask for mercy when her people had reduced half of Europe to a wasteland and murdered millions along the way? He’d give her mercy all right. The same sort of mercy she and her kind liked to dish out.

  He stepped towards the Germans, hands raised and open to show he meant no harm. He made shushing noises and even managed a smile. Then, when he was close enough to the German Frau to smell her fear, he whisked out his knife and cut her throat.

  The daughter grabbed her as she fell and was rewarded for her efforts by being sprayed with blood. Horrified, she let go of her dead mother.

  That was the cue for the boy to start screaming hysterically. A moment later, the knife that had slit his mother’s throat ripped open his stomach, and he screamed no more.

  Wilbur pushed the boy’s body aside with his foot and eyed the girl. Although the deprivations of war had hardened her, she was remarkably pretty and had a face that belied the evil in her Nazi heart. She was clearly in shock. Wilbur doubted she’d put up any sort of resistance, no matter what he did to her now. He was going to kill her, of that he had no doubt, but first he would teach her just who was the Master Race around here.

  As he reached for his flies, he was suddenly hit by a wave of self-loathing. What was he thinking?

  I’m not an animal, he told himself. I’m better than that.

  Eager to rid himself of temptation, he despatched the girl in the same way he’d despatched her mother.

  The rattle of machine gun fire and the sound of jackboots on rubble told him he was under attack once more. He checked his watch to see if he had time to kill a few more Nazis and reluctantly decided he didn’t. His boss had already spoken to him about his time keeping and warned that the next time he was late would be his last.

  Muttering an oath, he placed his gun against his head and pulled the trigger.

  Everything went dark. The machine guns fell silent. He could no longer taste blood in his mouth.

  Wilbur took off his VR helmet and sat still as his mind adjusted to the transition back to reality. As always when he came out of a session of Nazi Hunter, he was pumped up. The temptation to go back in and renew the slaughter was all but irresistible.

  Stay strong, he told himself, taking deep, steady breaths to help bring himself down. His heart seemed to be throwing itself about like a trapped animal. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his nose and came to rest just above his mouth.

  Reluctantly, he pushed his chair away from the desk and placed the VR helmet beside his computer. It was time to go to work.

  * * *

  ‘You got to try it. There ain’t never been anything like it. I tell you, it makes every other game seem like—well, like a game. Because, you see, Slut Slayer is just so damn real. It’s even better than cocaine. Better than anything.’ Mickey Stratton was babbling like he’d just swallowed a whole handful of amphetamines. ‘I tell you, if I didn’t need the money, I’d tell the suits where they can stick their job and spend all my time playing Slut Slayer. It’s the only thing in my life that matters a damn to me.’

  Wilbur tried to ignore him, but as they were sitting at adjacent desks, there was no way he could. He would just have to soldier on as best he could and hope Mickey would quickly run out of steam as he always did.

  ‘You know how many prostitutes I’ve killed in the last two days?’ Mickey went on. ‘Twelve crack whores. Nine streetwalkers. Four brothel madams. Sixteen—no, seventeen—call girls. And a couple of slavic sex slaves—one of whom turned out to be a transvestite, would you believe it?’

  Isabella Holder plunked herself into her seat at the desk on the other side of Mickey. Having just made it into work on time, she was flustered. ‘You been hanging about in dodgy sex bars again?’

  ‘No, no.’ Mickey shook his head. ‘I don’t do that shit no more. Found something way better.’

  ‘Not religion, I hope.’

  ‘Slut Slay
er,’ said Wilbur.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘The game. He’s been playing it.’

  Isabella’s lip curled in disgust. ‘I thought it was banned.’

  ‘Oh yeah, sure.’ Mickey wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve. ‘Like they can ban anything these days! Once it’s on the Net, that’s it—the genie is out of the bottle.’

  ‘Look at you! You’ve not shaved. Your clothes need a wash. And you stink like a dog fart.’

  ‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’

  ‘Seriously, Mickey. You need to sort yourself out before it’s too late.’

  ‘Oh, here we go. Little Miss Goody Two Shoes is lecturing me again.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Wilbur interjected. ‘You need help, Mickey. And you need it fast.’

  ‘Go blow it out your arse.’

  Further conversation was curtailed by a klaxon blasting out a one-minute warning. The forty or so people in the office stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to their computer screens. Chairs were adjusted. Bottoms shifted. Mouses were reached for.

  The screens came alive, displaying a digital countdown. 50… 49… 48…

  When the countdown reached 10, everyone in the office joined in, shouting out each number as it came up. 10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Go!

  Each screen was suddenly filled with charts and graphs. Between the graphics, numbers fluctuated up and down.

  Wilbur soaked up the information in front of him at a prodigious rate. His well-trained mind assessed what the figures were telling him and he made his first sale of the day—100,000 shares in Rio Tinto at 13 pence a share. He watched to see how the market responded and five seconds later bought the shares back at 14 pence a pop.

  A nice start to the day but scarcely earth shattering.

  Sensing that coffee beans were on the rise, he invested a million pounds of his employer’s money on a futures option. Now he was seriously motoring.

  The morning went by swiftly. Wilbur was on his best form. Every prediction he made about every market he poked about in proved to be spot on. When he broke off for lunch, he had added a little more than six and a half million pounds to the vast coffers of Arthur and Lawrence.

  ___

  That night, Wilbur firebombed Dresden.

  ___

  ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve,’ said Raymond Arthur. He didn’t so much speak as grind the words through his perfect white teeth. Rising from behind his mahogany desk, he skewered Wilbur with a steely gaze. ‘A pay rise? In this economic climate? This country’s been out of recession for barely two years and here you are, holding out your grasping little hand, going gimme, gimme, gimme. Who the buggery bollocks do you think you are, Edgar?’

  I’m the schmuck who labours day in, day out, thought Wilbur, to keep you and your cronies in yachts and stately homes. Out loud, he said, ‘I’m only asking for a fair—’

  ‘Fair!’ Arthur looked like he’d been shot while simultaneously swallowing a wasp. ‘This is business, not the boy scouts! We don’t do fair. That’s for sissies.’ He strode over to the picture window. ‘Come here, you worthless little squib. Let me show you something.’

  Wondering what the Hell he’d let himself in for, Wilbur did as he was told and stood beside his boss.

  The multi-billionaire threw an arm around Wilbur’s shoulders. ‘Take a look out there and tell me what you see.’

  They were fifty floors up. Wilbur could see a lot. ‘Buildings, mostly,’ he said. ‘Some trees and the River Thames.’

  ‘That’s London, that is. Greatest city in the world, with real estate worth billions upon billions. And this company happens to own 3.728 percent of it. Now that’s an awful lot of real estate, I’m sure you’ll agree. And if you think we got that by being fair, you’re even more stupid than you look.’ Arthur pointed. ‘You see that on that horizon? That grotty concrete monstrosity? Do you recognise it? Yes, of course you do. You bloody well live there, you poor little drone, you. And I’ll let you into a secret, shall I?’ Arthur lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I own that entire building, every last concrete inch of it, and if you ask me for a pay rise again, I will have it demolished within twenty-four hours and see to it that you spend the rest of your life living on the street. Comprendez, mi amigo?’

  Wilbur comprendezed big time. He was in the presence of a genuine, A1, 24 carat, out and out arsehole. Is this what we fought the Nazis for? he asked himself. Just to have our faces ground into the dirt by a different kind of jackboot?

  As Arthur’s arm decoupled itself from his shoulders, he realised he’d been holding his breath as if to protect himself against the stench of his boss’s greed.

  Arthur drifted back to his desk. As he didn’t give Wilbur any indication as to what to do next, Wilbur stayed where he was and turned from the window.

  ‘You recently applied for a place on the company’s Executive Training Program.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And I bet you’re wondering why you weren’t selected.’

  ‘Frankly, yes. I scored high on the intelligence tests. I demonstrated initiative and showed I could think on my feet. There was no way I should have been turned down.’

  ‘You never stood a snowball’s chance in Hell. And do you know why? It’s because you’re nice, and nice is not a quality we value here. If you want to get on in the world of high finance, you have to be a sociopath. The only thing that should matter to you is you.’ Arthur nodded in the direction of the window. ‘You have, of course, noticed the balcony and are aware that it was from that very spot that my late, benighted brother supposedly jumped to his death, leaving me sole heir to the Arthur fortune.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Wilbur toned automatically.

  ‘Loss? What fnugging loss? I hated the douche bag every bit as much as he hated me. And I’ll let you into a little secret, shall I?’ Arthur smiled the smuggest smile Wilbur had seen in a long time. His eyes sparkled with mischief. ‘He didn’t jump. I pushed him.’

  For a moment, Wilbur grasped futilely at the straw that he must have misheard, but he clearly hadn’t. The fact that Arthur had killed his own brother came as no great surprise; the fact that he had openly admitted it—now that was a real jaw dropper.

  Arthur laughed. ‘You should see your face, Edgar. It’s a picture.’ Composing himself, he sat forward and propped his elbows on the desk. ‘You can tell whoever you like what I just said. It doesn’t matter. Now get out.’

  Acknowledging to himself that he had been played by an expert in mind games, Wilbur headed for the door on legs that felt like jelly. But Arthur wasn’t finished with him yet.

  ‘Incidentally, Edgar. Mickey Stratton has left the company. His replacement starts at noon.’

  ___

  Wilbur arrived at his desk minutes before trading was due to begin. For once, Isabella Holder was ahead of him. She sat at her desk clutching a cup of Starbucks coffee.

  ‘You hear about Mickey?’ she asked. ‘Went mad, he did. The police are after him.’

  ‘What?’ Wilbur dropped into his seat.

  ‘The police are after him.’

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘He attacked one of the girls from the typing pool. Tried to rape her.’

  ‘Double no shit.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Last week, he put his hand up my skirt.’

  ‘Did you report him?’

  ‘In this place? Are you kidding? Report someone for sexual harassment here and they’re liable to get a pay rise.’

  Finding the topic of conversation uncomfortable, Wilbur tried to change it. ‘Do you know Raymond Arthur murdered his own brother?’

  ‘Sure I do. Everyone does. So what?’

  Wilbur eyed what had until recently been Mickey Stratton’s desk. In spite of the company’s clear desk policy, it was littered with used napkins, well-chewed pencils, coffee cups, sweet wrappers, a half-eaten sandwich and a USB stick.

  ‘Wonder what’s on this
,’ he said, grabbing the stick and dropping it into his shirt pocket.

  ‘Porn,’ said Isabella. ‘I’ll give you any odds you like on that one.’

  ___

  It wasn’t porn.

  When he got home that evening, Wilbur fired up the software.

  Installing Slut Slayer, said the splash screen. Please wait.

  A ping told Wilbur his microwave pizza was ready. He went to the kitchen, served the pizza up on a plate, cracked open a can of Pepsi and returned to his living room. Now the splash screen was telling him Special Edition.

  Wilbur crammed a piece of pizza into his mouth and sat down. The pizza was too hot; he took a swig of Pepsi to save his palette from blistering. Then he put on his VR headset and waited for the game to finish loading.

  He didn’t have to wait long. After only a few seconds, he found himself in a subterranean public toilet. To judge from the state of its walls and the fact that every urinal was a repository for brown water, old tissues and other detritus, it hadn’t been used for its original purpose in quite some time.

  Now it was an armoury.

  On a row of wooden tables was laid out a variety of knives, swords, garottes, handguns, knuckledusters, thumb screws, nipple clamps, bicycle chains, coshes, cattle prods, semi-automatics and sundry other weapons and instruments of torture.

  An oriental gentleman dressed like an English butler complete with bowler hat stood behind the tables. ‘Welcome to Secret Emporium of Fu Chan,’ he said with a faux-Chinese accent. ‘You want to kill ladies, you come to right place.’

  Wilbur was having second thoughts, and he was glad to be doing so. It showed he hadn’t lost his perspective. He wasn’t the new Mickey Stratton, nor did he intend to be.

  He was here only out of curiosity and intended to stay just long enough to find out for himself if Slut Slayer deserved it’s reputation as the vilest, most evil game on the planet. And then no more. As soon as he got back to reality, the USB stick was going straight down the toilet where it belonged.

  Wilbur picked up a knuckleduster.