S79 The Horror in the Swamp

by Brett Schumacher

  Danny’s scream stopped in his throat and he gurgled, still hugging his midsection. He choked on the blood and rolled to his side, his lower leg unmoving and lying at an awkward, unnatural angle. He sputtered, “Please…” and rolled his eyes up to Robert.

  Robert mimicked him, holding his arms close to his stomach. “Please, don’t hurt me anymore.” He straightened. “You want me to call you an ambulance, Danny?”

  Sobbing and choking, gurgling foamy blood down his cheek to the floor, Danny nodded weakly.

  Robert shook his head. “’fraid not, sonny boy. You and that other one have to pay for what you did. You,” He raised the axe, “have no idea,” he braced on his good foot, “what that fucking thing was like,” he brought the axe down, burying the edge of the plate in Danny’s exposed shoulder.

  The man couldn’t scream, but he tried as he flexed away from the pain. The flexion exposed his bloody crossed arms over his stomach, where small sections of intestine protruded under his wrist and hand. Robert brought the blade down on the arms. The crunch of broken bones was more satisfying than the blood spurting from the newly gashed forearm. Bone glinted in the dimness and then dark blood flooded into the opening.

  Robert let every memory of his time in the facility come to his mind, take over his consciousness, drive him to a higher frenzy. The puling, worthless, waste of space, writhing at his feet had caused it all.

  Dark blood ran toward his bare feet and he backed up a step. Danny was dying, but that wasn’t good enough. He wanted to deliver the death blow, but he wanted him to suffer even more before he died.

  He raised the axe again. Danny’s eyes rolled wildly in their sockets; he wasn’t seeing Robert anymore. Undoubtedly the world was fading to black as he bled out. Bringing the axe down again, Robert severed the mechanic’s right arm just above the elbow. The stump flailed in the air, showering the cot and floor with a fine spray of blood. Robert was a bit shocked at how much blood was in the man. “If thine right arm offend thee, chop it off,” he growled at the dying man.

  Somehow, the mechanic managed to kick Robert in the thigh. It didn’t hurt; didn’t even move him, in fact. But Robert turned his bloody rage on the offending foot. He stomped it to the concrete and chopped at it. Three blows to sever it, and each one sending shockwaves through Danny’s entire body. Each time he jerked, more of his intestines pushed through the opening in his lower belly. He still clutched weakly at it with his left hand.

  Robert stepped in the pooling blood, used his toe to lift Danny’s cheek from the floor. It was obvious the man was not seeing anything, but Robert wanted to see his eyes. He whispered, “If thine right eye offend thee…” He brought the axe down, burying the blade in Danny’s right eye socket.

  A gasp drew his attention to the right. The attendant stood at the end of the thick wall, his eyes wide, mouth unhinged, arms out to his sides, and fingers splayed. Robert looked back to Danny. His guts rolled out as the body tensed and jittered, and then he went limp. Danny the fuckwad mechanic was dead.

  The attendant made a small sound that might have been a weak attempt at a scream, and when Robert glanced his way, all he saw was a single bare foot disappearing.

  Robert yanked up on the axe. Danny’s head lifted off the floor with it. Robert bounced the axe up and down, but the blade didn’t dislodge. A door slammed and the attendant’s scream was finally born. Robert put his foot on Danny’s forehead and pried the blade out of him. It came loose with a sickening wet squelch and pop. Part of the eyeball rode at the base of the blade where the strip of gore-soaked mattress fabric clung. He gave it a shake, but the grim decorations remained.

  He ran for the store side of the building. The attendant couldn’t be allowed to make it to a vehicle. He ripped open the door and held the axe vertically in front of his face to ward off the attendant in case he had a baseball bat or the like. He needn’t have worried. The man was fighting with the exit door, trying to get out. He was terrified. Definitely not the same puffed up brave badass Robert had encountered before.

  He let the axe drop to his side and laughed. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

  The man turned to face Robert, holding his hands up, palms facing out. He blubbered, “Please, please, man. Don’t do this, please. I got a family. I got kids.” He pointed a shaking hand at the cash register. “Take it all, dude. I won’t say nothing to nobody.”

  “You think I want money?” Robert shook his head and clucked his tongue disapprovingly as he advanced slowly. The blood made his feet sticky and each time he took a step there was a sound like pulling tape away from plastic.

  “Look, I’m real sorry about what happened. It was all Danny’s idea, though. I never wanted to do it. I swear to God, man! Please!” He crouched with his hands up in the air.

  “Do you know what’s out there in that place?” Robert took another step. “Do you?” He screamed.

  The man flinched and shot to a standing position, hands on the door. He shook his head. “Just rumors, man. Ain’t nothin’ out there but an empty building.”

  “Really? Now, see, that just makes it worse because all your talk about me being a sacrifice for the monster was just made up bullshit.” He brought the axe up and thumped the middle of the handle against his left palm.

  The man’s gaze froze on the blade. Robert knew he was seeing the partial eyeball and his friend’s blood, already drying there. With a quick, sharp intake of breath, the man launched into the door, knocking it wide open and he started running.

  “Fuck!” Robert gave chase, ignoring how the dusting of small gravels on the pavement bit into his injured foot. Ignoring the fact that sometime after this was all over, he would have to dig out those tiny intruders and clean the wounds.

  The man ran into a field of shoulder-high grass, screaming like a freight train. How close were houses on that side? Robert didn’t know. Both times, he had approached from the other direction. He had assumed, given the less than legal activities going on at the station, there were no houses for miles around, but now he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t risk it, anyway. All it would take was one solitary soul to hear those screams, and he had no doubt the police would be swarming the place like blowflies on a day-old roadkill.

  The grass was tough, and the ground was spongy. As he ran, the grass grabbed at his axe. He shouldered it and kept moving in the direction of the screams. He couldn’t see the man, but he could definitely hear him. The grass whipped at his face and put a million thin papercuts on his bare torso.

  The man was only a few yards ahead of him. He saw his head clear the top of the grass and then disappear. Suddenly, the screams stopped, and the only sounds were the sounds of Robert’s steady, deep breaths and the thin slapping sound of the grass against his body.

  He reached the spot he’d seen the man last, but he wasn’t there. The grass moved at his side and he spun, striking out with the axe. The man swung at his face with a large rock. The rock and the axe blade hit their intended targets at the same instant. Robert’s head was thrown back as his cheekbone exploded, incinerating the side of his face and head with hot, bright pain. The man folded forward, over the axe, and then flew backward, off the blade, landing hard enough that he made a barking sound as the air left his lungs.

  Temporarily blinded in his right eye, Robert held his breath and pressed his left palm against his broken cheekbone. He turned frantically trying to catch sight of the man. He saw the attendant’s blurry shape backpedaling through the grass.

  He stepped forward, a calming numb settling through his body from his head to his feet. His vision began to clear in waves in his left eye, and he could see the blood soaking through the man’s white tee shirt. Blood looked black in the moonlight. Something he had known since his first night kill on a hunting trip way back in another life.

  When the attendant opened his mouth, blood poured out in thick foamy tendrils. He shook his he
ad and held his hands up as if to ward off the inevitable blow.

  Robert advanced in little half-steps to keep his balance. The new feeling of numbness imparted a lightness to his body much like he had experienced when smoking pot as a teenager. He didn’t want this to feel dreamlike; he wanted to experience the kill, revel in every feeling that emerged, and know he had done it. He had exacted revenge for what they had done to him and served as the hand of justice for all their past victims.

  He raised the axe high, the man rolled to his stomach and tried to drag himself away, Robert swung the axe toward the center of the man’s back, bending at the waist, using all his core muscles in the down swing.

  It was like chopping a block of soft wood. The blade cut through the spine without much resistance. The man’s legs, arms, and head all flew up simultaneously as if he were trying to accomplish an acrobat’s backbend, and then he fell limp. All the nerves had been cleanly sliced. He brought the axe up and repeated the chopping motion again. The blade cut into the spine and chinked against a shoulder blade. The man grunted and gurgled.

  Robert pulled the axe free and strained onto his toes to see over the grass. No lights burned in the distance. No sirens split the night. He leaned over and looked into the man’s large glossy, pain-filled eyes.

  “Not a good feeling to be out here facing a monster all alone and helpless, is it?” Robert patted the man’s head. “Don’t worry. Nothing lasts forever.”

  An old rock song played through his head. Don’t Fear the Reaper. It seemed appropriate and he hummed the tune as he grabbed the man’s foot and dragged him back toward the station.

  The man groaned every now and then, letting Robert know he was still alive. He didn’t know how, but he was. He could say one thing about both men, they were tougher than he gave them credit for. In the end, it didn’t matter, though.

  He dragged the attendant in through the store and into the garage from there. He put the attendant on the floor facing his mutilated buddy, and Robert was pleased to hear him whimpering and even more pleased that the man could not turn his head away. Robert placed the axe on top of what was left of Danny.

  He left them there and turned on the gas pumps. Still humming the tune, he filled a five-gallon jug with gas and doused the men with it, soaking every inch of the room afterward. He returned with another jug full and spread it all through the store, and another over the inside of the garage and his car.

  He tossed the jug into his car, opened the bay door all the way, and walked to the dumpster to retrieve his suitcase. At the side of the garage, he turned the water spigot on and waited patiently for the stream at the other end of the coiled hose. He stripped naked and washed off in the clear, cold water, taking time to drink from it.

  He chose a new set of clothes, socks, and his well-worn tennis shoes. Then he closed the suitcase, walked to the garage and tossed it in. Returning to his ruined clothes, he checked the pockets for his Zippo.

  “Good old trusty Zippo. Wind-resistant. Smoker’s best friend.” He set it beside his clean clothes and walked toward the garage to toss them in. As he started to throw them, he gripped a pocket and felt something sharp poke him. Curious, he brought them back and fished out the three claws from the alien’s hand.

  Laughing, he set them beside his lighter and then tossed the dirties into the bay. He dressed leisurely and laid his suit jacket over his arm. His tie hung loosely around his neck. The claws were remanded to his pants pocket. He thought he might make a necklace with them. Just a little souvenir.

  The smell of gas filled the air. He didn’t want the smell to get imbedded in his clean clothes. Walking to the edge of the garage’s open door, he touched the low flame to the gas there. The flame whooshed to life and danced across the floor so swiftly he gasped.

  The blue-orange light spilled outside, illuminating the entire area. He skipped backward, toward the road, saddened a little that he wouldn’t be able to stick around and watch the ending. He snapped the Zippo’s lid closed and dropped it into his pocket.

  When he heard the first sirens, Robert stepped into the tree line and continued to walk. He had a wife and daughter to get back to, after all.