The Acid Vanilla Series

by Matthew Hattersley

  “Why are you doing this?” Spook asked. “I know you. You’re a good man. Aren’t you?”

  Jason tilted his head from side to side. “Good. Evil. Who’s to say what is and what isn’t. If you ask me, goodness is in the eye of the beholder.”

  Spook scrunched up her nose. She could imagine Acid Vanilla saying something similar. Didn’t stop being bullshit, however.

  “Please, don’t kill us,” she pleaded. “It’s wrong. You’re better than this.”

  Jason Moss smiled his famous smile. All white teeth and dimples. “You ever heard of the shadow self?” he asked, his eyes twinkling in the moonlight.

  Spook shrugged. “Doesn’t sound too good.”

  “Oh, no. It’s rather wonderful,” Moss cooed. “A Jungian concept originally. He believed the shadow to be the primitive side of man’s true nature, the side containing all the parts of our personalities we don’t want to admit having. Only by fully acquainting ourselves with this darker element can we ever become whole.”

  Spook put her weight on her ankle, sending a shooting pain up her calf. No way she could run on it. She glanced into the trees. “So, what? This is you falling to the dark side, is it?”

  “Perhaps,” Moss continued. “You see, there’s only so much grumbling one can hear. The world is full of imbecilic chumps who won’t help themselves. It all got too much for me. Then a friend told me about this place, about the hunt. Said it’d be the perfect way for me to get to really know my shadow self.”

  “Geez.” Spook sniffed. “You think?”

  “I just want to experience every single emotion,” he said, his voice lowering to a sinister whisper. “Every aspect of my personality. We can’t fully appreciate life until we know what it’s like to take one.”

  “What a load of crap,” Spook yelled, feeling braver now. But there was a reason for that. In the midst of his pompous diatribe Moss had lowered his weapon. Now he was standing in front of her in full-blown motivational-speaker mode, eyes closed, beating the heel of his fist on his over-developed chest. Really into the sound of his own voice. So much so, he didn’t hear Acid Vanilla approaching swiftly from behind. Before he was even aware of her presence, she’d smashed a rock the size of a giant’s fist into the back of his skull, sending him staggering forward. Spook jumped out of the way as he crashed to his knees, a look of pained confusion distorting his perfect features. A second blow from the rock and he was out cold.

  “You okay?” Acid asked them.

  Spook didn’t reply. Didn’t move. Truth was, Acid’s appearance had startled her. It was that look on her face, still slathered with thick mud but fixed in a mad pout, cheeks sucked in, eyes wide and unblinking. She breathed heavily down her nose. The muscles in her arms, the thick sinews in her neck, bristled with tension.

  Spook had seen her like this once before, but it was still unsettling. This was Acid Vanilla in full-on kill mode. No thought. No feeling. Driven by pure instinct and the muscle memory of sixteen years as a deadly assassin.

  “You are very good,” Magda yelled. She pushed past Spook and leaned over Jason Moss’s prone form. Spat on his back. “Fuck this man.”

  “He was the one who killed your friend?” Acid asked.

  “Yes. Is he dead?”

  Acid got a foot under Moss’s upper body and rolled him onto his back before kneeling next to him and unbuckling his beige canvas belt. He let out a deep groan as she pulled it free from his cargo trousers and rolled him over onto his front. The groaning became louder, more frequent as he gained consciousness. Moving quickly, Acid yanked his hands up and behind his back and wrapped the belt around his wrists and ankles.

  She stood, with her boot between his shoulders. “What’s his name?” she asked Magda.

  “Moss. Jason Moss.”

  “This is the motivational speaker guy? she asked, pressing her boot down harder. “How’s that working out for you, mate?”

  Moss struggled against the ties, but Acid leaned her full weight on him. A large gash in the back of his head was bleeding profusely.

  “Let me go,” he said. “You’re making a big mistake.”

  “Hmm, not sure I am.”

  Spook glanced from the man back to Acid. “Shouldn’t we get out of here?”

  “Tell me about this closing ceremony,” Acid spat at Moss, ignoring her pleas. “What’s it all about?”

  “Go to hell,” Moss gasped, the affected Cali accent slipping into something approaching Mid-Western. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “I want to know now,” Acid said.

  She placed a boot on the back of his head and dug her heel into the wound. Moss thrashed around in pain, but his screams were quickly muffled as Acid leaned forward and shoved his entire face into the wet sand.

  “Acid, no…”

  Acid shot her an intense glare, mouthed, “What?” And not taking her eyes off Spook, relishing in her discomfort, she pressed down harder on Moss’s head, drowning him in the slurry.

  “What happens at the closing ceremony?” she yelled, finally taking her boot off his head.

  Moss gasped for air. “I… don’t… know,” he managed, in between violent coughs. “This is…. my first hunt… I just…”

  Acid pushed his face back into the sand.

  “Drown the motherfucker,” Magda cried, too gleefully for Spook’s liking. “He murdered my friend.”

  Spook couldn’t watch any longer. It was the screams that got her. Desperate muffled grunts of despair, like a tortured animal. She hobbled over to the shoreline and gazed out over the ocean. Putting some space between her and the torture.

  “Tell me about the closing ceremony,” Acid snarled again.

  There was another whimper from Moss. More gasping for air. More pleading. But Spook was relieved to hear the sound of spluttering compliance.

  “Fine… I’ll tell you… all I know.” He panted. “Please… I don’t want to die.”

  “We’ll see about that. Talk.”

  “I know only what I read in the pamphlet, and what I overheard in the bar last night,” he said, speaking quickly now. “Each year they spare a few of the prey… I mean, those being hunted. So they can… unf—”

  Spook spun around to see Magda kneeling beside Moss with a large blood-covered rock in her hand. The back of his skull was completely caved in.

  “Oh, shit!” She looked away, swallowing back an acidic reminder of the protein bar from earlier.

  “What the bloody hell did you do that for?” Acid yelled. “He was giving us information.”

  Magda yelled back. “He killed my friend. He had to die. You weren’t going to do it.”

  “Yes,” Acid said. “I was. After he gave us the information.”

  “How was I to know this? You tell him, ‘We’ll see.’ What does this mean?”

  Acid’s voice had an edge to it Spook didn’t like. “Listen, sweetie. I wasn’t going to let that bastard live.”

  With her heart pounding out of her chest Spook stepped in between the two women. “We haven’t got time for this,” she told them. “He’s dead. We’re not. Now let’s get moving before any other men with guns show up.” As if to put a big fat exclamation mark on her point, a screech of feedback burst out from the trees.

  “Security and clean-up teams to second quadrant,” a robotic voice chimed. “Guest down. Repeat, guest down.”

  Spook gave Acid a firm stare. See, I told you.

  “Fair enough.” Acid sniffed, scanning the perimeter, looking for the source of the voice.

  “This way,” Magda told them, setting off at a pace. “We’re not far from the steps. A little further, we’ll be out of sight.”

  Twenty-Five

  The loud siren reverberated out through the trees. Over the top of the snaking, metallic din, Spook thought she heard a car engine, but she might have been mistaken. Or hearing things. She hadn’t slept or eaten properly for the last fifty-odd hours and both her mind and body were shutting down.

 
As the black night faded to an inky dawn, the three women moved purposefully along the shoreline, going as fast as they could go. Which considering Spook’s ankle was still giving her real pain, wasn’t actually that fast at all.

  Every so often Acid would glance over her shoulder, and Spook would try and meet her gaze, hoping for a reassuring smile from her inscrutable friend. Hell, at this point she would take an ironic smirk, one of Acid’s classic eye-rolls. But no. Once satisfied they weren’t being followed, her head was down, her expression fixed in the same harsh pout, and her annoyance growing more apparent. Spook could almost feel the brittle, nervous energy seeping out of her pores. She wanted blood. Wanted this done with. And once more Spook was the one slowing her down. Messing everything up.

  They were in sight of the bottom of the cliff face, the steps a few hundred metres away, when Spook’s ankle finally gave way. She stumbled over onto the wet sand, swallowing the pain as best she could but letting out a cry all the same.

  Magda was the first over to her. “You are hurt?”

  “I’m okay,” she said, sitting up and putting her feet out in front of her.

  “Can you walk?” Acid asked, like a school mistress scolding an unruly child.

  “Maybe we should rest,” Magda said. “A few minutes. Let her regain some strength before we climb.”

  “Sorry,” Spook said, directing the word at Acid. “I’ll be all right in a sec.”

  Acid let out a loud huffing sigh. “Fine. Five minutes.”

  Magda sat next to Spook and nestled into her. A sign of solidarity, but it didn’t help. A few feet away, Acid paced back and forth, kicking up small piles of sand.

  “Your friend is hot-headed,” Magda observed. “She gets you into trouble?”

  Spook rolled her foot around the socket. “Yes and no,” she said. “To be honest, I’m the one who gets her into trouble.”

  “No. You don’t,” Acid said, walking over and squatting in front of her. “You’re just really bloody annoying.”

  The way she said it, there was no humour to her voice, but Spook saw a faint glimmer in her eye, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, something she wouldn’t have noticed if she didn’t know Acid so well. But that glimmer, it buoyed Spook.

  “Before you caved his head in, Moss was telling me about the closing ceremony.” Acid fixed Magda with those penetrating eyes. “What do you know about it?”

  Magda pursed her lips. “What do you?”

  “That it’s a big part of this sorry-go-round of a weekend. That there are double points for those taking part, whatever the hell that means.”

  Magda cleared her throat. “All I know, it is a closing party. I have never experienced it with my eyes, I am always in the kitchens. But there is lots of food, lots of drinking. It is a festival. A sick festival, I mean. The end of the hunt. How did you hear of this?”

  Acid caught Spook’s eye and raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips. A signal she wanted her input.

  “We found a cabin in the middle of the island,” Spook said. “Like a tech-store. There were computers that showed the guest list, information on the people being hunted, how many points we were worth, that sort of thing. It mentioned bonus points for inclusion in the closing ceremony.”

  Magda chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I see. But I do not know, I am sorry. But if we get up inside the compound we will kill these awful men, yes? The ceremony will not happen.”

  Acid peered up at the cliff face. A deep frown ridged across her forehead, cracking the dry mud. “You okay to walk yet?” she asked Spook.

  “Think so.”

  Magda jumped to her feet. “Let’s kill those bastard shits.”

  Acid squinted at her in the moonlight. “Where did you say you were from again?”

  “I didn’t say. Originally I’m from Russia. Siberia.”

  “I see. Well, Mags, you’re going to need some of that Siberian spirit if we’re going to escape this island.”

  “No problem,” she replied, helping Spook up.

  Acid took a deep breath. Puffed out her chest. “This is it then, ladies. You ready for the final push?”

  “I am ready,” Magda yelled.

  “Me too,” added Spook, though the silent evaluation she got from Acid was less reassuring. The wicked glimmer in her eye of a moment ago was now gone, replaced with a mixture of concern and unease that for once she was unable to hide.

  “Just stick close to me,” she told them. “One way or another, we’re going to finish this tonight.”

  Twenty-Six

  Invisible bat wings fluttered across Acid’s consciousness as the women scaled the craggy, uneven steps that led up the side of the cliff face. They had fallen silent a minute or so into the climb, better to conserve energy, but Acid’s busy mind still buzzed with the usual cacophony of chattering voices and dark imagery as she flicked through a mental Rolodex of possible outcomes for when she reached the top. Ideas and notions flew at her like insects. Too many to focus on. She knew that in situations like this, overthinking was deadly. It slowed you down. Had you second-guessing yourself. If that happened you might as well give up. You were already dead.

  From now on Acid’s only driver was instinct. She might not trust people. Might not play well with others. But the bats were a different matter. Those pulsating impulses that lit up her nervous system like the Northern Lights. Experience (along with many broken bones and near misses) had taught her fighting the bats only made things worse. Like a ship negotiating stormy seas, you had to lean into the crashing waves, let the current take you where it wanted. Otherwise you ended up off course. Smashed on the rocks.

  Easier in theory, of course. Different when every five minutes you had to stop to let your weaker companions catch up. Acid sat on a low ledge and puffed her cheeks out, watching Spook as she hobbled up the steps, leading with her good foot and dragging the other one painfully up to meet it.

  Was it bad of her to think the kid was over-egging it?

  And might she still convince them to wait for her somewhere safe, let her do the dirty work? In kill mode Acid was wild, feral, unable to account for what she might do. It was safer for everyone if she worked alone, allowed the bats and her intense bloodlust to take over.

  She looked down at her hands, balled into two tight fists. What was it Spook called it when she got like this? Deep inner rage. Said Acid should see someone about it. But to hell with that. Right now it was what she needed. Besides, Acid knew there was only one cure for whatever was eating away at her: killing Beowulf Caesar. Avenging her mother’s death.

  “Before you ask, we haven’t got time to rest,” Acid snapped, looking out to sea as Spook gulped down a mouthful of air. “We need the cover of darkness, and dawn isn’t far off.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” Spook said. “And who’s dawn?” She hit Acid with a sly grin that only annoyed her.

  Ignoring it, Acid looked over the side of the steps. They were over half-way up the cliff face, concealed by the curve of the mountain, but if she leaned out she could make out the edge of the shoreline and the dark shape of a vehicle. They’d found Jason Moss. Meant they’d be on their tail soon enough.

  “Let’s keep going,” she said, turning her back on them and striding away up the steep steps.

  Another thing about deep inner rage, why was it that people (civilians) always assumed anger was a destructive emotion? For Acid, anger was an energy. It was powerful. It got things done. Though of course, a lot of her training had focused on learning to step away from her emotions. All her emotions. Assassins were supposed to be cold, calculated, killing machines. Uncaring. Unaffected by death. Like a female terminator, Acid used to joke. Only thing was, she’d never really managed to completely step away. She assumed her emotions were too messed up to begin with (partly due to the cyclothymic disorder, but also because life had kicked her around for a good few years before she’d met Caesar). The way Acid saw it, after what had happened to her, she’d be crazy not to be ang
ry. Mad not to be a little crazy.

  So, yes, anger was an energy, anger was a good thing. And so what if it meant she was a loner and always would be? She didn’t need help from anyone. Those who did were weak. Once they reach the top of the steps, a few minutes away now, she’d head off on her own, tell Spook that was the way it was. No discussion.

  “Ah shoot, Acid, look.”

  She spun around to see Spook pointing at something above her head. She followed her finger to the top of the steps. Or rather, where the top of the steps should have been. It was only clear now after moving around the curve of the cliff face, but the last fifteen metres of the steps had crumbled away.

  Shit.

  Acid glared at Magda, biting her tongue both metaphorically and otherwise. “You didn’t think to mention this, that the steps end a little premature?”

  The woman raised her hands. “I knew the steps were here, but I have never used them before.”

  “Now she tells us,” Acid sneered, under her breath.

  “Could we use those ledges to get up?” Spook asked, gesturing to where a series of flat rocks, wide enough for two people, jutted out from the cliff face.

  Acid considered the option. The rocks rose up at intervals a few feet between each one, with the top one around six feet from the summit. Jumping between them would be difficult, but not impossible.

  “You two wait here,” she told them. “I’m going alone. You stay safe. I’ll come back for you.”

  “No!” Magda and Spook both yelled in unison. Magda adding, “I need to show you the way in. We all must go.”

  Spook looked over the side, widening her eyes at the steep cliff face and the large rocks on the ground below. “She’s right,” she muttered, rather unconvincingly. “We have to all go. That’s how we do it.”