Duet for the Devil
Page 48
The sea of straw-dry grass seethes in the wind, sloping slightly uphill, stretching away to the dark horizon, chaff & litter swirling all around, as the huge black vortex bears down upon the frail wood structures, dominating everything before it, riveting the eye with the fury of its Hellish majesty…
A slight draw separates Frank from the farmhouse.
He unholsters the .44 Magnum, its long, vicious barrel glinting in the weird yellowish-grey light.
He can see why his enemy selected this sight for the Final Showdown. There is nowhere to hide for the hunter. No way to approach without his quarry spotting him.
He can feel the crosshairs of the Zodiac scoping him, waiting for the moment He selects, squeezing that trigger so fucking slowly, selecting the exact moment, savoring the eternity of waiting… & each thundering heartbeat reminding His quarry, Hawkes, that: “I. LIKE. KILLING. PEOPLE. BECAUSE. IT. IS. SO. MUCH. FUN. IT. IS. MORE. FUN. THAN. KILLING. WILD. GAME. IN. THE. FOREST. BECAUSE. MAN. IS. THE. MOST. DANGEROUS. ANIMAL. OF. ALL. TO. KILL…”
He can drive in. Or he can walk.
That goddamn H&K G11 would’ve made one Hell of an equalizer. Just this Dirty Harry six-pack.
“FUCK THIS WHININ’ OVER SPILT MILK SHIT!” He snarls, pops open his trunk, &, much as it galls his sense of pride, drags out his Kevlar Second Chance wrapped in a faded army blanket, walks around to the relative privacy of the “blind side” of the Vette, strips off his jacket & shirt, & dons the flak vest over his undershirt. He has to work around the holster. Not easy. But the reassuring fit of the hand-tooled leather is like some mystic talisman he cannot bear to remove. Not this close to where The Beast lurks…
His shirt whips around him, as he rebuttons it, flapping in this Hellborn wind. He unbuckles his pants, tucks in his shirttails, & zips up, before tugging his jacket back across the broad expanse of his shoulders.
Frank’s eyes are hidden behind the mirrored mask of his gold-rimmed aviator’s glasses.
His grey-streaked hair billows in the gusts of wind.
A leg-shot can still cripple me, he thinks, but I’ll crawl ’til I see that bastard on His way to Hell… only a fucking headshot can take me out, now…
Hawkes squares his massive shoulders, sucks in his gut, & strides toward the farmhouse, gun hand thrust forward, the Magnum gripped in his right hand, tilted slightly skyward, ready to assume the combat stance on split-second notice, aim & fire.
He wades through the raging sea of dead-brown grass. Scrambles down the slope of the draw. & up the other side.
He’s halfway there.
Still no fire.
That goddamn Kansas twister spinning closer ever closer.
He skirts the eastern perimeter of the weathered & obviously long-abandoned house, its broken windows dark & ominous, staring down at him from the second story, leveling malignantly from the ground floor.
An explosion rips the death-still air, booming, echoing across the dull rumble of the prairie’s trembling earth.
Frank drops into a combat stance.
Realizes it is only the crash of thunder that he hears. Jagged bolts of blue-white lightning sizzle across the black & boiling sky.
Now, on the far side of the house, he can see a scarecrow, arms outstretched, limned against the lightning-illuminated clouds.
He sidles farther past the corner of the house.
Rain suddenly lashes downward in icy sheets, swirling like wet shrouds, cutting Frank’s line of vision to only a yard or so.
Just as suddenly, it ceases.
Another scarecrow.
& another.
& another…
The twister is so near, now, there is a deafening roar a vibration of both air & earth like a freight train racing toward you through a tunnel with your ear held down along the tracks.
He eases closer.
They are circled there, on the west side of the house… ten… eleven… twelve scarecrows form the circle… another, the largest, at their center…
Typical of cyclones’ trickster nature, the ground beneath Frank’s feet is running with rivulets of water, turning muddy, as the cracked, dusty soil sucks up the moisture, while the circle of scarecrows still stands upon dry ground.
Golfball-sized chunks of hail explode from the dark sky, clattering all around, bouncing & ricocheting like rock salt blasted from some gargantuan scattergun. Frank drops to a squat, ducking his face, shielding his head with his arms.
The cloudburst of hail lasts only a few moments, stopping as unexpectedly as it started.
The monstrous funnel moves past, just to the west, not more than two- or three-hundred yards away, ripping up fence posts & sod & dry-parched soil as it tears a swath across the open countryside.
The wind stirs again, whipping the dust & chaff in eddies, nearly blinding him in its renewed fury.
He closes the distance.
Gooseflesh rising. Bad vibes pouring over him like icy rain.
He takes the house first. Rushes the back door. Kicks the weathered wood to splinters. Searches room to darkened room in a flurry of commando shadowstrikes & feints, .44 swinging in brisk, studied arcs, taking it by the book, classic search-&-destroy tactics second nature to the ex-Ranger, focusing on every flicker of the lightning, every creak & whisper of shifting wood…
Nothing.
Nothing but a few mice, nailed to the walls, squealing with tiny, feeble voices, still squirming in their death throes…
Frank exits the same way he came in.
His hair bristles. The goose pimples ripple across his sweat-soaked flesh. His shirt clings wetly to him with every movement.
He knows before he sees, what Evil has been worked here.
He feels as though the very Pit of Hell has opened at his feet…
He wants to run.
Without looking.
But he can’t.
He has opened the yawning Gates of Hell, & he must peer through to the other side…
Almost hoping he takes a headshot before he witnesses firsthand what horrors the inhuman mind of George Simon Brittain has devised.
Flies swarm & buzz in a demonic symphony.
Step. By step. He forces himself to walk. Closer. Until there can be no mistaking—
Lightning flashes, throwing fitful light across this scene straight out of Hell—
Twelve little girls, stripped naked, savaged, skin flayed to expose bare flesh beneath, nailed to wooden crossbeams, crucified, throats slit, tongues tugged through leering wounds…
Colombian neckties…no one who has ever seen this abomination can ever forget the silent, shrieking terror it invokes…
The Great Night opens… & Hawkes is sucked into its dark & secret, mad & mindless heart…
Hawkes steps closer.
There is a horrible gurgling & groaning sound.
A booming roar.
Another strike of lightning sears the sky.
The figure at the center is a Missouri State Trooper, crucified, like his companions, but still clad in shirt & tie…naked from the waist down, save his socks & boots…his Smokie hat resting at his feet, beneath the juncture of his crossed ankles where the heavy, rusted nail is hammered, pinning him to the wooden beam in frozen torment… All ten fingers have been hacked off. They lie beside his hat. His penis, too, has been severed from his body…
Frank needs no one to tell him how the trooper has been gagged…
&, then, there is the final abomination.
The skinned carcasses of the thirteen slain german shepherds. The dead wear them like the hooded cloaks of shamans.
Bared fangs leering above their heads, trailing like robes across their shoulders & down their backs…
Hawkes screams. But his throat allows no sound to escape.
He kneels on the damp & dark-stained earth, & lets himself weep, pouring out his anguish, sobbing, until he believes he tears a stream of blood. He dips his fingers in this bizarre stigmata, watching it drip from his blood-drenched hands
.
A sudden ray of sunlight pierces through a rift in the raging sea of storm clouds above, illuminating a weather-bleached plywood sheet lying face-up on the trampled grass inside the Hellish circle, & the blood-scrawled message reads:
SFPD - 0 ZODIAC - 666
My VEnGEANcE NEEDs BLOOD
The reek of blood fills his nostrils with its coppery stench. Hawkes is surrounded by the chainsaw-droning of the swarming, hungry, countless multitude of flies, his brain thundering with their ceaseless buzz & the laughter of his dead war buddies… & The Beast …
Laughing. & gurgling. Infernal, mindless babbling…
He swings.
Combat stance.
Firing on reflex.
Firing again, & again, even as he moves.
He hears bullets strike flesh.
The groaning ceases.
But the laughter rings even louder, peals of thunder that shake the earth beneath his feet & make the air quiver like bare-flayed flesh…
He stares at the crucified State Trooper.
Dead.
Killed by his own hand.
Shot pointblank twice in the head.
His shirt splattered with blood where the third bullet took out his left lung & his heart.
“GEORGE FUCKING SIMON GODDAMN BRITTAIN, YOU MOTHERFUCKING COCKSUCKER, ZODIAC, WHERE IN THE HELL ARE YOU?” He screams.
But there are only the soft wailing of the wind & the whisperings of the endless sea of grass in answer…
Hawkes stands alone on this plain of carnage, blinded by his tears, circled by the dead, the soulless mirrors of his aviators’ shades reflecting the storm clouds & the jagged bolts of bluish lightning.
[ 287 ]
“Warren. Franklin. Hawkes—”
An unseen hand catches his right wrist in a crippling hold, fingertips digging into pressure points until his balled fist goes limp, & the .44 Mag drops from his deadened fingers.
Suddenly he smells the reek of Evil smoke.
Yet another hand clenches Hawkes’ hair in a steel-hard grip, & wheels him toward the sound of this measured monotone address.
& he stares through the blur of tears—
Immediately in front of him stands a stocky man dressed in a blue serge suit. A dark madura cigar is clenched between His teeth. He inhales & exhales, blowing out another pungent puff of bluish smoke to pollute the ozone-tang of lightning-charged Plains’ air…
He extends His leather-gloved right hand in mocking greeting.
Hawkes’ every hair bristles as if hit by a jolt of current, his pores puckering to chill gooseflesh. The piercing gaze of those owlish eyes fix his, exerting His will against Hawkes’, striving to dominate him, as if locked in a bout of mental arm wrestling…
This is The Beast.
His left hand holds His black attaché case.
His right withdraws from its pose of welcome, & He reaches behind His back, & slips His MAC 10 from the rear waistband of His trousers, & levels its muzzle at Hawkes’ heart,
“At. Last. We. Meet. Mano. A. Mano…” He chuckles. & His chuckle swells to a booming laugh like icy breakers lashing stone…
“Well. I. Did. Bring. A. Select. Few. Friends—”
Strung out in a ragged arc between the Zodiac & the outlying barn stand four of His companions—two men, a woman & a girl. He recognizes all but one…
& the recognition stuns him to abject silence.
“May. I. Introduce. My. Esteemed. Associate—” The Medic of Mutilations gestures to the emaciated man with the cobalt mirrorshades & black leather jacket. “—Professor Punk.”
“My. Traveling. Companions.” Again He gestures. “Snuff. &. His. Young. Daughter. Miss. Juliette…”
They are the pair seen in his momentary flash of psychometric revelation. & the memory hits him with a grandslam dose of dèjá vu.
“I. Believe. You. Are. Familiar.” He grins. “Very. Familiar.” Oh, how He grins. “In. The. Carnal. Sense…” He bows, His gestures exaggerated & grandiose— “With. Our. Ill-named… Miss. Cherry…”
She struts toward Hawkes, her sinuous hips swaying, firm breasts jiggling beneath a faux-snakeskin jumpsuit, cut to accentuate her muscular-yet-so-female assets. She lifts the Galil. Cradles it in her arms.
“No such thing as safe sex with me, Frankie Baby— I’m one dangerous lady, all the way…” She purrs. “Remember those condoms I made sure you used…?” She pauses, letting her words sink in to Hawkes’ buzzing brain. “Wellllll, hate to have’ta tell y’ now, but they were treated, with a topical cream, a custom blend a la Prof. Punk—some of Lucy Nation’s special libido-stimulator/Stayhard drug, an exclusive import for Erebos from the ‘black clinics’ of Hong Kong, & just a trace of a powerful hypnotic, & ditto for a dash of LSD…
“I hear you’ve been real busy, since I saw you, huh, Big Man…” The redhead taunts. “I’d offer t’ fix you up with some hot hardcore angelpix; I’ve got all the connections, y’ know…but I guess you’re into the cop’n’kiddie-snuff bit, now…?
“Enough smalltalk bullshit—
“Warren Franklin Hawkes, I’m a licensed P.I., & I’m making a citizen’s arrest… Murder One, Big Man, Multiple Murder…”
“Still confused, Mr. Hawkes?” George Brittain asks. “You see, MY friend, The Prof, informs Me Miss Cherry is one of Erebos’. Most Valuable. Players. One of Lucy Nation’s top trackers. & her. Prime. Female. Undercover. Operative.”
He draws deeply on the Te-Amo, ’til the tip glows like a Hellcoal in the gathering darkness. Then lets out a great puff of the vile, stinking smoke…
“Nice to know. You have been. Had. By. An. Expert…eh?
“Sorry. I. Shall. Not. Be. Able. To. Stay. Around. For. The. Trial… But. We. Have. Places. To. Go. &. People. To. Do…
“Oh. So. Many. Many. Of. Them…” & He laughs, how He laughs, savoring His victory over the meddling P.I., & with the sheer joy, in anticipation of The Hunt ahead… “Ah. Yes. Indeed. I like killing people. Because it is so much fun… Because man. Is. The most dangerous game of all to kill…”
Cherry raises the Galil, aiming it at Hawkes’ midriff & motions to the bald-shaved brute with the mascara & purple eyeshadow who holds Hawkes immobile. “BellaDonald, put the cuffs on him— it’s your turn this time, Big Man…”
“Hail Satan, Lord of the South!” Snuff chants.
“Hail Lucifer, Lord of the East!” Julie continues the proscribed litany.
“Hail Belial, Lord of the North!” BellaDonald cries out, as he slams the cold steel of the manacles shut around Hawkes’ wrists.
“Hail Leviathan, Lord of the West!” Prof adds.
“Hail. Me! Hail The Pale Horse Death! Hail The Great Beast 666—The Lord of Hell! The Lord of Paradi(c)e!” His voice no longer a controlled monotone but a howl of lustmord…
& Snuff shouts, “MAN HAS WILLED MAN!”
“NO BELIEF IS VALID—YET EVERY BELIEF IS VALID!” Prof. Punk answers.
BellaDonald screams, “NOTHING IS TRUE! EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED!”
& the Count Zaroff knife slithers from its strange, wooden scabbard, & He brandishes the Knife of Spring-Heeled Jack, & blue lightning twitches across its upraised blade, & The Beast who once was the man George Simon Brittain, & who has been The Zodiac/The Green River Killer/The Maldoror lets His laughter roar & merge with the echoing thunder, like The Bell of Doom tolling…
“MY DESIRES SHALL BECOME FLESH, MY DREAMS REALITY & NO FEAR SHALL ALTER IT!”
“Hystera!
“Ialbadaoth!
“Baphomet!
“Thanateros!
“In nomine Dei nostri Satanas Luciferi excelsi!
“The Day of Mankind has ended, The Time of Mancruel is at hand… AVE SATANAS! ALL HAIL BLUE DEVIL! & BID WELCOME THE APOCALYPSE—
“In the name of Satan, the Ruler of the earth, the King of the world, I command the forces of Darkness to bestow their Infernal power upon Me!
“Open wide the gates of Hell & come forth from
the abyss to greet Me as your brother & friend!
“By all the Gods of the Pit, I command that these things of which I speak shall come to pass!
“Come forth & answer to your names by manifesting My desires!
“Aamon—
“Abaddon—
“Abigar—
“Adramelech—
“Agaliarept—
“Agares—
“Ahaw-K’in—
“Ah Itz—
“Ah Puch—
“Ahriman—
“Ak Ek’—
“Alastor—
“Amemon—
“Anath—
“Apanecatl—
“Apollyon—
“Aries—
“Asherah—
“Asmodeus—
“Astoreth—
“Ayperos—
“Azathoth—
“Azazel—
“Azrael—
“Baal Berith—
“Baal Gad—
“Baalim—
“Baalot—
“Baal Phegor—
“Baal Shamen—
“Baal Zabul—
“Baal Zebub...”
The endless sea of dead brown grass ripples, as if stirred by some monstrous, unseen hand…