AFTER

by Kelly, Ronald

  Rott's jagged smile grew broader. "Cutting up? Sounds like a good idea to me." And with that he withdrew the cleaver and sank it's blade into the back of the man's neck.

  Sam wanted to close his eyes, telling himself that he didn't want to see Rott's insanity. But he didn't refrain from looking. It was the old man's job to sit and observe, and that is what he did, like it or not. In a street full of madmen, Sam was the lone stabilizing factor, the only lasting constant that the rural town of Watkins Glen had left. Everyone else was either dead or somewhere in hiding.

  The con shrieked as Rott went to work. His terror didn't last long. Three hacks of the cleaver separated the man's head from his body. As the body dropped to the ground, bucking and jittering like a headless chicken, Rott lifted his trophy at arm's length, blood drizzling from the ragged stump. "Listen up," he said, voice booming. "There will be no laughing without my permission. No eating, sleeping, no taking a shit without my seal of approval. I'm your warden now – your owner – and what I say goes, whether you like it or not. Does everyone understand?'

  The men standing around him stared back with disgust and defiance. For a moment, Sam was sure they would rebel, that they would lift their weapons and cut Rott down right there in the street. Do it! his mind urged. He's one and you're an even dozen. Don't let this madness continue!

  It might have happened, too. But Rott beat them to the punch. He hauled off and angrily heaved the con's severed head through the big window of the pet shop, shattered the glass and shocking the others with his fury. "I said… DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

  The stand-off ended as fear and uncertainty took hold. The men Rott had liberated from bondage grumbled and nodded solemnly.

  The wave of tension diminished with the sound of a scuffle in the alleyway between the hardware store and the pet shop. There was a dirty laugh, followed by the scream of a woman.

  Sam's heart sank as a big man with a red mohawk dragged a young blonde into the street. Her small breasts jiggled amid the tatters of her torn blouse. It was Tina Mercher, the grocer's daughter.

  "Look at what I found lurking behind the grocery store," said Mohawk. "A sweet little piece of ass!" With a shove, he flung her into the crowd of men. Laughing, they grabbed at her, tearing at her clothes, groping her with dirty hands, tossing her back and forth among them.

  "Please, don't!" pleaded Tina. Tears streamed down her face. "I…I've got to get back to my father. He's sick… I was trying to find him something to eat!"

  Rott's smile broadened even more, become wolf-like, predatory. "Daddy can wait, bitch." He turned his head and winked at Sam on the porch. "Ready for a little porn, old man?"

  Sam said nothing. He could only sit there, frozen, and stare at what was about to take place.

  "Strip her down and lay her out for me, boys," Rott said, unbuckling his belt.

  The men hooted and hollered as they obeyed. Soon they had the naked girl spread-eagled on the hot asphalt of the street. Two men held her ankles, while two others held her wrists. Tina shrieked and fought them, tooth and nail.

  "She's a little wildcat!" said one of the cons. "I can hardly hold her down."

  "I'll take the fight out of her," said Rott. And, with that, he walked up with the meat cleaver and hacked off both her hands at the wrists. They flapped and fluttered like two pale moths.

  "Damn!" said the fellow on the upper left side, recoiling as blood spurted all over the front of his filthy white t-shirt. "You're brutal, man!'

  "You haven't seen brutal yet," said their commander with a grin. "I'd say she weighs about a hundred and twenty. That gives us about twelve minutes before she bleeds to death. If everyone finishes fast, we can all have a turn at her." He looked over at the redneck and his dogs in the homemade cage. "Bubba, the bulls can have a go, too, if she lasts that long."

  Sam watched, horrified, as Rott shed his jeans and boots and entered the mutilated girl. She could do nothing but lay there and take the violation as her life's blood pumped through the ugly stubs of her wrists.

  Strike me blind, Lord, Sam prayed. I don't want to see this. But his eyesight remained true and he did see it. Someone had to witness the atrocities of Maple Avenue and he was the chosen one.

  Sam focused on Tina's face and was surprised to find her head turned, staring straight at him. Her lips moved silently and it took a moment for him to figure out what she was trying to say.

  Kill me.

  The old man stared into her pleading eyes and a memory came to mind. An Easter morning twenty years ago. Him standing in the church hallway with a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, handing it out to the children as they left their Sunday school classes. A pretty little girl of six dressed in a frilly pink dress and white patent leather shoes, her golden hair tied up in piggy tails. She had proudly lost her two front teeth a day or so ago, leaving a sizable gap between her other baby teeth. She had smiled shyly when he handed her the stick of gum. "Sank you, Misser Wheewer!" the little girl had said with a whistling lisp.

  Now those same lips, grown and full, asked a grim favor of him.

  Please… kill me.

  Sam's heart ached like it hadn't in years. He left his rocking chair, stood up, and lifting the old Winchester to his shoulder, took aim. Sam breathed in deeply and settled the sights on the space between Tina Mercher's tearful eyes.

  Dear God… forgive me, he thought, his eyes growing moist and hot.

  Thank you, she mouthed and gave him a weak little smile.

  Sam squeezed the trigger. The .44 slug punched a hole above the bridge of the girl's nose, then exploded out of the back of her head.

  "What the hell?" yelled the next con in line. "Shit, I ain't screwing no corpse!"

  Despite the sudden death of the young woman, Rott continued his violation, only stopping when satisfaction finally came. He stood up, his member drying in the July heat. "You just made one bad judgment call, Pops." He picked up his meat cleaver and took a couple of steps toward the fix-it shop. Several of the others accompanied him, angry at having been cheated of their turn.

  Sam levered another round into the rifle's breech and took aim, centering the sights on Rott's deflated penis. "Now ya'll can probably reach me in a few seconds flat, but I reckon I can turn two or three of you roosters into hens before that happens. And I'll start with the boss man here."

  The group of men stopped in their tracks, aware that the old man wasn't bluffing. Rott took a couple more steps, though. He laughed and, reaching down, stroked himself. "I can get it up again… if you need a bigger target."

  "You're a monster, Rott!" said Sam. His finger ached to pull the trigger, but he didn't. In the back of his mind, he knew the action would only seal his death warrant. Dick or no dick, Rott would cross the remaining feet of Maple Street, mount the porch of the fix-it shop, and split his head in half with the cleaver with one well-placed blow.

  Since Estelle's passing, Sam had prayed for death on many occasions. But that afternoon he found that desire to be gone. He desperately wanted to live… if only for the sake of his invaded town.

  Slowly, he backed toward the door of the fix-it shop. "I'm going back in here now," Sam told him. The rifle's muzzle never wavered, still in line with the murderer's privates. "You'll pay for what you did to Miss Tina."

  "I just got the ball rolling," Rott told him truthfully. "You're the one who killed her."

  Sam eased to the door, opened it with one hand and stepped inside.

  "See you tomorrow, Pops. We'll do our best to entertain you again."

  The old man ignored Rott's comment. He closed the door, secured it firmly, then dropped the rifle and stumbled toward the back room. Sam saw a tall stainless steel trash can next to his work bench – the type with a lid that swung open when you pressed a foot pedal – and headed toward it.

  He didn't make it. Before he got halfway there, he dropped to his knees and vomited. He did that two or three times, then dry-heaved until the nausea passed. Afterward, he crawled to his bed. He rolled over onto h
is side and cried himself to sleep, thinking of the girl in the frilly Easter dress… as well as the one he'd shot and left like a dead dog in the middle of the street.

  Again, a dream about the boy.

  Sam stood in the bedroom door, watching him hurriedly pack a sports bag.

  "The sheriff is on his way," he told him. "You hurt that girl. Hurt her bad."

  The boy, now sixteen, glanced up at him. "I just wanted to see how many fingers would fit in," he said. He grinned crookedly in that mean-ass way of his. "It was more than five."

  Sam shook his head in disbelief. "Why did you turn out the way you did?"

  The boy lifted his seven-fingered hand. "What was it Grandpa used to say… that anyone born with seven fingers was the Devil's right hand? So, you see, I never had a choice."

  Sam lifted his own hand, also bearing seven digits. "It never stopped me from trying to do the right thing."

  "You do your thing, Papa, and I'll do mine." Then he zipped his bag and stormed out the door past him.

  That was the last time he saw his son… for a very long time.

  The next morning, Sam awoke to the sour stench of old puke. He looked at the alarm clock and was surprised to find that he had slept through half of yesterday and all the night. It was nearly seven o'clock in the morning.

  Sam got up and sat there for a long moment. He thought about the events of the past two days, wondering if they had been for real or some horrible nightmare. But he knew that they had truly transpired. The pool of vomit in his floor and the memory of Tina Mercher lying, naked and mutilated, in the center of Maple Avenue told him that it had.

  He sauntered through the back room to the front of the shop. There was only a single door in the fix-it shop. He had bricked up the two windows in the front, as well as the single one in the back, during the late fifties when the Red Threat was real and paranoia ruled. Sam remembered how his fellow shopkeepers had thought he was crazy for doing so, and so had Estelle. The bricked-up windows and a dozen other quirky devices he had installed for security's sake. Everyone had thought him to be a nut… until the Cuban Missile Crisis scared the hell out of everyone in the country. Then they understood exactly what he had been waiting for.

  Aching all over from a bad day's and night's sleep, Sam slowly unsecured the front door, then cracked it open a bit.

  Rott's men were painting the fronts of the hardware store and pet shop a dark, ebony black. The group worked slowly and silently, more out of pure fear than anything else. The man they had considered an anti-hero inside the pen was now the Anti-Christ in their minds. They had seen precisely what he was capable of and knew they could end up the same way if they let their guard down.

  Sam noticed Rott and Pickpocket standing on the sidewalk across the street, discussing something. From the secretive way they conversed, the elderly man knew they were up to no good. He went back into his storeroom, rummaged through the junk and found a device that resembled a pistol grip with a transparent plastic dome at the end. He found an old pair of headphones and plugged them into a jack hole on the body of the device, then slipped them over his head. He stuck the dome to the crack in the door and turned on the power of the contraption's double-A batteries.

  What he heard terrified him.

  "I want you to gather the troops after supper tonight. Go out into the neighborhoods, door to door. Kill the men and women. Burn the houses. Bring me the children."

  Sam retreated and closed the door. Until that moment, Rott had been content to carry out his campaign of depravity and evil solely on the avenue of Maple Avenue. But now the entire town would suffer… and suffer gravely.

  And the children? What did he intend to do with them? The possibilities were too awful to even consider.

  The old man stood there and digested the revelation for a long moment.

  Then he turned and entered his workshop. He went to the gun cabinet and found a Remington 1100 twelve-gauge. He examined the semi-automatic shotgun and nodded. Yes, with a few modifications, he thought he might actually be able to pull it off.

  On the shelves of junk, Sam found a few things he would need: a couple of aluminum cake pans, some stiff springs, and a handful of bolts and sheet metal screws. He sat down at his workbench and checked the alarm clock. He had a good ten hours before Rott's army of bloodthirsty bastards set off on their mission.

  Taking a battery-powered Black & Decker drill from a peg on the wall, he hunched over the long, black body of the shotgun and set to work.

  On the evening of July 12th, Rott's men assembled in the street in front of Millie's Pet Shop. Most of them were tired and hungry, covered with black paint from their day of senseless labor. In turn, their faces were set in masks of cruelty and anticipation for the havoc they would soon wreak.

  They were armed to the teeth with handguns, rifles, and shotguns from the hardware store, and the big country boy with the Alabama t-shirt had the three Pit Bulls on chains like a pack of rabid bloodhounds. Rott stood near the propane grills, pleased at what he saw. He stripped the cooked flesh from a delicate arm bone with his jagged teeth, then tossed it into a pile of gristle and skeletal remains that had once been the daughter of the local grocer.

  "Okay, you've got your orders," Pickpocket told them, taking the point. "Search and Destroy. Nothing stays alive… except for the children."

  The skinny, little guy with the Nazi tattoos happened to glance across the street. His ugly face showed curiosity at first, then naked fear. "What the hell -- ?"

  The others looked toward the porch of the fix-it shop. There stood Sam Wheeler. He held a Remington semi-auto shotgun rigged with an ammo drum fashioned from two cake pans bolted together. The thirty-round drum was linked to the loading port of the scattergun. The weapon in his wrinkled hands looked as cold and deadly as the expression on his aged face.

  For a moment, a pall of stunned silence hung over Maple Avenue. Then Sam lifted the scattergun to his shoulder.

  "It's time to rock and roll, as you young'uns are fond of saying." Then he squeezed the trigger and the modified Remington began to rain fatal fury upon Rott and his band of transgressors.

  There were fourteen men in the street and three dogs. Sam intended to dispatch them all with thirty rounds of double-aught buckshot. The Remington 1100 jerked and bucked with the continuous recoil, hammering at the flesh and bone of the elderly man's right shoulder. He felt something tear inside – his rotator cuff more than likely – but he didn't stop. He held the weapon firm and steady, sweeping it from one end of the line to the other.

  The casualties among Rott's brigade were devastating. Heads exploded in bursts of crimson and splintered bone, and craterous wounds pockmarked their chests and abdomens. Several arms were sheared from their sockets. They dropped to the pavement, twitching and flexing, still clutching the weapons they had been toting.

  Bubba went down, his green cap collapsing amid the ruins of his skull. Instantly, the Pit Bulls were loose. As they advanced, crossing the street at startling speed, Sam lowered the Remington's muzzle and unleashed a burst of four rounds. One yipped sharply as he took a bee-swarm of pellets in his broad chest, while the other scarcely made a sound, taking a few more steps toward the fix-it shop without benefit of a head before finally falling.

  Sam squeezed the trigger again, but nothing happened. The gun was jammed. He struggled to clear the breech, but he was too late. The third dog – a black and white Bull with one blind eye – leapt and knocked him backward into his rocking chair. Sam dropped the 1100 and flailed blindly at the snarling maw of slobber and fangs. The dog's powerful jaws closed around Sam's left wrist. Yellowed teeth punched through ancient skin, shattering old bones and bringing spurts of blood.

  The elderly man reached into the right pocket of his overalls, groping, searching for the butt of the Colt. He withdrew the .45 revolver, pressed it against the dog's blind eye, and fired. The animal died instantly, but refused to release its hold. Sam cried out in pain as the weight of the dog did fur
ther damage to his wrist, ripping flesh and grinding bone against bone. Sam stuck the long barrel of the Peacemaker between the dead dog's jaws and pried awkwardly until they finally grew slack and let go.

  He thought he was out of the woods, when he looked up and saw the Alabama Hitman jump over the hood of the shot-riddled Mustang and march toward him. The wrestler's biceps flexed like living things beneath his tanned skin as he clenched and unclenched his huge hands.

  "You want I should open a can of whup-ass on the old bastard, boss?" he asked Rott.

  The serial killer and his second-in-command emerged from where they hid behind the black Ford. Rott smiled, his eyes glittering meanly. "Go right ahead. Break open a big ol' can."

  Sam raised his revolver, but suddenly the Hitman was there. He batted the Colt out of his grasp and grabbed Sam by the throat with one vise-like hand. He grinned with professionally whitened teeth as he slowly began to squeeze. "Want him dead?"

  Rott considered it for a moment. "Naw, just break his neck. Then he can lie in his own shit and starve to death."

  The Hitman's grin widened. "Sounds like a plan to me." He placed his other hand against the side of Sam's head and began to apply pressure.

  The old man grunted as he felt the bones of his neck begin to give way. Desperately, Sam reared back with his right foot and attempted to kick Hitman in the nuts, but he landed a glancing blow to his upper thigh instead. It was enough to throw the big man off balance. As they began to tumble to the porch of the fix-it shop, Sam felt a sharp spike of pain shoot through the back of his neck and heard a brittle crunch. He hit the ground hard, fighting against the urge to pass out from shear agony.

  He lay there, supported by his elbows, as he watched Hitman climb slowly to his feet. "I'm really gonna do a number on you now!" he growled and started forward.

  Sam scuttled backward, like a sand crab, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and the wrestler. He made it through the open doorway, crawled a yard or two inside the shop, and stopped. Sam watched carefully as the Alabama Hitman stopped within the frame of the door, filling it with his towering bulk.