Life Rage

by L. L. Soares

  She could feel her head tingling. He was trying to do something to her mind. She knew it. Maybe it wasn’t something he had any control over. That’s what she’d theorized about the two of them, that they had no ability to control what they did, once they were in the thick of it. Like vampires, they had needs and they were slaves to these needs.

  Except they couldn’t get what they wanted from her. She was immune. It totally baffled Grif.

  The tingling in her head felt good. It heightened her sensations. It made her cum harder and more often. He hit her G-spot, and she found herself squirting all over him. Eventually Grif just wanted to stop, but she wouldn’t let him. He tried to get off the bed, but she pulled him back. She had always had a strong libido, but something about him pushed it up a notch. Two notches. She felt like she was reverting to some animal state.

  “I got to go,” he said weakly, trying to get away again, trying to pull himself out of her, but she wrapped her legs tighter around him, refusing to let him go. She grabbed the wooden bars of the bedpost and held on for dear life, refusing to budge. Even after he came, she wouldn’t let him go.

  Despite the closed door, and despite their fucking, they could still hear the noise from outside. It reached a fever pitch and then started dying down. Whatever this thing was that Sam Wayne did to people, it was fast and furious and people killed one another quickly. It wasn’t long and drawn out.

  When it was completely silent, Colleen relaxed her legs and let Grif go. He seemed eager to get away from her. He was sweaty and weak and somehow ended up sitting on the floor, his back to the door, breathing hard.

  “You never met a girl like me before, huh?” Colleen said to him. She was breathing hard, too.

  “No,” Grif said, half-smiling. His face looked skull-like for a moment. “You got that right.”

  “We have to go soon,” she told him. Totally sure of herself. “It’s safe to leave now, and we’ve got a mission to accomplish, before this spreads too far.”

  “I know,” Grif said, but he didn’t make any effort to get up off the floor.

  * * *

  Viv sat on the floor of her room, listening to them. She wanted to join in, but she resisted. She tried with all her might to clear her head. Between their sounds, and the sounds from outside, it was almost too much to bear, but she was able to at least partially empty her mind.

  And after she’d just yelled at Grif for risking it, for fucking Colleen. Here he was, at it again.

  At least they were preoccupied. The sounds from outside were getting increasingly disturbing. Strangely, nobody tried to break into their suite, though.

  Viv tried to block out the sounds of anger and violence. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to concentrate on the sound of her own breathing.

  It lasted less than an hour, and then all was quiet again. Everything was peaceful.

  There was a knock on her door.

  “Viv?” Colleen asked. “Are you okay in there?”

  “Yeah,” she croaked, as if she hadn’t spoken in years and it was something new to her.

  “Get ready,” Colleen said. “We have to go soon. It’s time to move on.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Grif said.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  There didn’t seem to be any other drivers on the road. There were a lot of abandoned cars, and dead bodies here and there. Viv wondered if everyone else in the world was dead.

  Grif was driving. Viv was sitting on the passenger side, leaning against the window, looking out. For some reason she found herself thinking about Jeremy. She let her thoughts take her away.

  They’d met when she’d been doing some modeling. She had heard about him before she actually met him. He’d dated a lot of the other models, girls she knew. She wasn’t really close to any of them; she mostly kept to herself, but she couldn’t help hearing about him.

  She’d actually liked modeling, while it lasted. She’d had to earn money, and people seemed more than happy to pay her a lot of money to pose for pictures.

  When they’d finally met, there was an obvious, mutual attraction between them, and she’d considered exploiting that. But it just didn’t happen. Instead, they somehow found themselves in a different kind of relationship.

  They’d flirted, always on the verge of moving forward to something else. But they didn’t get close until after his accident. He’d gone into seclusion and she’d sought him out. Maybe at first intending to use his despair, perhaps she’d even wanted to end his suffering. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She’d helped him come back from the edge. She’d been the only one to nurse him back to health. To nurture him. She swore she would never harm him, and she never did. One of the few promises she’d ever been able to keep to herself.

  After the crash, he shut himself off from everyone but her. By that time, she was starting to feel overexposed and Jeremy was more than happy to offer her a way out of the business. He’d taken care of her financial needs. He let her use his credit cards, even her car was in his name. No one knew she lived there. They kept to themselves. She only went out at night. No one could trace her. That’s why she had stayed with him so long. She told him everything and he still accepted her, still wanted to protect her. It was the first time she’d stayed in one place that long since childhood.

  But like everything else, it had had a price. She’d had to resist him. No matter how much he’d beg her at times to take his life, she’d had to deny him. Sometimes it seemed more than she could bear, and she’d had to leave for days at a time. But she always went back. She couldn’t leave him for long.

  It was good when Colleen had entered the picture. She took the edge off, no matter how briefly. It would have been very hard for Viv to leave him completely, but with Colleen keeping him preoccupied, it made it easier for her to come and go. To have more of a distance from him. After years of intensity, it was nice to turn it down a bit.

  But now, Jeremy was dead. She’d lost him. After years of taking care of him, helping him become himself again. It was so painful to lose him like that.

  Colleen was in the back seat. She seemed very alert, looking out the back window.

  “We’re getting close,” Colleen said. “I can feel him.”

  This was something new. She’d never said anything about being able to sense Sam Wayne before. While this was a helpful asset to their mission, it also made Viv uneasy. That and her ability to resist Grif’s hunger. All this time, Viv had thought she was a normal girl, but it was clear that she wasn’t. She was like them. Not exactly like them, she didn’t have their urges, their needs. She was like their opposite. The one thing that could resist them. The snake charmer among the serpents.

  “It won’t be long now,” Colleen said. She was behind Grif’s seat now, whispering into his ear. “He’s very close, now.”

  Viv turned from the passenger window to look back at Colleen. There was something different about her. Viv saw a kind of an aura around Colleen. It was as if someone had outlined her face in bright green. And then, as quickly as it happened, it was gone.

  This made Viv wonder. Back at the hotel, had they been unharmed by the outside world because they were all immune to the violence? Or had they been spared because of Colleen’s presence somehow? Viv remembered Colleen being so sure that no one would harm them if they stayed in their suite.

  When they’d left the hotel, there had been bodies in the hallways. Bodies outside on the street. Viv remembered their tortured faces.

  “I hope you’re both ready,” Colleen said softly. “Because this will all be over soon.”

  * * *

  When they reached the bridge, they were low on gas. Not that it mattered much. The bridge was choked with cars and there was no way they could have driven across. They’d fueled up at abandoned gas stations along the way, but this was the end of the road.

  “We have to get out there,” Colleen said. “He’s close.”

  “How can you be sure?” Viv asked, but Colleen was
already out of the car and walking toward the silent, unearthly traffic jam. Grif shut off the engine.

  “I guess we’re following her, then?” he asked.

  “What other plan is there? She seems to think she can detect him somehow. We’ve followed her this far. Why not go all the way with it?”

  “I don’t know,” Grif said. “I guess there’s no Plan B at this point.”

  “Not that I know of.”

  He took out the keys and opened his door. Viv opened the passenger door, and they both got out. There was a foul odor in the air. It didn’t take much detective work to figure out why. Scattered between the abandoned cars were bodies, and pieces of bodies.

  “This can’t be real,” Grif said.

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  He went to the trunk of the car and opened it. They had more guns in there. He took out a pistol and slid it into the front of his pants. Then he pulled out a sawed-off shotgun.

  “If he’s capable of all this, do you think guns can kill him?”

  “I don’t know,” Viv said. “But we’ve got to try, right?”

  “I am really starting to regret coming along with you guys,” Grif said. “But I guess I didn’t have much choice. The way this thing is spreading, it would have caught up with me eventually.”

  “I wish I could be sure that we could stop this somehow,” Viv said. “But I really don’t have a clue. The only person who seems to have any kind of idea what’s going on here is Colleen, and I’m not a hundred percent sure she’s all there these days.”

  “She sure seemed all there in the bedroom,” Grif said and smiled.

  “That was a stupid risk,” Viv said. “You had no idea she’d be able to get through it okay.”

  “She got through it fine.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about this again.”

  “I think you’re jealous. Why didn’t you join in? It wouldn’t have been the first time.”

  “We have more important things to do now than talk about this.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll drop it.”

  She made sure to take her own guns, and she checked to make sure there was a fresh clip in each of them, and that she had extra ammunition.

  They looked out at the bridge. Colleen was walking on top of cars. She was halfway to the other side.

  “Might as well catch up with her,” Grif said.

  They walked over to the cars and got up on top of one at the beginning of the bridge, then started walking across the roofs like Colleen was doing. The world seemed utterly still, except for the sounds they made. Not even the sound of a bird in the sky.

  Even the water below them was silent.

  There were bodies on the ground between the cars, on top of hoods, some inside the cars where they’d been locked in struggles while they killed each other. An incredible wave of violence had washed over them, and like mad rats they’d torn each other apart. But it was so calm now.

  Viv and Grif picked up their pace to try and catch up with Colleen, but she was moving fast.

  “Wait up,” Viv called out to her.

  Colleen did not turn around. Either she didn’t hear Viv, or she pretended not to.

  The bridge was long, and they hadn’t even reached the middle of it yet.

  “What’s her hurry?” Grif asked, almost slipping off the roof of a Cadillac. Some of the cars were spattered with blood that was dried now. But you had to be careful.

  He struggled to regain his balance and then moved on.

  Viv stopped to wait for him.

  “I don’t know,” Viv said. “It’s like she’s going to meet someone she can’t wait to see again. There’s something strange going on here.”

  “She doesn’t have any weapons, does she?” Grif asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Colleen was walking over the trapped cars as if she were walking on air. Never a misstep, never a wrong move. She picked up her pace as the others struggled to keep up.

  “Colleen,” Viv shouted, but she didn’t turn to look back at them. She seemed not to hear.

  “She’s like a woman possessed,” Grif said.

  “I’ve never seen her act like this,” Viv told him. “It’s kind of scary.”

  They kept walking along the car tops, and then Colleen leapt down and disappeared from view. She’d reached the other side.

  “We’re almost there,” Viv said. “Maybe we can get her to listen to reason once we get off this bridge.”

  But it didn’t make much sense. Colleen had gotten a head start. Once they got off the bridge, she’d be even further away. She was probably running by now. Viv had the urge to turn back. Colleen was their way to find Sam Wayne; otherwise, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. But if Colleen wasn’t going to cooperate with them, then there wasn’t much point in going on.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked her brother.

  “I don’t know. Are you thinking we should give this up?”

  Viv looked back. “We’ve come too far now. I guess that’s not an option.”

  “Yeah, we’re almost there,” he said.

  They reached the last car, finally, and climbed off. There were more cars in front of it, but once they’d gotten off the bridge, there was no longer a need to walk in a straight line. Viv and Grif went to where there was some open space. They stopped to survey the area.

  “Where is she?” Viv asked. “I thought we’d see her.”

  “There she is,” Grif shouted and pointed. Colleen was running across a green field up ahead. The grass was littered with corpses. Viv caught sight of her, then Colleen disappeared behind some trees.

  “She must be going to him,” Viv said. “There’s no other explanation.”

  “But so eager? It doesn’t seem real. It’s like this is some kind of weird dream. Doesn’t she know he’ll kill her if she gets too close?”

  “I don’t know,” Viv said. “She’s been right in front of him twice already, seen him kill two people right in front of her. And yet she got away untouched.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know, but maybe we’ll finally find out.”

  They started running toward the field.

  They stopped when they reached it. Colleen was still far ahead of them. There was death all around them, but there was also something moving down at the other end of the park. Not something, someone.

  Sam Wayne turned in their direction. He just stood there, watching them approach.

  “Is that him?” Grif asked.

  “It must be,” Viv said. “Nobody else is alive. I guess this is it.” She pulled out her gun. “This is your last chance to turn back.”

  “And go where?” Grif said. “If we don’t stop him now, there’s nothing to go back to.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  They got closer, but Sam did not move from where he stood, watching them.

  His mind was kind of hazy, hovering between the rage that had taken over, and the last vestiges of who he had been. There was a tingling sensation in his head, in his arms and legs, like something was coming out of him. Some kind of energy. And while it was generating, his mind was almost on hold. That was the only way he could have explained what he felt, if he’d wanted to.

  If someone had asked.

  But whenever anyone got close enough, he lashed out at them. He was a kind of beacon, it seemed. And nothing could get in the way of the message he was sending out into the world. Nothing.

  He couldn’t feel whether it was hot or cold. Because of the tingling, he couldn’t even really feel his own body, although he knew it was there, beneath him. Otherwise, he’d just drop to the ground.

  He didn’t look down at himself, though. It wasn’t important for him to know his body was still there. To see it.

  Sam felt like a man at the bottom of a deep, deep ocean, water filling his ears and deafening him, making it hard to really see things clearly. Making it hard to move.

 
And, always, the crazy tingling everywhere. It was almost painful.

  She was the first to reach him, but he couldn’t see her.

  That wasn’t exactly true. He could sense that someone was there, in fact it was almost as if he could briefly see the faintest outline of her, but when he tried to focus on her, she would disappear.

  This was a familiar feeling. He knew this person. He wanted to lash out at her, to kill her, but she was invisible to him. And, the more he tried to concentrate on her, the fuzzier his mind got. He found it difficult to remember what he was looking for.

  * * *

  Colleen stood over to Sam Wayne’s side and watched him. His face was bright red and the veins bulged on his neck. He was moving his head back and forth, as if he was looking for something. She was amazed she could get so close. But then, this had happened before. When he’d killed Turney and Jeremy, she had expected him to kill her too, but both times he’d seemed too distracted before he could. As if he couldn’t really see her at all.

  Colleen had felt a kind of magnetic pull, drawing her to him. She’d tried to resist it at first, but the closer they’d gotten to him, the more impossible it was for her to turn back. As if whatever came out of him that was infecting the world with violence was also what drew her to him.

  But now that she was here, not ten feet away from him, she didn’t know what to do. She thought it would be clear to her when she finally reached him, but it wasn’t. Colleen just stood there, watching Sam Wayne looking for her; obviously feeling her presence but unable to pinpoint where she was.

  I can’t just stand here, she thought. He’s bound to find me eventually.

  * * *

  To Viv, Sam was a disappointment. He didn’t look like someone who was responsible for thousands of deaths. He was just a naked man, smeared with blood.