“Don’t forget his leg.”
“What leg?”
Grinning, Larry swung the bat hard, that hit with a resounding Crack when the thick, round end collided with Danny’s shin. “That leg.”
Bryan stood by the tailgate, horrified as Larry leaned over Danny, slapping his face a couple of times.
“I don’t believe he’s still out.”
“Jesus, Larry.”
“I oughta try out for that Tough Man shit, next time they’re in town.”
“Give me that,” Bryan said, and then grabbed the bat and wrested it away from Larry, who pushed the semiconscious thug further into the truck bed, covered him with the tarp and slammed the tailgate shut.
Bryan felt a little better, not being able to see him. He’d feel a lot better when this shit was over with. He sagged against the truck, took a deep breath and blew it out.
“Dude,” Larry said. “Are you as jacked as I am?”
“You kidding? I’d just snorted the line you left me when I heard that shout. Between the coke and the raw adrenaline, if I jumped straight up, I wouldn’t stop ‘til I hit the moon.”
Snickering, Larry said, “I need a beer. Look, go make sure your house is locked up—and close that goddamn window. I’ll get us a couple of beers. Then we’ll burn a joint and figure out what we’re gonna do with this moron.”
Chapter Twenty
Bryan returned to find Larry leaning against the truck, a bottle of Rolling Rock in each hand. The bat Bryan had left in the grass by the rear tire next to the curb was now balanced on the side rail of the truck bed. All was quiet, no lights on up or down the street. Bryan hoped it would stay that way. Nodding at the bat, he said, “What’s up with that?”
“Had to show it to our buddy back there to shut him up.”
Bryan peered over the edge of the truck, dreading what he might see. No telling what Larry had done while Bryan was inside making sure Carrie was locked up tight. The tarp they’d used to cover Danny had been pulled down to his neck. Thin slices of moonlight filtering through oak tree branches hanging over the sidewalk framed his pale face. Jaw clenched tight, he stared past Bryan as if he wasn’t there. Bryan wondered if the guy was afraid to acknowledge his presence, worried the bat might find him again.
“He was making quite a racket when I came out of the house, moaning and groaning, banging his head against the truck.” Smiling, Larry added, “I put a stop to it.”
Bryan didn’t bother asking what Larry had done. He didn’t want to know. He accepted his beer and took a nice long drink, while Larry fired up a joint. Larry held the smoke in for a moment, blew it out and began passing the joint back and forth with Bryan.
“He left his keys in the ignition. The way I see it, we either bury him out in the woods or drive his ass to the hospital.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“About killing him? No. About driving him to the hospital? Maybe. I mean, I figure we get him pretty close to the place—way the fuck away from here, anyway—call the cops and say there’s a guy screaming bloody murder in the back of a pickup truck.” Larry chuckled. “Or just leave his ass sitting on the side of the road.”
Twin streams of smoke flowed from Bryan’s nose as he took another drink of beer and passed the joint to Larry. “We’re not killing him.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.” Larry grabbed the bat off the truck and poked it into the tarp. “Hey. You want to live?”
Danny closed his eyes, nodded and said, “Yes.”
“You ever show up around here again—”
“I… won’t.”
“—you even drive down this street. Hell, if I ever see your ass anywhere in this town again, you’ll be a dead motherfucker.”
“I won’t… I’m sorry… I… picked the wrong house.”
“Goddamn right you did.” Larry flipped the tarp across his face. “Keep your fucking mouth shut and I’ll get you to the hospital. You don’t, I’ll drive you into the mountain and bury your ass there.” He took one last toke of pot, dropped the spent roach to ground and handed the bat to Bryan. “Here, Dude, you keep this. Just get your car and follow me ‘til I pull over. Keep a good distance between us in case something happens.”
“Like what?”
“The hell should I know?”
Larry climbed into the truck, took a drink and wedged the bottle between his thighs, turned the ignition and the engine rumbled to life. When Bryan’s headlights flickered on and off and on again, he put the truck into gear and pulled away from the curb.
* * *
Driving down the I-77 exit ramp, Larry thought about what had happened. He wasn’t kidding about being happy to catch some creep trying to bust into Bryan’s house, and he’d taken great satisfaction in pounding the shit out of that asshole. The adrenaline rush of sneaking up on the prick was almost as high as when they’d hauled ass the wrong way up the exit ramp. The guy was lucky. Had it been Larry’s home, he most definitely would have been hauled inside and had the brains beat clean out of his head. Burglar. He looked like a burglar, standing outside the window, jiggling the screen. The shovel and pick-axe told a different story, though, one that set Larry’s nerves on edge. And why Bryan’s house? Maybe he had seen Carrie out somewhere and followed her home, at the hospital while visiting a sick relative. For all Larry knew, he could have something to do with those Devil’s Own pricks, and had come calling to dish out a little payback.
Larry downshifted as he pulled to a stop at a red light in front of Wal Mart, glanced in his rearview and saw Bryan’s headlights bearing down on him. He turned in the seat and looked through the rear window, at the tarp covering his old pal the burglar.
Burglar, my ass!
And if he wasn’t your average everyday burglar looking for something he could pawn for a healthy dose of crack, what should they do? What should they really do? Drop him off so he could heal his wounds and show up some day seeking his revenge? Larry knew what he would do if somebody had taken a baseball bat to his arms and legs.
A horn sounded. The light had changed, and here he was sitting at a green light in an old beat-up truck in the middle of the night, with a battered and bleeding victim hidden under a tarp, as inconspicuous as a crack whore working the parishioners at St. Peters’ Sunday morning services. Larry looked up at Bryan’s frowning face in the rearview mirror. Grinning, he eased off the clutch and pulled through the intersection. Two blocks up a police car turned onto the roadway, headed straight for Larry. He looked in the mirror and back at the road. The policeman went by and Larry smiled. Bryan was right. They were the luckiest fuckers in Charlotte. Larry picked up speed and hung a right at the next corner. Moments later he headed down Main Street, into a part of downtown Charlotte he knew they had no business being in. He had gotten off the interstate three exits too soon, because he had to think through the ramifications of the course of action they were about to take.
Larry had told Bryan they would take their serial killing buddy to the hospital. And that’s what the fucker was now—Larry was sure of it—a serial killer who had blundered his way into their clutches. Larry knew something else, too: they couldn’t let him go. The guy knew where they lived, where Bryan lived, anyway. And when he healed up he’d come back for them, one dark night, months from now when they had all but forgotten him and moved on with their lives. Larry couldn’t chance it, no matter what Bryan said. He’d take him to the northern end of Mecklenburg County, wind his way up one of those old mountain trails where nobody in their right mind would be this time of night, get out and grab the pick-axe and drive it straight through his heart. By the time Bryan figured out what he was doing, it would be too late.
Larry turned right, past a group of young black men who stood on the corner beneath a liquor store’s flashing red neon sign. Iron bars stood in front of the plate glass windows, on which faded signs advertising weekly specials from days gone by had been hung. Max’s X was burned out, leaving the sign reading Ma ’s liquors. Two block
s down he took another right, then a left past a row of old boarded up houses, where three rail-thin women stood by a lamppost on one of the corners; one white, with long, greasy hair, the other two, black. The skimpy outfits they wore hung on them like dirty rags. They were arguing with a black guy, who was shaking a finger in their faces, moonlight glinting silver off his metal teeth as he laughed.
“Hey, baby!” one of them called out to Larry, her wild, frizzy hair pointing in all directions. She was taller than the other two, and when she bent over, Larry saw the dark brown aureoles surrounding her nipples nestled in the filthy fabric of her loose-fitting top., “Get some’o this and you won’t never go back home to Mama!” she taunted, mashing her breasts together while the other two laughed.
And somebody shouted, “Hey! White boy! Get the fuck outa here!”
A bottle shattered against the truck and Larry stomped the gas pedal, hauling ass up the street as he looked in the mirror to see Bryan’s Honda speeding past the crack whores.
* * *
To say that Bryan was not happy would have been the understatement of the century. He couldn’t believe it when he looked out the window and saw Larry hammer that guy. And the look on Larry’s face. He was crazy. No doubt about it. No doubting something else, either: Larry was a handy guy to have around. No telling where Bryan might be right now if it wasn’t for Larry. Probably not safe behind the wheel of his Honda, definitely not tucked in safe and sound beside Carrie. Who knows, maybe busting the guy’s leg had been necessary. Bryan doubted the prick would want to find himself in Rolling Meadows again, not if he knew what was good for him.
The beer and the pot had taken the edge off, stopped his hands from shaking, anyway. But the pot had made him paranoid. And it didn’t help matters any when Larry pulled off the exit ramp into the seedy side of Charlotte and sat at the green light like some kind of stoned out moron. Bryan almost shit when the policeman pulled onto the boulevard just seconds after they had left the intersection. No telling what he might have done had he spotted Larry idling under that green light like some drunken idiot straight out of a Cops episode. And now the dumb fucker was taking them past a street corner full of thugs—probably gun-toting thugs—who were looking at Bryan like they weren’t happy to see his pasty white face moving past their favorite liquor store, which might have been okay if this was one of Bryan’s novels that he could write the ending to, but this was real life, and Bryan was scared shitless.
He followed Larry down a series of dark streets whose corners were decorated with prostitutes and busted out streetlamps, whose cracked and dirty sidewalks were littered by broken glass and condoms, and by several scowling black men who sneered as Bryan passed by them.
Bryan slowed, increasing the distance between he and Larry, so he could haul ass down a side street if something crazy happened. A loud crashing noise snapped Bryan’s head to the left of him, where three punks at the dark mouth of an alley were raining savage kicks on some poor guy who lay in the middle of a couple of spilled-over trashcans. He stepped on the gas and sped down the street, looked up and saw the truck speeding away from him.
“Damn it,” Bryan muttered as he followed Larry, who was racing through a twisting labyrinth of side streets, disregarding stop signs and lights as if they weren’t even there. Bryan slowed at an intersection, because he wasn’t about to barrel his way into an accident in the middle of this godforsaken slum and have every derelict within earshot converge on him like a pack of starving zombies. He lost sight of Larry, panicked and stomped the accelerator, finally glimpsing the truck’s taillights heading east toward a traffic signal. The light turned red and Larry raced through the intersection, right into the side of a tricked out Firebird, sending the Ranger into a screeching, wide-sweeping three-hundred-and-sixty degree spin, while the muscle car flipped onto its side, showering sparks like a gigantic grinder’s wheel as it slid through the intersection, the thundering rap music blaring from its radio barely heard over a howling engine that kept the rear tires spinning full blast.
Bryan, who didn’t know what to do, pulled to the side of the road as the Firebird’s driver pushed his door open, and then pulled himself up and out of the car. Landing on all fours on the ground, he scrambled to his feet, screaming against the roaring engine as two of his companions crawled out after him and a third hoisted himself up from the passenger seat, blood covering his face from a deep gash running along his forehead, spattering his t-shirt and arms. He grabbed the edge of the roof and tried pulling himself out, slipped and fell back into the car.
The driver, turning now, limped toward the truck. He was big, his arms thick with bulging muscles. The angry look on his face was screaming, ‘I’m gonna kill somebody!’ He led his partners over to the truck and grabbed the door, flung it open and Larry came out bouncing a beer bottle off the leader’s head, sending him down to his knees as glass shattered and the other two shoved Larry against the truck
Bryan pulled away from the curb, out into the intersection, where he stopped and grabbed the prowler’s bat from the front floorboard. Inaudible against the Firebird’s screaming RPMs, he jumped out of the car and ran over to the truck just as the angry leader was getting to his feet. The guy pulled a knife from his pocket, flipped it open and Bryan slammed the bat against his forearm, sending the knife falling end-over-end to the asphalt, the gangbanger howling as the bat pounded his gut and Larry grabbed the larger of the two holding him by the neck, drove a knee into his stomach and slammed his face into the truck, dropping the guy to his knees, blood spurting from his shattered nose as the last remaining thug turned tail and ran.
Bat in hand, Bryan ran toward the Honda, turned his head and saw Larry trotting behind him, fist raised skyward like a conquering Viking Warrior.
Inside the car, Bryan tossed the bat in the back seat, waiting anxiously for Larry to pile in beside him. Sirens wailed in the distance and Bryan stomped the gas pedal.
Tires screeching and smoking, they roared away from the intersection, Larry calling out, “Yeeeeeehawww!”, while Bryan, cocking his head sideways, said, “Shut the fuck up.”
Chapter Twenty-One
It started when he was twelve, when his father came home with a promotional copy of Duke Nukem. Putting damn near every weapon of mass destruction a bunch of stoned-out code warriors could think of in the hands of a child probably wasn’t the greatest idea in the world. Leaving him alone in his room for hours on end with no supervision other than his computer-generated super hero and his newfound Internet friends wasn’t doing him any favors, either. He became a coldhearted killer, a much feared Internet assassin, mowing down opponent after opponent in Duke Nukem’s fast-paced realm of death matches and duels, insults and absurd one-line-putdowns.
He soon became bored with the asinine cartoon violence and graduated to Quake, a dark, gothic world of castles and monsters, leather-clad Neanderthals and Grunts, wizards and knights, demons and devils and slithering man-eating monsters. An eerie, futuristic landscape of severed limbs and realistic mutilations, where clicking a mouse splattered raw-red chunks of meat against roughhewn walls, and sent bloodied opponents gurgling to their graves.
He lived it.
He loved it.
Alone at night in bed he dreamed of it.
He joined a clan and called himself Redneck. Not because he was one—far from it—but because he knew it would piss people off to know that a redneck had just kicked their ass. A year went by. Another passed, and the only time the child felt really alive was sitting in front of a computer, spreading death and destruction across his make-believe universe.
He gained weight, and his hair grew long and shaggy. Dark, grungy clothes became his uniform of choice. The tantalizing thrill of tobacco came into his life as he steered clear of family and friends, and skipped school whenever he thought he could get away with it. All he cared about was his imaginary world of bits and bytes, and he stayed in that world while his life began a downward spiral of failing grades and eroding
social skills, until his parents finally put their foot down and said enough is enough. They took his computer away and he decided to kill them, to butcher them while they slept, or set fire to the house in the middle of the night. But it wouldn’t work—it could never work, because he’d be caught and sent to jail and he would never again see gore splashing across his screen, would never hear the tormented cries of his screaming victims.
In exile, he sat in his room and studied. During these times, his troubled mind would wander back to his binary netherworld, where wicked masters led slimy, bloated creatures through vile, fetid swamps, whispering for Red to come join them.
His forced absence was a revelation. He could not afford to look the part of the budding young psychopath he was becoming, could not allow himself to drift back to the surly, standoffish lout who had so consternated his parents. He didn’t cuss, did not smoke. He kept his hair neatly-trimmed and helped out around the house, studied hard to bring home grades that would keep him in the family’s good graces. The restriction ended and Red made his return, spreading murder and mayhem throughout the gaming community’s shadowed underworld like an ill blowing wind. But it was not enough, and he soon came to realize that no matter how much digitalized mayhem he generated, it could never be enough.
Late at night he would find himself gazing at the ceiling. Sometimes he would step restlessly to the mirror, and catch a fleeting glimpse of the muscle-bound character from his computer game. He would stare, eyes locked onto the glass, until his body would slowly transform into the hulking, snarling savage he so desperately wanted to be.
He began to wonder what it would feel like to actually kill a person, to gut them, to blow a body apart with a grenade, or splatter insides with a roaring shotgun blast. But he was only fourteen and had no such access to shotguns or grenades, or weapons of any kind. One afternoon, he arrived home from school to an empty house. He made a tuna fish sandwich to tide him over until his mother would get in from work to prepare their supper. He was sitting in the back yard, eating his sandwich when the neighbor’s gray and white tomcat wandered up. He pinched a piece of tuna and tossed the oily meat to the cat. It attacked it and he tossed it some more, leading him ever closer, until the cat had crossed the yard and was eating out of his hands. He stroked the pet and made it purr, pressed its back and pinned its stomach to the ground. The cat growled, hissed and screeched. Red silenced it by clamping a hand around its throat and pushing it harder against the grass. The cat wheezed. His body twitched and Red smiled. Its eyes puffed out and he began to laugh. He watched, mesmerized as life ebbed slowly through his fingers, and knew that he had found his calling.
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