by Barr, Jeff
"Suck eggs?" Sonch grinned at Arneson. "Am I crazy, or is that is some peckerwood, corn-bread, white-trash motherfuckin' bullshit? You think he's trying to, what's it called, co-opt our culture, Arneson?"
"Could be," Arneson said. He slapped Rubalcava across the face, leaving a glaring red handprint. "Come on now. Make this easy. Give us what we need, and you blow town and leave this shit behind." Arneson ignored Sonch's frantic throat-slitting motions. Maas would have a kitten if they let this fat fuck just walk away. Arneson leaned in closer to Rubalcava, and the bound man's eye started to tic. "Last chance, man. Sonch is going to kill you if you don't tell us."
"I'm already dead, man. The minute they find out I rolled over, the boys I work for put the word out on the streets. After that, it's just a matter of time. These guys, they don't leave open connections—they get closed ASAP, no questions asked, no excuses."
Sonch stubbed out his smoke, grinning, and rose to his feet. He took a long swallow off his beer and belched resoundingly. Giving Rubalcava a sardonic little salute, he walked out of the room. Clanking sounds and the occasional muffled curse floated back.
Arneson grabbed Rubalcava by the hair, ignoring the tacky dried blood, and pulled his face around to his. "Go to the cops. The FBI. Whoever. Whatever. Just give us what we need, and I will let you get the fuck out of here. I'm telling you, do it."
Sonch returned wheeling a bright orange machine. The face of it was covered in a complicated array of knobs, switches and lights. At the other end of the machine was a large grated hopper. On top of the grate, a paper bag marked KWIK-DRY PORTLAND CEMENT.
Rubalcava barked laughter. "You guys are going to bury me in cement? What is this, 1965?" Sonch grinned and cut into the bag. Cement puffed out like the breath of a desiccated corpse. "You really are some corny motherfuckers. What, did you guys see this in a Scorsese picture?" He shook his head, still laughing. "You know what, you're going to need a few more bags."
Sonch unreeled a length of rubber tubing and attached it to a nozzle on the outside of the hopper. He flipped switches and cranked dials, and the thing lit up. Arneson smoked hungrily. Rubalcava began to fidget.
"Hey, fuck you guys. You know you're dead, right? They're going to torture you so long you'll be able to retire."
Arneson blew smoke in his face. "It's not too late to take me up on my offer."
Rubalcava snorted and turned his face away. Arneson flicked his eyes up at Sonch, who grinned and hit a switch on the mortar-sprayer. The thing rumbled to life like an American V8 engine. Rubalcava's eyes darted toward the noise, then away.
Sonch pulled on leather work-gloves and picked up the nozzle, examining it under the stark light of the hanging bulb. "You know, I never done this before." He twisted the tip, and gave the trigger an experimental pull. Cement squirted form the tip, spraying a rooster-comb of thick gray liquid. "Ought to be interesting."
Arneson stared at Rubalcava, willing him to stop fucking around and give them what they wanted. Chances were this was still going to come to a bad end for the guy, but better not now, not here, and not by Arneson's hand. Rubalcava, jaw clenched, turned away to face the wall.
"OK. If that's how you want it to be, then that's how its gonna be. Open your mouth." Rubalcava shook his head and squinted his eyes closed. Maybe he hoped that blocking the sight of Arneson would banish him like an evil genie. Arneson sighed. "We're going to plug this sprayer into your mouth, and Sonch is going to pull the trigger. After he does that, he's going to jam it right down your throat. We're going to spray twenty pounds of cement into your stomach, and your lungs, and wherever else it will go. Your organs are gonna rupture and fill your fat body up with this shit. You're going to drown in cement. And remember, you did this to yourself." He pulled on gloves and picked up a steel bottle opener. He forced it into Rubalcava's mouth, the tip clanking against his teeth, and wedged it between his jaws. Muscles straining, he levered downward. Rubalcava screamed through the widening gap between his teeth.
Sonch rammed the steel nozzle into Rubalcava's mouth. The machine thrummed and pounded. Sonch edged a dial up, and the noise ratcheted up to a roar. Tools jangled on a nearby workbench, and Rubalcava's Dingo boots rattled out a jazz beat on the oil-stained floor. Arneson, arms ugly with muscle, held Rubalcava as Sonch began to push the nozzle in deep.
Rubalcava's eyes were wide and panicked, blood threading over his teeth. He began shouting, muffled by the nozzle. I give! I give! I give! Arneson pulled the hose, gripping Rubalcava's head by the hair.
Sonch scowled and looked to Arneson. The muscles his forearm jumped and fluttered. Arneson could see how bad he wanted to do this. He knew Sonch's past, or at least enough to know what kind of things he had done, and this would be no more than a bump in the road to hell.
"Start talking," Arneson rasped. "So help me God, you leave anything out, I'm going to let Sonch have his wish." Rubalcava's eyes strayed to Sonch, who grinned like a demon. Rubalcava looked back to Arneson, eyes rolling like a calf's in the moonlight.
"Shit. OK, man, I'll talk. I'll talk. Don't do nothing else to me, OK? I'll tell you everything you need to know. Just get rid of that crazy bastard, please?"
Arneson gestured with his head, and Sonch stalked away. Rubalcava started talking.
The eye of the camera recorded it all.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Sugar watched the news online, reeling at the wash of information pouring across the networks. Los Angeles had declared a State of Emergency. The governor had flown to Washington on a pretext of approaching congress for more funding, and he showed no signs of returning. The police held the line while bus after bus of reservists arrived in khaki-colored ranks.
There was shaky phone video of a Skunger trudging down an empty sidewalk. One arm was bare of the infection, shocking pink against the dark mat of the Skunge covering the rest of his body.A man with a heavy black mustache darted out, shotgun held at the waist, and pulled both triggers. The Skunger's head exploded, spraying bone, brain, and Skunge everywhere. Mustache ran back, fist victory-pumping like a quarterback running back from throwing a touchdown.
Another site, another video. This time, the camera quality was almost professional, the lighting perfect, the color so good it was almost occult. A Skunger lay strapped to a plastic serving table. Sugar thought she'd seen one just like it on sale at Costco the week before. The video zoomed in on the Skunger's eyes: terrified and shaking. It was a woman—or had been, anyway. A keening, eerie noise emerged from what had been the mouth. Now it was filled with a spiky mass of vines.
A man stepped into the frame. He wore a bright yellow apron with a red pocket, and no shirt underneath. He held a meat cleaver in his left hand and an electric carving knife in his right. He smiled so broadly that the tears running down his face dripped into his mouth.
He raised the electric knife and sawed into the screaming figure. Dark blood flew. Every few seconds the blades would become stuck in the bloody Skunge, and the knife would sputter to a stop. One minute the cutting man would be laughing, and the next crying as the knife buzzed. He hacked at the writhing figure with the cleaver, leaving gaping wounds like raw red smiles. Sugar swallowed, her stomach lurching. She willed herself to look away, told herself to look away.
The Skunger thrashed, emitting frantic grunts. The gowned man brought out pliers and tore at the vines, yanking out long wet pieces of them, holding up his prizes for the camera. He let the light play across the bloody lengths. He cut off three of her fingers, her nose, an ear, while the camera lovingly captured every second. He wiped the lens clean when it got too splattered with blood.
Finally, the man reached behind himself and whipped his apron away. Beneath, he was nude. The Skunge had eaten his penis and testicles, leaving a broad swatch of red-rimed fungus and two twisted, hard-looking roots where his balls had been. He left the gloves on and stepped away from the scene for a moment. The Skunger's eyes, bright with panic, pleaded to the camera.
He returned
, stone-white buttocks pumping as he hefted a large hand-held circular saw onto the table. He dropped it with a bang next to the Skunger, and turned back to the camera. Tears dripped down his face, smearing the blood. He lifted a photo into the camera's eye. A woman, eyes bright, smile white. Beside her, holding her hand, eyes tipped up in laughter, the man with the saw. Before the camera's unblinking eye, he ripped up the picture, and turned back to his wife.
With a bright electronic laugh, the saw whirred into life.
Two minutes later, when she heard a knock at her door, she was almost relieved.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Sonch lit another joint and clicked the play button. Metallica's 'Dyers Eve' blasted out of the Jeep's speakers.
"How many of those are you going to smoke?" Arneson asked. He twisted the volume down, then grimaced as Sonch cranked it up again. He shouted something to Arneson, but it was lost over the pounding drums.
"What? I can't hear a fucking word your saying," Arneson shouted. He left the volume dial alone, but closed the windows to kill the road noise.
"I said, I'm gonna smoke them awwlll, man." Sonch motioned to the breast pocket of his polo shirt, where two more joints stood like soldiers at attention. "Every last one."
Arneson scowled out the windshield. He was already on edge, and Sonch wasn't helping. Sonch sober was nothing if not reliable—he was a prick, and a sadistic asshole, but at least he was predictable. You could count on him to do a job and no surprises. But if Sonch got too high he was liable to pull any bullshit move that occurred to him. He had the attention span of a cat and the inventive curiosity of a monkey. He was a loose screw, on a day that Arneson wanted everything buttoned down tight. Ah, hell.
"Well at least give me a puff off the goddamn thing," Arneson said. Sonch whooped and passed the joint, which was roughly the size and shape of a decent Cohiba. Arneson took a medium hit, and his head began swimming immediately. Even after two years working for Maas, he still wasn't used to the kind of high-powered stuff that grew in NorCal. Maas had his own R&D team for weed. They bred strains with higher-THC counts, smoother flavors, brighter colors. That constant innovation helped him maintain his stranglehold on the West Coast 'purple highway'; the long stretch of I-5 that stretched between the state of Washington and Southern California, where truckloads of marijuana traveled back and forth, delivering full and retuning empty for more.
Sonch pulled out a flask and took a long pull, and Arneson rolled his eyes.
He parked the Jeep in a stand of Western Larch, and they struck out through the brush. Sonch began complaining almost immediately about the heat, the sun, the goddamn bugs. He also smoked the remaining two joints, and by the time they arrived, he was so stoned he could hardly get through a sentence. He was hitting his flask hard, too.
They stopped at binocular range and watched the trailer.
It was a gently dilapidating double-wide, boasting sun-bleached green siding and dirty windows. A cinderblock fence enclosed the back and side 'yard', which featured fun accessories like rotting piles of dog-shit and sage bushes. The back left corner of the fence was unfinished, nothing but a tumbled collection of crumbling blocks and an old wheelbarrow. The sheriff had jurisdiction out here, but he stayed out of business he was paid to stay out of. A few old pickups were scattered around, most of them held together with rust. A pair of Doberman Pincers paced the yard, tongues lolling in the heat.
"Time."
"One forty pee em, boss," Sonch said. He sounded excited. This was also bad news: when Sonch got excited, situations had a way of growing hair.
"OK. Any minute now."
They sat and waited. Sonch fidgeted. "Wish I had a smoke."
"Quit complaining. Once we're done, you can smoke 'til you choke."
"Listen to the man rhyme. A regular Kenny West, that's what you are, man."
"I try my best. Now shut up and get ready."
"Oh come on, I was born ready. There ain't nothing going on we don't already know about. Rubalcava talked so fast and so long I thought his lips were gonna fall off."
Arneson said nothing, squinting through the binoculars at a plume of dust rising in the distance.
"Here they are."
The car pulled up and parked. A sedate blue Toyota sedan featuring a bright yellow Baby on Board sign affixed to the back window. The dogs sat up, alert, but didn't bark. The first guy to get out was a skinny, dread-locked dude in tie-dyed shorts and a Bad Brains t-shirt. The second guy looked like someone from the IT department at an insurance company: chubby, thin blond hair complete with a shiny patch starting on the crown, a wispy blond goatee and chinos he was constantly hitching up over his flat ass.
A woman emerged, toting a bassinet draped with a cheery pink blanket. Arneson scowled and Sonch snorted as the woman entered the trailer behind the two men.
"Shit."
"Ain't that a kick in the ass. Got to be a psycho bitch to bring a baby along."
"Yeah."
"Well?"
"Shut up, I'm thinking."
"Well don't think too long; Maas wants this done, and he wants it done today."
"I know. Fuck. Fuck. OK, we're still on, but for Christ's sake watch out for that kid."
Arneson went first, loping down the hill-side and into a clot of trees huddled several hundred feet from the grounds. Sonch followed, moving quick and easy. Arneson saw the dog's heads come up, scenting the air. Sonch carried a long canvas bag that clanked when he dropped it. He pulled out a long metal tube and a few black alloy parts, and began screwing them together. Soon the shape of a gun emerged. He tightened the last piece and handed the gun and a flat box to Arneson. The wind was gentle, the air clear as a newborn's conscience. Arneson loaded the gun with two aluminum darts from the box.
Arneson fired twice, the shots no louder than a cough in church. Both dogs dropped to the dust.
"Nice shooting, Tex." Sonch said.
"Thanks." Arneson set down the gun then stared at Sonch. "Oh for Christ's sake, what is that?"
Sonch had pulled something else from the bag. A long wooden scabbard decorated with red silk tassels. "What? It's a Samurai sword. You got to have seen one of these babies before."
"Of course I have," Arneson said. His hissing whisper was painfully loud in the stillness. "In chop-socky movies on channel eleven. What the fuck is it doing here?"
"Well, Maas sent us to put the fear of God into these bozos, right? Are you telling me this isn't the right tool for the job? Look at the goddamn thing. I'm gettin' a boner already." Sonch pulled back on the hilt, exposing two inches of gleaming steel. He grinned like a demented kid.
Arneson sighed. "Fine. But if you get shot, it's your own fault."
"Oh come on. These dipshits ain't so dumb as to wear straps on a road job. Quit your belly-aching and let's go already. This thing is thirsty."
Arneson moved down the slope, keeping low, stepping slowly enough not to draw the eye, but covering ground. "Who carries a fucking sword?" The ghostly sound of Sonch's chuckle followed him down the hill.
They moved in a circle, angling toward the back. Rubalcava had given them an admirably complete idea of the layout, allowing Arneson to plan their route down to the inch. The trailer backed up to a hoary old patch of woodland, which extended back a mile before meeting a wooden fence. That marked the border of a massive swathe of BLM land that had lain unmolested for decades. Rubalcava had told them that no one in the place had even considered the idea of someone coming in through the back. They lack a certain imagination, the fat man had said, smiling up at Arneson with chubby, implacable calm. They only think in one direction—straight ahead. If you come from some other direction, it wouldn't even occur to them to look. These guys aren't thinking about security, they're thinking about money. Arneson believed him. Brass knuckles and a pair of pliers were great incentives to truth-telling.
They reached the back wall, and carefully climbed through the hole. Arneson shook his head again at the boarded up back window
s. Rubalcava hadn't been kidding; this was beyond amateur, bordering on the ludicrous.
They crept across the dirt, avoiding the crunch of the sage brush and the piles of dog shit dotting the yard. The hot silence ticked over. They halted when a rough peal of laughter burst out of a nearby window. After a three count, Arneson drew a pistol and they kept moving. Sonch snorted at the pistol, and Arneson gave him the finger.
The place was laid out in Basic American Trailer: a tin rectangle, cheap paint, two doors—one up front and one on the side. According to Rubalcava, the front door had some cheap webcams set up, with motion sensors that would sound an alarm inside. That was OK—they wanted the side door. From there, they could spread through the house. The action would be in the kitchen.
They stopped on either side of the wooden steps leading to the raised front door. Arneson held up a hand, and Sonch paused obediently, his eyes slatey with blood-lust.
Arneson counted to three, and they went in.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
The water felt cold enough to stop her heart. Sugar swam downward until her fingertips brushed the bottom of the pool, then opened her eyes. Someone had dropped a dildo in the water, and it shimmered like a mirage in shades of blue, silver and pink.
She'd forgotten how much she loved swimming in Maas' cold pool. In the two weeks since she'd come to stay at the compound, she'd spent at least half an hour each day swimming in the icy water. Her lungs began to ache as the itch under her skin disappeared. The sun was an unreachable golden coin hanging overhead. Finally she made for the surface, stretching for the sun, lungs burning. Her nipples stung from the frigid water. Unwanted memories scratched at her mind like claws on a wooden door; she covered the noise with the thunder of her heartbeat, pounding in her ears. Nothing could touch her under the water.