Red Scare (The Postmodern Adventures of Kill Team One Book 3)

by Mike Leon

  “Yeah, I—Wh—What?!”

  “Anal. You know, like butt sex. I can do that because it doesn’t count.”

  “For serious?”

  “Yeah! True love shuns a used vaginey. So young love only gets the hiney.”

  “You didn’t hear that one from the Patience Patrol, did you?”

  “No. My high school boyfriend, Dwayne. He’s the one that taught me anal doesn’t count. He was really smart.”

  “Yeah he was.”

  INT. BRUNSWICK RANCH - GUEST BEDROOM - NIGHT

  The guest bedroom at Jenny’s ranch is a cozy little room tucked away behind a simple door adjoining the den. Inside, Adler sets Karen’s half-naked and unconscious body down on the queen sized mattress as Carter fluffs a pillow.

  “Bro,” Adler says. “It’s a good thing Karen passed out in front of us.”

  “Definitely, bro,” Carter agrees, as he lifts her head and pushes the pillow underneath. “She is way too drunk for consent.”

  “And bros don’t take advantage of impaired hos.” Adler pulls a trash can up next to the bed from a corner of the room, just in case Karen wakes up and has to hurl.

  “For sure. Only men can stop rape, bro.”

  “That’s right. Take back the night! Kappa Delta, bro!”

  “You think Karen will be safe if we leave her in this spare bedroom?”

  “Definitely, bro. Let’s go smoke a bowl of Gavin’s dank mail order bud.”

  “But not in the house. We don’t want to skunk Jenny’s place up before her dad comes home.”

  “I hear you, bro. That is a legit concern.”

  EXT. THE WOODS - NIGHT

  Lily awakens to the sensation of water rushing between her legs. In a state of timeless unconsciousness, she believes she is pissing herself, possibly in front of someone important. She tries to hold it in, but it just keeps running down her legs. So embarrassing. So wet. So cold.

  “Yach!” She rattles her head and pulls in a long breath of air. She is alive and up to her knees in chilly water. The liquid has an eerie green glow from the submerged lights of the dashboard instruments in the truck. It is slowly rising. Her head feels like it went through a rock tumbler and she is bleeding from a cut above her eye.

  The Ghoul! Lily’s eyes dart feverishly around the inside of the truck, searching for any sign of the titanic monster, but she finds none. Looking through the broken window, Lily sees only an inky black rippling surface around the truck, and the ominous blood red rise and fade of distant radio tower lights along the horizon.

  She opens the door to her left and steps out into the surrounding body of water, a shallow pond that is a few acres wide. Looking back, she cannot see the highway, or the metal railing she went through, only a long dark slope and some fallen trees. She remembers the truck running downhill for a long time, wildly out of control, skinny trunks slamming against the grill of the massive vehicle. She remembers screaming a lot, then nothing. The trailer is upside-down by itself, nearly fifty yards from the cab. It must have ripped free and rolled in the crash. The bent exhaust stacks on top of the truck indicate that it rolled too, but Lily has no memory of that.

  She has no desire to stay here. If the Ghoul survived the wreck, and he almost certainly did, he will be down here looking for her. Lily begins slowly plodding forward through the squishy unseen bank underfoot.

  INT. BRUNSWICK RANCH - JENNY’S BEDROOM - NIGHT

  “What are you doing?” Jenny says. Her lips curl in mild disgust as one eyebrow crunches down in disdain. Trevor hovers over her, his legs straddling her skinny little waist as he fingers his zipper.

  “I thought we were gonna…” he says

  “We are, but I’m not gonna touch your thing,” Jenny grumbles back. “Ew!”

  “But then how are we supposed to?”

  “Over the clothes, goof!” Jenny pinches the slider on his crotch between her fingers and pulls his zipper back up. “It’s called frottage. It’s safer sex.”

  “Oh.” Trevor practically feels his balls shrivel up into his guts. “I just thought tonight was the night. You know?”

  “For going all the way? Trev, we’re not married yet. We haven’t even been together a year.”

  “I know, babe. I just—does that dry humping stuff actually work?”

  “Of course! Here.” Jenny pushes herself from between his thighs and turns to her hands and knees in front of him. She brushes her back end against his pelvis. “Just rub against the back of my pants like this. It feels just as good as doing it for real.”

  It feels like scrubbing his dick on sandpaper. Trevor can even feel the teeth of the zipper sawing against him, and even though they are on the other side of his underwear, and in reality hardly noticeable, the effect seems amplified by the fury of his disappointment. There is simply no way in hell that doing it for real feels anything like this searing irritation.

  Trevor bends over Jenny and wraps his arms around her shoulders. He cups her exquisite breasts in his hands and whispers in her ear. “What if it’s just the tip?”

  “That’s the same as the whole thing! I let you touch my boobs. Isn’t that good enough?”

  It is not good enough. It took almost an hour of begging to coerce Jenny’s top and bra off, and then she didn’t want him looking at her breasts afterward, so she turned the lights off. The implications Trevor has managed to deny for months are molding into harsh reality here. This dumb animal is never going to put out. She really believes this ignorant, backwoods, Christian humbug about sex and sin. A made-up fairy tale is beating Trevor right now. A lie, invented by bronze age usurers to subjugate their womenfolk, is keeping Trevor from what he wants.

  And how dare she? Trevor is a gentleman far above the hick mouth-breathers Jenny dated before. He’s rich. He summers in Ibiza. He is intellectually superior to the whole lot of them. He read Sartre! He could take her whole life to a new level and she won’t even open her bony little legs for him after all the time he put in. The saddest part is that she isn’t even that hot. She’s acceptably pretty, but she would never be on a magazine cover. He certainly would never marry her like she keeps talking about. Not unless she had a lot of work done.

  “Babe,” Trevor says. “I think I’m going to go downstairs and grab a few beers from the kitchen.”

  Jenny whines back at him with insecurity. “You have to be drunk to be with me?”

  “No. No, babe. Not at all. It’s just—” Trevor struggles to come up with something cute to say that will get her off his case. “For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication. Friedrich Nietzsche.”

  “Oh. Um...You’re so smart, baby. I don’t even know who that is. Bring me one too.”

  “Okay, babe. I’ll be back in a few.”

  Trevor draws the bedroom door open slowly, squinting at the bright light of the hallway, then pulls it quietly closed behind him. He creeps down the second floor hallway to the stairs in his socks and blue jeans. He should have put his shirt back on, just in case he runs into Jenny’s insufferable jock friends downstairs and they want to give him a hard time with witty and original phrases like; Do you even lift, bro? Adler is the worst of them—the fucking monkey. Those people don’t belong in an academic setting, but their presence is the price everyone must pay for the school to have a viable football program and the crucial funding that comes with it.

  His plan is a simple one. The last few times Jenny got him this worked up, his balls ached for half the following day. He has no intention to let that happen again, so he’ll head downstairs, find a quiet bathroom away from the others, take care of his business, and return to Jenny with drinks in hand. If she still wants to do her little safer sexcapade, he can hump her leg for a while and pretend it got him off. She won’t be able to tell since his pants will be on anyway.

  He finds the den completely unoccupied. Gavin and the other ruffians must have gone outside to play one
of their dimwitted games. That is preferable. He didn’t want to talk to them anyway. Now where was that bathroom?

  He glances around the kitchen for a bathroom door while he fetches beers from the fridge, but doesn’t see any, so he heads back into the den. He follows a short hall under the staircase to an open door leading into a small room containing a washer and dryer with a few baskets of laundry and detergent. Not what he was looking for. He turns to the closed door behind him and twists the knob. The room beyond is carpeted and decorated with flowery wallpaper. It has a fluffy upholstered chair and a large bed. Not a bathroom either. He turns to leave, then does a double take of the tiny bedroom and the half-naked female form lying face up on the bed.

  Karen, Gavin’s friend, the nerdy plain one, is lying on the bed in nothing but her underwear. She doesn’t seem to notice him, but on reaction, he blurts out an apology.

  “Oh, sorry. Sorry,” he says.

  Karen doesn’t budge. He expected her to shriek and start screaming at him to get out as soon as she noticed him, but she does nothing of the sort. Trevor leans into the room and whispers her name.

  “Karen?” Trevor whispers, stepping closer. The girl remains like a stone statue. She does not even appear to be breathing. He hopes the little harpy didn’t just go and drink herself to death with him here. Something like that will look bad on his record. Trevor inches a bit closer and nudges Karen’s shoulder. Her bare skin feels warm against his icy fingers after setting the beer down. He puts his ear to her open mouth and confirms the gentle wafts of air from her lips. Her breath smells like rubbing alcohol.

  Trevor whispers her name again, louder than last time, and again receives no response. He grips her upper arm and shakes her. “Karen?” She groans quietly but does not wake up. Trevor shakes her harder without any significant reaction. She is stone-cold wasted, and not coming out of it any time soon. Trevor pokes the peak of her right breast as though he is testing a hot tray that just came from the oven.

  He eyes the length of her nearly nude body, and even in her frumpy brown granny panties, she is more exposed to him than Jenny has ever been—Jenny, that tease, that glaring example of how they hang it on display but refuse to ever give it up. His cock is still rock hard from what that freezer did to him upstairs. Trevor is tired of these provocateur harlots setting him up to fail—of them parading him around like a showpiece with no reward. No more.

  He presses his fingertips into Karen’s crotch and rubs a swirling pattern like he has seen in internet pornography. There is no reason to be harsh with her after all. He can feel the thick muff of brown hair under her panties, and he is offended by her antiquated crudeness. A girl like her would never have a shot with someone like him under any other circumstances. Maybe he’ll close his eyes and pretend she’s Jenny—or Summer. Why couldn’t it be Summer passed out in here?

  “Gavin?” Karen mutters, her eyelids creaking into squinted slivers.

  “Yeah,” Trevor says. “Shoosh, baby. Here.” He picks up a Bud Light from the nightstand and pops the top. “Have some of this.” He pours half the contents of the beer bottle into her mouth and watches to make sure she swallows it without choking.

  Then he closes the bedroom door.

  INT. BRUNSWICK RANCH - BARN - NIGHT

  Gavin strains to cram his hardened member into Summer’s narrow anus. They have been at this for what seems like hours, with her grunting in discomfort and attempting to ease him, and he has only just now achieved what could be described as half penetration.

  4

  “Ow!” Summer squeaks again as he pushes harder into her. She is bent over on all fours in front of him, wearing the same expression of anguish she has had since they started at this. “Owie!”

  Gavin stops pushing. “Hey,” he says. “Are you, uh. Is this not working for you?”

  “No!” she quickly insists. “I love it! Keep—Ow!—doing it.”

  He doesn’t want to keep doing it. There is nothing about this experience that is enjoyable, and seeing directly through her obvious lie, Gavin cannot possibly continue. He draws away from her and sits down against the railing, with the industrial size horse carcass grinder behind him.

  “Oh, no,” Summer whines. “What’s wrong? Was I bad?”

  “No. That’s not it at all,” Gavin reassures her. “It’s just...um...I came already. Yeah. I came twice. Because you’re so hot.”

  “Really?” Summer lights up like a firefly. She is a pretty girl, and very sweet, but so very dumb. “Okay. It was really good for me too.” She puts her clothes back on as Gavin watches silently. It doesn’t take her long. She didn’t start out with much to begin with. He feels unsatisfied and maybe a little led-on, but mostly he feels guilty. He let his dick lead him into this situation, and Summer’s feelings will be hurt when he invariably has to let her down. Jenny will be upset that he hurt her best friend. Karen already hates him. He feels like he threw a lot away tonight for nothing.

  Gavin hears the rustling of footsteps outside the barn and pans visually to the door. One of the others must have come looking for them—hopefully not Karen. He doesn’t want Karen to see him here with Summer. This was an awful idea.

  “Hey! Is somebody in there?” calls a distinctly feminine voice, but it doesn’t belong to Karen or Jenny. The girl who stumbles wearily into the light of the barn a few seconds later is short and thin. Her skin is pale white and her long jet black hair is frayed and frizzy with moisture. Her black Megadeth shirt is sopping wet and appears to be her only article of clothing, except for her knee-high black leather platform boots. Blood is smeared down her left leg, and on her forehead from a cut in her hair. “Oh, fuck. Thank God. There’s somebody here. I need your help.”

  “Lily Hoffman?” says a surprised Summer.

  The strange goth girl looks equally surprised as she eyes Summer up and down. “Summer Dandridge?”

  “You two know each other?” Gavin says.

  “We went to the same high school,” Summer says. “That’s the girl who stole Jenny’s boyfriend.”

  “Chad Evers?” Lily shakes her head in baffling confusion. “We hooked up one time. It wasn’t even a thing. Look, it’s not important right now! You need to call the police!”

  “What happened?” Gavin says. She looks like she rode the log flume without a log and someone hit her with a crowbar at the end of it. Gavin jumps down from the platform and approaches Lily. “What happened to your pants?”

  “There’s a man after me! He’s already killed two people...and…” Lily stumbles forward and slowly falls to her knees, sobbing.

  “Did he do something to you?” Gavin says. He holds his hand out, but doesn’t touch her. If she’s been abused by some kind of sex pervert she may need some space.

  “Yes,” Lily confirms, nodding her head with shame. “He… he…”

  “It’s okay. You’re probably in shock.”

  “He made me eat quarter pounders with cheese!” She wraps her arms around Gavin’s leg and cries loudly into his thigh. Her wailing is mostly absorbed by the fabric of his jeans. She seems to be raving about things that don’t make sense, but he can leave the details for the police to sort out. He puts his hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s going to be okay.” He turns back to Summer. “Hey, can you call 911 from your phone?”

  “I left it in the house,” Summer shrugs whimsically.

  “Me too.” He taps Lily on the arm. “Come on back to the house with us. We’ll call the cops.”

  INT. BRUNSWICK RANCH - DEN - NIGHT

  “Bro,” Adler says. He rests on the big Italian leather sofa in front of the giant flat panel TV in the Brunswick den. His face tingles, and he thinks his eyes might be wider than his eyeholes, but then that would be impossible, unless his eyeholes are even bigger, and then they just keep getting bigger if his eyes get bigger than them. What if everyone is constantly getting bigger because their eyes keep growing? Maybe the reason we grow up is our eyes get larger and—

  �
��Yeah bro?” Carter says. He sits on the sofa to Adler’s left. He is ridiculously high. He smoked so much weed that Adler thinks he should keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, but he keeps getting distracted by the things the cat says. He didn’t even know Jenny had a cat.

  “What are we watching?”

  “Fall Guy, bro. I love to get high as fuck and watch The Fall Guy.”

  “Right, bro.” Adler tries touching his eye, to see if it still fits in his hand, but if the rest of him gets bigger with his eyes, then it would, so he can’t tell that way if it got bigger.

  “Bro, I think maybe The Fall Guy is like part two of The Six Million Dollar Man. Like if you were half robot, bro, and you worked for the army and then you retired, wouldn’t you want to just buy a monster truck and spend all day giving Markie your post?”

  “Who’s Markie?”

  “Christine from Night Court,” says the cat. “Meeeeow.”

  “Way hotter than Heather Thomas,” Carter says. “But not as hot as Staci Keanan. Nobody’s as hot as Staci Keanan.”

  “Are you blind? Christine Lakin was the finest piece of ass in the Lambert household or anywhere else for that matter.”

  “Kitty, she was twelve!”

  “Only in season one. She got older. What are you, gay?”

  “Bro, that cat is twisted,” Adler says.

  “What cat?” Carter asks.

  The kitchen door bursts open and smacks against the stoppers connected to its hinges. Gavin flies into the den yelling. “Adler, have you seen my phone?” Gavin says. He is followed into the room by two sexy ladies.

  Adler hops up from the couch and approaches the hottest one of the babes that walked in with Gavin. “Girl, you are unreal. What’s your name?”

  “That’s Summer.” Gavin shakes his head at Adler in addled surprise. “You know Summer. Were you smoking my shit?”