Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 1

by Jeff Strand

  Herc Jr., it seemed. Slightly shorter, but beefier. A few more steroid injections and he could be with Chrome Dome’s crew. He looked in his mid-twenties, wearing a baseball cap turned backward and a skintight tee-shirt that said “Dick Diesel.” Grimsbo’s drinkers, they greeted him and his entourage with a scant nod.

  “Them dogfights up at Sin Mountain,” the Stetsoned old-timer said.

  “What up, Meat!” The shouter had fewer pounds on him than the gold chains he wore over his Yankees baseball jersey. Meat gave Pencil-Neck a fist bump and led his entourage to the bar.

  Clay guessed none of them could fight. Not Meat, who measured toughness in biceps peak. Not the tousle-haired Frankenstein’s monster showing Pencil-Neck some karate block. Not the mutton-chopped beach ball rolling his head around like a boxer and shrugging to a twenty-year-old rap song he picked on the jukebox.

  A row of shots was set before them which they raised toward Herc. “Welcome home, dad!” Meat downed the shot and slammed the glass on the bar top. His father, at the rear of the bar, nodded gloomily.

  The buxom waitress drifted over to Clay, smelling of gum and perfume. “Sorry to keep you waiting, hon. Can I get you anything?”

  “You can get me something, Maria,” Meat shouted before Clay could speak. “Name of that fake casting agent who creampied up your slit. Nice video on Jizzhub!”

  Maria made a face like she was counting to ten, then stormed off crunching peanut shells underfoot.

  Clay had seen enough. He nodded to the old-timers and went back to his truck. He parked in a lot across the street facing the bar. An hour later Meat and his boys climbed into a black Escalade. Clay tailed them through side streets and turned off when they entered a cul-de-sac. He cruised the area a few minutes, then parked on the street facing the cul-de-sac. The turnaround was packed with SUVs, pickup trucks, vans, motorcycles and hoopties.

  Rap music boomed from the biggest house on the dead-end street.

  Somewhere behind the house, dogs were crying.

  5

  The party raged into the early dawn. All night people went in and out of the house, drinking and smoking. No one seemed to notice the black 18-wheeler parked down the street. Clay saw nothing of interest until just before noon, when a van cruised past his truck and stopped on the lawn.

  Meat came out to greet it. Through his binoculars Clay watched the van’s side door open and a Mr. Universe wobble out with two leashed pit bulls. The driver, a gorilla in a cutoff army jacket, went to the back of the van, grabbed a bucket of 5/8-inch steel chain and followed Meat and the dog walker into the house.

  Clay wiped his binocular eyecups on his shirt and mopped his brow. Hot as hell out.

  Hotter in his chest, where an old memory caught fire.

  Old Man Gardner. He was why Jimmy, Clay’s dog, his twenty-pound Boston terrier, never made it to Los Angeles. Clay wanted to blame his father for not mending the fence where Jimmy escaped, but in the end it was Old Man Gardner who pulled the trigger, who blew the back out of Jimmy for crapping in his yard. Jimmy and his butter-soft coat, how he leaned on Clay’s chest and rolled his eyes up for attention. Old Man Gardner left the dead dog on the road outside his gate. This he declared on the Hallers’ front steps, reeking of cheap whiskey and self-satisfaction—Chrome Dome’s granddaddy with a shotgun.

  Clay sweated in the cab, thinking about Jimmy.

  About the pit bulls.

  What the old-timer said: “Them dog fights up at Sin Mountain.”

  He’d read about dog fighting. How so-called “dog men” beat and starved the dogs to make them more aggressive. Set them loose on “bait” animals, like cats or smaller dogs, to sharpen their taste for blood. Chained them in cages or steel drums. Drowned, strangled, shot or beat against the ground the dogs who lost or were severely injured. He’d seen pictures of dead dogs in trash bags, blood-spattered walls. One image, the combatants locked like Kama Sutra lovers, bleeding all over each other, the bottom dog staring at the camera, infinitely rueful.

  The pit bulls from the van, they looked like they’d survived such a contest—barely. Faces like meat tossed under a lawn mower.

  Clay’s dad didn’t let him see the body when he picked it up, but that didn’t help. For weeks he kept picturing Jimmy raped by Old Man Gardner’s shotgun. Post-traumatic stress disorder, he didn’t know the term back then, he only knew that what happened to him in the forest transformed how he would see life forever. Every show of strength, every flaunting of power, extended the Rapist’s will, thrust a knife through the core of him.

  These trailer-trash King Shits, these gangster-wannabe King Shits, these muscle-bound King Shits with their chains and cages and fight rings. They were rapists of the animal kingdom, Old Man Gardner with a god complex.

  Thinking about Jimmy, Clay realized his war was only his boyhood self still searching for redemption. A mask he hid behind, like the truck he spent so much time inside, a mask he couldn’t take off.

  He should have driven away, he should never have followed those men from the bar. What he had seen today, written on those pit bulls’ faces, was the end of every King Shit in Grimsbo, population about to drop. Even Meat’s three-story headquarters looked like a King Shit house.

  Blue sky, a day promising to top a hundred, a day for glaring sun and bug splats on the windshield while he tore up the interstate, and Clay sat in his truck picturing the .50-caliber Desert Eagles he kept in a briefcase. Nasty way to send a man to the underworld.

  Little by little, like dawn breaking over years, Clay had made peace with death. He knew that for every man he hunted, he brought death closer. Chasing down foes in his 18-wheel King Shit chariot, Clay the ultimate King Shit, a King Shit killer of King Shits. That, he’d learned in his forty-one years, was how the universe worked. When shadows peeled back the world and all you saw were your sins, reflections of reflections, mirrored to infinity. Whether he died in the next few minutes or lived to fight another day, a King Shit killer was coming for him.

  So bright the sun-baked asphalt, so sour-sweet the gummy bears he chewed while he stared at the opened side of the van where the pit bulls had been. Thinking about them, about Jimmy, voices from the past chattering in back of his mind—and then:

  “Don’t move, Clay,” David, still thirteen years old, making Clay wait after all those years. Some wisp of foreknowledge sampling from his worst memory, guiding him into another dark forest.

  Minutes later, Meat pushed out the front door.

  “We’re heading out,” he said to someone inside.

  So that was why Clay’s subconscious urged him to wait. Meat would lead him to Sin Mountain.

  Clay watched over twenty people stream out of the house and disperse into vehicles. Beach Ball and Frankenstein’s Monster and Pencil-Neck. Van Driver and Dog Walker, minus the dogs. All dudes except for a skinny blonde in a Jeep convertible, turning out of the cul-de-sac onto the lane intersecting with the dead-end street. Clay started the truck and followed the procession to a freeway onramp. A mile out of town Meat’s Escalade turned right onto a rural road and led the convoy up a steep, golden hill. Clay followed, hanging back so he’d have plenty of room to pull over when they reached their destination. This turned out to be the gravel drive of a big white farmhouse.

  The only house within miles, atop a blaze of arid land known as Sin Mountain.

  Through his binoculars he scanned the trees and fence obscuring the property. Place like that, they didn’t want you crapping in their backyard.

  “Well, Jimmy,” Clay said, “looks like we’re finally gonna pay back Old Man Gardner.”

  6

  Over-the-top didn’t begin to describe them—the hand cannons under his armpits. Bought from a guy on the Internet at a reasonable price, if your tastes included signed Picassos and rare Scotch. Over four pounds each, ten-inch barrels, titanium gold finish, custom gold-plated grips featuring a black dog with glowing red eyes. Hellhounds. The seller gave them funky names from Welsh myth, b
ut Clay just called them Jimmy One and Jimmy Two.

  So far, the Jimmies had only shot pumpkins. The exit holes so big Clay could put his fist through them.

  Truly a King Shit weapon, how a shotgun blast must have felt to a twenty-pound dog taking a crap. Clay’s “Rebirth-day” gift to himself, came with the custom double-gun shoulder holster and leather briefcase. The seller had a flair for the cinematic.

  Long shot of Clay driving across open field, his big rig black as dreamless sleep, a shadow growing under the eye of the sun.

  No plan, just jump down, point, shoot. Dumb as Chrome Dome’s stick fight technique, but it was now or never, he should’ve been on the road by now.

  The Jimmies hungered for more than pumpkin seeds and pulp.

  Anyway, probably the whole town knew what Meat’s gang was up to and all they worried about were law agencies spread too thin for some Podunk animal abusers. Last thing they’d expect was a battle with a long-haul truck driver.

  Sin Mountain: Dead land ready to catch fire and a King Shit party at the far end. It could have been some farmer’s family picnic, people drinking beer and standing around or sitting in lawn chairs. But then there was that pavilion-type thing back by the trees, like a wooden carport built around a large, empty sandbox. Cars parked around it, except where a wooded trail sheltered some dozen dogs chained to overturned barrels, some lumped on their sides, not moving.

  Now Meat kicked something in the sandbox—the fight ring—something too small to see over the low wall. He went after it and kicked it again, while a buffed shirtless dude in a doo-rag jerked the chain on a pit bull in one corner.

  Those Hellhounds, they were the most decadent purchase Clay ever made, but he knew someday he’d need them.

  His last delivery: Pain and humiliation, right on time.

  He rolled in slowly, honking thunder as if the crowd were kids pulling on an air horn. By now everyone was watching him. The skinny blonde grabbed something from her Jeep, and Meat vaulted from the ring, striking his best college bouncer pose in a gap between parked cars.

  Clay killed the engine. Jumped down from the cab. Heat and parched grass smells hit him.

  Meat’s sleeveless tee-shirt said, “Do you even lift, bro?”

  “Jesus,” Meat said, “it’s Jim Carrey—”

  BAWWWWMMM!

  That was Jimmy One, and the blonde on Clay’s right fell behind the Jeep, shotgun pointed skyward.

  BAWWWWMMM!

  Jimmy Two barked left at a redheaded guy reaching down the back of his jean shorts. Blood and entrails showered the tree behind him. He collapsed next to a dog lump.

  Someone screamed. People ran for cover. Jimmy One followed Pencil-Neck around back of the ring, turned his face into a menstrual explosion. Guy in a feathered pimp hat made it to the trail when Jimmy Two turned his chest into a porthole, flashing a gap in the trees ahead.

  Hellhounds.

  Silly, Clay knew, giving his guns personalities like he was a hit man in the movies. But then, they were his muscle, weren’t they, like Chris Kezzlewick had David and Quinton? And this was his rape stage, his forest.

  These metaphors of male potency, extensions of the Rapist’s will, forcing themselves on people where holes weren’t supposed to be.

  Clay heard screaming inside the ring. Doo-Rag had let the pit bull loose, and instead of charging Clay it seized in its teeth the thing Meat had been kicking. The small, fawn-colored dog thrashed in the pit bull’s jaws. Flopped behind the low wall and swung up again, its cries so shrill Clay felt his blood turn to crushed glass. Jimmy Two put down both animals with a bullet through the pit bull’s muzzle.

  To the right: Chakk-chakk … BOOOMMM!

  Beach Ball with Blonde Girl’s shotgun, nicking a corner post of the ring.

  Jimmy One and Jimmy Two tore into him, his third-trimester gut.

  The spent cartridges whipped past Clay’s face.

  Hellhounds.

  “Anyone else?” Clay pointed them, side by side, at the crowd. “What about the house,” to Meat. “Anyone in there?”

  “No, man.”

  BAWWWWMMM!

  Jimmy One saw Cell Phone Guy before Clay, scalped him with his sunglasses sitting on his head. He crumpled out of sight between a Corvette and a Buick.

  Where he fell came a ring tone: Wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka.

  Pac-Man, eating.

  Meat hit a biceps shot palming his forehead.

  “Everyone put their hands up,” Clay said. “No one uses cell phones. Sure there’s no one in the house?”

  “No, man. I mean yes. Fucking yes.”

  Then, “What is this? You were parked back at the house, right? What the hell do you want?”

  “I want your people to get in back of my truck.”

  “What for?”

  Jimmy Two pointed at Meat’s chest. The part that said, “bro.”

  “Everyone but you.”

  Meat scowled. “You got six rounds left.”

  “That’s right.”

  Not including the magazines in his cargo pants pockets.

  “Anyone want a piece of my Jimmies?” Clay shouted.

  Wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka-wocka

  Meat said, “You’re something, man.”

  “Someone should answer that phone.”

  “But you said no—”

  BAWWWWMMM!

  “Five rounds left,” Clay said, Doo-Rag, still in the ring, pulling his hand back from his right boot.

  “You want something to do, big man, open the trailer door on my truck. Let’s go, people, form a line.”

  Doo-Rag went to the back of the truck. Meat next, everyone else filing after him, hands raised, the Jimmies tracking them. “Used to drive long haul myself.” Doo-Rag, arms akimbo, stared up at the empty trailer. “It’s going to be hot as hell in there.”

  “Like those dogs you got chained.”

  Doo-Rag turned to Clay. “Man, those are dogs, four-legged things, this is what they do.” Nodding toward the ring. “You, you’re killin’ people.”

  “People, huh?”

  “Heat stroke, starvation, whatever you got planned—it’s monstrous.”

  Doo-Rag was a monster himself. Chiseled, in olive-drab fatigues and black boots—Clay hadn’t forgotten the piece hidden in the right—tattoos on front and back like giant monk script, illegible against the dark canvas of muscle. Knife scar where the right pectoral tied in with the front deltoid. Bad dude, but he had a point. Clay with his Hellhounds and trailer-cum-death-chamber, like some King Shit Nazi … he hadn’t thought what to do when the shooting ended.

  “Two-legged things,” he said finally. “Okay, here’s what we do. First, everyone else gets in the trailer. Then you shut the door and go to the ring. You, too, bro,” Jimmy Two pointing at Meat, “and you three, Frankenstein.” Jimmy One waving at the sleepy-eyed brute near the back of the line. “Let’s go, people, this isn’t a spectator event.”

  Dog Walker, last inside the furnace, glared down at Clay. “You’re gonna get your ass whupped.”

  Doo-Rag shut the trailer door.

  Meat, Doo-Rag and Frankenstein’s Monster went to the ring. Clay approached from the trail side, the chained dogs eying him, ears forward, brows furrowed. He kenneled his Hellhounds, removed the shoulder holster and laid it at his feet. Stepping over the low wall, he took a spot behind the dead dogs, conjoined at fang and face. The warning he’d fired at Doo-Rag through the low wall had ripped a hole in the pit bull’s underbelly, pooling guts and sticky stuff on the killing floor.

  Lined behind the dog mess the three men exchanged glances.

  “Two-legged things,” Clay said. “This is what we do.”

  The ring was infernally hot, miasma of old contests and fresh kill. Adrenaline gripped the men in place, unsure how to triple-team their opponent.

  Two-legged things, doing what four-legged things do.

  Outside the ring, two-legged and four-legged things dead or dying under the eye of t
he sun.

  Hop-stepping around the dogs, Clay threw a shield up—elbows and front knee covering groin and midsection—and blocked Frankenstein’s Monster’s roundhouse kick. He chopped the man’s windpipe, then bent his arm back so that Doo-Rag, knife flashing from the right boot, bayoneted a corpse. Doo-Rag threw a hook around the human obstacle in his face. Clay straight-arm blocked it, released Frankenstein’s Monster and stabbed his fingers in Doo-Rag’s eyes.

  For an instant he felt a phantom, a flicker of temperature behind him as he finished Doo-Rag with an elbow to the temple. For an instant he became a child again, back in the nightmare forest. Chris Kezzlewick snaking over him, breathing on him. “Don’t move Clay,” David’s ghost, freezing him.

  For an instant. Then he felt a death grip on his shoulders, and teeth tear into his earlobe. Clay twisted with elbow out, knocking Meat off balance.

  Stepping around the dog mess again—now a heap of four- and two-legged things—he thrust his fingers into Meat’s mastoid process.

  Clay didn’t fight people, he dissected them.

  But now training turned into something other than self-defense.

  Like his Hellhounds, he hungered.

  A four-legged thing descended on Meat’s sprawled body. A digestive tract in the guise of a man, boiling with pain and blood lust. There was a script to it, the feeding. Clamp hands around prey’s neck. Smell its fear. Bite off piece of prey’s upper lip, like tearing open a bag with your teeth. Create an entry point.

  Clay spat out the chunk of lip—Meat wouldn’t be able to pronounce “lip” after that—and bit off pieces around the mouth. Speech, what two-legged things do. Then he bit off part of the tongue—Meat wouldn’t be able to pronounce “tongue” after that—chewing, rending, working through the eyeballs, ears, nose cartilage. Meat kicked and flailed under the onslaught, shrieking like the little fawn dog. He tried to whip Clay with the chain around the pit bull’s neck. Clay slammed Meat’s arm down, then dug his fingers in the nose holes of the face beneath Meat’s face.

  Monstrous.

  It was a red skull Clay left when he walked back to the truck. “An eye for an eye,” an ear for a face—a face for every animal that had perished where Meat now lay screaming.