by Tim Curran
Something bit his ankle.
He jerked and a rodent went scampering away. A rat? Must have been. Too big to be anything else. He looked around the cellar. Had he been an anthropologist he might have appreciated the primordial squalor of prehumanity. But he certainly did not appreciate it. Bones and hides, human remains, bodies and parts of them hanging from the rafters. A sack-which must have been a human stomach stuffed with something and stitched closed-was hanging from over the fire from a tripod.
Vile, was the only word for it.
But honestly, with all the boxes and bags and crap piled everywhere, Maddie Sinclair’s basement had been a pigsty to begin with.
Imagine that. Uppity, snobby, Little Miss Perfect Maddie Sinclair’s basement was a rat’s nest. Ah, the secrets we hide from our neighbors.
He heard a sound and started. He was expecting them to come back, those white-painted wraiths with their necklaces of human scalps and fingers. He expected them to return to their kills…and their captive. And maybe this time, it would be no simple dry-hump from an overeager teenage savage.
Maybe it would be the real thing.
He thought that if Macy was truly dead and he was the last civilized person in Greenlawn then maybe it would be better off if he just cashed in his chips here and now.
But to die like that, to be peeled and quartered…
His senses were very alert these past hours. So he listened. Processed it all. Outside he could screams of terror or perhaps pure unbridled joy in the distance. Crickets chirping. Nothing else. A calm night. Warm, pleasant.
You better find a way out of this.
You don’t have much time left.
He could feel the numerous gashes and bruises on his body, each one a separate catalog of pain. It would have been unlivable a few days before, but now it only served to reinforce his waning will to live. He was alive. He was a man. Men like him would be needed to straighten this out if such a thing ever became possible.
He had to live.
He squirmed across the floor, smelling the piss in the dirt, the shit that Maddie and her daughters buried in the sand. Jesus.
Footsteps.
Shit.
The three of them came padding down the stairs-and padding seemed appropriate here, because they no longer walked like women, like human beings, they shuffled along like apes or cantered like hunting wolves-and crowded the doorway.
Maddie came over and squatted about four feet from him. She had a bone in her hand that looked roughly about the size and shape of a human femur. It was stained brown and one end was sharpened for stabbing. She said something, a series of guttural barking sounds that he could not begin to decipher. She grunted and then stared at him for response.
When he didn’t respond, she pounded the floor with her bone.
He just shook his head.
She pounded her bone with authority now.
As dangerous as the situation was, it reminded Louis of that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He could have laughed at the absurdity of it had he not been so close to tears at that point.
There was something she wanted him to understand. She kept pounding the bone, offering him the toothy grin of baboon.
Maddie Sinclair had been an attractive woman before this happened to her. Yes, elitist and pompous, but also the sort of women men watched, the penis having no true shame. She was not thin and willowy like some TV spokesmodel, but shorter, hips and ass well-rounded, breasts quite large, long hair just this side of bronze and large liquid black eyes. Sexy. That was the word for it. She had it and she carried it well and that’s all there was to it.
But now…good God.
Naked and painted white, that brilliant red war paint at her face and breasts and loins, the streaks of dried blood and filth mottling her. Her hair hung in her face like strands of wet straw, her mouth hooked into a contorted, evil funhouse sort of leer. And those eyes-could you really call them eyes?-wicked crevices peering into a pestilent sewer blackness.
She edged in closer, slapped the ball joint of the bone in her palm.
The way she smiled was not the way human beings smiled. It was the lurid, carven grin of a crocodile. A smile of teeth and bone-crushing appetite. She glided forward on hands and knees, the stench of her enough to put Louis’ stomach in his throat. Her breath was sharp smelling like rat poison.
She had him and there was no way out.
Despite the crawling beast she was, the craven leer in her eyes was unmistakable. She did not want to make love, hell no, she wanted to screw, to fuck. And even that was far too dignified for a rodent like her. She wanted to rut like hogs in the mud and breed like wolves in the brush and apes in the trees. Rutting season. She was in heat and she wanted what he had.
And if he didn’t give it?
He knew the answer to that. The ones that had refused were hanging from the rafters, salted, boiled, tanned, or bubbling away in pots.
Maddie’s mouth was open and he could see her tongue worming in there like a maggot considering blackened meat. She crept closer, her breasts swinging from side to side like the teats of a cow. Louis could feel the heat coming off her. It was feverish, diseased, sickening. Not the sort of heat you associated with a human body, but maybe a cooling engine block.
He tried to squirm away from her and she did not like that.
She dove on top of him, grabbed him by the ears like a school bully and smacked his head off the hardpack of the floor five or six times. She was an absolute horror close like that…the greasy feel of her, the loose boneless gyrations of her body, the molten heat rising from her pores, and worse, oh God yes, the smell of her which was like dirty straw in a monkey cage. A unique and revolting effluvium of urine, scabby hides, and simian drainage.
Don’t throw up, Louis. Jesus Christ, don’t you dare do that.
She grinned down at him with that obscene drooling blow-hole of a mouth and he almost lost it right there. Some things were not meant to smile and she was one of them.
She ran her hands all over him, letting her fingers do the walking while he trembled at her touch and his stomach contents bubbled up the back of his throat. There was no escape, that was the most horrifying and demeaning part of it all. She groped his balls and squeezed his legs. She slapped his chest and gripped his shoulders while she slapped her thighs against him until he felt that his full bladder would burst. She pressed her fetid smelling corpse-face into his own, nibbled his throat and covered him with sloppy kisses, licked him and tasted him with a tongue that was coarse and gritty like that of cat. And when she pulled away, she left a rope of spit that broke wetly against his cheek.
The entire thing was not so much violation or suggested rape, but more like being a piece of meat: seasoned and tenderized, made ready for the stewpot.
Or maybe the marriage bed in this case.
She crawled away and he saw just how filthy her ass was. She turned, saw him looking at her, grinned almost childishly and spread her legs apart. She jabbed a thumb up inside herself and pushed it in and out and there was no mistaking what she had in mind.
Louis pissed right down his leg.
He had never felt so unclean in his life, contaminated by her touch, her smell, his own helplessness.
She went over to the fire.
She had a bowl in her hand.
She slit a few stitches of the gut bag and pried it open. The hot stink that came out was meaty and blood-smelling. She scooped something out of there with her fingers and brought the bowl to him. She wanted to feed him. Steam rose off the bowl, the juice inside congealed and fatty, the meat itself flabby and pale. He could not say what it was…a bit of lung? A strip of heart meat? A slice of kidney?
He drew away from it.
She opened her mouth with a sawtoothed grin and snapped her jaws shut. It was all so simple in her mind: meat was meat. No inhibitions against cannibalism, against feeding on your own kind, absolutely no cultural taboos because they had not yet been invented at her level of ps
ychological evolution.
She shoved the bowl in his face and some of the juice spattered him, running down his cheek. It smelled like hot vomit.
He recoiled.
She stuck the bowl in his face again and he butted it out of her hands with his head. It flopped to the floor, right into the dirt. She made an enraged growling sound, snapping up a piece of meat and shoving it in his face.
I won’t.
I will not eat that, you foul fucking cunt, and I don’t care what you do to me but I will not eat human meat. So just…piss…right…off.
She saw the defiance in his eyes and jumped on him, scratched ruts in his face with her nails. If he didn’t want the offered meat, then he must want something else. She grabbed his pants and fought with the zipper while he fought against her. It was no use. Hands tied, legs tied, he was about as offensive as a wriggling worm. She yanked his pants down and he could feel himself shrivel to nothing. She brought her face down there, sniffing his balls. She jabbed her fingers into them, making him jerk with pain, but she kept right on doing it like some confused bratty child who did not comprehend why her Jack-in-the-Box just wasn’t working.
Then she straddled him again.
Rubbing herself against him while her daughters watched in breathless fascination. She stuck her breasts in his face, leaving white streaks on his cheeks. She kissed him, licked him, melted her rancid body into him. And when she slid her cankerous tongue into his mouth, he did the only thing he could.
He bit down on it until he drew blood…
79
When Macy pulled herself off the floor, she was aware of the pain thrumming through her body, but it was ancillary, removed, like the beat of her heart and the pulsing of her muscles it was part of her identity now. She was grimy from dirty hands, lustrous with grease-fat. A trickle of blood ran down the inside of one leg, it was crusted over breasts and belly, reddening her lips and smeared over her chin. Her hair hung in filthy strands over her face.
They had ringed her in, the clan.
Facing her was another girl, older than she. Like Macy she was naked though carefully painted with black and white stripes. Her hair was dirty, though a lustrous gold.
The girl hissed through clenched teeth.
Macy steeled herself.
Her eyes, go for eyes, then her throat.
The girl backed away, seemed almost submissive and when Macy let her guard down for that one instant, she charged. She leaped three feet and hit Macy square in the face, then hit her in the head and gave her another jab to the chin. Macy was overwhelmed, seeing stars and funny lights in her head. She folded up and the girl pounded on the back of her skull.
The girl made to kick her and Macy rolled away, more out of dizziness than anything else.
The girl jumped on her back, locking an arm around her throat and yanking her head back until it felt like her spine would snap. The girl grabbed her own wrist and tightened the hold, applying more pressure until Macy thought she would pass out. She clawed at the girl’s scabby arms, tugged at her hair.
The girl only squeezed that much tighter.
The clan was excited, cheering and howling. This was a blood rite, an ancient test of strength and cunning and also one of the few true entertainments that existed in the prehistoric world.
Macy’s vision began to blur.
She couldn’t draw a breath.
She’s killing you! Killing you! Killing you!
A strangled growl started in Macy’s throat. She bared her teeth, drool foaming from her mouth. She reached back and grabbed the girl between the legs, filled her hand with her womanhood, and twisted it with every ounce of strength she had left.
The girl screamed and loosened her grip.
Macy went wild, writhing and squirming with reptilian gyrations. She got her chin under the girl’s arm and bit down on her forearm until she felt her teeth break through the skin and blood filled her mouth.
The girl, screeching madly, released her and hopped away, tripping over her own feet. When she turned from babying her wound, Macy was on her. Letting loose a snarling, wolflike sound, Macy snatched up a handful of the girl’s hair and twisted her head on her neck. The girl raged, scratching and hissing. Macy stuck her thumb in the girl’s left eye and she cried out again, going nearly limp. Then Macy had both her hands in the girl’s hair. She yanked her head down and started kicking her. In the belly, the groin, the legs.
The girl fell back.
Her left eye was swollen purple, nearly closed, but her right was huge and staring, filled with murder.
The girl came at her.
Macy tried to sidestep her, but the girl rammed right into her, throwing her off balance. She jabbed her elbow back and felt the impact, heard the girl’s nose break with a sickening popping sound. She brought hands to her face. Blood ran between her fingers.
Macy went at her.
And to Macy, at that moment, the girl epitomized the suffering, the degradation, the violation that she had endured and been put through. She punched her in the face again and again and then kicked her in the ribs. The girl screamed and tried to fight back, but it was no easy bit with being half-blind. Macy came from every direction, battering her with fists and feet.
The girl fell to one knee, bleeding and dazed.
She tried to rise up and Macy kneed her in the side of the head and kicked her repeatedly when she fell back.
Then she jumped her, clawing her face and then sinking her splintered nails into the girl’s hurt eye. Tearing right through the lid and scratching her eyeball, laying it raw. The girl screamed with an agony that was shattering and bone-deep. She fought and bit, but Macy would not quit digging at her eyeball. She had it now, her nails speared into it, her fingertips worked into the socket. With a primal yell, she ripped the eye from its socket. It came out with a bundle of pink muscle and an oozing length of optic nerve.
Throwing her weight behind it, Macy yanked it right out until it came away in her hand, still pulsing with life.
The girl was a blubbering, shuddering mass of flesh by that time, overwhelmed by agony and barely conscious. Macy hit her a few more times. Then something was shoved into her fist.
A knife.
There was no conscious thought on the matter. Macy gripped the knife and what she did with it was done out of reflex, entirely instinctual. She pulled the girl’s hair back by the roots and slashed the knife against her throat, blood spraying in her face and over her breasts. She slashed the girl again and again until it looked like both she and her victim had been dipped in red ink.
The girl struggled a bit, then flopped over into Macy’s lap.
The clan was wild from the violence, from the stink of raw blood in the air. You could see it in their eyes. They wanted to cover themselves with it, swim in it, paint the walls of the lair with it.
This was nectar.
This was the juice of life.
This was the fluid of the great mystery.
They were screaming and jumping around, beating on each other, rolling on the floor, fucking, spitting, scratching themselves bloody. It passed from one to the next and the next and the next like some kind of hideous circuit was completed.
Macy was not immune to it.
Her heart was pounding, her flesh wet with blood and sweet-smelling sweat. She felt the heat between her legs, in her belly, and especially in her mind like some all-consuming firestorm.
The grotesque faces of the clan staring out at her in rapt anticipation, Macy buried her face to the girl’s throat, wrapping her lips around the knife wound that had split her carotid open. The blood still gushed. It was hot and salty as it filled her mouth and flowed down her throat, as she sucked and gulped, more content than a baby suckling mother’s milk from an offered breast.
At last, she pushed the corpse away, blood running from her mouth. She raised her hands into the air, cocked back her head, and screamed her rabid lust to all creation. For she was blooded now. She was of the clan. She was a
hunter…
80
The pack needed to be careful now, they needed to rest and lick their wounds, recover from the physical injuries of the open warfare on Providence Street and soothe the psychological ones. Both kinds were still wide open and hurting.
But the Baron would not have it.
The more lives he took, the more blood and guts he spilled, the more pain he took, the more alive he felt. He could not and would not roll into the straw like some beaten dog, not when there was hunting and the night called to him. He was energized, thrumming with energy as if he were mainlining the very honeyed ambrosia of life itself.
The pack lay in a grassy field, licking their wounds and calming one another, a few of the more daring ones clutching weapons, ready for the hunt. The Baron stood up and walked towards the street. A few of his hunters went with him. The others perked up their ears, concerned, alarmed, but not following.
There was an odor on the breeze.
The baron had caught its scent and it enlivened him. It was tantalizing, pleasing. He followed its trail, curious and excited. It awoke cravings in him he had not felt in some years. It made his heart flutter, his blood run hot. His penis stood hard. One of his hunters, a teenage girl was down on all fours, sniffing the trail. The Baron went up behind her, grasped her hips, pushed her open and penetrated her. She shrieked and snapped at him, but she had offered herself and the chemical signature of that was unmistakable. He took her as she wanted to be taken with fierce thrusts, his thighs slapping against her ass cheeks.
When he was done, the odor was stronger.
He followed it, the other hunters coming now, too, sneaking through the grass, weapons in hand, eyes glittering with moonlight. The odor was of dead things, meat rotting and fly-specked. It left a trail of rank, green stink, exciting canine impulses in the entire pack. They all wanted to roll in it and scent themselves.
The Baron led them forward, through yards, across vacant lots.