Death Metal

by Mark All

  David jumped back, his heart racing. Vince was still here. David had either been mistaken, or Nancy’s virus would take too long to work.

  Vince dragged Jessica to the mixing console, his head craned sideways to see the computer monitor. “What did you do?” He twisted his body to look from David to Nancy, jerking Jessica roughly around. “What the fuck did you do?”

  “Nancy?” David said.

  Nancy, deathly pale, said nothing.

  Jessica looked to David imploringly, though she must have known that before David could move the blade from her throat, Vince would use it.

  Then she slipped a little in Vince’s embrace. An inch. Then another.

  “What did you fucking do!” Vince shouted at Nancy, shaking with rage. He began to glimmer, like dazzling lights refracted through water.

  His grip on Jessica had loosened, and the axe blade had dropped several inches from Jessica’s throat.

  David could hold back no longer. He threw himself forward, hands outstretched, grabbed the axe, and twisted. As Vince shouted curses, the axe did not slide from his grip, but glided through his hand, as if moving through a viscous liquid. It came away in David’s hand, and his momentum from pulling it sent him stumbling into the console behind him. Jessica elbowed Vince in the gut, her arm seeming to sink into him, then she shook herself free and fell forward into David. He dropped the axe, threw his arms around her, and hauled her away from Vince.

  The dead man flickered and shimmered like a cloud of color, and David could see Nancy and equipment racks vaguely through him. Vince writhed and his mouth opened in a scream of fury and agony, as if he were burning in the eternal fires of Hell.

  “I will not leave! My music will not fade away! You will LISTEN to me! You will HEAR me! I SHALL BE HEARD!”

  He reached out and clutched at David. Ghostly fingers passed through David’s shoulder, and David shuddered and drew back, even as Vince became more and more ethereal.

  Nancy dragged herself up, took the mouse. She closed the browser, opened the file management window, and pressed shortcut keys to select everything displayed. As she dragged it to the Trash, Vince screamed again, his voice now coming as if from far away, through a dense snowfall, its echoes softening to inaudibility.

  Then his body, insubstantial, faded to a poorly defined silhouette of fog, and finally disappeared entirely. His wails ceased, leaving the studio in silence, save the humming of the computer and rack-mount equipment fans.

  Gasping through sobs, Jessica hugged David tightly. “What the hell just happened?” she asked. “What did you do?”

  “Virus,” Nancy said weakly. “Uploaded to the web and launched against iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, a dozen primary file-sharing sites. It’ll propagate on its own now. Wipe that cursed music from the face of the fucking Earth.”

  “I didn’t know you’d even finished writing the program,” David said.

  “Yep. Last night. It’s like I was in a dream. John was there, helping me.”

  “John was right all along,” David said. “We owe him a big thanks.”

  “Even if he tried to kill you with that light?” Nancy asked.

  “I guess he saw my death as a small sacrifice for the greater good,” David said, smoothing Jessica’s hair.

  Nancy turned back to the computer. “I’m wiping the hard drive now.” She spared David a glance. “Sorry about your computer, dude.”

  David eased Jessica into a chair, picked up the axe, and turned to the mixing console. “Yeah, fuck the computer.” He unplugged the external backup drive, tossed it on the floor, nudged it with his foot, then brought the axe down on it. The heavy blade cut through the plastic housing and buried itself in the hard drive. Nancy had moved back, and now he ripped the computer out from under the mixing desk, opened its casing, and went to work on its hard drives with the axe, grunting with the effort, unable to stop himself.

  He gradually became conscious of Jessica’s hands pulling on his arms and dropped the axe, straightened, turned to her.

  She took his face in her hands. “You’re done, David. You’ve sent the music back to Hell.”

  “Consigned it to oblivion, as it were,” Nancy said. “With my help, in case you didn’t notice.”

  David laughed weakly, and then Jessica was kissing him, and he was kissing her back, not the way he’d hoped for a first kiss with her, but as soul-satisfying as he could ever have imagined.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Two months later

  “Danny? It’s Jessica Chandler.” Jessica adjusted her Bluetooth headset and typed the date into her spreadsheet under the Contacted column beside Danny Morgan’s name. She wanted to meet her goal of signing five artists by Christmas, and it was nearly Thanksgiving already.

  There was a brief silence on the phone while the bass player doubtless went through his mental rolodex and came up with who she was. “Jessica! Why are you calling?”

  “I heard you put The Cranks back together. With a new lineup.”

  “Yeah, but we’re just, you know, playing local gigs and recording in a basement studio.”

  “I also heard the sound clips on your web site.”

  “Hunh.”

  “They’re pretty good, Danny.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Better than the old Cranks.”

  “If I may ask,” Danny said, “why do you care? If you’ll recall, Sage Records dropped us for breach of contract.” He sounded sarcastic, angry, and hurt.

  “Yeah, Sage fired me, too,” Jessica said.

  “Hunh,” Danny said again. “Bummer.”

  “Maybe not. I’ve started my own label.”

  She smiled as she waited for a reply, hopefully not another “hunh,” picturing the wheels turning in his head.

  “That sounds familiar,” he finally said. “Don’t you do country music?”

  She laughed. “You’re talking about Alan. He was my first act; he was the singer for my husband’s old band. Modern country, really, practically rock, but we do everything. There’s a lot of money to be made on ‘the long tail.’ Like I said, I like the songs your new band’s done. They need to be rerecorded, though. You could do it at my husband’s studio.”

  Now Danny laughed. “We don’t have that kind of money. We’re doing covers at local bars. The new drummer recorded us in his living room.”

  “David charges more reasonable rates than you’re used to. We don’t have a lot of overhead.” She paused for the kicker. “We’d front you the costs till the music earns back.”

  “‘Earns back,’ that’s funny.”

  “I’ve still got all my connections in the industry, dude. I’m a great marketer, and Nancy, our IT and social media specialist, has more friends and followers than you’d believe. Don’t worry, we’ll sell it. That’s the big advantage I can offer you over the DIY Indie route.”

  Another pause. “That’s great, Jessica, I’m glad for you. You were always straight with us…”

  Jessica smiled. “So how about it, then? We’re practically next door to you. Conveniently located in Athens, a short hour-and-a-half drive from Hot ’Lanta.”

  It had been a tough decision for Jessica to move in with David, into the house where Ben and Mike were murdered, where the music was born that killed Charlene and countless others. In spite of that, they felt staying was a way to spend the rest of their lives honoring their friends, rather than selling the place to someone who’d use it to record some lame bar band, or worse, a non-musician who’d turn the studio into a home theater, and put a popcorn machine in the control room. No, they had to reclaim the space, not allow Vince to drive David from his home—their home now—as well as preserve the victims’ memories.

  She knew she’d never get over the horror and the loss, but in time she had become happier than she’d ever been before. If she hadn’t proven to Ben, her parents, and herself, that she could do an outstanding job at her chosen profession when she was at Sage, she was certainly doing so now, with her own c
ompany, without her family money. More importantly, she just wasn’t so concerned with succeeding anymore. She’d dedicated herself to her original and true goal, bringing wonderful music to people to make them happy. After Oblivion, she had a lot to make up for in that arena, but she had the rest of her life to do it. And the most special partner to do it with.

  “Um,” Danny said, “weren’t you involved with Penumbra? I’m relieved to know that you lived through the Death Metal Massacre, just kind of in shock to hear from you.” He took a breath, then nearly whispered, “What the hell was that all about—really?”

  Jessica swiveled her chair to gaze out the window at the backyard, avoiding looking at the toolshed, while she considered how to respond. The media, the country, and the world had eventually consigned the horrors of the previous summer to the black hole of oblivion in the social consciousness that becomes the repository of all the unpleasant and unfathomable tragedies they didn’t want to deal with. Theories from the insightful to the wacky abounded, including terrorists distributing a hallucinogenic agent in the world’s major water supplies, and modulated signals in a flash-in-the-pan rock band’s viral single that altered brainwaves, unintentionally or not. All included conspiracies to cover up the source and ineffective official responses to the horror, which CNN dubbed the “Death Metal Massacre.”

  The evangelicals were convinced the song was Satanic in nature, and for once, they were right. That wasn’t the sort of thing that could be proved in any court or official investigation, of course. The consensus of law enforcement and governments the world over was that the disturbance had been due to some terrorist hacker with a background in neurology, for whom they allegedly continued to search. Obviously, a bunch of rock musicians were incapable of any such far-fetched, futuristic behavioral modification, so no damages had been demanded of Penumbra, Sage Records (whose lawyers now had a special place in Jessica’s heart despite her ouster), or any employees or shareholders thereof. Especially since the music was no longer available for analysis.

  The most important thing was that the epidemic of violence had ended as abruptly as it had begun, and the digital source had been eradicated. As far as Nancy could tell, her virus had completed its work within a couple of weeks, and all instances of “Fire It Up” had been deleted from every computer and mobile device in the world. This success was a testament to Nancy Dillehay’s skill and perhaps evidence of the miraculous, as well as the source of even more mystery and speculation. The preponderance of pundit opinion was that the CIA had eliminated the global mind-controlling software threat and was keeping mum, being embarrassed that it had occurred in the first place—but likely preserving it for their own potential use if an extraordinary need arose. The CIA wasn’t talking.

  “It was tragic,” she finally said. “I don’t really know what happened.” That was true enough, she thought, dabbing moist eyes with her sleeve.

  “That maniac’s still on the loose, isn’t he?” Danny asked.

  A chill swept her, made her shudder. They’d all been shocked after they’d destroyed Vince. Too stunned to think up a story, they had simply called the police and told them what had happened. Given the corroborating eyewitness accounts of Vince’s appearance at the Athens Theater, it never occurred to them that the band was crazy or dissembling. They assumed Vince had somehow faked his own death, a preposterous and nonsensical idea, but it was the only logical explanation for their stories of what had happened, and for the murders. Jessica, David, Nancy, and Alan had gone through a very bad couple of days when the DA decided to open Vince’s grave, knowing his body would put the lie to their tale. They’d gotten falling-down drunk, cried together, sobered up, and gotten drunk again.

  Then the police told them that Vince’s body was not in his grave. Jessica shivered thinking of it again now. She hoped to God it did not mean Vince was still out there somewhere.

  “We just have to move on. So what do you say, want another shot at the music biz?”

  “Well,” Danny drawled, “we are doing okay on our own. With no pressure. Working our day jobs and making the house payments—me and my better half were able to get somebody else’s foreclosed home at a bargain. There’s irony for you.”

  “I can help you pay that house off a lot sooner,” Jessica told him. “We’ve got a small but effective marketing machine, lots of contacts, cheap studio time for you.”

  Yet another pause on Danny’s end. Then, “That’s all well and good—but we’re still not going to tour.”

  Jessica chuckled, her eyes dry now. “Not a problem, dude. You can just do regional shows. We have practically no overhead, remember? We’re all about the music, the listeners—and the musicians.”

  She could hear the smile in his voice when he responded. “Okay, lady. I’ll have to run it by the others, but safe to say, we could use a little better production on the tracks. When will there be some open dates at the studio? It’ll have to be on weekends.”

  She opened the scheduling software, settled on tentative dates with Danny, and hung up, telling him she’d be expecting his confirmation within a week.

  “Rock and fuckin’ roll,” she said to herself, spinning her chair around.

  Despite the studio’s sound treatment, she heard the aggressive chugga-chugga of David’s Marshall rumbling the house below her feet. God, she loved him. She’d been afraid that a relationship which began under such intense circumstances was bound to fail; that the burning embers would cool quickly. They hadn’t. She supposed their feelings had been forged in the fires of Hell.

  She couldn’t put her finger on exactly why she loved him, just that she ached for him when they were apart, and her soul rejoiced at their union every day. He was hot, considerate, a nice guy, talented. He’d saved her life more than once on that night. None of that was enough to account for the depth of her emotion. Maybe it was because she’d been able to woo a dedicated obsessive-compulsive artist away from his music to spend so much time—willingly—with her. She was successful as a Musician Whisperer for her own needs, not just business. Most importantly, there was an energetic chemistry between them she felt would not fade when they became intimately familiar with each other’s love-making. Fuck it, she thought. What did the source of their love matter? Whether it was due to a biological imperative, emerged from a thousand factors in their subconscious minds, or they were simply soulmates, she just wanted him.

  In fact, she wanted him now.

  Jessica got up and headed for the basement.

  * * * *

  David bent a note on his new Jackson Randy Rhoads RR1, backed off the preamp gain on the Marshall, struck the string again, and smiled. He was ready to go. The solo for this new song was burning in his mind and he was ready to record it.

  Turning to the console and the computer monitor, he shifted the guitar to grab his coffee cup, which had replaced the once ubiquitous beer bottle. He took a sip and paused to admire the gorgeous guitar. The man who’d wanted to take the axe to his vintage Les Paul, and figuratively to himself as well, seemed another person, a denizen of an endless night of darkness in the penumbra of life following the wreck of the van, the band, and his identity. Now he’d found life worth living again, found a purpose in his own music, but more importantly, he had found a higher state of being by experiencing everything with Jessica. She made him happier than music ever had.

  She’d also helped him believe in himself, helped him realize that life was about fulfilling his own unique potential—even if it wasn’t what he’d aspired to. It wasn’t so much accepting not being as good as he’d wanted to be, but appreciating the nature and value of what made him, him. He’d had to face the fact that he’d aspired to be a virtuoso and composer of serious, grandiose, arty music because he hadn’t trusted himself. He hadn’t recognized what he had to offer than no one else in the world could. He’d felt he had to do something so profound there would be no question as to his worth. In the end though, he could only be himself, and fighting that was futile.
Fighting that opened him up to unhealthy influences, made him vulnerable to dominant personalities with their own agendas, whether personal aggrandizement or calling up Hell Fire.

  Unafraid now to be himself, to find his own voice, he’d finally freed himself to pour out his soul, and had been shocked to find the music he wrote was better than anything he’d done before—and original. It was also less pretentious, less bitter, more sing-able, more positive, and made him feel better to write, play, and listen to.

  His output was prodigious, and ideas for this solo were arranging themselves on a track in his mind, wanting to get out into the world.

  He set Pro Tools to punch in with a pre-roll of two measures and was about to start the take when the hallway door opened. Jessica stuck her head into the control room with a cryptic smile. “I signed Danny Morgan. The Cranks.”

  “Yes! You so rock, Babe.”

  She shoved the door open, came in, and pulled up a chair next to him.

  He repressed a twinge of irritation at being interrupted and felt guilty for it.

  “So, how’s it going?” Jessica asked, peering around him at the computer monitor.

  “Super. Working on the new song.”

  She looked around the control room aimlessly. He wondered what was going through her head. They’d had professional cleaners come in and replace the carpets, but it was impossible to cleanse themselves of their nightmarish memories. Still, when she was near him, he could hardly take his gaze or his thoughts from her. He found her stunningly beautiful and couldn’t believe she was with him, might always be with him. The nascent lead solo in his head was providing a soundtrack for her, describing her spirit in a sequence of arpeggios that soared ever higher, each dripping a cascade of descending scale runs before the next ascending triad. It insistently demanded his attention, but the muse herself was quite a distraction.

  She faced him again. “We need to reclaim this space,” she said seriously. “Drive out bad memories with good new ones. We need to do it here.”