Long Chills

by Ronald Kelly

  The casualties among Rott’s brigade were devastating. Heads exploded in bursts of crimson and splintered bone, and craterous wounds pockmarked their chests and abdomens. Several arms were sheared from their sockets. They dropped to the pavement, twitching and flexing, still clutching the weapons they had been toting.

  Bubba went down, his green cap collapsing amid the ruins of his skull. Instantly, the Pit Bulls were loose. As they advanced, crossing the street at startling speed, Sam lowered the Remington’s muzzle and unleashed a burst of four rounds. One yipped sharply as he took a bee-swarm of pellets in his broad chest, while the other scarcely made a sound, taking a few more steps toward the fix-it shop without benefit of a head before finally falling.

  Sam squeezed the trigger again, but nothing happened. The gun was jammed. He struggled to clear the breech, but he was too late. The third dog – a black and white Bull with one blind eye – leapt and knocked him backward into his rocking chair. Sam dropped the 1100 and flailed blindly at the snarling maw of slobber and fangs. The dog’s powerful jaws closed around Sam’s left wrist. Yellowed teeth punched through ancient skin, shattering old bones and bringing spurts of blood.

  The elderly man reached into the right pocket of his overalls, groping, searching for the butt of the Colt. He withdrew the .45 revolver, pressed it against the dog’s blind eye, and fired. The animal died instantly, but refused to release its hold. Sam cried out in pain as the weight of the dog did further damage to his wrist, ripping flesh and grinding bone against bone. Sam stuck the long barrel of the Peacemaker between the dead dog’s jaws and pried awkwardly until they finally grew slack and let go.

  He thought he was out of the woods, when he looked up and saw the Alabama Hitman jump over the hood of the shot-riddled Mustang and march toward him. The wrestler’s biceps flexed like living things beneath his tanned skin as he clenched and unclenched his huge hands.

  “You want I should open a can of whup-ass on the old bastard, boss?” he asked Rott.

  The serial killer and his second-in-command emerged from where they hid behind the black Ford. Rott smiled, his eyes glittering meanly. “Go right ahead. Break open a big ol’ can.”

  Sam raised his revolver, but suddenly the Hitman was there. He batted the Colt out of his grasp and grabbed Sam by the throat with one vise-like hand. He grinned with professionally whitened teeth as he slowly began to squeeze. “Want him dead?”

  Rott considered it for a moment. “Naw, just break his neck. Then he can lie in his own shit and starve to death.”

  The Hitman’s grin widened. “Sounds like a plan to me.” He placed his other hand against the side of Sam’s head and began to apply pressure.

  The old man grunted as he felt the bones of his neck begin to give way. Desperately, Sam reared back with his right foot and attempted to kick Hitman in the nuts, but he landed a glancing blow to his upper thigh instead. It was enough to throw the big man off balance. As they began to tumble to the porch of the fix-it shop, Sam felt a sharp spike of pain shoot through the back of his neck and heard a brittle crunch. He hit the ground hard, fighting against the urge to pass out from shear agony.

  He lay there, supported by his elbows, as he watched Hitman climb slowly to his feet. “I’m really gonna do a number on you now!” he growled and started forward.

  Sam scuttled backward, like a sand crab, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and the wrestler. He made it through the open doorway, crawled a yard or two inside the shop, and stopped. Sam watched carefully as the Alabama Hitman stopped within the frame of the door, filling it with his towering bulk.

  The wrestler glared at him, then glanced downward. He stood on top of a steel mesh grate. “What the hell’s this for?” he asked.

  “Clean up,” replied Sam. Then he kicked out with his left foot, tripping a lever that protruded from the boards of the floor.

  A seven foot plate of quarter-inch steel slid smoothly down its double-tracks from where it was concealed in ceiling overhead. It acted like a guillotine, striking Hitman on the crown of the head and cleanly dissecting him, from his scalp to the soles of his feet.

  Sam flinched as blood and shredded tissue filled the air. As the plate slammed to a stop against the steel grate, shutting out the evening light, the front half of the Alabama Hitman folded into itself and lay in a heap. A second lever opened the grate and what was left of the wrestler dropped into a refuse pit out of sight.

  Seeing the rear half of the Alabama Hitman crumble outside seemed to hit a nerve with Rott. “Get a good night’s sleep, old man!” he bellowed from the street. “Tomorrow’s your death-day! I’ll bake a cake and break out the black candles!”

  Sam lay on his back on the floor, the pain in his neck, shoulder, and wrist competing in their intensity. Nearly blacking out, he breathed in deeply and struggled to a sitting position. Rott continued to rave outside and he wanted to catch every word of what he had to say.

  “After you’re gone, I promise it won’t end, Pops! I’ll burn this damn town to the ground, until only ashes remain. Maybe I’ll gather up all the women in town and turn one of your churches into a whorehouse. How would you like that? And the kids…” He unleashed a laugh so hideous and laden with darkness that it made Sam feel sick to his stomach. “Oh, they’ll have the best time of all.”

  Sam slowly got to his feet and stumbled to the back room. His intention was to collapse on the bed and suffer into the night. But Rott’s laughter caused him to forget his defeat. The murderer’s threats echoed in his mind: the burning of Watkins Glen, the blasphemous whorehouse, and the uncertain fate of innocent children. He thought of the accountant’s wife and her two young’uns and wondered if they were still at the house on Marigold Lane or if they had found the courage and means to move on. He hoped for the latter, but knew that the possibility of them still being there was very real.

  Considering the decision he had to make, he prayed that they were on the beach of Gulf Shores, hundreds of miles away from Watkins Glen.

  As he entered the room, he ignored the comfort of the bed and went to the generator in the corner instead. He cranked it with his one good hand until it roared into life. Then he went to the rolltop desk and powered up his computer. He waited until Windows came up, then retrieved the file he had downloaded several days ago. Most of the information was scientific gibberish to a simple man such as himself, but he knew he could decipher it if he put his mind to it. There was no if about it… he had to.

  Of course, none of the information was worth a hill of beans without one crucial ingredient. Cradling his arm, Sam went to the opposite corner, where cleaning utensils leaned: a broom, mop, and dust pan. Hidden behind the common items was a very uncommon one. With some effort, he dragged the heavy lead canister from its concealment.

  It was a souvenir from a train derailment that had happened five miles south of Watkins Glen in 1968. A couple of days afterward, Sam had been scavenging for junk amid the ruins, when he came upon the canister. He had taken it home, sanding away its bright yellow paint and the biohazard symbol on the side, then stuck it away, just a keepsake from a local disaster.

  The following day, the countryside was swarming with FBI and Secret Service agents. They never found what they were searching for… but then they never looked in the back room of Sam’s Fix-It Shop.

  The canister could only be opened by a special tool manufactured by a government contractor of the U.S. Department of Defense. Sam had bought such a tool on eBay for $4.99, plus $2.50 shipping.

  Sam wrestled the heavy lead cylinder onto the surface of his workbench, the pain in his neck and shoulder burning like pure hellfire. He went over, tilted the computer monitor his way, then sat on an old bar stool and went to work. Taking a deep breath, Sam used the tool and unlocked the top of the canister.

  He wondered if he was wasting his time… if its contents were still potent. When he lifted the lid, he knew for a fact that they were.

  Sam Wheeler thought of the New Sata
n and his plans for the folks of Watkins Glen. And he knew what he was doing was right.

  Reaching inside, he dipped out a small handful of Armageddon.

  Clarence “Pickpocket” Jefferson stepped out of the pet shop into the gloom of early dawn. It was only five o’clock; a good hour before sunrise. He thought he might take a run before scrounging up some breakfast, like he had done in the exercise yard of the federal prison he had spent the last few years in.

  Yes, breakfast. He looked around at the human carnage around him, gory garbage left by the old man’s automatic scattergun. He spotted a lean arm that had been torn away at the shoulder. Pickpocket’s stomach growled. At first, Rott’s dietary eccentricities had repulsed him. But lately he knew that adapting to more primitive fare was crucial for survival. Bicep bacon with a side order of grits and toast might not be so distasteful after all.

  Pickpocket was about to take off down the street for the town park, when a sound drew his attention. A wet, phlegmy cough, followed by a loud wheezing.

  He turned and found Sam Wheeler sitting in his customary spot… in the hardwood rocker in front of the fix-it shop. But he wasn’t alone. In the chair next to him sat a stainless steel trash can. One that had dozens of red, blue, and yellow wires sprouting from drilled holes in its mirror-like body.

  There was something about that altered trash can that bothered Pickpocket. He took a couple of curious steps into the middle of Maple Avenue and that bothersome feeling turned to cold, gut-wrenching fear.

  “Rott!” he yelled. “Rott… you’d better get out here!”

  A moment later, the big bald man with the Rottweiler tattoo on his chest ambled out, looking both sleepy and pissed off. “What the hell you doing waking me up so damn early, Pickpocket?”

  “Look,” he said, indicating the man in the rocking chair.

  Sam Wheeler looked on the point of death. His left arm was in a makeshift sling. The hand peeping out of the end of the torn bed sheet was swollen and purple. But that wasn’t what concerned Rott and Pickpocket the most. The elderly man was terribly sick. His face was ruddy and covered in weeping blisters and most of his hair had fallen out. He seemed weak to the point of collapsing. It was willpower and that alone that kept him upright in his rocker.

  “What the shit’s the matter with him?” Rott asked.

  “I… I can’t say for sure,” said Pickpocket, “but it looks like some accelerated form of…”

  “Of what?”

  “Radiation poisoning.” Pickpocket took a couple of steps backward.

  “He… he couldn’t have. He’s just an old fix-it man.”

  Rott ignored Pickpocket’s mumblings. “Good morning, Pops. Whatcha got sitting next to you there?”

  “Your doom,” Sam simply said. He launched into a violent fit of coughing. A spray of bloody droplets and a couple of loose teeth showered the boards beneath his feet.

  “Rott… that thing,” Pickpocket said nervously, “I think it’s a…”

  “I know what it is,” the murderer replied. He grinned, seemingly unconcerned. “And you built it just for me? Why, I’m genuinely touched. But what about your precious town?”

  “It’s already dead,” Sam told him. “I might as well lay it to rest.” The old man stared at him with bloodshot eyes. “Tell me something, Rott. Why didn’t you head for Florida? Why did you head north… for Watkins Glen?”

  Rott laughed and raised a seven-fingered hand. “Like I said before, I never had a choice.”

  Sam revealed his own sevenfold deformity. “That never stopped me from trying to do the right thing.”

  “Then if it feels right, do it,” challenged the man with the slavering dog on his chest. “That’s what I always did.”

  “And society suffered for it. Well, they will suffer no more.”

  It was at that moment that Pickpocket noticed the device Sam held in his right hand: the press switch that was wired to the shiny silver trash can.

  Rott shook his head and grinned in admiration. “I misjudged you, old man,” he told him. “But then I always did. Be sure to tell Jesus and Mama I said howdy.”

  “And you can tell the Devil to stay the hell where he belongs,” Sam replied.

  Rott laughed loudly. “Too late. He’s already staked his claim.”

  Sam smiled, displaying a mouthful of bleeding gums and missing teeth. “Not on this piece of property he ain’t.”

  Pickpocket turned tail and ran. He ran as fast as he possible, knowing all the while that he could never run fast or far enough.

  The two men, young and old, matched rocky-steady stares, their pale pupils mirroring one another.

  “Goodbye, Papa.”

  “Goodbye, Boy.”

  Then Sam Wheeler pressed the red button on the hand switch.

  The sun rose and set on Watkins Glen one last time that day… along with a sizable piece of the state of Alabama.

  Mojo Mama

  Quite abruptly and without warning, a searing pain blossomed in the hollow of his throat, just above the junction of his collarbones.

  Quentin Deveroux reined his horse to a halt and coughed violently. He choked on the obstruction, feeling it move – of its own accord – up the narrow tube of his esophagus and into the chamber of his mouth. He sensed the motion of flailing legs and the tip of a stinger raking across the soft flesh of his palate. Then he spat, releasing the awful creature from its imprisonment. A small yellow-brown scorpion landed in the dust, then scampered off the pathway into the tall weeds.

  The taste of blood and poison filled the young gentleman’s mouth and he cursed. “Damn that black bitch!” he rasped. “Damn that Mojo Mama!”

  Quentin sat in the saddle for a moment, regaining his composure and allowing the agony to fade from his throat. A few seconds later, the discomfort had subsided. But it would return. He knew that, deep down inside him, the potential for pain was endless.

  The first time Quentin realized that the house of Deveroux was cursed, was during the battle of Gettysburg. He had been leading his cavalry division in a charge against the Northern forces, when a horrendous pain had engulfed his stomach. At first he thought he had been gut shot by a Union bullet or skewered by the sword of a passing cavalryman. But when he examined himself, he found no evidence of a wound… no blood at all.

  The pain, however, had increased tenfold. It grew so intense that he doubled over and fell from his saddle. While chaos surged around him, he was on his knees, cramping and gasping as the agony in his belly traveled up through the narrow channel of his throat. He opened his mouth to scream and watched, mortified, as a swarm of red wasps fluttered past his lips and took flight into the bullet-ridden air. He had wheezed for a long moment, his throat and mouth swollen from their attack, stingers spearing his inner flesh in a dozen or so places. Quentin was certain that he would suffocate, when the inflammation suddenly receded and, within moments, he was back to normal again.

  He had suffered numerous attacks after that… from all manner of creatures and from the confines of his own traitorous body. It wasn’t until the end of the War, just before the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, that Quentin had received a letter from his older brother, Trevor, informing him of the horrible curse that had been cast upon those unfortunate enough to share the Deveroux family name.

  Quentin urged his steed forward, past the deserted slave cabins, to the rundown stable. An old Negro gentleman named Percy took the reigns as he dismounted. Percy had been the last one to remain at the Deveroux sugar plantation. He was a free man but chose to stay out of convenience and a loyalty that the others had not felt toward their former masters. He eyed young Quentin curiously before leading the horse to its stall. “You’ve gots blood…” he said, pointing to the corner of his mouth. “Here.”

  Irritated, Quentin raised the back of his hand and wiped the trickle of blood away. “Never you mind.”

  As he started toward the stable door, Quentin felt Percy’s eyes upon him. He could imagine the man smi
ling behind his back, perhaps in secret approval of the misery he and his siblings were enduring. But when he turned to confront the old uncle’s glee, he found that he was already out of view, unsaddling the gelding and grooming its chestnut brown coat.

  Quentin took a cobbled walkway through the garden, toward the two-story manor. The once brilliant and well-kempt jardin des plantes – as their Cajun-born mother had once called it – was now forlorn and choked with weeds. The circular pond in the center was covered over with a dense scum of green algae and the marble statues that their father had imported from Greece stood dismally around the courtyard, devoid of their former luster and stained with a heavy coating of thick, black mold.

  He left the ruins of the garden and approached the main house. The Deveroux mansion had once been the finest in all Louisiana and their sugar plantation the most prosperous in the land. Then the War Between the States had come along and, fast upon its heels, the dreaded Curse of the Deveroux. It wasn’t long afterward that everything that the Deveroux family had built their life upon – health, wealth, and power – had fallen into a vicious cycle of affliction, poverty, and disrespect.

  Quentin was almost to the mansion, when he heard the sound of mournful crying coming from a utility shed that stood away from the rear of the house. He hesitated for a long moment, torn between investigating the grievous sound or leaving the poor soul to their private misery. But, in the end, his love for his sister surpassed his own emotional discomfort.

  “Isabella,” he said softly when he reached the shack’s wooden door. He knocked at the panel with his knuckles. “Isabella… are you alright?”

  A cross between a harsh laugh and a ragged sob answered his foolish question. “No, Quentin, I most certainly am not alright! Now, go away and leave me alone.”