by Max Wilde
Then he saw the house. A ruin rising from the desert, its roof beams bared, glassless windows staring at them blindly. A gate lay where it had fallen from its posts and two parallel tracks, like giant fingers had been dragged through the dirt, sketched a path up to the front door.
“Turn in here,” Junior said.
The nurse balked, stopping the car, sobbing, shaking her head, clutching at the wheel like it was a life ring.
“I ain’t going up there.”
Junior reached over and sliced her where her white uniform hugged the corrugations of her ribs. The linen of the dress parted like lips, revealing a bulge of toffee-colored skin that disappeared beneath a wash of bright, fresh blood.
The woman screamed and clutched at her side. “You cut me! Oh, Jesus.”
She gabbled something in Spanish, and Junior held the tip of the scalpel to her eye, a fake eyelash fluttering against the bloodied blade like a moth beating at a window pane.
“Drive or I’ll take out your eye.”
She drove, the car rattling and bumping toward the house. He looked back. The road was empty.
“Park behind the house,” he said.
She obeyed, stopping at what had been the kitchen, the door long ago reduced to matchwood.
Junior found the scissors in the glove box, holstered them in his pocket, lifted himself out of the car and leaned against the hood, the metal hot beneath his palms.
“Come,” he said to the woman.
She stared at him through the windshield, her face patterned with tears and dust. She shook her head, and he saw her as a child.
“Come,” he said again.
She slid out, knock-kneed, her dress riding high on her chunky thighs. She teetered a moment on her silly heels, then he held out a hand and she came to him, docile as a whipped dog, and he knew she was his now.
He put an arm around her shoulders, supporting himself on her as they entered the house. The kitchen stank of animal dung and rot.
Junior lowered himself to the linoleum floor, his feet skidding a trail in the dust as he crossed his legs. He handed the scissors to the nurse, handle first.
“Cut my hair and beard. Make me look like your Jesus.”
The woman stared at the scissors for a moment and he read her mind as easily as if her thoughts were caught in a bubble in a comic book.
He reached a hand up under her dress and touched the scalpel blade to where her panties sliced into the meat of her thigh, the stew of her flesh on his fingers.
“Do it,” he said, and she stepped off the heels, and kneeled beside him, snickering and sobbing, and started hacking away at his hair, enough dry tendrils falling to the floor to fill a pillow.
When his hair was trimmed to where it just brushed his shoulders, she started on his beard, and he felt coolness on his skin as the fur fell away. After a few minutes she nodded and dropped the scissors. He touched a hand to his face, fingers finding soft down.
Using her shoulder for support he got to his feet, his hips and legs stiff as he unfolded himself.
“Come,” he said. “Take me to the bathroom.”
They wandered through the ruined house, avoiding holes in the floor where the boards had rotted, until they came to a room containing a blackened shit pot and an old iron bathtub, crouching on clawed feet, the enamel eroded by water.
Junior lowered himself onto the edge of the tub. It rocked a moment, then stilled itself.
“Take off your clothes,” he said.
She stared at him, biting her lip, sobbing. “Please don’t rape me.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said.
She unbuttoned her dress and pulled it over her head, the blood on her ribs a red ooze, revealing a lacy white bra and a pair of pink panties so tiny they were almost hidden by the softness of her belly.
“Those too,” Junior said, gesturing at her underwear with the scalpel.
She reached behind her and unhooked the bra, her heavy breasts sagging out. She dropped the bra and turned her back, stepping out of the panties, hugging herself, looking over her shoulder at him when she was done.
“Get into the tub,” he said.
She sobbed and said, “Please.”
“It’s going to be fine,” he said.
She stepped a leg up high and placed it in the tub, finding her balance before she lifted the other. She held the edges of the tub and lowered herself into a crouch, eyes fixed on the rusted faucets.
“Lie stretched out,” he said. “Like you’re taking a bath.”
“There ain’t no water,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter.”
She sank her buttocks to the enamel, laid her head against the slope of the tub, and stretched out her legs, covering her breasts and her pubes with her hands.
Junior nodded and smiled. “That’s good,” he said, and took her panties and balled them up and stuffed them into the black mouth of the plughole.
He stood and balanced the scalpel on the edge of the tub, the metal finding the hard yellow light of the window. He unzipped his jumpsuit and pulled it off. Freed himself from the brown boxer shorts that accordioned the loose flesh of his navel.
Junior lifted his emaciated body and settled into the tub, straddling the nurse, his dangling penis slack and blue, the twist of foreskin brushing her naked thigh.
The woman turned her head, staring at a stain that bubbled from the plaster of the wall.
“Look at me.”
She ignored him.
“Please.”
She turned to him, her eyes large and wet. There was enough light in the room for him to see his twin reflections in her flecked pupils as he lifted the scalpel and ran it down from her throat to her pubes, as if he were unzipping her, her organs swelling out, glistening.
She sighed and shuddered, and then she was still. He sat unpacking her entrails, letting her blood fill the tub, bathing himself in it, luxuriating in the warmth of her insides, before he opened his mouth and let the blood fill him.
33
Gene, at the wheel of the Lincoln, drove away from the city and into the desert, the head of the man in the suit rolling in the trunk like a bowling ball as the car swooped through a cloverleaf and onto the straight. Drum was slumped in the passenger seat, leaking blood, his breath coming in shallow gasps,
Gene had held the weapon on Drum, back at the house, a stranger’s voice saying, “What have you done with Timmy?”
“Nothing. Yet. You get me home safe and sound, nobody gonna bother your boy and Bobby and Sally Heck.”
“If you’ve hurt him—”
“Not a hair on his head has been touched. You have my word on that.” Gene stared into those porcine eyes. “Call Mrs. Heck if you don’t believe me.”
Keeping the weapon on Drum, Gene reached for his phone with his left hand and hit speed-dial. After a few rings Sally Heck picked up and, trying to sound calm, Gene asked if Timmy was behaving himself.
“Oh, he’s as good as gold,” the woman said.
He lowered the weapon and allowed the giant to find his feet. He and Sally exchanged a few more words and Gene ended the call.
Drum was prowling the room, stepping over the bodies, clutching at his wounded shoulder, redness dripping through his fingers. He found a handkerchief in his pocket and shoved it under his shirt to stop the blood.
“We have to torch the place,” Drum said.
Gene nodded.
Drum toed the Glock lying beside the dead man. “That weapon licensed to you?”
“Yes.”
The giant shook his head. “Jesus Christ, boy, what you usin’ for brains? You never heard of a throwdown? I would advise you to retrieve the rounds and the spent casings.”
Gene found two cartridge cases and pocketed then. One of the rounds Drum had pumped into the man in the suit had emerged from the back of his head and was embedded in the drywall in the midst of a pointillist display of blood and brain. Gene clicked open the small knife on his keychain, d
ug out the slug and dumped it in his pocket with the shell casings. Of the other round there was no sign.
Gene inspected the dead man’s head. He’d seen enough gunshot trauma to understand that bullets did crazy things when introduced into human craniums: they bounced off bones, caromed like trick cyclists around the brain pan, and often came to rest deep inside the lobes of the brain.
“Take the head,” Drum said.
Gene looked up at him. “What?”
“Take the head. You can’t rely on the fire destroyin’ ballistic evidence and we don’t have the time for no post-mortem. Anyway, leaving him headless’ll make it look like cartel business.”
Gene couldn’t fault Drum’s logic but he doubted whether he had the stomach for the task.
Reading his mind, the sheriff said, “You too weak bellied?” Gene said nothing. “My wing's broke, I ain’t gonna be no use to you.”
Gene retrieved the wood saw from where it lay on the floor, still stained with Drum’s blood. He took it across to the man in the suit and laid it beside the body.
“Flip him onto his front,” Drum said, as if he had experience in these matters.
Gene rolled the man over and lifted the saw. He rested it high up on the man’s neck, two vertebrae at the top of his spine providing a cradle to guide the blade. He shut his eyes, a sour taste in his mouth. Then he opened his eyes and started sawing.
There was very little blood, and the blade was sharp and within a minute he was deep into flesh and sinew. The blade snagged on a spur of bone, stuttering to a halt, bile rising in Gene’s throat as the head lay at an impossible angle, the wound in the neck gaping on fat and meat and cartilage. Gene having to summon all his willpower—using Timmy’s face as a totem—to carrying on sawing.
Gene felt the saw bite into wood and the man’s head separated from his body and smacked the planks.
Gene stood, fighting a moment’s nausea and left the room, finding his way through to a kitchen that was spotless but for a couple of empty beer bottles on the counter. A trash can stood near the door and he pushed down on the swing lid, freed the black plastic liner and went back through to the other room. Gene dumped the head in the trash bag and knotted the top.
He left the bag by the door on his way through to the garage where the Mercedes SUV stood. It was unlocked, with the keys in the ignition. Gene opened the gas flap and unscrewed the cap.
A garden hose was coiled on one wall, beside a work bench. A set of tools hung in order of size above the bench. One saw was missing. Gene lifted a small hacksaw and cut a length of hose about two feet long. He found an empty paint can under the desk and walked it over to the Mercedes. He fed the hose into the SUV’s gas tank and blew into the end to create a vacuum, coughed when he caught the taste of gasoline, and dangled the hose in the can, listening for the trickle of fuel. When the can was full he took it and headed for the house, pooling a trail of gasoline behind him.
Back in the room he found Drum slumped in a chair, gripping his shoulder, the skin of his face gray and wet.
Gene doused each of the bodies with gasoline, splashed the drapes and walked a trail to the door where the black bag waited. Drum followed him. They listened a while, but heard nothing but the rattle of a helicopter and the distant wash of the freeway.
Gene opened the door and Drum handed him a box of matches. Gene knelt and struck a match, seeing the purple lick of flame as the gasoline ignited and rushed off into the house.
He and Drum walked down to the Town Car, its chrome kicking back the hard glare of the afternoon light. Gene popped the trunk, stowed the head and drove away just as the Mercedes in the garage blew. He resisted the impulse to leadfoot it, keeping well within the speed limit.
They had skirted the city and found themselves on the road home, heat haze warping the blacktop that lay flat and straight before them.
Drum, still applying pressure to his wound, sat up as the sun flared off tin roofs. “Dump the head before we get to that town. Then you gonna have to get me some medical supplies.”
Gene checked the mirrors. The road stretched empty in both directions. He clicked on the flasher and took the Town Car onto the gravel shoulder. He stood up out of the car, stretched and went to the rear and retrieved the head. The garbage bag had torn in a couple of places and flies had found their way to the pink skin beneath.
A rig rumbled by and Gene leaned against the car, waiting. When the semi swam into the distance Gene took the bag and walked away from the car. A barbed wire fence was strung from rotting wooden posts and he stepped over it easily. He found a gulley and dumped the head. Rolled a few rocks onto it until the plastic was invisible. He threw the slug and the cartridge casings far into the sand and went back to the car, which was thick with the stench of Drum.
“Go into the town,” Drum said, “and find a drugstore.”
“You need a doctor.”
“There’s a sawbones’ll fix me when I get home. For now we’ll just patch me up.”
Gene found the drugstore in the sad main drag, most of the buildings boarded up. He parked the Lincoln a block away and walked down to the pharmacy, a bell gargling as he entered. An old man reading a newspaper stared at him from behind the counter.
“Yessir?”
Drum had been surprisingly detailed in his instructions: latex gloves, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a pair of scissors, gauze, bandage and surgical tape.
Gene relayed his requests to the old man who nodded and shuffled off, his carpet slippers cut away at the big toes, exposing bunions the size of cooking apples. The druggist rooted through dusty shelves and came back with the small pile of goods.
“Some fellah gone and done himself an injury?”
“My dog,” Gene said. “Got tangled up in barbed wire.”
“They’ll do that.”
The old man made a sum on a scrap of brown paper and gave Gene the total. Gene paid him and went back out to the car. Nothing stirred in the main road.
Gene started the Lincoln. “And now?”
“There’s a motel other side of town,” Drum said. “I once courted a widder lady from these parts.” The giant wheezed a chuckle, which got him coughing.
Gene found the motel, a tumble of buildings built around a scorched forecourt.
“I’ll be needing some liquor,” Drum said.
Gene left him in the car and went to the office. A faded hand lettered sign saying VANCANCIES was taped to the window.
A jaundiced man of indeterminate age watched a black and white television so old and unsteady that its strobing tube could have induced epilepsy. He looked up at Gene.
“I need a room for a couple of hours,” Gene said.
“Couple hours or the night, thirty bucks.” The man slid a broken-spined register toward Gene. “I’ll need some identification.”
Gene put a fifty down on the register. “Let’s skip the formalities, shall we?”
The man shrugged and the fifty disappeared. He gave Gene a key with a smudged and crumpled paper tag tied to it with brown string.
“Room Seventeen,” he said.
“You wouldn’t have a bottle of whiskey would you?”
“There’s a fifth of Jack I could let you have.”
“That’ll do.”
“Be another thirty.”
Gene paid him and took the bottle and went back out to the car, handed Drum the bourbon and drove down to the room which faced away from the highway toward a low range of soiled-looking hills.
Gene unlocked the room and Drum heaved himself from the car, stumbling as he crossed the porch and went through to the bathroom.
“I’m going to need your help, boy.”
Gene was about to refuse, but he thought of Timmy and followed the big man into the cramped bathroom that stank of old pipes.
“Cut away my shirt,” Drum said, sitting on the side of the stained tub.
Gene pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and did as he was told. The wound in Drum’s shoulder still oo
zed blood but the flow had slowed to a trickle. Drum uncorked the booze and drank from the bottle, speaking round the neck as he gave instructions.
Gene cleaned the wound with hydrogen peroxide, the sheriff neighing like a gelded horse, throwing back nearly half the Jack in one swallow, liquid dripping down his chin. Gene applied gauze and taped bandage over it. He fashioned a sling for Drum’s left arm. When they were done, he cleaned away the blood and dumped the mess in a plastic bag that he took through to the room where Drum lay on the bed, sucking on what was left of the bottle.
“What now?” Gene asked.
Drum found a remote and clicked the TV to life. “I need to rest up for a while,” he said, voice thick with pain and liquor. “We’ll move out at sunset.” He surfed until he found a porn channel and sighed. “Can’t say why exactly, but the sight of barenaked ladies always soothes me.”
Gene sat down on the single chair by the window and tuned out the grunts and moans from the TV. He called Sally Heck to check on Timmy, reassured by the woman’s good-natured chatter, and pocketed his phone and stared through the lace curtain at the distant hills, waiting for dark.
34
As Aunt Sally led Timmy past the half-open door to the dead baby’s room he saw just a flash of the infant lying in the crib, pedaling its little naked feet, hands flapping. He could hear it too, screaming like a siren.
He stopped in his tracks with his eyes squeezed closed and Aunt Sally said, “What’s wrong, Timmy?”
“Nothin’,” he said and let her lead him into the kitchen, saying they were going to have fun, fun, fun, Timmy making good and sure he sat in a chair facing away from the corridor, trying to ignore the cold fingers on his backbone, shutting down the Creepshow by pretending to listen to Aunt Sally chattering on as she made cookies.