Merciless

by Bryan Smith

  With the weather beginning to turn cold again, however, a need to replace the tattered old blankets he’d stolen years ago had arisen. Last night had been miserable, with temperatures dropping to a level far lower than usual for this time of year. Not wishing to endure another night like that, he’d ventured out to the nearest cabin in the area, one he knew was often unoccupied for many weeks at a time. A private drive to the cabin had been carved from the top of a steep mountain ridge. For the old hermit, scaling the ridge in order to walk up to the cabin would not present a huge obstacle. He’d become a highly skilled climber during his decades in the woods.

  Climbing up the side of the ridge would, of course, be more difficult at night than in the daytime, but he wasn’t overly concerned about that. He would have to go a bit slower and be more careful than usual. What he hadn’t counted on was the bloody tableau that greeted him at the top of the ridge. He’d heard the screaming and sounds of struggle even before reaching the top and had considered retreat. Though he remained remarkably agile for someone his age, he was an old man. Also, he currently had nothing he could use as a weapon on his person. Without the means to defend himself, putting himself in the middle of a violent situation was not something he was particularly keen to do.

  The sounds he was hearing were not the kind that would originate from an ordinary fight. The people engaged in the struggle at the top of the ridge were trying desperately to kill each other. He’d heard similar sounds before. Hearing them now triggered unwanted memories of things he never wanted to think about again. Memories of blood and thunder, screams and pain. His many scars throbbed and his head filled with hateful images as a part of him that had remained dormant for many years threatened to awaken.

  In the end, sheer curiosity compelled him to take a look at what was happening. He peeked over the edge of the ridge and watched as a beautiful young woman fought viciously with an even younger boy, who looked to be somewhere in his mid-teens. There was a squalling infant on the ground nearby, too. The woman eventually wound up getting the upper hand. She then appeared to take great delight in murdering the boy, drawing it out and making it as agonizing as possible. The old hermit hadn’t seen anything like it in a long time. Seeing it now made his scars throb uncomfortably again.

  After the boy was dead, the woman tossed his corpse over the other side of the ridge. The hermit experienced a tense moment when she first took hold of the boy’s limp wrists, fearing she would drag the body this way and spy him peeping out at her. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

  She then spent some moments staring at the crying baby, apparently weighing what to do about it. He thought she might kill it or take it with her, anything but what she actually did. Shortly after she turned away from it and began the walk back up to the cabin, an impulse caused him to scramble the rest of the way up the ridge and grab the baby.

  The journey back down the side of the ridge was far more harrowing than it ever had been before. With the baby held tightly in the crook of one arm, he had to be exceedingly careful with each step down. It took quite a bit longer than it normally would, but he eventually made it down safely.

  And now here he was back in his shack, with the baby resting atop the rickety wooden crate where he took his meals most nights. He sat on another crate in the dim lantern light and stared at the infant as it squealed and flailed helplessly with its little pink fists.

  He’d had a son once.

  David. That had been his name.

  The hermit’s hands curled into fists as he gritted his teeth and his head filled with echoes of fearsome thunder. Outside the shack, it was quiet.

  Inside, a storm was raging.

  20

  THE NAKED GIRL ON THE floor was still breathing. Grant could tell that much from the miserable mewling sounds she was making. She was also gagging on the nail wedged deep in her mouth and the blood filling her throat. He worried she’d soon choke to death if he didn’t remove the nail and duct tape from her mouth and turn her onto her side. This had nothing to do with any concern for her well-being. They were far past that. The girl and her mother were both already doomed. Too much had happened. It was like Lindsey had said, there was no coming back from this. He was pissed at her and hated to give her any level of credit for anything, but she was undeniably right about that.

  So, yes, the girl was doomed no matter what, but he didn’t want her to perish just yet. He was no longer in the fevered state of erotic obsession he’d been in prior to fucking Lindsey, but he still found the girl’s nude body compellling. She had a belly button piercing, a little silver heart right in the middle of her navel. The only tattoo she had was a small shamrock on her right shoulder. It was so bright green he figured she’d gotten it recently, probably within the last few months. He wondered if she’d had to get parental permission for these minor body modifications. Probably, he guessed, though he wasn’t entirely sure where the law stood on such things. For all he knew, she’d turned eighteen recently and was legally able to make such decisions for herself. He made a mental note to check the minivan later. She might have a purse out there with her ID in it.

  He decided he would remove the nail and do whatever else necessary to stave off her demise a bit longer. Despite this, he did not immediately act to help her. A sudden onset of melancholy kept him in the chair as his mind began to travel along dark corridors. In those moments, he realized it didn’t matter how hard they worked to cover up what had happened here. They could try to erase physical evidence by burning the place to the ground, but he had little doubt the police would suspect them anyway. He’d seen too many crime documentaries in which people tried to cover up their dirty deeds in a similar way while concocting a preposterous cover story. No matter how careful or detail-oriented the perpetrators were, the cops were usually pretty adept at sniffing out the truth. An investigation would reveal his and Lindsey’s shared deep fascination with true crime stories and from there it wouldn’t take much to start connecting the dots. On top of all that, a fire might not even destroy all the physical evidence. Most of it, maybe, but damning traces would probably remain.

  There was only one viable way out and it was a longshot. They would have to act fast, before the crime scene was discovered. Instead of attempting to cover up the crime by setting the cabin ablaze, they would get together as much money as they could and escape to some country with no extradition treaty. That might not keep them free forever, but it might give them time to establish new identities and escape to yet another location. If they worked it just right, they might yet manage to get away with everything.

  He stewed over this conclusion a moment longer before heaving a sigh. The plan struck him as fundamentally sound with the exception of one major flaw. It was based on the assumption he and Lindsey would stay together after leaving this place. He thought of all the things that had happened between them tonight and, with a slightly heavy heart, realized a continued partnership with her would in all likelihood be untenable. There was too much animosity, too much water under the bridge, and setting it right would be next to impossible.

  Aside from all that, he might have a better chance of eluding capture as a man traveling alone. After all, the authorities would at least initially be hunting a couple. Before leaving the country, he would have to kill Lindsey and dump her body in some other remote location, a place where it hopefully wouldn’t be discovered for a long time.

  Grant was under no illusions. He was certain Lindsey was thinking similar things up there in the shower. His wife was a genuinely hardcore bitch. Ruthless and merciless in ways that gave even him pause. That thing with the baby. Jesus. In her place, he didn’t know if he could’ve done it. He would have to remain vigilant and wary of her until he decided the time was right to kill her.

  And yet . . . his melancholy wasn’t only about Lindsey and how difficult it would be to get away after doing something like this. He was able to think more clearly post-orgasm, which meant certain realities of the situation were weighing
on him more heavily now.

  These women on the floor were a far cry from the type of anonymous victim he’d envisioned. He didn’t know them extremely well, but he knew them. They were his relatives. The girl’s blood carried his DNA. There was something obscene about having to kill her, especially, even if there was no way around it. Even worse was the prospect of closer relatives, parents or siblings, hearing about what they’d done. They would be devastated. Inconsolable. For a moment, he found this aspect of it almost overwhelming. His mother would, of course, be in deep denial at first, but at some point accepting the truth of it all would be unavoidable. He imagined the overwhelming horror she would feel when it truly hit her. In the next few moments, melancholia was replaced by something close to despair. A part of him suddenly, desperately wished he could take it all back and go back to leading a proper, normal life. He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob at how absurdly impossible that was now.

  He was snapped out of his sad funk by the girl’s gagging sounds abruptly getting much louder. Sliding out of the chair, he dropped to his knees next to her, braced one hand against her chest to hold her still, and began the process of extracting the big nail. She gagged harder than ever and stared up at him through watery eyes as he continued pulling at the nail. He saw pleading in those eyes. A level of desperation almost beyond comprehension.

  After he was finished pulling out the nail, he set it on the floor and ripped the duct tape off the girl’s face. A choked half-scream escaped her lips as Grant turned her onto her side and began encouraging her to hack out the blood. She spat out several large globs of the red stuff mixed with phlegm. After that, she continued coughing and spitting, but the bits of spittle that emerged mostly came out clear. Satisfied she’d successfully cleared her throat of obstruction, he gently eased her onto her back.

  Grant smiled. “There you go. All better now?”

  Her eyes filled with fresh tears as she sniffled and said, “Please don’t kill me. I’m pregnant.”

  Grant’s smile slipped as his mouth opened and he gaped at her in stunned confusion for a moment. Then he gave his head a hard shake and said, “Wait . . . what?”

  She loudly cleared her throat and swallowed with obvious difficulty. Then, in a much clearer and steadier voice, she repeated what she’d already said: “I’m pregnant. Six weeks fucking pregnant. I found out yesterday.”

  Grant grunted and shook his head again. “Holy shit.”

  21

  PIPER WEATHERBY WAS NOT A stupid woman. She knew she was caught up in a desperate and possibly hopeless situation. Her chances of surviving the night were close to nonexistent. Unfortunately, the same was true for Kelsey, who was now claiming to be pregnant. The declaration came as an immense shock to her mother, who hadn’t even known the girl was seeing any boy on a serious basis.

  Not that anything resembling a serious relationship was a prerequisite for getting pregnant. At no point in her life had she ever been that naive. Even if she had been, the arrival of her third child so long after the births of Rory and Kelsey would’ve disabused her of the notion. Baby Vance was the result of one of her numerous brief hookups with other men. She couldn’t even be one-hundred percent certain who the real father was, but she knew for an absolute fact it wasn’t Pierce.

  All this time later, she was still sometimes baffled by her decision to go forward with the pregnancy. Even in this era of backwards lawmakers relentlessly tightening the laws regarding abortion access, terminating the pregnancy would’ve been by far the easier way to go. For one thing, it would’ve led to far fewer life complications. She’d enjoyed the greater freedom that had been hers with Rory and Kelsey getting old enough to look after themselves for the most part. By opting to keep the baby, she was also choosing to reduce that level of freedom by a significant degree. In the end, however, she simply hadn’t been able to go through with ending the life growing inside her.

  The one way in which she’d been fortunate was Pierce’s perpetual obliviousness. Despite their drastically reduced frequency of intercourse in recent years—they rarely fucked more than once every month or two—he never once doubted he was the father. Of course not. His ego wouldn’t have allowed for the possibility back then. He was a man’s man. King of his castle. Lord of all he surveyed. No one would dare intrude on his territory. All that standard alpha-male bullshit. Though it was a bit of a stretch, the timing had been such that she could get away with passing the pregnancy off as the product of one of their rare couplings.

  It helped that he’d still been wrapped up in his work back then. If she’d gotten knocked up after his recent retirement, she almost certainly would’ve gone the termination route. In retirement, with so much less to occupy his mind and time, he’d become much more inquisitive about where she went every day and how she spent her time. Though he hadn’t come out and accused her of cheating on him, she knew he’d become suspicious. He especially didn’t understand why she was still dropping the baby off at an expensive daycare facility every day. After all, now that he was home most of the time, they should easily be able to share child-rearing duties and look after the infant themselves.

  Piper sneeringly derided his wholly imaginary ability to do anything of the sort, reminding him forcefully of how shamefully little he’d done to help her with the older children when they were babies. And he’d definitely left one-hundred percent of the messier parts of child-rearing either to her or the nanny they’d employed in those days. The fierceness of her counter-argument caused him to temporarily back off on the subject of daycare, but his suspicions had lingered.

  She’d taken to looking over her shoulder constantly every time she took some guy back to his place or to some cheap motel, fearing she was being stalked by some private investigator hired by Pierce. Continuing to indulge in promiscuous behavior was a huge risk, one that verged on tempting fate. At some point, if she didn’t stop, Pierce would discover what she was doing and at that point all hell would break loose. Her life would get messy fast. She knew that. And yet she hadn’t been able to stop pursuing and bedding men. It was like an addiction, one she was incapable of freeing herself from.

  In recent weeks, she’d reached the point of beginning to crack from the pressure. She became more short-tempered and less willing to put up with Pierce’s endless questions regarding her daily activities. This further fueled his suspicions and inevitably led to the tension between them becoming unbearable. Piper decided she’d had enough. She wanted out of the marriage, craved nothing more than total freedom to live her life as she saw fit. To fuck whoever she wanted whenever she wanted and never again spend one second worrying about the possible consequences.

  Undoubtedly sensing the fragile nature of their union, Pierce badgered his family into taking this trip. In retrospect, she should’ve put her foot down and announced her intent to separate from him right there and then. She considered it at the time, but hesitated because it wasn’t something she wanted to do so abruptly in front of her children. And now she’d learned a terrible lesson in how fragile life really was. Pierce would still be alive right now if she hadn’t sought to delay that moment of familial trauma a little longer.

  But Pierce wasn’t alive anymore.

  He was dead over there on the floor by the door, the front of his shirt soaked in blood from where he’d been stabbed in the gut and throat multiple times. Every glimpse of his unmoving form was like a knife through her heart. She was surprised by how much his death pained her now, in light of all the bad feelings and how distant they had become from each other over the years. They’d shared a life together. Brought kids into the world. There were lots of good memories that still meant something, even now. Now that he was gone, she felt like she was missing a part of herself.

  She had no clue what had become of Rory and the baby, but there was no sign of them anywhere in the part of the cabin she could see. Nor had she heard any cries from Vance since shaking off the effects of the tranquilizer. She chose to interpret the
se things as good news. Rory might have gotten away somehow, perhaps with Vance in tow. She hoped this was true. Prayed for it. Not being at all religious, she wasn’t normally the praying type, but she felt compelled to do so now. Maybe it would help. Who knew?

  She could hope so anyway.

  It was pretty much all she had at this point.

  She couldn’t comfort or otherwise come to the aid of the only one of her children she knew for a fact was still alive. Piper’s hands were wrapped so thoroughly in duct tape they felt encased in cement. She couldn’t move them at all. Her ankles had also been painstakingly wrapped in tape. Movement wasn’t possible. The idea of escape was laughable. She became increasingly distraught at the knowledge of how completely helpless she was. She wished she could talk to her daughter and tell her everything would be okay. Tell her she didn’t need to feed bad about getting pregnant. Tell her she was a good girl and that her mother loved her no matter what.

  She turned her head to the side and watched as the naked man kneeling next to Kelsey tugged at her navel piercing and grinned at the way this made her squeal. The leering creep had removed the nail from her face, but it was clear he’d not done so in any attempt to allay her suffering.

  Quite the opposite, if anything.

  Above all else, he clearly wished to prolong her suffering as long as possible. He was an evil man. A devil. And to make it all worse, she knew him. As a young child and as a teenager, his branch of the Weatherby clan had still been somewhat closely involved with Pierce’s branch. At some point, though she never knew why exactly, whatever held those relationships together sort of fell away. More than a decade had gone by since she’d last set eyes on the boy she used to catch staring at her so often at those long ago family gatherings.