Endless Night

by Richard Laymon

  If I know Tom and the guys, they’ve got her dangling by her wrists from a rafter. We’ve done it before. Ones we take alive, we sometimes keep them hanging for a couple of weeks and we pay them visits whenever we get the urge to fool around.

  Funny to think about them having Lisa like that.

  She’s probably been hanging there since sometime yesterday, so the guys have had plenty of time with her. She was pretty upset when I talked to her on the phone last night. She sounded like she’d been roughed up and maybe felt up, but nothing real serious.

  By now, I bet they’ve tortured and gang-banged her.

  Which really pisses me off.

  It’s sort of like if they stole my car for a joy ride and crashed it on purpose into a wall, you know?

  These guys who were supposed to be my friends.

  Friends don’t do that sort of shit.

  I’ll admit it gets me turned on, thinking about Lisa hanging there all naked and sweaty in Tom’s garage. The guys going at her. A couple of them holding her legs up high and wide apart by the ankles while two other guys have at her, one going in the front door and one in the back. I can just see her twitching and shuddering. I can even hear how it’d sound. The rafter creaking up above them all. The guys grunting and gasping. Lisa whimpering, crying out. And a lot of wet, sucking noises.

  They shouldn’t be doing it to her.

  To someone else, but not to Lisa. Not without my permission, anyway.

  They’re doing it to punish me, the bastards.

  And they’re loving it. I’m sure they’ve just been hoping and praying I’d screw up sometime and give them an excuse to grab her. Lisa hasn’t got the greatest personality that ever walked the earth, but she has a great body.

  It won’t be so great after they’ve finished with it.

  Even if I can save her, she’ll probably have scars. That’s if they didn’t get carried away and amputate something.

  She won’t be any good to me if they’ve messed her up. But then, no big deal because they’ll kill me first chance they get, anyway.

  I’d damn well better try to kill them first.

  It might not be as impossible as it sounds.

  There’ll be Tom. And Mitch and Chuck. That’s three. Minnow makes four. No, wait. Minnow’s dead. Jody busted his head in with her baseball bat, at least according to Tom.

  Of course, I’ve only got his word for it.

  Why would he lie? Maybe so I won’t be expecting Minnow, and ... I should’ve asked Ranch about him. Oh, well. Minnow must be dead, now that I think about it. He went off down the hall to look for more prey, but he didn’t come back.

  So that’s three: Tom, Mitch and Chuck. Plus Clement Calhoun, and ... and who else?

  My God! There used to be twelve of us! Twelve! Of course, that was before Tex, Dale, Private and Bill got their tickets canceled.

  Eight of us went into that house on Friday night. Minnow, Ranch and Dusty are down the tubes since then, and I’m not exactly one of the gang anymore. So there are only four of them.

  If I go in with a gun in each hand ...

  No. One against four is extremely shitty odds.

  I know!

  What I do is go in with Jody—or a gal who’ll pass for her. So it’ll look like I’m keeping my part of the bargain. Also, I can hold her in front of me, use her as a shield.

  Damn it! Why didn’t I take Dusty’s vest off him? That’d be the thing, go in there with a Kevlar vest under my shirt.

  Shit!

  It’d take me an hour to go all the way back to that house. I should’ve done some heavy thinking about the whole deal before I started shooting my mouth off into this tape recorder. Shit, the thing is like a ... an addiction. The fucking world could be coming to an end, and I’d start the tape rolling so I could get in my two cents.

  Shit!

  I wasn’t even to the freeway before I dug the thing out of my purse and ...

  Shit!

  Okay, okay. Calm down.

  What’s done is done, right? Water under the fucking bridge. No way I can go back and get Dusty’s vest. I’d have the time to do it, but for all I know the bodies might’ve already been found. Forget it.

  Who needs a bulletproof vest, anyway? Look at all the good it did Dusty.

  Besides, it’s not like the guys are gonna be waiting in there tonight to ambush me with guns. Mitch’ll have his fucking saber, Chuck his ax, Clement his hammer and straight razor, Tom his Bowie knife. They’ll have firearms handy, all right. We’ve got a real arsenal in the garage. But that stuff is for emergencies, so they aren’t likely to have me covered if I walk in dragging along a sweet young thing so it looks like I’m playing along.

  The problem is, I’ve got to find one.

  Shouldn’t be too hard. She won’t have to be a dead ringer, or anything, now that Dusty’s out of the picture.

  Anyway, enough about all that. Time’s running out, and there’s no telling how busy I might get before the deadline tonight, so I’d better go ahead with the history of our little gang while I’ve got the chance.

  Where the hell did I leave off?

  I don’t know. Did I tell about the time we went after Denise Dennison? That was our first house raid, and ... yeah, I already went into all that.

  What about after Denise?

  Geez, get a load of her!

  Where was I?

  Things were awfully hot around L.A., so we drove all the ...

  Never mind.

  I can’t think.

  It’s this car I just passed. The girl in back looks just like Jody. I mean, maybe she’s not the spitting image, but she’s close—very close. About the same age. Cute face, very short blond hair.

  I’d been creeping up on the car for a pretty long time. A white Nissan Sentra. It was going just a little slower than me. I didn’t want to get stuck behind it, though, so finally I swung over to the left and put some speed on. The idea was to race by, then get back into the slow lane.

  Coming up alongside it, that’s when I spotted the girl in the back seat.

  Just when I’m trying to resume the history of our gang, I’m suddenly looking at exactly the gal I need.

  Fuck the history.

  I’ve slowed down now so that I’m going the same speed as the Sentra. It’s about fifty feet behind me.

  In the front seats are a man and a woman. They’re probably her parents. The way things are these days, though, who knows? Nothing’s the way it looks. Everything’s twisted and odd.

  It doesn’t really matter who or what they are, though.

  If they aren’t her parents, big deal.

  Just so they aren’t a couple of undercover Green Berets or Ninjas or some such shit.

  I don’t think there’s anyone else in back with the girl.

  Just the three of them.

  The girl’s too good to lose. I’ve got to have her. It’s just a question of how to do it.

  They’re close enough, if I stand on the brakes, they’ll probably rear-end me. Maybe that’s the way to go. They’d have to stop, or the driver could get into big trouble for hit and run.

  It’s risky, though. My Caddy is a lot bigger than their little heap, so I’m not likely to get hurt. But you never know what might go wrong. For one thing, you don’t know how hard we might hit. Wouldn’t it be great if I got them to pile into me, and both cars got put out of commission?

  It’s not likely, but it could happen.

  Or what if the other guy loses control, maybe spins out, flips his car or gets broadsided by a truck or something? Naturally, I wouldn’t pick a time when there’s a lot of traffic around. Even still, they might crash and burn.

  Forget staging a crash.

  I want her alive.

  Here’s an idea. I could drop back and tail them. Sooner or later, they’ll take an off-ramp. I can wait till they reach their destination, then figure out a safe way to snatch her.

  Lousy idea.

  They might not stop for hours. And
when they do, it might be at someplace crowded.

  This stretch of freeway is just about perfect. The traffic isn’t real heavy, and there are long stretches with nothing on either side except desert.

  Here’s another idea.

  I’ll put some distance between us, then pull over and stop. Make it look like something’s wrong.

  I’m a gal, remember? And not a bad looking one, at that.

  Let’s see if the guy will stop for a damsel in distress.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Oh yeah! Oh yeah! What a RUSH!

  I was brilliant! Brilliant!

  Whew! I’m out of breath. Hard work.

  Wait’ll you hear ...

  How do things look back there?

  Fine ... fine. Made a ... clean getaway ... looks like ... Yeah. I go around this bend and ... Yeah, can’t see their car now ... Home free.

  Whew!

  Gonna shut this off a minute and catch my breath.

  All right, I’m back. Gotta tell you what I did. It worked great. did like I said and sped up for a while to get out farther in front of them. While I was busy putting some space between us, I took the .45 out of my purse and shoved it down the front of my skirt. Not the best place to put it. For one thing, I couldn’t get the barrel down far enough. The muzzle pushed right against my dick and I had this awful picture of the damn gun firing. But I worked on the problem and managed to get the barrel down into the crack between my thigh and nuts. Guys were never meant to carry guns in front like that.

  The Derringer would’ve fit perfectly, by the way. But it only had a two-shot capacity, and I wanted more firepower than that.

  By the time I got the Colt the way I wanted it, I was far enough ahead of the Sentra. Plenty of room to stop and climb out while it was still coming.

  When you see somebody pull over in front of you, you always watch them. So I knew their eyes were on me. My plan was to hurry and put up the hood so it would look like I had engine trouble.

  But one of those huge eighteen-wheelers rushed by when I climbed out. It must’ve just passed the Sentra, because I hadn’t seen it before. The truck blew a gust of wind against me. I clapped a hand down on my wig to keep it from flying off. The blast of hot air whipped against me so hard that it jerked open a couple of buttons at the bottom of my shirt and flapped the shirt away from my belly. Which was no big deal except for the fact that it showed off the .45 that was stuck down my waist.

  I hunched over and hugged my belly to hide the gun.

  Just after I did that, the Sentra passed me.

  Its brake lights were on. But only for a second. When they went off, I realized the guy wasn’t planning to stop. He’d only slowed down as a safety precaution, and now he was ready to speed off.

  Doing the quick hug to hold my shirt down is what gave me the idea.

  I suddenly jerked and hunched down as if I’d been struck in the belly by a terrible pain. I staggered forward a couple of steps, then dropped to my knees beside the front tire.

  Chivalry ain’t dead.

  The joker must’ve kept his eyes on me in his rearview mirror.

  My knees no sooner hit the dirt than his brake lights came on again. He pulled off the highway and started backing toward me with his tires flinging up clouds of dust.

  I saw the face of my sweet piece in the rear window. She looked very worried about me.

  Glad to report that today’s fall was a lot better executed than the one last night. This time, I didn’t bash my knee. And fortunately there was no dog handy to bite my face. A few other cars and trucks were roaring closer. I didn’t want any of them stopping, so I got to my feet and hobbled, still bent over and hugging my belly, but in a way that didn’t look so drastic.

  I had one hand inside my shirt, of course.

  A few yards in front of me, the Sentra stopped. I staggered between the two cars and eased myself down till my rump came to rest on the edge of my hood. I tried to smile at my sweetie in the rear window. But I was supposed to be hurting, so my smile twisted into a major grimace of pain.

  Oooo, I’m good.

  Not only good, but lucky. Instead of just one adult getting out of the car to help me, they both did. A couple of very good Samaritans. Either that, or the guy came after me because I gave him the hots and the gal came along to keep an eye on him.

  They looked like a real dynamic duo, both of them in their thirties, slim and trim and tanned, decked out in sunglasses, polo shirts, white shorts, white crew socks, and topsiders. Maybe they were on their way through the desert to a distant marina for a day of yachting.

  The man stopped a little short of me and asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Of course she isn’t all right,” the gal said.

  Obviously his wife. Nobody but a wife—or maybe a really overconfident fiancée—talks to a guy that way, as if he’s a dope.

  She put her hand gently on my upper arm. “Is it your stomach?”

  I bared my teeth and nodded.

  And listened. Some major traffic was bearing down on us from the rear.

  “Must’ve hit you awfully hard,” the man said. Actually, he was almost shouting. Because of the traffic noise, you could hardly hear yourself think. “Was it something you ate?” he asked.

  A semi roared by, and I could hear another on the way.

  “I ... I think I’m having a miscarriage,” I yelled.

  “Oh, dear God!” the woman cried out. She squeezed my arm. “How far along are you?”

  “Six weeks.”

  The next semi passed, throwing hot gusts of air against us.

  I suddenly doubled over.

  “Jerry! We’ve got to take her to a hospital!”

  “How are we gonna find a hospital?”

  “We’ll find one, don’t worry.”

  They both grabbed me. Holding me up, they hustled me over to the back door of their Sentra. Jerry opened it. He asked, “Do you need anything from your car?”

  I shook my head, then let out a whine.

  “Have you got your car keys?”

  “Yes!” I squealed.

  The girl in the backseat scooted over to make room for me. I sort of tumbled in, and Jerry shut the door.

  I was damn near ecstatic.

  Never even hoped they’d invite me into their car.

  Figured I’d have to kill them right out in the open by the

  side of the highway.

  Jerry and his wife got into the front seats. Jerry was straight in front of me. He pulled down his shoulder strap and buckled it.

  “What’re we doing?” the girl asked.

  “This woman needs a hospital,” her mother said. She was reaching up for her shoulder harness.

  “So we’re taking her to ... ?” The girl gasped when she saw the Colt come out of my shirt.

  Very fast, I put two rounds through the back of Jerry’s seat. As he pitched against his safety belts, the mother started to twist around to see what was happening. I dropped sideways, my shoulder on the girl’s lap, jammed my muzzle against the back of Mom’s seat and put two slugs into it.

  The girl went ape, screaming and pounding on me. I pushed myself off her. Once I was sitting up, I bounced her head off her door window. The window cracked, but didn’t break. She slumped, out cold.

  All the windows were shut because of the air conditioner, and it was so smoky in there you’d think we each had our own cigars. If you ask me, gunsmoke smells a lot better than cigar smoke. Love it. But I was afraid people driving by might worry if they saw all that smoke, so I put my window down to let it out.

  Then I stuck the Colt down the back of my skirt. It went there fine.

  Leaning forward, I checked out Jerry and his wife. The shoulder and lap belts had kept them both from going anywhere, but both of them had keeled sideways a little. They were still alive. They made some noises, but didn’t fight me when I straightened them up.

  I wanted them to look okay. That’s how come I’d shot them in the backs when it wo
uld’ve been a lot more fun to pop them in their heads.

  On the dashboard was a folded map. I had to climb halfway into the front seat before I could reach it. After grabbing it, I stayed up there and took a minute to check out the damage. Jerry and his wife looked fine, mostly, just as long as you didn’t look any lower than about halfway down their chests. Lower than that is where the bullets came out, and what a mess.

  Anyway, I unfolded the big map of California and propped it up against the steering wheel in front of Jerry. This way, all the folks speeding by would think these two had gotten themselves lost and pulled over to figure out where they were.

  They were lost, all right.

  Where they were going, though, a map wouldn’t be doing them much of any good.

  I watched them for a couple of minutes. Neither of them moved. They seemed to be unconscious, and they’d probably be dead pretty soon.

  The girl was still slumped against her door. Her eyes were shut and her mouth hung open. She looked real good.

  Not that she had a face anywhere close to Jody’s. It wasn’t ugly, though—just ordinary and a little cute. She looked about Jody’s size, but maybe ten pounds heavier. Her tits and butt were bigger. She wore a short-sleeved red blouse and denim culottes.

  Culottes. Doesn’t anybody wear skirts anymore?

  Gals must really be afraid that guys are gonna stick their hands up ... Am I repeating myself? Seems like maybe I already gave my theory on the paranoia of modem women as shown by the fact they’ve gotta wear clothes with barriers between the legs.

  I haven’t got time to be repeating myself.

  Anyway, I didn’t go exploring under her culottes. Instead, I undid a button in the middle of her blouse and slipped a hand in. She was wearing a bra, but it was the good kind that feels like it almost isn’t there. I could really feel her through it.

  You know the old saying, though: business before pleasure.

  Anyway, that wasn’t the greatest place in the world to start messing with her, what with two bodies in the front and cars speeding by all the time. So I let go of her.

  I climbed out of the Sentra and strolled back to my car. After opening the trunk, I went to Jerry’s door and pretended to talk to him. It took a while, but finally there was a big enough break in the traffic. That’s when I raced over to the girl’s side of the car, jerked open her door, dragged her out, picked her up, and hustled her to the trunk of the Cadillac. Tossed her in, slammed the lid shut, and still had time to spare. I walked back to the Sentra and shut its door, then got all the way back to my own door before the next group of cars and trucks came along.