by Drew Stepek
“I get it. I fucked up. You care. I was wrong to involve Linnwood. He must have seen Paulina through the window of our hotel or heard us talking to her one of the times he dropped me off. Either that or he was staking me out. I own that, Eldritch. I have to own the fact that he took her because he wants to give Rodderick something he doesn’t have. And if she dies, I have the life of another kid on my conscious. All that said, you have to own that you put us all in danger.”
He took his hands off of the wheel and tied his long hair in back. “Why did you bring the Perry back to the room if you knew that they wanted the girl?”
“I didn’t know until right before he took her. The Skulls chased us back to the hotel and they tried to kill him, too. He was pissed off at me for blowing his deal with Rodderick.”
“His deal?”
“Linnwood wants to run coke in Austin.” I lowered my head. “He thought I was going to meet Rodderick to smooth things out for him and what’s left of the Perrys. Well, Rodderick took me back to his place and that’s where things got all fucked up.”
“I will take responsibility,” he finally said. “You were right. We should have handed the girl over to the authorities.”
His phone buzzed again.
“Who’s texting you,” I asked, feeling that we had both accepted responsibility for a series of really bad ideas.
“Back up,” he said.
“Anyone I know?”
“We shall see.”
He pulled into the main entrance to West Lake Hills and started the upward climb to Rodderick’s compound at the top.
“Pull back,” I told Eldritch, remembering the way. “I know how to get in there.”
“Are there still people outside the front gate?” Eldritch turned off the headlights on our car.
“He told me that the paparazzi stopped coming by the compound yesterday. Besides,” I reminded him, “it’s too early for them to be there.”
He pulled a clove out of his cigarette case. “How many entrances to the ranch are there?”
“There’s the main entrance at the front gate and then there’s a private entrance in the rear. Linnwood will be going in the back. We should go over the side wall and take them by surprise.”
He lit the clove. “Obviously.”
When we got close to the top of the hill, he pulled to the side of the road.
“Are you ready?”
He nodded and reached into the backseat for his sword. “Promise me this.”
“Yeah?”
“Promise me that if we save Paulina, that no matter what else happens, that you will take her to the authorities.”
I nodded my head and bit my top lip. “We can’t let her die like her sister, Eldritch. I can’t erase my mistakes, but I can make this right.”
We both got out of the car and started huffing it up the hill.
I pointed to the compound that was hidden behind a wall twenty feet high, camouflaged by shrubs. “It’s up there to the right.”
“Does he have any security detail on the grounds?” he asked.
I stretched my injured arm behind my back. The feeling was returning and although it was nowhere near one hundred percent, it would have to do. “There will be some Minutemen and maybe what’s left of the Skulls on the grounds. I’m sure he also has cameras everywhere.”
He secured his sword on his back and waved me to follow him as he trotted up to the wall.
I joined him and tugged on the bushes. “The Minutemen clean up his messes. It has something to do with keeping him out of trouble.”
“Interesting,” he said as he continued to survey the area.
I tugged on the shrubbery again. There was no way it was going to hold either of us if we climbed it.
He dug his hands in and began scaling the wall.
“Eldritch?” I coughed. “I’m not going to be able to get up that wall.” I pointed at my arm.
He looked down to me. “I will meet you around at the back gate.”
I remained close to the wall and started shuffling towards the back. “How the fuck am I going to get in there?” I whispered.
“We will figure it out,” he returned, hearing me.
I carefully timed my movement because there were several security cameras patrolling the outer wall. Even though I was pretty sure Rodderick knew we were there to crash his party, there was an outside chance that we could get in there undetected. When I reached the corner of the front side wall, I noticed some flood lights that lit up the long dirt road that lead to the back. So, I strayed from the cover of the wall and trailed off to the tree line that followed the long dirt road that lead to the back gate. It amazed to me how big his compound was from the outside. No one in Los Angeles had a place this big.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
A big gun started discharging and echoing through the trees. Our cover was blown. I started running toward the back gate, which I immediately noticed was open.
The back gate started to close. The gunfire alerted Rodderick and whomever was guarding the compound that we had arrived. I slid sideways through the gate right before it closed and saw Eldritch’s rental car sitting in the driveway.
“Kill him!” one of the security guards yelled into a headset. He wasn’t talking about me. I tripled my speed, and undetected, I cannonballed myself into him. The force of my body knocked his gun out of his hand. I got him on his back and I pressed my fingers into his eye sockets. I felt his tears and blood flow into my fingernails. He whimpered a bit but I instantly cut off his voice when I drilled my teeth into his jugular vein. There it was. Warm food.
CRASH!
I looked to my left and saw the tail of Eldritch’s jacket zip through a window. Two more guards ran around the corner of the house near his entrance and started firing aimlessly into the house. They didn’t notice me, so I left my meal twitching on the ground and bolted around the garage to get to the pool area.
“Fucking asshole,” I said as I looked into the garage and saw the pickup truck next to a Ferrari and a Lamborghini. “Fucking asshole!”
I took the corner full speed and reached a six-foot steel fence that surrounded the pool. Knowing that I couldn’t jump over it, I barreled right through it, upending it and pulling the stakes from the concrete in the ground. Not being slowed, I closed my eyes and leapt through the gigantic bay window that overlooked the pool. Glass crashed all around me but I didn’t let up. Gunfire rang out across the house and I followed the sound. It was coming from the foyer at the front of the house. I rushed to get there.
As soon as I ran in, a bullet flew by my head. Eldritch was in the middle of five Minutemen. He spun in a circle, decapitating two of them as bullets ripped into his torso. I ran to his aid, tearing off one of the guard’s arms and then firing the gun that was in that hand into two others. One dropped to the ground and Eldritch struck the other down with his sword.
He grabbed the one that had dropped by his hair. “Where is the girl?” he shouted. “Where is Rodderick?”
“I don’t know,” the final guard sputtered. “Please don’t kill me.”
I started to head to the playroom.
“Where is Rodderick?” Eldritch screamed again.
“We’re here for him, too. We’re here for him—”
Eldritch put him out of his misery by piercing his brain with his katana and then pulling it up, releasing the brain from his head.
I pulled the gun from the arm and entered the dungeon. The lights were off and another one of the Nightshayde films played on all the screens. I looked at one of them for a second and caught Rodderick kissing Hamster Fist.
“I am addicted to your human blood, my love,” he said.
“Rodderick?” I shot up all the screens in the room. “Where the fuck are you?”
“He is here,” Eldritch called out calmly from the foyer.
I walked back down the hall. Eldritch was standing at the bottom of the winding staircase pointing his b
lood dripping sword up the stairs. He stepped onto the first stair.
“Don’t take another step,” Rodderick commanded from the top of the staircase.
I turned the corner to see Rodderick standing at the top of the stairs with Linnwood hiding in the shadows behind him. Linnwood’s smirk lit up his face as he fired up a Dunhill.
“Dude.” Rodderick waved his hand, trying to loft the smoke back at the preppy killer. “Don’t smoke in my house.”
Linnwood’s smirk wiped off his face and he took the smoke out of his mouth and looked for a place to extinguish it.
“Put it out, you twat,” Rodderick snorted.
“Okay,” Linnwood agreed as he walked over to the top of the banister.
Rodderick shoved him. “Don’t you fucking dare put that out on the wood.”
Linnwood looked puzzled. “Then, where should I put it out?”
“On your fucking tongue, Perry.”
Eldritch glared at me quickly and then tried to take another step.
“What did I just say, Eldritch?” Rodderick lifted a gun. “Put the dumb sword away.”
Eldritch dropped the sword. “Where is the girl, Stephan?”
I walked to the bottom of the stairs and stood next to Eldritch.
“The loser is back,” Rodderick chuckled. “Why didn’t I kill you?”
I dropped my gun next to Eldritch’s sword and kicked a headless Minuteman out of my way. “Just give us the girl. We know you haven’t killed her yet.”
“Killed her yet?” He nudged Linnwood in the ribs. “I’m not gonna kill her.”
Eldritch chimed in. “Then what do you want with her? Do you want her blood?”
“I don’t want her. Perry brought her here. Besides, I can’t do anything with cancer blood. I’ll probably just fuck her and then give her over to the Skulls to sell her in Mexico.”
Linnwood dropped back into the shadows on top of the stairs and curled his lip.
Blood dripped out of the side of Eldritch’s mouth as he started growling.
I looked around the foyer without moving my head, trying to figure out a way to get to Rodderick. The only way up was the stairs. The chandelier was out of my reach, and if I jumped up at anything, he would just pick me off with his gun.
Rodderick ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m going to make you watch me fuck her, too.”
“Come on, man,” I shouted back.
He just laughed.
I started to bluff, trying to buy Eldritch a minute to figure out a plan. “The girl has cancer, Rodderick. Just give her to us or—”
“Or what?” He stepped down on to the staircase but kept the gun on Eldritch.
“Demon!” Eldritch roared as he kicked up his sword and started rushing up the stairs.
Eldritch managed to make it a quarter of the way up the stairs before Rodderick opened fire, filling him with bullets and knocking him on his back to the foyer tile.
“Stay down, Eldritch,” Rodderick shrieked.
Eldritch’s blade fell out of his hand as he tried desperately to plug the holes in his chest with his hands. I bent down to help him out but he pushed me away.
Rodderick shot him in the foot, just playing with him at this point. “Linnwood, get some pictures of this with your phone. I want to remember this moment when I’m massaging the peach fuzz on the little girl’s head while I destroy her asshole.”
“Oh my God!” I cried.
“These little girls worship me. I’m doing them a favor, homeboy. I’m inside of them and then they are inside of me.” He turned and started making his way back up the stairs.
I grasped Eldritch’s left hand. It was completely coated in his blood.
Out of nowhere, five shotgun blasts blew the huge doors to the compound open behind us.
Eldritch dragged himself to the corner of the staircase. He winked at me and signaled to his sword. Then, he slumped over and coughed up a bunch of blood.
Call it divine intervention.
Call it the twist to end all twists.
Call it the next most fucked up thing that could possibly happen.
Rodderick stepped sideways as one of the doorknobs sailed by his head. “What the fuck now?”
Linnwood pulled his gun out of the back of his pants. “What’s this shit?”
As the smoke lifted outside the door, several figures stepped into the light. Some had priest collars and others had cowboy hats. Many of them held leashes, tugging back on a mixed bag of horribles. McCoys. Perrys. Chaplins. RTLs. Six Street Skulls. There were even a few Battlesnakes and Batwangers. Some I’d seen before. Some were new faces. All of them had skin decomposing and hanging off their bodies. Their eyes were glossed over or rolled back into their heads. Their mouths barked and snarled. One of the Chaplins gnawed away at his tongue as his head buzzed. A McCoy next to him moaned and started snapping at his chin, trying to catch the blood splashing out into the room. The Chaplin tugged at the leash’s collar around his neck and almost instantly, his head detonated into the delighted face of the McCoy and his teammate next to him.
His Minuteman handler dropped the leash. “Fuck,” he whined as the lifeless and headless body fell to the ground.
All of them were slaves to the zombie drug Sunshine, and they were starving for meat. Apparently, The Cloth and the Minutemen built themselves an obedient army of vampires: The Brotherhood of Evil Fucking Druggies.
One of the Minutemen walked to the front of the pack as the others fought to restrain their dogs. One of them stung his servant with a cattle prod, only making it rattle around and claw into its own face.
“Give us the girl, Rodderick,” the Minutemen leader demanded.
I gripped tightly onto Eldritch’s sword in one hand and my new gun in the other. In no world was this going to end happy. I signaled for Eldritch to make his way back. He pushed himself behind the staircase, leaving a smudged trail of blood.
Rodderick waved his gun. “What are you talking about? How dare you come into my house.”
“It’s over, son,” the leader continued. “Give us the little girl and none of this ever happened.”
I got to my feet, steadied myself and pulled back the sword. “Give them the girl,” I pleaded.
Linnwood staggered and pulled another gun out of the back of his pants.
“Jesus,” Rodderick scoffed. He fired his gun, piercing the Minutemen leader in the head. “Fuck you.”
“What are you doing?” Linnwood cried as he retreated to the rooms at the back of the house.
The leader fell back onto a restrained Battlesnake who tore his head off and instantly began chomping on his face. Several other Sunshine-filled monsters stretched their leashes to the breaking point as they dug into the corpse with their fingers and teeth.
“Let them go!” one of the priests commanded.
I turned to see that Eldritch had made it out of the foyer and then immediately sped toward the stairs. Rodderick started following Linnwood toward the bedrooms. He shot several times into the pack, knocking a few of the zombies and their masters off their feet. It wasn’t enough though, because as soon as I started up the stairs, the rabid army of the dead were unleashed.
One tripped me up right before I reached the top and started digging its fingers into my ankle. I turned to see the recently decomposed face of Luke Perry grinning. The intensity of his craving caused his teeth to crumble in his mouth. He was so desperate to get me that his fingernails peeled off as they scraped into my leg bone. I kicked furiously to escape and saw the twenty or so others running on their hands and feet like dogs up the stairs behind him.
I sliced Luke’s hand off with Eldritch’s sword, but that just freed him up to go for my face. Unable to control his blood lust, he impaled himself on the tip of the sword. I kicked him away and turned to follow Rodderick and Linnwood. He fell back with the sword lodged in his ribcage and the other demons instantly tore him into pieces.
I heard Linnwood yell down the long corridor that had
closed doors every ten steps or so. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
SMASH!
Someone jumped through a window.
Galloping and scratching on the hardwood floors boomed off the walls behind me. I wanted to check to see if the doors were locked, but if I even stopped for a second, I feared that they would catch up to me and devour me before I had the chance to close my eyes. I turned my gun backward and popped off a few rounds as I saw a small light coming from one of the rooms at the end of the hall. It was obviously Rodderick and Linnwood’s escape.
I burst through the door and didn’t stop. The broken window called to me from the far side of Rodderick’s master bedroom.
Before I jumped, I remembered that Paulina was somewhere in the house. I screeched to a halt.
A bunch of the monsters sprung into the room. I shot what was left of my bullets into three of their heads near the doorway.
One of the creatures pounced into the bedroom. As it jumped at me, I avoided contact and threw my gun at it. Instantly, three more stampeded into the room. One of them had Eldritch’s sword and it ran at me with it pointed forward like a tusk. I jumped over onto Rodderick’s bed and it just barely missed lancing me. It spun back to me as the other two headed toward the window, jumping through. One of the creature’s heads half exploded from a faulty collar, and it fell onto a giant shard of glass still secured into the window pane.
As if these things could understand anything anymore, I pleaded with it. “I’m not the one you want.”
It was a Chaplin. It spastically wheezed and choked as it tried to lift Eldritch’s sword behind its head. Its makeup melted all over what was left of his face and ran into its mouth. Even if it wanted to talk, it couldn’t. Its tongue hung out of a hole in the side of its face. It was missing two fingers on both hands and the one that wasn’t desperately trying to grab me flopped around, barely attached at its wrist. A blood vessel popped in its eye and it started crying blood. As if it recognized me, it glared at my face and turned its head.
“I’m not the one you want,” I repeated.
It grunted as it slowed down and started to step toward me. It was unable to support the weight of the sword so it fell back and clanged on the floor. As if a bell had gone off, it was that instant that I noticed an irritated burn all around his neck under The Cloth’s restraint collar.