by Ryan Green
There was still an hour to go before Sheila arrived. That was plenty of time to make his way back around to the front of the house and haul the bodies inside. Ronald lined the corpses up neatly in the middle of the room as if they were laid out for a funeral, tugged off their coats to cover their slack-jawed faces, and gave himself a pat on the back that it had only taken him half of the hour he had to do the job. He stood perfectly still for a few minutes, then carefully reloaded his gun. He double-checked the scene outside, to make sure it didn't look suspicious, and to make sure that there was plenty of room for her car to pull up, before strolling back inside.
He settled down with a fresh bottle of beer and stared down at the covered corpses as though they were the television set, without a single spark of recognition showing in his eyes or a single thought about what he was looking at firing off behind them. Christmas carols still played on the radio, but he couldn't even hear them. All of Ronald's plans had been leading to this moment, and the anticipation was almost overwhelming. The one who had ruined it all was coming here to face him. The monster who had destroyed him. Who had destroyed their family. The love of his life. He couldn't believe that even after all these years he still hadn't scrubbed her out of the place where she had burrowed into his heart.
He double-checked the gun. He finished the beer. He ran through the plan, over and over and over. There was so little of it left that it looped back almost as soon as it got started. This was the grand finale. This was the greatest enemy that he had ever faced in his life, the greatest betrayer. He closed his eyes and drew a steadying breath, just like they teach you in Marksmanship 101. He drew it in, held it, and then let it ease out. He let the calm spread out through his body. He let it steady his hands.
He opened his eyes and listened carefully to the sound of the approaching car. In the corner of the room, the lights on the Christmas tree flickered on and off, dousing the shadows in a bath of colours that he stared into with the same mindless intensity as the bodies or the television. He breathed deeply and steadily as he heard a little girl shouting and laughing outside, overcome with exuberance at seeing her family again. It reminded him of his little Sheila at that age, so bright and perfect every moment of the day. He listened carefully for the sound of her voice. He wanted to hear her one last time before it was over, despite everything that she had done to him. He cursed himself for a fool, but he kept the gun hidden away just the same. The boy knocked on his door, too rough to have been any of the little girls out there, and with a quaver in his voice, Ronald called out, ‘Come on in. We're all waiting for you.'
Dennis walked in first, holding Sylvia's hand. Holding Ronald's daughter's hand as if she belonged to any other man but him. It was the first time that he had seen his little girl in years. His lip quivered as he tried to hold back his tears. Then Sheila came into sight. She had cut her hair. She was dressed up like one of the women about town. He could have walked past her without realising it was his own daughter if it hadn't have been for her face. Those eyes and those lips still called to him. Even if they were smeared with garish red whore's war paint now. They crept into the room as though it were a bear's cave instead of a family home. The little boy Michael must have looked like his father, because Ronald couldn't see a trace of himself in that little face peeking around Sheila's skirts. Ronald gave Dennis as polite a smile as he could manage. ‘Come on in. Let's have a talk.'
They crept in, getting closer and closer while still exuding fear. Even that brave boy Dennis, who had so proudly stood up to Ronald not so long ago, seemed to be quaking in his boots. When they saw the bodies on the ground they froze in place. Ronald chuckled. ‘What do you think boy? Do you still think you're going to kill me if I touch my own girl again? Do you think that you are anything to me except a waste of a bullet?'
He snapped off a shot and it burst through Dennis' chest, spraying blood up the wall behind him, sprinkling red to match the whore's lipstick across all of their Sunday finery. Sheila had known her father the longest and the best, so she didn't even try to run as he rose up from his seat to face her in all his fury. He levelled the gun at the swell of her chest and hissed, ‘You have destroyed me. You have destroyed your mother, your brother, your sisters. You have destroyed all of us. You are a traitor and I will see you in hell.'
He squeezed the trigger. It only took one bullet to kill her, but it didn't feel like enough. She didn't feel dead enough yet. He unloaded the rest of the clip into her corpse, each shot launching another gory spout up to stain the walls, the Christmas tree, and her bastard children.
He cast aside the pistol and snatched up that boy who looked nothing like him, that hideous depravity that his daughter had wrought on the world. He wrapped his shaking hands around that wrong thing and he ground his hands together as if it was the only way to keep the world from ending. He crushed that little boy's throat until he was certain that he would never breathe again, then he took a staggering step to toss the tiny corpse out into the mud. He spat after the boy and would have done worse if he didn't have other business to attend to.
The last victim of Sheila's treachery was crouched down beside the man who had stolen her, trying to shake him awake. It was intolerable. Even now, after he had won, after he had won so completely that there was no way for anyone to come back from it, this child was still acting as if the lie was true. As if this usurper had ever been her father. Ronald took her in his arms and she cried out, trying to get away. All the fight that had been missing from the bastard was here in the true heir to the Simmons name. It was almost a shame to bring it all to an end. Still, it had to end. It all had to end and this was how. He put his hands almost gently around the girl's throat as she beat at him and screamed. He let her tear at him with her painted nails and shriek right up until the moment that she found that she couldn't make another sound. Her eyes went wide as he choked the life out of her. Staring right into his. Daring him to look away. She would have been a daughter who he could have been proud of. This all could have been avoided if it hadn't been for her mother ruining everything for everyone. She slapped at his hands weakly, as if she could sense his mind wandering. He met her stare and watched the life drain out of her. He kept on squeezing long after it all should have been over, as if letting go meant finally admitting that it was over.
Part 4: The Last Stand
He carried her by the neck to the other bodies and laid her down, stripping off her coat and covering her face. He dragged the boy who pretended at being her father over to lie him down beside her. Sheila should have been next, but he couldn't bring himself to lay her down there with the rest of the scum. He hefted her in his arms like he had when she was a little girl, cradling her tight against his chest as the heat left her body. He laid her carefully on the dining table and fetched out Becky's finest tablecloth to cover her up. It was the least that he could do for the love of his life. Blood began to soak through the thin cheap cloth almost immediately, but he didn't even look back. He still had the final motions of his mission to complete.
He collected some of the thick plastic wrapping that he used for parts from under one of the rusted hulks. He wrapped up the bastard brat sprawled on the mud, trying to touch him as little as possible, then he went to fetch the car keys from inside. He dumped him, unworthy as he was to lie among the Simmons dead, into the boot of his father's car and then drove it off to rest amongst the other junkers. He scooped the other pathetic worm from where he was still dangling limply in the water barrel before repeating the process with Billy's car. He went into the house to sprinkle some of the kerosene around and damp down the smell. Then it was over. The mission was accomplished. He staggered inside and changed into clean clothes before casting a glance over the living room. His eyes skimmed past the parts that he didn't want to see. He was done.
He had no idea what to do now. He had no plan to guide him. He stopped himself from losing control. He pulled himself back. He reminded himself that the time for that was all over now. He was t
he victor in this little war of his, so it was time to celebrate. He was going to a bar for the first time in as long as he could remember, he was going to drink whatever he wanted and he was going to worry about absolutely nothing. It was a quiet night in the bar, only the sad and the serious went out drinking a day after Christmas, even out here in the back end of nowhere. Ronald took his time and savoured the taste of real beer and the smoke in the air. Even the peanuts on the bar tasted better, even if they felt like styrofoam in his mouth.
He was free.
Nobody had a hold on him now. Nobody could go sneaking around telling filthy stories about what he did or didn't do. There would be no more Becky like a lead weight hanging around his neck, dragging him down into the dirt with her. There would be no more kids shrieking and screaming and running all around the house at all hours. His home would be a place of peace, a sanctuary from the outside world. All the evil in the world had died with the betrayer. He replayed the moment in his mind. The splatter of blood on the Christmas tree lights, tinting the room. The look on her face when she realised what she had brought down upon herself. She would not mistake his warnings again. Nobody would. When he had said that a reckoning was coming, he had most assuredly meant it.
He didn't know it, but Ronald's gruesome grin was making even the hearty drunks out on Boxing Day anxious. In the dim light of the bar, all that they could see was the bulging whites of his eyes and the glint of his teeth amidst the tangle of his beard. He wheezed with laughter, replaying the memory over and over. The squeeze of the trigger. The pop of her chest as the bullet tore through her. Just like he had practiced. Centre of mass. Perfect shot. Every time. He savoured every detail of it. This would sustain him through the cold years that would come in a way that liquor and food never had.
The next morning, the itch was still there. Something that was still missing. Some vital part of his plan that had escaped his notice. His energy had returned and he rose with the dawn. He paced as usual, let the dog run around the yard and slowly realised what was missing. An ending. He was not so foolish to think that this slaughter would go unnoticed forever, nor was he cowardly enough to flee from whatever justice confronted him, so long as he remained in control of the situation. The only thing that still weighed on him, the only thing that he could not control throughout the whole thing, would be how the rest of them would respond, all of the other enemies who had aligned themselves against him through his years in Russellville. He couldn't stand the thought of them snickering and talking behind his back. He could not tolerate the idea of them still being in the world when he was gone, at all. He sat with the television on, drinking beer all day long as the new plan slotted together in his mind. Once all the pieces were there, there was only one logical way for them to fit together. He sat still and watched the television and drank his beer, three feet away from the rotting corpses of his family, and he did not get up and leave because his plan required him to wait. It was a Sunday after all.
He drove into Russellville first thing the next morning in Gene Junior's car, stopping by the Walmart to restock on bullets before heading straight to the offices of Peel, Eddy, and Gibbons Law Firm. He wore a straw cowboy hat as a feeble disguise, but there was no way that Kathy Kendrick did not recognise him before he pulled the trigger. Inside their offices, the lawyers and secretaries in the back heard her shouting and heard the gun firing off, but they did not move. Some of them believed that it was some children playing with a new noisy Christmas toy. But to others it seemed weird that someone firing a gun in a law office was not gunning for one of the lawyers. They kept their heads down until they were certain that Ronald was gone, by which time it was far too late for the poor girl who had become his final obsession. One of the lawyer's clients was waiting in the front room and saw it all unfold in front of her. After Simmons made his swift exit she started screaming, ‘He shot her! He shot her!' over and over until a legal secretary emerged from the back to investigate. There was a bullet-hole in the wall above Kendrick's desk, and her body was found slumped on the ground. There was blood pouring out of a wound on the back of her head. Blood so bright and red that it surprised the onlookers. She was still alive when they found her. They said that she was still breathing despite the bullet having gone right through her head, although she had faded before an ambulance could arrive. Nobody knew who had shot her. Nobody knew why he had done it.
Whatever emotion Ronald had left seemed to have been spent, and now he was just going through the necessary motions. At his next stop, Ronald switched his hat for a baseball cap and came out with his gun at the ready in case warning had been called ahead. The Taylor Oil Company had no warning at all of what was about to descend upon them. Ronald started firing on sight, gunning down J. D. Chaffin, one of the truckers and a volunteer fireman with almost casual contempt, just because he walked into Simmons' line of sight at the wrong moment. The man died at the scene. Ronald set his sights on his actual target next. Russell ‘Rusty' Taylor was the owner of both Taylor Oil and the Sinclair Mini-Mart where Ronald had found his final place of employment. Russell was hit twice and badly wounded before another worker arrived on the scene, wandering back through from the bathroom. Julie Money had just started as the bookkeeper for the oil company. She thought that all of the noise and theatrics were probably the latest in a series of good-natured pranks that the boys had been playing on her since she started. She froze in place when she spotted Chaffin's body, and before she could unfreeze Simmons had his revolver pressed to her forehead. Thoughts of her two children danced through her head. She screamed, ‘No!' and leapt for cover as he pulled the trigger. The bullet seared a line through her short blonde hair as she fell behind some crates. She had the good sense to play dead. Ronald fled the scene, laying down a flurry of covering fire that missed everyone present. Russell Taylor was saved by paramedics before the next call for help even came in.
Ronald Simmons went through his entire spree expecting armed resistance from the people of the town. He kept on expecting them to realise that they were at war with him, but all that they saw were the actions of a madman. If anyone in town had paid attention to the strange monster dwelling amongst them, then his next stop might have been predictable. But despite the town's tiny population and Ronald's unusual appearance, he had been so reclusive that nobody was able to make the connection before he arrived at the store where he had been working little more than a month before. He reloaded his pistol in the car as he drove, with a practiced ease born from hours on the firing range. He switched hats once more and strode gleefully into the Mini-Mart, ready to unleash hell on the last in the long list of places where he felt he had been belittled and insulted. He walked right up to the counter, looked his old co-worker Rebecca Woolery in the eye and the shot her right in the chest. The manager, David Salyer, heard the bang and came running from the back of the shop. He had only an instant before Simmons turned the gun on him, and he spent it throwing a chair at the man. It was enough to knock off the marksman's perfect aim. The bullet hit Salyer, knocking him to the ground, but the injury would not prove any more fatal than Woolery's. Both victims would survive, because an unexpected third party intervened before Simmons could deliver a killing blow.
Ronald was not the only one in the store who had seen combat. The store's other veteran, Bill Mason, had been stocking shelves just out of sight and responded to the threat with trained efficiency. He began pelting Ronald with full cans of soda, interrupting any attempt to aim and preventing him from delivering a coup de grace on either of the fallen Mini-Mart workers. Under attack for the first time since the beginning of his great mission, Ronald retreated to the car and sped off, flustered.
In the car, rage began to overpower Ronald once again. This was going to be the end of his life and they were even trying to spoil that. They were interfering in his plans. They were ruining everything. His final stop in town was Woodline Motor Freight. He had learned from his mistakes, stepping out of the car and walking calmly through the offic
es, doing his best to ignore the other workers who had crossed him in more meaningless ways until he could find his primary target, the only woman in his life who had actually stood up to him. He found Joyce Butts in one of the back offices and fired two shots, one into her chest and the other into her head, smirking all the while. She collapsed without a word, to his delight. She, too, survived. He may have been excellent at placing shots on a human-shaped target, but the human body itself is, luckily for Joyce, considerably more complex and resilient than paper.
He locked himself in one of the computer offices, where he found one of his old co-workers, a young woman by the name of Vicky Jackson, crouching on the floor. He dragged her to her feet and she braced herself for worse treatment to come, but calm had swept over Ronald now. All of the fire and fury drained out of him, and he set the gun down on the table beside him, even offering his backup pistol to her if it would help her to calm down. He gently told her to call the police, that he wasn't going to hurt her, and that it was all over now. After she had made the call he explained, ‘I've come to do what I wanted to do. It's all over now. I've gotten everybody who wanted to hurt me.'
For the next few minutes, he made polite small-talk with Vicky Jackson, asking her about her Christmas and talking about the weather and people that they knew about town. He asked why she had never come to visit him when he worked in the Mini-Mart, and she told him that she had just missed his shifts when she happened to be in. He offered her a cigarette to calm her nerves and they both sat smoking companionably.
She was shaken by how normal he seemed after everything that he had just done. He was so calm that she even managed to get a little bit of information out of him before the police arrived. He had taken her hostage and arranged to be arrested in this way not because he was scared of death—in fact, he was absolutely certain that he would be killed for the things that he had done—but because he feared that in a shootout with the police he might end up paralysed or in a vegetative state. He had seen things like that happen to people back in his army days, and the thought of that complete loss of control absolutely haunted him. It would have been the complete antithesis of everything that he had worked towards his entire life. He knew that he was going to die, but that death was going to be on his own terms, with all of his work in this world done and all of the wrongs done against him avenged.