Terrence's eyebrows knit together and his face twisted into an enraged scowl. His eyes flashed brilliant with anger. He shook his head violently, trying to free it from Todd's hands. Todd looked up at the ceiling and tried to gather his thoughts, to find the words to make the big man understand.
"Do you know that it took hundreds of thousands of years for the world's population to reach one billion and in the 200 years that followed, it has more than quintupled? The world's population has tripled since 1980, to 6 billion people, and is expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050. For every one of those 6 billion people on Earth nearly six tons of carbon dioxide is spewed into the air annually. Do you realize that one human being generates over 1,569 pounds of waste a year? That's nearly 125,000 pounds in a lifetime, sixty-two tons! And that's just one person! Half of the land on the earth has already been built on, paved over, and otherwise altered so that it is almost uninhabitable by any species other than humans and the insects and vermin that thrive off of us. And as the population continues to grow we'll need to convert even more land into habitable space for humans meaning inhabitable space for almost everything else. How can we allow that? Fifty percent of the world's original forests have been destroyed as a result of massive land clearing for housing, roads, agriculture, and industries. Do you get what I'm saying? Do you even give a fuck? Your sperm cells are destroying the planet! So, I had to stop you. I had to stop you from reproducing."
Todd paused and stared into Terrence's eyes. There was no understanding there, just a white-hot rage and fear. He was looking at Todd the way you would look at a kid on Ritalin who'd just taken a loaded shotgun down from the mantle.
He looked terrified.
"You don't care do you? Nobody cares."
Todd dropped Terrence's head hard onto the plastic covered vinyl floor and stormed out of the room. Terrence's eyes rolled up into his head as he passed out once again. Todd stomped into his bedroom, slammed the door and flicked on the television. He paced back and forth in his tiny little room. He grinded his teeth and tears rolled from his eyes.
Several times he yelled or screamed. The tears came more forcefully and so did his rage.
"He doesn't understand. He's going to tell the police. What am I going to do? What the fuck am I going to do?"
He punched himself in the head several times as he continued to yell and curse.
"Fuck! Fuck! What did I do? What the fuck is wrong with me?"
He walked into the adjoining bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror, and once again doubted his sanity. There were a few smears of blood on his face from where he must have forgotten and touched it with his bloody hands. His clothes were matted with Terrence's blood and his hands and fingernails were caked with it. He looked like a murderer, a madman. He peeled off his clothes and climbed into the shower. The warm spray splashed onto his chest.
Todd stood there, staring at the tiled wall, trying to collect his thoughts.
I've got to kill him.
It was a simple sobering thought.
I can't let him go now. I've got so much more to do. He'll ruin everything.
Todd stepped out of the shower and turned it off. He began to shiver as the cool conditioned air hit his warm skin. He didn't bother to put any clothes on. There was no need to ruin anymore clothes with Terrence's blood. He walked back into the living room and into the kitchen. Terrence was awake again. He took one look at Todd and began to thrash and shake his head. Todd wondered for a second why he was reacting so violently. He didn't have any weapons on him yet. Then he remembered that he was naked. He looked down at himself and realized to his own embarrassment that he had an erection.
God, this guy must think I'm some kind of pervert.
"Don't worry; I'm not going to fuck you. I'm straight."
Terrence continued to shake his head back and forth staring at Todd's erect cock like it was the barrel of a gun.
"Oh Jesus, are you serious? Calm down. I'm not going to do anything to you. I'm straight! I'm not gay! Oh, fuck it."
Todd stepped over Terrence, noting that the man was probably getting an unwanted glimpse of his asshole and nut sack as he reached across the kitchen counter for the carving knife in the knife rack. He picked it up and looked at it. It was about seven inches long with a serrated edge. Just the thought of using that knife to saw through the big guy's flesh made Todd's stomach do a little flip. He was still straddling him and so the guy was still freaking out at the sight of Todd's naked genitalia. Todd stepped his other leg over him and put the knife back into the rack. There was no way he could have used that thing. Instead, he picked up the cleaver.
Nice and quick.
Terrence had somehow managed to loosen up the tape around his mouth with all the thrashing around he'd been doing.
"Heeeeelp! Don't fucking come near me. Don't you fucking touch me, you sick ass crazy motherfucker!"
Todd brought the cleaver down on Terrence's throat. The blade cut through the big man's esophagus and lodged in his cervical vertebrae. Terrence's body began to tremble and shake. Blood sprayed from the wound in his neck and bubbled up from his mouth. A gurgling, whistling, wheezing sound came from the gash in the big guy's lacerated throat. The chords in his neck bulged as if he were trying to scream. It had not been the quick cut Todd had been expecting. He had hoped to behead him.
It took a bit of effort to dislodge the cleaver from Terrence's neck. There was a sickening wet ripping and cracking sound as Todd yanked the blade free in an explosion of bright red arterial blood erupting from the big man's jugular and carotid arteries which had both been severed. Todd turned his head as his stomach finally betrayed him and he regurgitated onto the plastic, depositing the vegetarian burrito he'd had for lunch into the pool of blood.
Oh, God. This is fucking horrible. Oh, my God. I can't believe I killed the guy. It had to be done. I had no choice. It had to be done.
Terrence was still making those gurgling sounds. His eyes were completely dilated and his lips were moving as if he were trying to speak. His hands were still cuffed behind him and his arms duct taped to his sides but Todd could hear the man's fingers raking the plastic. Todd's stomach heaved again and more of its contents erupted from his throat.
Todd kept his head turned as he brought the cleaver down again and again tossing blood into the air each time he wrenched it free for another blow. The wet sticky crack of the cleaver striking flesh, blood, and bone was making Todd's stomach do flip-fl ops. The bile continued to rise in Todd's throat. His throat was raw and scalded from swallowing it back down. Finally, he stood up and grabbed the serrated knife from the knife rack and sawed the rest of the way through Terrence's vertebrae. Thankfully, the man was dead by then. Terrence's head rolled off the plastic and bounced against the refrigerator.
Todd stared at it. That warm inviting smile that had wooed so many women into having his children was nowhere in evidence. The man had died in terror and agony and it showed in the rictus on his face. Todd stood up slowly on wobbly legs. He was shaken and physically and mentally exhausted. He stepped over the big man's corpse and staggered back into his bedroom. His body was completely covered in blood but at least he hadn't ruined anymore of his clothes. He'd have to figure out what to do with his clothes as well as the body in the morning. Right now he was exhausted. He needed some sleep.
As Todd stepped out of the shower, dried off and climbed under the sheets, he wondered about his ability to sleep with a man's castrated and beheaded body exsanguinating on his kitchen floor. Surely that had to mean he was crazy. Only a psychopath or some sort of sociopath could sleep after something like that, with a dead man in the next room. Todd was too tired to give the question much consideration. He closed his eyes and drifted off, dreaming about his mother's bleeding vagina and his father's ruptured skull just like he always did. They were the only dreams he ever had.
Chapter Nine
The sun intruded into Todd's bedroom, waking him from a sleep filled with gore-streaked nightma
res of pain and death. Perspiration trickled down his forehead into his eyes. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, squinting against the sunlight. His head felt fuzzy and sluggish as if he were waking from an all-night drinking binge. He remembered all the tequila he'd drank the night before just as the headache split through his skull. Seconds later his alarm clock went off. Todd smacked it off the night stand. It continued to blare. Clamping his hands over his ears he stood up and stepped on the clock with his bare foot. The alarm went off and the radio came on. Todd stomped down on it again and again, crushing it into silence. His headache was pounding now, throbbing in his temples.
Todd looked around the room trying to reorient himself. He half expected to see his father's corpse with the skull caved in on one side lying against the wall across the room, the dead priest, chest hollowed out with one bullet, skull collapsed by another, his mother, still bleeding from her vagina, and Terrence Mohammed's headless body. But all he saw was his Sierra Club Earth Day posters and posters of Jim Morrison, R.E.M. and Kurt Cobain, his CD collection, the wall-mounted Sharper Image CD player, stacks of magazines, milk crates filled with books, the futon he slept on with the shattered radio/alarm clock alongside it and the pictures of his mom and dad and his dog Honey that sat on the nightstand by his bed. Todd dressed quickly for work still trying to shake off his headache, the previous nights blood-spattered dreams still echoing in his mind.
After he was dressed, Todd sat down on his bed and opened his laptop. He needed to connect with other like-minded individuals, others who understood the cause. He needed to talk to Heimlich.
Todd clicked on the link in his favorites to the Zero Population Messageboard and a message popped up stating that the link could not be found. He tried it again several times and then tried the link to the Zero Population website. That was gone too.
"What the fuck is going on?"
Todd clicked onto a search engine and typed in Zero Population. The first thing that came up, at the top of the page, was today's headline, "Heimlich Anatolli Arrested for Terrorism." Todd clicked on the link to the story.
October 16th 2009, New York City, New York, Dr. Heimlich Anatolli, Biology Professor at MacDonald University and author of the controversial book Zero Population was arrested today when he and a group of university students attempted to poison New York City's water supply with an experimental sterility drug called Progesterex. Ironically, Heimlich was one of the inventor's of the controversial drug marketed as a non-surgical alternative to tubaligation surgery.
In a written statement given to police investigators, Dr. Anatolli cited overpopulation and the resultant "terminal damage to the ecosystem" as his reason for the attack. In the same statement, he indicated that, if successful, it would have been the beginning of a worldwide campaign targeting 25 of the most populace cities in the world including Los Angeles, Mumbai, Sao Paolo, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Osaka. According to researchers, this would have resulted in the involuntary sterilization of nearly 300 million women. "His efforts would have reduced population growth by more than half. It might have been just what the environment needed," said one prominent Socio-Anthropologist who asked not to be identified. In his statement, Dr. Anatolli was quoted as saying "My only regret is that I failed. Hopefully someone else will carry on my work or else we're all doomed."
Dr. Anatolli will be arraigned today on charges of terrorism and 10 million counts of aggravated assault.
Todd could barely believe what he was reading. He clicked on several other articles but none of them contained any more details. Todd was alone now. His mentor had been captured. All hope was lost. Somehow, Todd had to get his hands on the drug and continue the man's work. He Googled Progesterex and could find no one in America who sold the drug. There was a factory in Beijing that manufactured it but they could no longer legally export it to America.
"There has to be a way."
Todd continued searching the web for another hour until he had to leave for work. He found out everything about the drug except how to acquire it. It had originally been marketed as a hormonal therapy drug for chemotherapy patients only to be discontinued when it was discovered that it reduced the amount of estrogen and progesterone the body produces, sending women into early menopause and rendering them infertile. Heimlich had gotten a grant to continue research on the drug as a safe and permanent form of birth control, a non-surgical alternative to tubaligation.
Obviously, he had perfected it.
The kitchen was a mess. Luckily Todd was already running late for work so there was no time for breakfast even if he'd had the stomach for it. Todd could not believe that he had left it this way. If anyone were to have peeked into his apartment he'd have been on death row in a heartbeat. Terrence's body still lay on the plastic where he had left it. The blood had finally coagulated and hardened in places to a brownish red crust. The man's head was still lying against the refrigerator. Todd considered finishing the job of hacking his body up for disposal, but could think of no way to do it that wouldn't have ruined his clothes and made him even later. Terrence would have to wait until after work.
The big man's body would have to be cut into pieces small enough to haul off in his messenger bag, unless he could borrow someone's car. That was going to take a lot of work. He wondered if he could call Stephanie and ask to use her car. He hadn't spoken more than a couple of words to her since they'd broken up five months ago. Calling her to use her car probably wouldn't go over too well.
Todd looked down at the man and felt a pang of guilt and sorrow. He had murdered another human being. He had not just prevented him from having other kids. He had taken the man away from his existing kids, the kids he had been supporting. They would now grow up fatherless because of Todd.
This isn't what I wanted. Things just got out of control. I'll be more careful next time.
And there would be a next time. Todd couldn't fool himself about that. He was fully committed now. Now that Heimlich was in prison, it was all up to him.
Todd picked up the scalpel from the floor and put it in his messenger bag. He grabbed the last two remaining rolls of duct tape from the four-pack he'd bought at the hardware store. He considered trying to roll Terrence over and retrieve the handcuffs but he couldn't think of any way to do it that wouldn't have gotten his clothes bloody, so instead he picked up the clamps and the stun gun where he'd left it by the couch in the living room and grabbed his bike from where it stood by the front door.
Locking the door behind him, Todd carried his bike down the stairs to the street. As he rode to work, passing cars locked in traffic, belching noxious fumes into the air and coffee shops and breakfast joints filled with chain-smoking consumers destroying the earth one Styrofoam cup and sausage and egg biscuit at a time, Todd's sense of urgency increased.
They have got to be stopped.
Chapter Ten
Todd had no stomach for the job today. The endless line of needy people had no concept of what real poverty was. In America, the average "poor person" had a color TV, A DVD player, a microwave oven, and a car. People in Third World Countries, who lived without running water, refrigeration, heat or electricity, would be justifiably offended by the things Todd saw every day. His first applicant of the day had come in wearing diamond earrings and a platinum necklace. In six years Todd had still not gotten used to the astounding gall of some people.
He wasn't in the mood to fight it today. Todd was still exhausted and, despite taking a fistful of Extra-Strength Tylenol, his head still throbbed with a dull ache. Today, Todd rubber-stamped every application that came in with the exception of one or two obvious cases of fraud. He was too tired to argue with anyone. Then Nicolene came in.
She looked much the same as she had two days ago. Still pregnant. Still strung-out. Only now she was alone.
"Michael's dead. Some guy…a trick…picked him up yesterday and gave him some dope that was uncut. When Michael started convulsing, the guy dumped him in an alley. By the time someone
noticed him back there and called the ambulance he was already dead."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Todd looked down at her belly. "So, what are your plans now?"
"I'm not having an abortion. I just wanted to tell you that. I'm keeping my baby. And I'm not getting myself fixed either. I'm going to get clean. I signed up for one of those Narcotics Anonymous programs. I'm going to kick. I'm going to be a good mom."
Todd was furious. He glared at her without saying a word.
"I need to get on welfare. You can't turn me down. I qualify."
"Are you sure you want to do this? Most of the baby's brain and spine development happens in the first two trimesters.
That child might already be messed up."
Nicolene tilted up her head defiantly. She rubbed her hands over her belly then looked down at it and smiled.
"I don't care. This is all I have left of Michael and I'm keeping it. And if you don't get me that assistance I'm going to tell everyone about how you tried to force me to have an abortion."
Todd looked at the messenger bag sitting next to his filing cabinet.
"Very well then. Which address would you like it sent to?"
Nicolene smiled, satisfied. Todd smiled too. As high as she was, some latent self-preservation instinct still told her that there was something not quite right about that smile. It was perhaps an instinct she had picked up from her many months turning tricks on the streets. She had gotten good at spotting the bad ones and if Todd had pulled up beside her wearing a smile like that, there was no way she would have gotten into his car.
"The one on the application. That's where I live."
"Good."
Todd stamped the application approved and placed it in a pile on his desk.
"You can expect your first check in six to eight weeks."
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