Crude, dumb, uncaring, and boy-howdy opportunistic. Yeah, Renny was a prize, for sure. Prize catch of the day.
Except that this day, somehow, Victor had found time out from his busy schedule to come back from the dead. This did not shock or be-fuddle Barb overtly. Maybe she’d seen too many monster movies, and lacked the emotional capacity for astonishment. She stared down her reflection eye-to-eye and reminded herself that Victor had done a lot of uppers in his thirty-odd years on the planet. Hell, he was probably spin-ning in his new grave right now—at 78 rpm.
The bathroom light was harsh. It made her feel lonely. She was for-tunate to know that it was a loneliness she could drive away. She wanted Renny on her, inside of her, the fastest way she knew not to feel lonely anymore.
She found him semiconscious and semi-erect. Renny functioned best with a five-minute nap between rounds. Barb woke him up with her mouth. She didn’t say a word, but he awoke anyway. They made a great deal of noise over the next half-hour. Renny always lasted longer once he’d “primed his pump”; his words.
They were both on their backs, kicking away sheets to let their own sweat cool them off, when Barb said, “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Little scritchy noise. Like a mouse.”
“Probably that stupid cat of yours.”
“No, he doesn’t make noises like that.”
“Then it probably is a mouse. This house is—”
“No, listen.”
Renny listened. If the thing making the noise was a mouse, it was dragging off a dog for a bit of fun.
Barb pounded his shoulder. “It’s under the bed!”
“Jesus Christ.” Renny stayed calm and leaned overboard for a look-see.
From beneath the dust ruffle, the baseball bat shot out like a piston, hitting Renny foursquare in the chin and making him see night sky. It still had clots of Victor drying on it. Then something whip-snaked tight coils around Renny’s throat and dragged him down to tussle.
Renny made a gargling noise in the dark as he was reeled in. Discombobulated, he thought he was being engulfed by a giant wiggle-worm with a whole lot of little worms attached. He dug his heels into the rug and fought to breathe. Barb was already making those screamy gasps that truly bugged him, deep down.
It was a hand on his throat. He peeled it off. As he did, another ap-pendage trapped his hand.
Renny pulled back and dragged his rubber-limbed assailant out from under the bed—the preferred place of concealment for seasoned, traditional boogeymen.
It was Victor again.
Moreover, it was Victor as he had been buried that afternoon. Bones all smashed. No head.
Renny was instantly mummified in a barbwire-tangle of leathery muscles and nonliving rubber flesh; it was like trying to wrassle a waterbed. What used to be Victor’s arms and legs—now freed from bones and framework—coiled and constricted into tentacles that were much quicker than Renny’s fist. They slithered snug around his windpipe, his chest, his stomach, and Renny could feel it coming—the big squeeze that would make the life jump right out of him.
Now Renny was making those screamy noises.
He was clawing at his own face when Barb, no longer wailing, charged back from the kitchen, brandishing the biggest meat cleaver Renny had ever seen.
Victor had threatened her with the cleaver once; that was how she’d known where to find it.
And Barb had, in fact, seen too many monster movies. Especially the ones about psychos and kitchen implements; you could get every-damned--thing on cable nowadays. She hacked and chopped and slashed and hollered and only nailed Renny by accident once.
The grabby Victor-thing began falling to pieces faster than a clay vase run through on the wheel with a cutoff needle. Tearing a suffocat-ing creeper of skin free from his mouth, Renny flailed to a sitting posi-tion and sucked air.
“Barb—you cut me open, goddammit!”
“I missed, honey, I’m sorry, okay? That thing was all over the place!”
She helped him stand. He was wobbly, unused to needing help, to being nearly beaten. Their feet buried in the desiccated meat on the floor, she felt him shake. He hugged her tight and genuinely.
“I know. I know, babe…but that thing is ole you-know-who again.”
“Can’t be. No way.” She pressed her face into his neck, not looking. He lifted a scrap of now-inanimate flesh and turned it to the faint light, so Barb could see the tattoo. A cherubic, comic book devil-child looked back at her from a corona of flame.
“Aww, shit—it’s Hot Stuff, Renny!”
“Yep.” Jesus, wasn’t there anyone whose life hadn’t been touched by Harvey Comics?
Victor Jacks had gotten his ink at a Sunset Boulevard parlor called Skin Illos, at the behest of Nikki, who had been his girlfriend of record prior to Barb. Barb had heard you could bleach tattoos by using a laser. She hadn’t been able to work up the spit to suggest this to Victor prior to his very timely demise.
“Renny…hon…I don’t want to make you mad or nothin, but—”
“But?”
“What if Victor…you know, keeps coming back every time we, you and I…you know.”
“Victor ain’t coming back again.”
“What’re we gonna do?”
“What I wanted to do originally. Dump him in the sewer. What’s left of him. Let the rats chow down.”
“Guess we’re gonna need another Hefty bag, huh?”
Barb grimaced at the sliced-and-diced assemblage of tissue on the floor. It relaxed and settled, shifting softly. Renny stared at it, too, pant-ing, with shiny eyes, the sweat leaving his chin in droplets.
“But first, babe—hand me that meat cleaver.”
The manhole cover weighed ninety-five pounds, give or take. Renny had the advantages of a pry bar and good upper torso strength. Thus were the headless, autopsied, dismembered, broken-boned earthly rem-nants of Victor Jacks consigned to LA County waste disposal network.
Hacking Victor into itty-bitty bite-sized morsels had given Renny a peculiar thrill—the same excitement that had granted him a full-on chubby while bludgeoning Vic-baby the first time.
Sucker just wouldn’t give it up. Renny had to admire that, begrudg-ingly.
And if Vic-baby somehow managed to make a third curtain call, why, that’d be the tits, too. Because Renny was starting to enjoy the new, fun things he could do with his hands.
Like what he might do if Barb lost her marbles and started that gawdawful shrieking again…
Nahh. Just a vagrant thought. No problem, there.
Renny yanked his fingers clean and the lid seated with an iron clank. An old pal of his had once broken three fingers by not letting go soon enough, after chasing a frisbee into the sewer. That made Renny think again of Barb. Maybe it was getting time to let her go. True, she’d come to his rescue and handled herself well enough tonight, but what if Victor was some kind of curse or something, specific to her?
You don’t pull back your hand in time, you lose. And it wasn’t his fingers that Renny had been parking inside of Barb, most of the recent past.
Just now, in fact, he was up for another bout. His body urged him to hurry home to her. She would be fresh out of her bath, tasty and scented, and Renny wanted to ride her until she screamed for real.
“Do you hear something? A noise, or—”
“Oh for Christ sake, Barb!”
“I’m serious. Stop it.”
Feeling like a wiener, Renny backed out and listened to the double-time of his own heart, backdraft from his urgent need to climax, soon--sorta-like-immediately. Barb listened intently—she resembled a grade-schooler trying too hard to concentrate—not for sounds from the heart, but telltales of nearing monsters. She was still head down, ass up after coyly asking Renny to do her that way, and she clung to the mattress as though it could render her some psychic truth.
“I don’t hear anything, babe, except maybe your own paranoia bounc-ing back at us from the walls.
” Fed up, he grabbed his smokes off the nightstand. Pretty glib, he thought, for a guy who was strangling on a rope of living dead ligaments about an hour ago.
“I thought I heard the seat fall down in the bathroom.”
“My fault. I left it up.” When Renny strove to impress, he could be the most courteous, thoughtful man on earth. Then, as he procured what he wanted, he let the courtesies slide. Like tonight: He’d left the seat up on purpose, a territorial assertion he knew she’d notice, yet tolerate. The brilliant trick of Renny’s life was that he made sure people always noticed him when he was being a swell guy, so there was less risk of him being singled out when he was being a turd of ethics. Voila—he was known far and wide for being fair, wise and trusty. No way he’d ever sleep with another man’s partner, or murder someone, or even think of doing the deed.
Even to someone already dead.
Renny could take blame artfully, too—whamming it back the way a tennis pro returns a smartass serve. Like the toilet seat thing.
“I admit I left the seat up, babe. Your house, your rules. But that fuzzy cover on the tank makes it fall down again, and—”
“Shh!”
He smoked in silence, having scored his point. Barb took the ciga-rette from between his lips, stole two quick puffs, and replaced it as though afraid of being caught tampering with the evidence at a murder scene.
Renny gave up and went to use the bathroom. He left the seat up.
“Barb, there’s water all over the bathroom floor. I think maybe your pipes are backing up. Roots, maybe.”
“Oh, no! Is it all—you know, messy?”
“Just water. Like a big splash, all over.”
“Renny!”
That brought him back quick enough. What a man.
As he skidded in barefoot, he caught Barb shrinking and pointing. Something had just moved near the juncture of wall and ceiling above her cosmetic table. Renny squinted. The something was low-slung, slid along lizard-fashion, and was now watching them both coldly from seven feet up.
“What the hell is it?” said Renny. “A rat?”
“You ever see a white rat with no hair, with eyes that big? Jeeezus, Renny!” Barb could see pretty well in the dark after all. “Where’s the bat?”
Renny almost chuckled. “I’ll get the damned thing. Whatever it is.”
She stopped him, open palm to naked chest. “No you won’t, either, Renny. Now, I’ve been doin some thinking, and you’re a nice guy and a good man and a good male protector and all that, and I haven’t been holding up my end on this deal, and like you said, this is my house…so let me do this. It’s my turn.”
When Barb let loose with stuff like that it stopped Renny deaf and dumb; how could he even consider dumping a woman this good?
She watched his cigarette glow near the bathroom door. “You just stay right there and hit the overhead lights when I tell you, okay?”
“Yes’m.”
“Go!”
The hundred-watter Barb kept in the ceiling fixture blinded them. The thing on the wall recoiled and dropped behind the mirror. Renny and Barb heard it hit the floor and scrabble into the shadows.
“See it?”
“I see it,” Barb lied. She shielded her eyes and groped around until she found the bat.
“I don’t see it.”
Renny could see the tail of Barb’s cat, poking from beneath the dresser. It was a miserable calico Renny felt was responsible for every one of his sneezes since he and Barb had linked up. When it wasn’t skulking around the kitchen trying to eat everything in sight, it was shedding pounds of hair and clawing the furniture to ribbons. It had some kind of inane cat name Renny could not retain. It didn’t listen when Barb told it no. It never had.
It had probably knocked the toilet seat over, numb little fart.
The tail twitched in that spastic way that announced the cat was revving up for the old chase-and-disembowel routine. Barb told the cat no, loudly. It didn’t listen.
She tried to block it with her foot, but the cat executed a tight dodge and zipped under the dresser, way ahead of her. There followed an un-seen, brief and violent encounter that sounded pretty awful, though nei-ther Barb nor Renny could see any of it.
The cat’s tail whapped Barb in the chest. The cat was no longer con-nected to it. Tufts of calico fur followed, held together mostly by blood.
Barb began making cave-person noises and wedged herself into the combat zone, dealing short, blind strokes with the bat. The bureau be-gan to scoot with each hit, bunching the area rug.
The intruder darted out from the far side. It looked like a hand.
“Barb, it’s a hand.”
“What!” Barb backed off, frantic and hollow-eyed. “What! What! A hand? I don’t care! It hurt my cat!”
“Barb, it ran under the bed.” Renny stepped back from the edge, just in case Barb started swinging again.
Hot for combat, Barb spun. “It hurt Rumplecatskin!” The kill light was in her eyes.
She swept aside the dust ruffle. Two eyes returned her gaze from about a foot in. Then it charged, before she could bring the bat into play, and got a tight grip on her throat.
It was Victor’s hand, all right. He’d grabbed her throat enough times for her to make a lightning ID. Whatever else had befallen Victor’s mor-tal parts, his right hand was still strong and mean as ever. Barb’s wind was cut and in seconds she’d see the purple spots. Victor knew exactly how to throttle her.
She collapsed into a heavy, spread-legged sit-down as Renny dived across the bed, not as fast as he could have been. He didn’t really want to touch it. The severed wrist terminated in a reddish-white bag of muscle, like the fat, nontapered tail of a Gila monster. Renny grabbed that end and tried to yank it off.
Goddamn it, but this was getting to be much more trouble than any-thing was worth.
Barb’s face had shaded to mauve. Renny crawled in tighter, bent back the clutching index finger, and heard it pop as he broke it at the base joint.
Shouldn’t he just let it polish Barb off? Would this all be over then?
Nope, he thought as he levered the middle finger out of the flesh of her neck. No way he was going to be beaten and humiliated by disorganized body parts. He cocked the finger away savagely and smiled when he heard it snap.
There were eyeballs on the back of the hand, and they swivelled a full one-eighty to glare at Renny. The pupils dilated. Barb was sucking wind in big horsey gasps, her face flushing crimson.
Renny remembered the first time he had ever shaken this hand. Howyadoo. Victor Jacks was the sort of guy whose very existence dared you to be better than him, and promised to humiliate you if you tried.
The thumb and ring finger could not hang on alone; apparently Barb had smashed the pinky, a lucky hit with the bat; it jutted crookedly, alienated from the choking operation. Renny pried the hand free and chucked it across the room as Barb fell down. The hand bounced from the wall to the floor, leaving red impact smears. Clumsily, it tried to locomote.
Barb stumbled over and started stomping on it. She got gook all over her heel, slipped and nearly fell again. This enraged her enough to bash the hand with the bat until it didn’t move anymore.
Both of them squatted down at a safe distance and got their first really clear look at it.
Apart from the killer hand and about four inches of forearm, there were Victor’s eyes. Eyes that had always been the color of pastel blue enamel, opaque eyes that did not deal in emotional shades, with the hair-trigger flecks of silver buried deep like vague rumors of madness. The eyes were seated across the first three knuckles on the back of the hand, and looked roped down by strings of muscle and threads of optic nerve. One eyeball had just been imploded by Barb’s death-dance. At last, Renny could recognize the bulbous bag that hung off the far end of the wrist.
“That’s his heart.”
The whole assemblage reminded Renny of something that Victor might jerry-rig on his auto workbench. He was known to be m
iraculous when it came to solving your vehicular woes with a bent coat hanger, spit and a soldering iron.
“His heart.” This was not the sort of news Barb was eager to hear. “His heart, oh godddd…how could it be his heart, they took it out, you beat him to pieces, didn’t you break his hand? Last time?”
Renny honestly could not recall.
“I mean…he didn’t have no head, Renny! What’d the eyeballs do, roll here by themselves—?”
As they watched, the heart-end caved in, voiding blood in a final death-spurt. It made a large, wet, wide stain on the finished wood of the now-exposed floor.
It appeared to Renny as though it had farted. It was kind of funny. “Wow. You really broke his heart.”
She began slapping him. The blows were openhanded and basically harmless. “Renny, goddammit, that’s not funny! That’s his fucking hand! It’s been around my throat plenty of times, and for a minute there I could actually see him, like he’d come back whole to beat me up again, and it’s not funny!”
Barb was a pace and a half from an asylum. Her tirade petered out and left her sobbing. Renny did the right thing and tried to hold her. She let him. If he had given her a Kleenex, she would have dislocated his jaw.
“Okay, okay. Sorry I’m such a jerk.”
Pangs of selfishness could occasionally make Renny feel guilt, or some-thing like guilt. More important right this minute was the abrupt de-duction he’d made while keeping an untrusting eye on the no-longer--moving hand thing.
Victor had been slabbed and gutted…and had come walking back. He’d had all his bones busted and he’d come blobbing back. And Renny had dumped Victor in the sewer and Victor had come back again, from the sewer. Up through the toilet, just like those urban legends about scuba-diving rats, and snakes, and crocodiles, all of which the eyeball-hand resembled.
The Living Dead 2 Page 17