“Sounds interesting. Wanna come?”
She patted her tummy. “Baby on board. Can’t be running after monsters and such.”
Rex fidgeted anxiously. “Um, sorry about this, Bruno. This sounds important.”
Bruno laughed. “It’s okay, Rex. I understand. We’re still on for Saturday, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Great. I’ll let you get back to work then. Remember to take your medicine.”
“Sure, sure,” he said in a distracted tone, mentally compiling a list of monsters capable of this kind of violence.
Bruno got up from the couch. “Take care of yourself, Rex. We’ll see you in a couple days, okay?”
He turned to look at her and smiled. “You bet.”
As he watched this beautiful, pregnant woman walk down the dark hallway toward the door and disappear, a wave of profound sadness overwhelmed him. He knew that Bruno would never have that baby, and he cursed the gods for their cruelty.
Rex turned up the volume on the TVs again to see if he could glean any more useful information. He knew the area around the crime scene very well, but he wasn’t sure what his plan would be when he got there. He stepped into the bedroom to change clothes.
Minutes later, he returned to the front room wearing his Asskicker attire — black leather coat, black shirt, black pants, and black combat boots. Bruno always told him he looked like Johnny Cash’s bodyguard in this outfit, and Rex took it as a compliment, although he had no earthly idea who Johnny Cash was.
Built into the wall behind the desk was a large cabinet. Rex opened the sliding doors to reveal his personal armory, containing guns, knives, assorted crucifixes, a .50 caliber wooden stake gun, a ghost trap he had bought from the Ghostbusters’ bankruptcy auction that didn’t work for shit, and a dozen identical silver baby crowbars.
He briefly inspected the inventory, but there was little point to this, because invariably only one weapon would ever do. He grabbed a silver crowbar and slipped it inside his coat, and then headed out the door.
Chapter 8
Dementia Sabbath
Dementia Sabbath sat in the back of a shabby, obviously unlicensed cab as it wended through city traffic. She wore a burgundy suede trench coat over a silk blouse and leather pants and knee high leather boots. Her face was flawless alabaster, topped with a cascade of flame red hair. She was tall, gorgeous, spectacular, and presently very concerned for survival of the human race.
Through the windshield she could see they were approaching the crime scene, which was swarming with cops and reporters. There were police barricades ahead, which detoured traffic and kept out the morbidly curious.
The cab driver, a bullet shaped man with a dreadful combover, grunted and honked his horn. He wanted to get a lot closer to the action to impress his beautiful passenger, but the law of physics that did not allow more than one automobile to occupy the same space had foiled him again.
“Police barricade, miss. This is as close as I can get.”
“This will do fine. Pull over here,” she said.
The driver obeyed, guiding the taxi to the curb. Dementia noticed his photo ID duct taped to the back of his seat. It read: “Yousef Zarin,” and was surrounded by pictures of his family — a wife and two teenage daughters.
The driver turned to look back at Dementia through the scratched plastic partition that separated them.
“Sorry about the broken meter, miss. Let’s call it eighty bucks even.”
Dementia took a lip balm from her coat pocket and applied it leisurely.
“That won’t be necessary, Yousef. I never carry money. Just forget you ever saw me and go back to work.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and then smiled. Then he picked up his clipboard and struck her name off his list of passengers.
She tucked the lip balm back in her pocket and prepared to exit the cab. Looking again at the family photos, Dementia said, “You have a beautiful family, Yousef. Why don’t you take them on a picnic this weekend?”
Once again, Yousef stared at her vacantly. Then he grinned.
“Yes. They like picnics.”
Dementia stepped out of the cab and Yousef Zarin drove away. She walked the final half block to the barricades and stopped at the yellow police tape. Standing in the rain for a minute, she examined the hectic crime scene, taking in every detail, noting every cop, reporter and paramedic.
Then she stepped over the police tape.
* * *
A short time later, Rex Havoc arrived at the murder scene. He parked the Studebaker down the street, a safe distance from the activity. Through the windshield, between beats of the wiper, he had a clear view of the Metro bus, and was surprised to see the scene apparently deserted. Police tape and barricades bordered the crime scene, and lights had been set up for the investigators, but there was not a living soul to be seen anywhere. He got out of the car for a better look.
He walked past the barricades, encountering no resistance and no sign of investigators. The place should be swarming with cops and reporters, but there was nobody, as if this small part of the city had been suddenly raptured. Which was ridiculous because all the angels Rex talked to said the Rapture wouldn’t happen until April Fools’ Day.
Cautiously, Rex approached the bus. Through the windows, he could see some of the victims’ bodies still sitting in their seats, their corpses withered like peat bog mummies, and their eyeless faces frozen in unimaginable torment.
Something inside the bus moved. It was a figure, a woman, carefully examining the cadavers. An investigator, perhaps, but Rex thought otherwise.
Inside the bus, Dementia sensed she was being watched. She spun around to look out the window, but saw nothing. She returned to her work, and was shocked to see Rex standing in the bus aisle only three feet in front of her, giving her a steely glare.
Dementia was absolutely stunned. The doors were all closed, and she had no idea how this man got onto the bus without her detecting him. But there he stood, bypassing every one of her nine senses.
“Where is everybody? Where are the investigators?” Rex asked, fairly certain he wouldn’t like the answer.
Dementia eyed the man with deep suspicion.
“I sent them out for a beer. Why don’t you go with them?”
Rex surveyed the carnage aboard the bus, and furrowed his brow.
“I think I’ll stick around,” he said.
She gasped, astonished that this stranger could possibly ignore her suggestion.
“Well, that’s certainly unusual,” she said after a moment. “I guess we’ll have to do this old school.”
She extended her arms, and the fingernails on both hands instantly extended a full two inches, becoming sharp and curved, like raptor claws. Rex stood his ground, reaching into his coat for his baby crowbar.
Dementia slashed at Rex’s face, but her claws passed through him as if he were no more substantial than smoke. Surprised, she slashed at him again, but this time he blocked her arm with his crowbar. Grabbing her by the throat with his other hand, he lifted her off her feet and slammed her down onto an empty bus seat. He held her down and raised his crowbar to smash in her skull. But his crowbar hooked on the metal handhold overhead, slipping out of his grip as his hand came down violently.
She used the distraction to kick him backward, into the lap of one of the victims seated across the aisle. She rose to her feet and thrust the heel of her boot at his face, but Rex ducked out of the way. Her heel broke through the fiberglass seat and got caught. Immediately, he grabbed her leg and flipped her backward, slamming her against the farebox at the front of the bus. Rex retrieved his crowbar from the handhold and swung for her head, but she caught his arm mid-swing and squeezed. She was stronger than him – a lot stronger. He thought she would pulverize the bones in his wrist.
When Rex loosened his grip on the crowbar, Dementia pulled the crowbar away with her free hand and flung it through the bus’s windshield. She grabbed his face,
which was solid now, and was sinking her claws into his cheeks, intending to rip the face clean off his skull. He smashed her hard in the mouth with his fist, and she hit the floor.
As Dementia looked up to see Rex moving toward her again, she saw a big, bald cadaver with lots of prison tats seated nearby. The bald corpse stood and grabbed Rex in a bear hug. He tried to twist free, but was having difficulty as more carcasses began moving and grabbing him. Rex knew she was controlling their movements somehow, and he was becoming overwhelmed. Then he saw her right arm raise and pull back the sleeve of her coat, revealing a queer metallic device attached to her forearm.
She aimed the device at Rex, and he ducked just as an incredible blast of energy issued from the weapon, blowing a hole through the top of the bus. But this was more than a weapon. It had created a vortex, and was pulling everything in its immediate wake into a dimensional whirlpool. The cadavers holding Rex were pulled one after the other into the void, which shredded the bodies to atoms before it swallowed them. Then he felt himself being dragged into the vortex, and he frantically reached out to grab a nearby handhold as Dementia raised the device to fire again.
The vortex proved too powerful and pulled Rex through the open hole in the roof. Tumbling backward through the opening, he snapped out with a hand and grabbed the ragged edge of the roof hole. He clung desperately to the roof, his hands gripping torn metal as the vortex pulled everything around him into the void. Moments later, the vortex evaporated and Rex dropped heavily onto the top of the bus.
Inside the bus, Dementia picked herself up from the floor. She heard sirens approaching. More police, doubtless, wondering what happened to the first shift. Dementia rolled the sleeve of her coat over the device on her forearm, then ran toward the windshield and crashed through it. Landing with panther-like grace on the asphalt, she ran swiftly into the shadows.
Rex heard the sirens as well. He lay on his back atop the bus, exhausted, the rain washing blood into his eyes. With great effort, he rolled himself off the top of the bus, hitting the ground with a painful thud. As he stood, he saw police cars approaching the barricades from every direction, and cops with guns drawn were rushing toward him. Rex paid no attention to the wall of police closing in. He was scanning the area, looking for Dementia in the crowd, but she was long gone.
He saw his crowbar lying on the street and picked it up. As he stood, Rex felt a gun barrel pressed against the back of his neck.
“Drop the crowbar,” said the man with the gun.
Rex complied, letting the crowbar drop to the street with a clang. He raised his hands in surrender.
The gun and the voice belonged to Assistant Director Chaney, who had just arrived on the scene with the second wave of cops. He stood behind Rex, patting him down for other concealed weapons but finding nothing.
“Rex Havoc,” continued Chaney. “Why is it whenever there’s a shitstorm brewing, I can usually find you at the center of it?”
“Agent Chaney. Good to see you, too,” said Rex, recognizing the voice.
“It’s Assistant Director now. You want to come with us, or do we have to do the baton dance?”
“No, too many of your cops will get hurt. I’ll come with you.”
High above the crime scene, hunkering on a fire escape in the dark, Dementia watched Rex being interviewed with acute interest. This grim, determined man was unlike any human she had ever encountered, and he fascinated her.
Three policemen moved in, handcuffing Rex and pushing him into a squad car. As they drove away, Chaney stood alone in the rain for a minute, studying the crime scene. He looked up, peering at the nearby rooftops.
On the fire escape, Dementia ducked reflexively, but she was too deep in shadow to be seen. She watched Chaney walk to his car and drive away, following Rex and the others to FBI headquarters. Then she leaped up three stories to the next rooftop, and was gone.
* * *
Rex sat alone in the interrogation room of the FBI offices at the Federal Building. He drummed his fingers impatiently, waiting to be interviewed or beaten with a rubber hose or whatever the hell they did to people in this place. His hands were handcuffed and chained to a steel table, and he noticed there were four bottles of water in a bucket of ice at the other end of the table, well out of reach. Was this just an oversight, or were they trying to sweat him? It didn’t matter because either way it really pissed him off.
Minutes later, Chaney walked into the room and placed a laptop on the table. He looked at Rex, who was downing his third bottle of water. Only one bottle was left in the ice bucket, which seemed impossible for Rex to reach, but Chaney shrugged it off.
“I thought the Asskickers moved their operations to Europe,” said Chaney.
“We did. Things took a bad turn in Romania. I came back to take care of some business.”
“That was you who shut down the Aldente Clan last night, wasn’t it? Impressive work. Why didn’t you just call us?”
“I did. You were too slow. They were about to kill that little girl.”
Chaney didn’t argue the point. He sat down at the table across from Rex.
“So, what do you know about these bus murders?” asked Chaney.
“Very little,” said Rex. “There was a woman on the bus – a tall redhead — but I think she came afterward. We exchanged hellos, and then she tried to kill me. She got away shortly before you arrived.”
“Yeah, we got her on video. The bus cam was still rolling.”
He flipped open the laptop and turned the screen toward Rex. The video showed Rex and Dementia fighting in the aisle, surrounded by a lot of dead passengers.
“Tough girl,” said Chaney.
Rex nodded. “You’re tellin’ me.”
Chaney continued: “Somehow this woman talked every cop and reporter into getting lost so she could inspect the bus in private. I found them all at a nearby bar drinking beer.”
“You have an ID on her?” asked Rex.
“Not yet. We also have video of the killers, but they’re not in the database either.”
Rex looked again at the computer screen. This video showed Danny and Naomi calmly killing off the passengers one by one. The weirdest thing was there was no panic or resistance whatsoever from anybody on the bus. They all sat quietly in their seats until it was their turn to die, and then screamed horribly as their lives were torn away from them.
The last shot on the video showed Danny and Naomi, smiling and waving to the camera as they got off the bus.
“You’re the expert on this monster shit. What the hell is this?” asked Chaney.
Rex slowly shook his head. “I’m not sure. They appear to be draining every atom of usable energy from these passengers. They may be a form of succubus. Or maybe something new. I’ll have to do some checking.”
Still chained to the table, Rex rose from his chair.
“Anyway, I think I have all the information I need,” he said. “Thanks for your help, Assistant Director.”
Chaney glared at him. “Listen, Rex, I brought you in for questioning, not a consult. I don’t need another Atomic Bitch situation.”
“It all worked out in the end, didn’t it?”
“I’m serious, Rex. We’ve got this.”
Rex held up his handcuffed hands. “Am I free to go?”
Chaney glanced down at the laptop and tapped a couple keys to shut it down.
“I have no reason to hold you,” he said. “Just do me a favor, okay? Keep me in —”
There was a sound of handcuffs clattering on the steel table, and when Chaney looked up, Rex was already gone.
“– the loop,” Chaney said, finishing his thought.
He shook his head wearily.
Two more years to retirement, he thought. Then he could get on that sailboat he was making payments on every month and sail away forever from all this happy crap.
Chapter 9
Joey Clawhammer
Joey Clawhammer had the world by the balls.
At
28 years old, his drug empire was spreading faster than a Kim Kardashian sex tape. He had 35 full-time employees, four of them just to count his money, and he was on track to move more product this year than anyone else in the tri-state area. All the local cops were on his payroll, and his loyal gang of former mercenaries were stone cold killers. Best of all, he had just made the biggest deal of his life with the third largest drug cartel in Uruguay.
He had cars, boats, homes, an Apache helicopter, even an island somewhere, although Joey had never seen it. It had penguins living on it; that’s all he knew.
Not bad for a poor kid from Peru, the youngest in a family of twelve. He was Jose Apaza then, and had spent his youth guiding tourists up the mountain trail to Machu Picchu, day in and day out, for twelve goddamn years. This job came to an abrupt end when he got into an argument with a retired couple from Denmark, and then stole their money and pushed them off the mountain.
He fled the country and went to work for his older brother, Carlos, in the United States. Carlos had a thriving drug operation in the Bronx, and he put Jose to work as an enforcer. Jose liked the money he was making, but he loved the killing, so much so that his brother – no slouch himself when it came to dropping bodies into the East River — became alarmed by Jose’s viciousness and fired him.
Enraged by his brother’s colossal act of betrayal, Jose broke into Carlos’s house that night and killed him with a claw hammer. Then he cut up the body and sent pieces of it to everyone in Carlos’s gang, along with a selfie of Jose holding the bloody claw hammer. It obviously had the desired effect, because faster than you could say Keyser Söze, Jose was installed as the new boss of the organization.
Soon afterward, Joey Clawhammer – as Jose Apaza now called himself — moved his base of operations into an abandoned tenement in the Bronx, a seven story apartment building with optimal views of the street. The place was a pigsty, but Joey turned it into a fortress. There were armed guards on every floor, keeping an eye on the cocaine as it was stepped on and bagged for distribution. He had an arsenal that rivaled any National Guard armory, including rocket launchers, Uzis, grenades, land mines, even a gold machete, which Joey kept nearby to chop the hands off thieves, or lop off the head of anybody who forgot to remove his hat indoors.
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