by Stephen Hand
She could see his massive, stinking back through the ventilation slats in her door. He was standing looking into the locker directly opposite hers, bearing down on the small pig she’d put there as a decoy. His back was turned towards her, sweating, heaving.
If Hewitt had taken the trouble to look more closely when he’d first entered the locker room, he might also have noticed that something was missing from one of the tool racks. And now his back was facing her—and she was holding a meat cleaver in her right hand.
Slowly, carefully, she began to open the door, and for one coldly calculating moment she enjoyed his confusion. She’d put the piglet in the locker. She’d laid the bait, and now Leatherface had taken it.
He didn’t know what was happening. He just ranted and fired up the chainsaw over and over. He was too damn stupid to realize it was time for the slaughter man to get some payback.
Erin crept forward behind Leatherface, raised the cleaver and—
Reflection. Mirror inside the locker. Girl behind. Girl in the mirror. Behind!
BEHIND!
Leatherface turned and screeched as the cleaver came down with every ounce of strength Erin could muster. He hauled the chainsaw across to deflect the blade, but in the narrowness of the room, his bulk worked against him. He was too big, too clumsy, too—
THE MEAT CLEAVER HACKED CLEAN THROUGH HIS RIGHT FOREARM.
Blood.
The blood of Thomas Brown Hewitt.
Blood of the maniac. Blood of the murderer. Blood of the psychopath. Blood of the skinner, the butcher, the cannibal, blood of the freak.
The blood of Leatherface!
The chainsaw sputtered, spat and fumed. The pig ran out from under his feet and away. Leatherface looked down at his arm, badly cut and pouring with blood. His face as Kemper was emotionless but his eyes were furious with expression. The shock was nothing. She was nothing. His insanity would not be denied. He—
THE CLEAVER HIT HIM AGAIN.
Erin snarled and buried the vicious steel in exactly the same place, plowing the same crimson furrow, and cutting right through the bone.
Suddenly, his forearm fell limp, pulled down by the weight of the saw gripped tightly in his right hand. But the arm was no longer connected to the elbow by any muscle tissue. And the bone was gone, clean cut through.
Blood was everywhere. The arm bent down at an unnatural angle—ninety degrees the wrong way to the body—and then it was gone.
Leatherface howled as his right forearm fell to the floor, still clutching the chainsaw, his fingers locked on the gas.
The moment the whole gruesome assembly hit the ground, it span out of control—the severed arm and the chainsaw turning round and round with the revving of the engine, spinning insanely within a spiral of exhaust fumes.
Erin jumped back, the whirling sawblade almost hitting her feet, and stared at Hewitt’s bloody stump in disbelief.
She had hurt him—she’d hurt him real bad.
And no one but the young woman could have understood the heady cocktail of emotions that flowed through her at that moment. She was feeling anger, hatred, terror, vengeance, joy, success, and . . . power!
She wasn’t the fleeing victim any more. She’d proved he wasn’t all mighty or invulnerable. She had taken the fight back to him and beaten him. What could he do when his arm had been crudely amputated? His chainsaw was whining out of control on the floor. Just who the hell did he think he was, playing God with people’s lives?
Erin raised the cleaver to finish him off when she remembered Andy.
The hanging boy had begged her to kill him and it had almost killed her. She couldn’t do it, but she had to. She’d taken a long knife and stabbed him through the chest and part of her had died with him.
But here, now, she wanted to take the cleaver and chop the mental Hewitt bastard up into a thousand bloody pieces. Fear and anger had completely overwhelmed her. And now she was acting purely on survival instinct wasn’t she?
Leatherface had no such doubts. Weeping and whining, his whole body shivering with psychosis, he placed a heavy boot down on his own severed arm, stomping on the bleeding butchered limb to keep it from moving any further. Then he reached down with his left hand and picked up both the unfeeling arm and the raging chainsaw.
Erin came at him again, but he was so much larger than her.
She lifted the cleaver to hit him across the chest, but he punched her across the face with his severed right elbow stump. His moist flesh and ripped shirt dragged over her lips, spilling the warm fluid of his gash into her mouth.
Erin fell back, trying to spit the nauseating shit out off her tongue.
This gave Leatherface the time he needed to pick up the chainsaw and slam it against one of the lockers, shaking the cutter free from the postmortem grip of his dead right hand. The useless limb fell to the floor, giving him full control of the weapon.
Erin steeled herself for another attempt. She lifted the cleaver, testing its weight in her hand, then moved forward, screaming, determined to kill—
Too late.
The psycho-freaking maniac had the chainsaw in his left hand, and was swinging it high up around his body, howling, squealing, slinging the power tool in lethal erratic orbits all about him, tracing deathly patterns of exhaust blade homicide in an impossible barrage of death.
The saw was everywhere and she couldn’t get near him. And now she could see that the full fury of his bubonic, syphilitic eyes was tuned upon her. Even maimed, Leatherface was still the darkest nightmare of senseless murder she could ever hope to imagine, and now her fight was hopeless.
He raged at her and screamed. He hurled the chainsaw wildly over his head, in a pure display of destructive madness.
Leatherface was degradation.
Leatherface was despair.
Erin ran for her damned life. Out of the locker room and on to the main floor of the slaughterhouse. There had to be another way out of there and this time she would find it.
She still held the cleaver, but was no longer under any illusion that she could ever be a match for him. But at least she’d won one round of the fight. No, she’d done more than that—she’d disfigured the bastard.
If nothing else came out of this execrable day, Thomas Brown Hewitt would be maimed for the rest of his wretched, miserable existence. He could go back up to the farmhouse and compare stumps with Ol’ Pappy. Thanks to Erin.
You’re welcome!
Leatherface wailed, he cried, he screamed, he came after her, he—
Stopped.
At first his whole body had been shaking with rage, but after a few labored steps, he began to stumble until finally . . .
The chainsaw fell out of his hand and crashed onto the floor, where the engine purred and sputtered, the chain disengaged and meaningless.
He dropped to his knees and then fell back against the lockers. And soon he was on the ground, moaning and clutching at his bloody stump. He was quivering. Pathetic. Bleeding.
At the end of the day, Leatherface was left sitting in the locker room, a subhuman alone among all the animals of the slaughterhouse, cowhide on his feet, humanhide on his face, only you won’t find “humanhide” in any dictionary.
Erin had shown that even stalkers bleed, and that the biggest enemy she’d had to confront was fear, not some deranged retarded cripple with a chainsaw. Hewitt had tried everything to impose his violence upon her, and he had failed. He had killed her friends, changed her life, driven her half-insane and yet she lived.
Erin lived.
FIFTEEN
By the time she had found her way out of the main hall and into the loading dock area, Erin’s mind was in tatters. If she had prevailed against the countless attacks that had been thrown at her, it was because she had fought like the enemy.
She had become a thing that had hacked off a man’s arm with a meat cleaver. She had screamed and dismembered him; letting him dehumanize her almost as much as if he had stolen her face. But within that t
errible realization, a crumb of the original Erin Hardesty still survived.
And she fled, looking for the rainbow that would transport her back to her own life, to a world of innocence where the worst thing a man could do was to smuggle a piñata full of cannabis over the Mexican border. For sure, there was a part of Erin that was still pure and untouched, but right now that part was comatose.
She paused for a moment to see—to listen—if he was coming, but all she could hear was the grunting and murmuring of the animals, even the chainsaw was silent. Which meant he must have been sneaking up after her again.
Erin had no idea just how beaten he was. Crying, gripping his stump. A foot lashed out and kicked at the motionless power tool, and he sat there, head slumped, in a pool of his own blood.
The way out of the loading dock was blocked by a massive roll-top door. At first she ran down to the foot of the shutter and tried to lift it. But, although the horizontal metal segments rippled and clattered in time with her efforts, the door remained firmly in place.
Leatherface still hadn’t caught up with her.
She ran to the far side of the door and found a switch-box mounted on the wall. There were two big, round plastic buttons on the control unit: one red, one green—hardly an intelligence test. Erin thumped the green button and watched eagerly as the door slowly began to rise like an armored curtain.
Her eyebrows twitched and the cleaver was shaking in her right hand, but her face was a picture of manic joy. She had come through another labyrinth intact. First the Hewitt place, then the old house on the prairie, and finally this godforsaken slaughterhouse.
She had had enough of walls and now wanted nothing more than to be moving again. She wanted fresh air. She wanted a car on the open highway. She wanted freedom.
The first thing she noticed when she stepped out of the meat processing plant was that the sun was rising.
My God.
She’d spent almost twenty-four hours there.
The new dawn was the first clear measure of how much time had elapsed since they’d stopped to pick up the teenage girl. Erin was appalled to think she’d spent a whole day running and fighting for her life in this Texan insane asylum. Yet she was amazed that only one day had passed—it had felt like whole lifetimes in slow motion purgatory.
The second thing Erin noticed was that the sky was pouring with rain.
She was already drenched with sweat, blood and the water from the slaughterhouse sprinklers, but this rain was from God. It was fresh, pure, cleansing, and she was only too happy to let it fall down on her as she staggered outside.
She wasted no time.
She ran straight across the dusty parking lot, then sprinted along a dirt road that led back up to the highway. But after a few flagging minutes on the road, Erin slowed to a clumsy jog, then down to a dazed walk.
Her eyes darted in all directions, looking for Hewitt, watching for the sheriff’s car, almost expecting to see Henrietta’s trailer—but ultimately seeing no one and nothing but open prairie. And suddenly she was overwhelmed.
No longer in immediate danger, Erin almost collapsed beneath a landslide of exhaustion. She had been awake nearly all day, she had been running, fighting, she had been living solely on her wits; now that she could unwind, her body demanded time to heal.
She ached all over. She was beat and badly needed sleep. And her mind was a jumble—a highly-strung confusion of nightmarish images and denial, refusing to accept that what she’d seen today was even possible.
The meat cleaver fell from her hand.
It hit the road with a dull clang, but she ignored it and carried on walking.
Her hands and arms hung limp by her side. She had to bring all her willpower to bear, just to keep moving. She had to concentrate.
One foot in front of the other, one foot, got to keep moving, one more step, and another, and another . . .
The young woman had become so ravaged and disoriented that it never once occurred to her: she was heading back along the road in the direction of Mexico. Sure, the border was a couple of hundred miles away, but every step she took was undoing the progress she’d made yesterday morning with her friends in the Chrysler Dodge—not that she would have cared. The one thing she did know about the route she was taking was that it was away from the slaughterhouse, away from Luda May’s hovel and away from the Hewitt place.
Erin laughed.
And then she cried. Her feet walking along the center of the road. Bewildered. Lost. Her mind in jagged shards. Reflecting. Reflecting pieces of memory of the teenage girl in the summer dress. All her life Erin had wanted to be someone like that, walking alone—chased by shadows—a crazy hitchhiker. All her life she’d waited for this moment, hadn’t she? And what would happen after Erin? Would there be another crazy girl walking along the road? And another? And another?
No. Wait, wait, wait! She couldn’t be like the teenage girl because there was no one out here to pick her up. How could she be a crazy hitchhiker if she couldn’t get a ride? Oh God, she wanted so bad to be home right now. Dallas was like a distant—where’d the cleaver go?
She thought she heard a vehicle coming.
Erin checked her clothes. She was still wearing her tank and her flared jeans, all dirty, torn, and covered in blood, and her shoes were busted. But no summer dress, so she couldn’t be the crazy hitchhiker. And she didn’t have a gun. She just had her wild hair, and the fear in her eyes.
The noise was getting close now. It was definitely an automobile engine of some kind, low, rumbling.
Sounded like a truck, rhymed with f—
The big rig came powering along the highway, taking the quiet back route off the Interstate. Bob had done this road many times—took at least an hour and a quarter off the journey, and less chance of being caught gear jamming. He was doing eighty-five, which was good for a haulage truck of this size—but then, the diesel was a triple-digit ride.
It was raining—he had the wipers on full—but the sun was coming, so visibility was okay. The roads through here were so dammed straight, the only thing you got to look out for were some of the dips. Some of the grades could catch you out if you didn’t pay close attention.
Bob took a sip of coke and wiped his mouth. Yep, the truck was going down one of the grades right now. He hit the gas, ready for the gentle up stroke, then drove straight back up the—
What the?
There was someone walking plain in the middle of the road.
He hit the horn.
She wasn’t going to move.
Quickly, he squeezed on the brakes—gently enough to stay out of a skid, but firmly enough to avoid knocking who ever it was flat dead.
He wrenched the wheel and pulled over to the shoulder, making sure he didn’t even clip the girl as he rolled by. The engine stopped.
Looked like a young woman in a pretty bad way. Acted like she didn’t even see him; just kept walking, staring straight ahead.
Bob put on the handbrake, then climbed down from the gleaming high cabin. He was a well-built guy in his forties, but he moved toward the girl with the care and concern of a family man rather than a hard-nosed trucker.
“Hey there,” he called. “You okay?”
Flashback.
She’d said almost exactly the same thing to the dead teenager. Only then, Erin had been the one inside the vehicle, and it was the teenager who’d needed to escape.
Erin stopped.
She turned, looked at Big Rig Bob, and said something he couldn’t quite hear.
“You in a wreck?” he asked.
He could see she was in severe trauma, so he moved very slowly, and spoke as softly as an ace trucker could. Then carefully, very carefully, he placed a gentle hand on her arm and helped steer her back towards the truck. Erin flinched and drew a sharp intake of breath, but she saw his face, smiling, trying to be calm, reassuring. And she saw his truck.
A truck.
A way out of here.
So she let him help he
r on board, and just sat shaking in the passenger seat as he closed the door for her, then mounted up himself and got the rig underway.
Bob was sure she’d been in an automobile incident of some kind. You could be in an accident out here and not be picked up for hours. She was damned lucky he was scheduled to come along like that.
He looked at her. Guessed she was what, thirty, thirty-five? Difficult to tell underneath all that dirt, and she stank awful, like a farm during muckspreading.
“Where are we going?”
It was the first time she’d spoke. Almost caught him by surprise. But he kept his eyes on the road.
“Gonna get you some help,” he said firmly.
Help.
Help . . .
Erin felt more tears welling in her eyes.
The horizon burned with the red dawn of a new day, and, despite the rain, the landscape was awash with gold and scarlet hues.
Erin had every reason to feel safe now. She was with someone—someone who could protect her—and they were driving away.
Nothing could stop them now. Nothing. Not Hewitt with his goddamned chainsaw, not that legless freak in the wheelchair or the retarded bitch in the trailer—none of them. Not even that sadistic son of a bitch sheriff. Who was to say Hoyt was even a real lawman anyway?
Bob didn’t know what to make of the woman. Any second now he kept expecting to see the wreck of an automobile, but so far he’d seen nothing. She must have walked quite a few miles before he’d found her.
He saw a sign by the side of the road: “BIG COW—BBQ.”
Call it the power of suggestion, but his stomach rumbled. And hey, it was getting on for breakfast time.
The girl started crying beside him. In fact she was weeping, getting hysterical. Heck, he needed to get her some place.
“Honey, what’s your name?” he asked, hoping to shake her out of it.
“I wanna go home,” she cried.
“Do you live around here?” Maybe she hadn’t been in a crash after all. But then, what—?
No answer.
Bob sighed and reached into his breast pocket for a cigarette. Lit it up. He’d seen accidents before. You couldn’t spend as many years on the road as he had without seeing a whole lot of wreckage—never could understand why people were scared of flying when you see so many dead bodies on the highway every day. But there was something about this girl that wasn’t quite adding up.