Authors: James Roy Daley
Mark Croft, who turned twenty-nine the week before, saw what was happening but his response was inadequate.
Hands raised, eyes squeezing closed, he said, “Don’t!”
The ax soared between Mark’s open hands and smashed into his helmet. The helmet, which saved his life, split apart but stayed in one piece as Mark dropped to the ground with legs like balsa wood, suddenly thinking about his mother.
He had told her––no,
promised
her––that he’d visit tomorrow. He said he’d stay for dinner, maybe even spend the night. He hadn’t seen his mother or his father in nearly six months and for Mark and his parents, six months was an outrageous amount of time. He had never been away from them for such an extended period. He had a great family; he loved them so very, very much. And it was his parents––Colin and Janine––that he thought about as the blade hit home.
WHAM!
Mark dropped to the ground and Nicolas spun around, gripping the ax with both hands.
A fireman stood a few feet away, holding his hat near his chest. His eyes were wide and his mouth was agape. He had a grey beard and gigantic eyebrows. This was Gary Sharpe, father of three––soon to be the
late
Gary Sharpe. Father no more.
“Perfect,” Nicolas muttered, with his lips pinching together.
He raised the ax up and brought it down again.
Gary’s response was even less effective than Mark’s. He looked up, his stomach flipped, and his chin quivered. He squeezed his fingers into fists and his throat made a noise that sounded like a groan. Then he took the blade right in the face. This caused his neck to snap, his skull to split open, and an eye to pop from his head. As his skull cracked apart and the grey matter from his brain exploded, blood gushed through his giant eyebrows, down his beard, and onto his chest.
The ax blade came free.
Nicolas turned towards Mark once again.
Mark was on the ground, a hand in his lap. Fingers were opening and closing as blood ran from his chin.
Nicolas kicked the hat off, spun the ax around, and smashed him with the blunt end, which wasn’t very blunt. It was shaped like an ice-pick.
All four inches of the pick went into the center of Mark’s skull, making a slapping clapperboard
POP!
as it went in.
His neck crunched; his vertebrae shattered.
Nicolas tried to pull the pick free but found it was stuck. He wiggled the tool back and forth, widening the hole he had created.
Mark’s body seemed boneless now; blood ran from his eyes and nose. The blood was so dark and thick it looked like molasses.
A voice: “What the hell are you doing?”
Nicolas abandoned the ax and spun around. He pulled the gun from the holster and pulled the trigger three times.
Barry Doreen, a veteran on the force, was born with one blue eye and one brown eye. As a result, he spent his entire life being called ‘Wolf.’ And when all three bullets caught Wolf in the chest, it caused him to release a noise that wasn’t completely unlike a howl. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Two firemen left: Douglas Waterier and Kyle Van Ryan. Neither knew they were under attack but both heard the gunfire. For Douglas, the sound of firing came a second too late. He stepped from behind the truck just as Wolf exhaled his last, copper-flavored breath, and Nicolas shot him down.
With Barry on the ground, it was official: the area looked like a battlefield.
Tara and Brett Adkins sat in the minivan with their heads blown off.
Baby Michelle, strapped in her baby seat, looked like a sack of wet entrails––the word
horror
doesn’t begin to describe her remains.
Twelve-year-old Mandy Burton was stuffed into the backseat of the Dodge Charger with a pair of bullet holes in her innocent looking face and parts of her brain smudged against her thin shoulder.
Her dad, slumped over in the front seat with blood still streaming from his chest, had turned bleach white.
Beneath the car, Peter Holbrook’s skull was crushed, flattened beneath the car’s front tire.
Officer Joel Kirkwood had been stripped to his socks and his underwear and dumped in a ditch. In the moonlight, his face seemed to be locked in a scream.
A few feet from Joel’s corpse, Tony Costantino had been shot to death.
Fireman Gary Sharpe had been bludgeoned with an ax and had a hole in his face three inches long.
Mark Croft had the ice-pick end of an ax buried in his skull.
Barry ‘Wolf’ Doreen and Douglas Waterier had been gunned down at point blank range and were lying on the road, less than five feet from the vehicle that had driven them to their fate.
And––
Almost miraculously, one man was left unharmed: Kyle Van Ryan.
Kyle, standing on the far side of the fire truck, wasn’t moving. Once he heard gunfire his instincts told him to stay put. Now he could hear someone talking. It wasn’t Barry or Douglas; it wasn’t Mark or Gary. So who was it?
“This isn’t going the way I planned,” Nicolas was saying. “What am I supposed to do now?” He did a quick headcount of the slain firemen.
One. Two. Three. Four.
There were four. But five had gotten off the truck. One missing.
Nicolas said, “I know you’re there. I don’t want to hurt you, I just want the keys to the truck.”
Kyle didn’t exactly believe the man but decided to take a chance. “The keys are in the ignition.”
Nicolas heard the voice; now he knew where the man was hiding. He was on the other side of the vehicle, not far away. It would be easy to pinpoint the exact spot, but for reasons beyond him, he didn’t want to hurt the man. Not that one; not him.
He said, “You the driver?”
A pause. “No.”
“Then how do you know where the keys are?”
A longer pause; then Kyle answered with the truth. “We’re trained to leave the keys inside the ignition in case the driver is injured. Sometimes we need to move the truck.”
Nicolas shrugged his shoulders. “That sounds about right. Well, I can safely say your driver is injured. Sorry about that. I’m going to borrow the truck.” He climbed onboard and sat in the driver’s chair. Sure enough, the keys were there, free for the taking.
Nicolas started the motor, threw the truck in gear, and drove.
“Thanks buddy,” he said through the open window. “Have a nice fucking night.”
The truck pulled away and Kyle watched it go. Then he looked at his butchered friends and wondered what the hell just happened.
35
The ax was embedded in Mark Croft’s skull. The wooden handle sat on the road like a fallen tree. Gary Sharpe’s corpse was less than six feet away; his face had been split in half. These men were like brothers to Kyle Van Ryan. He had lived with them, trained with them, and played a million games of cards with them. He had gone to weddings and funerals together. And although he enjoyed Mark’s company more than Gary’s, he cared for both equally. These men were family. They were part of the brotherhood.
On the road beside Gary was an eyeball. It was wet and bloody and it had dirt on it. Kyle was staring at it when he heard the voice.
“Help––”
Kyle turned towards the sound. It was Douglas Waterier; he had been shot but he was still alive.
“Dougie,” Kyle said.
Douglas had been transferred from a fire hall in Chicago a few months back. It was his decision. He was fifty-two years old and tired of the big city. He wanted to live in a place where the living was easy. Now he was lying on a road with a broken spine and a punctured lung and a pool of blood beneath his shoulders deep enough to drown in. His eyes had turned dark and his skin had gone pale. The man was dying; soon he’d be dead.
Kyle got down on his knees. “Oh Dougie, what happened here?”
“I got shot,” Douglas coughed out. “Somebody shot me.”
“Let me see.”
“No.” Doug begged, before Kyle had a chance to touch him. “Just, no. Don’t move me. Please.”
Kyle nodded. Doug’s life was draining away and he didn’t want to spend his last moments getting examined.
“I understand,” Kyle said.
“Stay with me.”
“I will, brother. I will. And don’t worry; the ambulance will be here soon.” Kyle said it because it meant it but he was wrong; the ambulance would never arrive.
∞∞Θ∞∞
Nicolas turned a corner a headed for town. He was smiling and singing, wondering if he could get a fire-hose working so he could have some
real
fun. Before long, he saw an ambulance racing towards him with sirens blaring and lights flashing. When the vehicle got nice and close Nicolas pulled the fire truck into the wrong lane and laid on the horn, playing a friendly game of high-speed chicken. He hoped that the two vehicles would collide because he liked his odds of survival.
The ambulance swerved. The driver lost control and the vehicle rolled four times. When it stopped rolling it was upside down on the far side of the ditch with its windshield shattered and its hood crumpled.
Nicolas, still singing and smiling, parked the fire truck at the side of the road and stepped out. He walked over a small hill and past several trees. He shot three medical workers at point blank range, even though two of them were clearly dead.
He was tired, decided to call it a day.
He got in the truck and turned it around. It was not an easy feat but he managed, somehow he managed. And on his way home he drove past Kyle Van Ryan and saw that the man was holding onto a corpse like he had fallen in love. Nicolas waved and smiled and drove on by.
Kyle watched him go.
When Nicolas arrived home he parked in his driveway, thinking about how exciting the day had been, thinking about the bitch in the trunk and the guy in the basement with his legs blown off. He’d deal with them in the morning. In fact, he’d deal with the entire town in the morning.
The time to wage war had arrived.
36
Lying in the trunk next to Pauline Anderson’s corpse, Beth cried many times. The psycho’s trick with the drill had done its damage, both mentally and physically. This fact could not be disputed or denied. Her physical injuries were painful but her mental wounds kept the tears rolling long after her physical abrasions became manageable.
Beth thought she’d go crazy.
She wondered if she’d suffocate. Or bleed to death. Constructing the psycho’s features in her mind gave her shivers. But more disturbing,
much
more disturbing, was thinking she’d never see him again. If that happened, she’d be locked in the trunk forever. How would she survive, by eating what was available? She
knew
what was available: Pauline’s corpse, the things living within it, and not much else.
Time crawled. Flies buzzed. Maggots scurried across her skin and she pretended not to notice. Outside, a raccoon walked next to the car and Beth figured Nicolas had returned with another brilliantly sick joke. The next forty-five minutes were spent waiting for the punch line. And when she heard the fire truck pull into the driveway, she wasn’t sure what to think.
If someone other than psycho-boy was in the driveway, she needed to yell––draw attention to herself. But it
was
psycho-boy; it
was
.
Of course it was.
Who else could it be, the garbage man?
She waited, quite literally holding her breath.
Nicolas walked past the car, slammed an open hand on the hood and shouted, “How’re you doing in there?”
Beth didn’t answer; instead she picked the tire iron up and held it near her chest.
“Not talking huh? Why is that? Is it because I got you with the drill? Is that it? You mad at me? You dead?”
Still no answer.
“Won’t talk.” Nicolas scratched his head. “I can make you talk, you know. Oh yes I can. Do you think the drill is all I can do? Is that it? How would you like me to stick a water hose into that drill hole for the next few days? Would you like that? Huh? Would you? I can do it; I don’t mind. You and the corpse can go swimming together, yes? Do you know what else I can do? I can make a little bonfire beneath the car.”
Nicolas listened.
Nothing.
“I’ve got a jar filled with hornets, too. I ever tell you that? I do. I found a nest near the swamp and I put it inside this big mayonnaise jar that I’ve had since, gosh, I don’t even know when. I poked a bunch of holes in the lid. Every now and then I give ‘em a little water. Sometimes I give them honey. I’m not sure what hornets eat but I know one thing for sure: they’re ready to get out of that jar. Oh yes they are! If I shake the jar, open it, and place it upside down on the trunk… do you think the hornets will crawl through the drill hole? I think they will. Yeah, I’m pretty sure of it. You do you know what else I think? I think they’d be pissed off and ready to wage war. I also think you’re a fucking twat.”
Nicolas listened.
“Maybe you
are
dead. Is that what you’ll have me believe?
Oh no. That brainless bitch is dead. Whatever will I do?
I’ll tell you what I’ll do, ya stupid whore… I’ll drive the fuckin’ car into the lake. How about that? How do you like them apples?”