Shut The Fuck Up And Die! (24 page)

The short trip, however, proved easier than
she thought it would be. She pulled one of the crutches free and
wedged it beneath her arm. The top was made of some sort of foam
that had become hard and brittle with age and it almost felt like
an oblong rock pressed into her armpit; but at least she was able
to walk with minimal pain again.

Going up the rickety stairs would be tricky,
she knew, but she hobbled to them, intent on getting the hell out
of the basement and perhaps finding some bandages. Pausing at the
bottom, she took one last look over her shoulder.

Daryl’s body was sprawled across the floor
with Mary’s guts connecting the two like some bizarre umbilical
cord. When his body went limp, his arm had had fallen in such a way
that his left hand lay gently atop his dead mother’s
fingertips.

“
How fucking sweet . . . “

Mona spat on the floor and looked up at the
stairs, mentally working out the best way to traverse them with her
crutch. She was cold, bloody, and her body felt as if she’s just
ran a marathon . . . but, at the same time, there was still that
overwhelming rush that always accompanied a kill. It was more than
just the adrenaline and endorphins pumping through her body.

It was
power
.

It was control.

It was everything that made life worth living
. . . .

SCENE TWENTY

Matt watched the gun bob and weave in front
of him and wondered if Earl would actually be able to hit him. The
large man looked as if it were taking every ounce of his willpower
just to remain on his feet: his knees were buckled slightly and,
even through the snow, Matt could see that there was a glassy haze
to his eyes. There couldn’t be much life left in him: with the
freezing temperatures, the arrow wounds scattered across his torso,
and accompanying loss of blood, it could only be a matter of time
before Earl collapsed. It seemed as if he barely had the strength
to even hold the gun, much less pull the trigger.

Still . . . he’d somehow managed to dig the
weapon out of the snow, haul his sorry ass through the woods, and
make his way back here. Which meant that he had the heart of a
survivor. A lesser man simply would have laid out there in the
wilderness, closed his eyes, and allowed death to claim him. But
this brute . . . he was something else.

In a way, Matt almost respected the man. He
saw in him a lot of the same qualities that he’d recognized in
Mona. You could teach a person to be a marksman; they could also
learn how to stalk prey and not strike until just the right moment.
If exposed to enough violence and bloodshed, the same person could
even be trained not to so much as even blink as they watched the
life drain out of another human’s body. But the innate hunger to
persevere, to push your mind and body well beyond its limits for
the achievement of a singular goal: that was something you had to
be born with.

It was also what made Earl as dangerous as a
hand grenade that may, or may not, have had it’s pin removed. Fate
often had a way of watching over those with the drive for
dominance. Maybe it was evolutionary or perhaps the person’s
personality was simply so strong that events unfolded according to
its influence. Whatever the reason, Matt had seen a time and time
again. A bitch in the woods who took three shots to the head before
she finally stopped stabbing Matt’s father with a broken limb. The
husband in Roanoke who’d had a pistol fall right into his lap when
the night stand toppled over onto his dying wife.

And these rare moments were what made it all
worth it: everything else was nothing more than a passing
amusement, the souls of the dead like tokens spent in the arcade of
life. But times like this one, when Matt felt as if he were facing
down a true contender, those were the instants when he truly felt
most alive. Here in the snow, surrounded by the desolate wilderness
and dilapidated farmhouse, he and Earl were like gladiators facing
off in an empty coliseum. Only one would taste the blood of his
enemy. Only one would emerge victorious.

“
Let’s do this thing.”

With a battle cry that burst from his mouth
in plumes of breath, Matt charged at his worthy opponent. He weaved
through the snow, darting back and forth erratically as Earl tried
to follow him with the muzzle of the gun. Closing the distance
rapidly, he was ready to rip out the bearded man’s tongue out with
his bare fingers if he had to. And that was when Earl squeezed the
trigger.

Rather than a roar that boomed out like
thunder in a snowstorm, however, there was only a soft click.
Earl’s finger pulled the trigger again and again, but each time the
result was the same. With a laugh, Matt stopped; still ten feet
away from the other man, he shook his head as if he couldn’t
believe what he were seeing.

“
What’s the matter, big guy? Out of
ammo there?”

For a moment, Matt’s eyes flittered over
Earl’s shoulder and his smile broadened until it looked as if he
were shooting a dental commercial in the midst of a blizzard. When
he next spoke, his voice was much louder as he squatted down and
picked up a handful of snow.

“
Killing your mother . . . that was
something else. A real hoot, as you’d say. You should have heard
her. The screams, the crying . . . the way she clung to me like a
frightened kid just before I tossed her ass down those
stairs.”

By this time Matt had stood again and he drew
back his arm like a baseball player winding up for a pitch. Hurling
the snowball at Earl, he continued talking, his voice loud and
rapid.

“
You should’ve stayed down out there in
the forest.”

Earl tried to dodge the projectile but it
splatted against his face squarely and exploded in a shower of
snow.

“
You should have just laid out there
and let the storm bury you and then things might not have turned
out this way. If nothing else, you could’ve hid out there in the
woods. Let us think you were dead and then come crawling back home
once we were on our merry way. But, no. You had to think you were
Mr, Tough Guy, didn’t you? You had to have your revenge. How’s that
working out for ya, sport?”

Earl staggered forward as if barely clinging
to consciousness. He’d turned the useless gun over in his hand so
that he now held it by the barrel and brandished it like a club.
Matt, however, seemed nonplused by the man’s stop and go
aggression. He continued scooping handfuls of snow from the ground,
rolling them into loose balls, and lobbing them at his attacker.
And the entire time his monologue continued in its rapid fire
delivery.

“
Your little plaything’s dead. Your
mother’s dead. Your brother’s dead. And soon, you’ll be dead, too.
See, me and Mona we’ve been at this a long,
long
time. That I-77 killer they’ve been
prattling on and on about on the radio? Yeah, that’s us. You won’t
be the first family we’ve killed, not by a long shot. But I can say
this: you were certainly the most interesting.”

A snowball thudded against Earl’s chest as
Matt hopped from foot to foot.

“
You know what your downfall was,
Goliath? Your anger. I had to teach my wife how to channel hers,
just like my Daddy taught me. But you? You let it blind you. You
let it lead you into my little trap out there in the woods. It’s
the reason you’ve got more arrows in you than a flowchart. And it’s
also the reason why you’ve been listening to me prattle on and on
without every realizing that
this
was about to happen.”

Earl never heard the whoosh of the crutch as
it cut through the air. Just as he’d never heard Mona making her
way through the snow as Matt’s taunts covered the sound of her
progress. One moment, he was simply trying to focus on the snowball
tossing asshole in front of him; and the next, pain shot through
the back of his skull as a flash of brilliant light exploded in his
field of vision.

He fell to his knees and wobbled there as his
hands touched the back of his head and came away bloody. Before
he’d even had a chance to comprehend what this might mean, however,
Mona swung the crutch again. This time, it thudded against his
temple and, as the world went dark, Earl Gruber fell face first
into the snow.

At first, he was only aware of muffled voices
that sounded as if they were originating from somewhere in the back
of his head. No real words. Just a lull that rose and fell in
volume. Bit by bit, the sounds began to string themselves into
words; with comprehension there also came a pounding pain in the
back of his head that was ten times worse than any hangover he’d
ever suffered through.

“
. . . sit him up.”

“
Damn it, Mona, I’m doing my best. He’s
a big fucking guy.”

His body was being jostled. He could feel his
rolls of fat jiggling as he was shifted and positioned and,
somehow, he knew that was no longer outside. It smelled like home
here. Slightly musty, a trace of Mama’s powder lingering in the air
. . .

His eyelids fluttered open, but there were
only blobs of color where detail should be.

Was he sitting up? It felt like he was
sitting up . . . .

“
Shit, sweetie, he’s coming to. Be a
dear and whack him again, okay?”

His head jerked to the side as something hard
and unforgiving slammed into his cheek. Darkness overtook him again
and when reality next reasserted itself, it did so with pain unlike
any he’d ever known.

It’d taken a lot of work, but Matt and Mona
had managed to drag Earl’s unconscious body into the house. By the
time they’d made it through the front door, they’d both collapsed
in the foyer and lay there, panting in each other’s arms and
grinning like a young couple who’d just lost their virginity. Earl
had moaned once or twice, but every time the large man had seemed
to be coming around, Mona would swing her crutch with a well placed
shot to the temple.

Dragging his fat ass up the stairs had
probably been the hardest part. It’d taken close to an hour, with
frequent breaks so that Matt could pant for air while he stretched
his aching back. By the time they’d made it to the little hallway
at the top, Mona had knocked Earl into oblivion so many times that
the crutch was bent and the side of his face was nothing more than
a swollen bruise.

Now the large man was propped in a chair with
his arms stretched out before him. His head lay on a tabletop and
the couple stood on either side of him, smiling at one another.

“
You ready to do it?” Matt asked
playfully.

Mona nodded her head so quickly that she
looked like one of the bobble-heads people put on the dashboards of
their car.

“
Yeah,” she said, “I wanna see what
it’s like. See what the big deal was.”

“
Okay then, sweetie. One the count of
three. One . . . .”

“
I love you, Mattie.”

“
I love you, too baby.”

“
You said
two
.”

Mona’s eyes sparkled and she winked at Matt,
who smiled back.

“
Did not. I said
too,
not
two
.”

“
Same difference.”

“
Two . . . .”

“
Now you’re just repeating
yourself.”

“
Three!”

The couple simultaneously swung the hammers
that Mona had found in the shed behind the house after they’d
killed Mary. The metal hit the heads of the spikes that their other
hands held in position, but the metallic ting was overpowered by
the bloodcurdling scream that blasted from Earl’s wide mouth. His
eyelids flew open as the sharp tips of the nails rammed through his
hands but by then Matt and Mona had already swung again. The nails
thudded further into the same tabletop that they’d found Darlene
Honnicker impaled to and Earl tried to yank his hands away from the
torture that burned within them. But it was too late: he was
securely staked to the butchers block table and the action did
nothing more than send bolts of agony racing along his arms.

“
So,” Matt asked as he stepped back to
admire their handiwork, “what do you think?”

“
I don’t know . . . . I mean, it goes
with the room and all. But it’s just not my style, you know? I’m
just not into the whole shabby-chic thing.”

Matt shrugged and picked up the red can that
sat by his feet.

“
Yeah, I can see what you mean. It
seems . . . I don’t know, kind of like
American Gothic
meets
The Scream
. Interesting conversation piece, for
certain. But, in the end, it’s just not us.”

As he spoke, Matt walked around the room,
liberally splashing gasoline on the floor and table. He walked out
of the room backwards, leaving a wet trail to mark his passing and
continued through the bedroom and into the hall. When the can was
nearly empty, he screwed off the little spout, returned to the
windowless room, and doused the rest over Earl’s flailing body. The
fumes were sharp and pungent and wavered in the air like heat in
the desert. Almost immediately, he and Mona began coughing as their
eyes watered with tears.

“
Come on, Mattie . . . let’s blow this
joint.”
Mona slipped her arm around Matt’s shoulder and allowed him to pick
her up as if she were a bride being carried across the threshold.
Kissing him gently on the cheek, she glanced down at her bandaged
leg and smiled.

“
If I’d known I would get this type of
treatment, I would’ve got myself stabbed in the leg a long time
ago.”