INSIDIOUS ASSASSINS

by Jack Ketchum

  He had upset the bosses; not something you do—bad for business. Getting back into their good graces was paramount. “Snap out of it, buddy,” he grunted as he slapped his face a couple of times to psych himself up.

  Not only an expert marksman, Jacob also excelled at tracking people, a talent he honed after many years of black-ops work overseas in “The Sandbox.” Therefore, he figured tracking a man whose face looked like someone took a brick to a cantaloupe should be like a jaunt through a meadow.

  He started with the hospitals and struck out. Not one person reported a case even remotely resembling the target. Outside the man’s apartment building, Jacob watched from a safe distance as police cordoned off the area and stood at attention by the entrance. Detectives shuffled in and out of the complex, obviously confused by the grisly scene with a missing dead body.

  His patience waned. He had until the end of the day to rectify the situation or else he’d end up a free agent with a target on his own back.

  Think, think, think!

  He decided to backtrack to where witnesses had last seen the mark. The main strip of town was a big area and had its good and not-so-good sections. A guy all banged up as that might stand a chance of hiding out in the shadier parts of town. Up and down each filthy alleyway, Jacob looked for any signs that his target had been around. Witnesses. Bloodstains. His body.

  Still no dice. “Where would I go if I was a half-dead, bloodied mess in a shirt and tie?”

  As the day’s light began to fade between the tall buildings, the town’s more unique and unsavory residents seemed to ooze from the cracks in the pavement. Jacob continued his search, determined to finish the job he thought he finished once already. Up ahead, a woman strutted forward along the sidewalk. Definitely out of place around these parts, her uptown fashion sense and sparkly jewelry immediately caught the attention of the neighborhood dregs. She met Jacob’s gaze and kept it there. From a distance, she seemed well put together and ready for action, but as she got closer, he noticed dirt stains on her arms and legs. Her hair that he thought she had pulled back into a bun was actually matted to her head, her outfit disheveled on her frame.

  She smiled at Jacob as she approached, her smirk nothing more than a mouthful of rotting teeth and gums. Jacob tried not to maintain eye contact, but couldn’t help himself—she looked like a damned walking corpse. He grimaced as she licked her dry, cracked lips, her tongue darting out like a bloated slug.

  Then he noticed the deep gash around her neck, from when he garroted her about two months ago. Worms and maggots weaved through the breach in her throat, squirming between the desiccated folds of the laceration.

  This is impossible!

  Jacob never sugarcoated it to anyone. He was a monster and he never denied it, not even to himself. It was his detachment from his fellow humans, the desensitization he carried with him his whole life, that made him such an asset to The Collective. Since the beginning, it was what helped him carve out a fruitful and lucrative career in the murder-for-hire field, even before he hitched his star to the Machiavellian corporation. He had also seen some shit in his lifetime. Whether here in the states or across the ocean in the sandstorm of enemy territory, he had seen and done more than his fair share of primal evil.

  But ... this business before him was just absolutely ridiculous.

  People on the street pointed at her, gawked as if she were a sideshow attraction, but they sure got out of her way in a hurry, not wanting anything she might be selling. Oblivious to the spectators, she reached out toward Jacob, who, still staring in disbelief, reached for his gun. She hissed at him through her putrid scowl and then lunged.

  “Fuck this!” Jacob blurted just before firing three rounds, center mass, into the woman’s chest. The street cleared of all witnesses as if the sound of gunfire made them evaporate back into whatever hole they called home. The woman dropped to the sidewalk with a meaty thud. No blood spilled out of the wounds, just a fetid stink that made his eyes water.

  He saw something on the back of her neck, a small flower tattoo that he recalled from their previous encounter. Yup, that’s her, alright. He slid his gun back into its holster, looking around nervously before booking it down an alley.

  Jacob paced in front of his building, trying to release his anxious energy. He did his best to keep his voice to a whisper as he talked into his phone. “I don’t care what you say. This is impossible! She was like a walking friggin’ corpse and she had the smell to prove it.”

  “Let’s not get carried away, Jacob,” said the man on the other end. “Discussions about the reanimated corpses of the people that you’ve already received payment for killing is not going to help your case any.”

  “Listen to me, asshole,” he spat into the receiver, immediately regretting his choice of words. “I know how this sounds, but I know what I saw.” He left out the part about the maggots writhing around her opened throat. “I don’t know how or why, but someone is seriously fucking with me.”

  “Mr. Wright, do I have to remind you that you’re on a timetable here? Time is running out and you still have a job to finish. All this nonsense you’re spouting is making me regret my decision to continue soliciting your services.”

  “You don’t understand,” Jacob said, almost pleaded. “Something is wrong. I just need some time to—”

  “No!” the man boomed. “Finish the job now and maybe you’ll still have a life to retire to. Is that understood, Mr. Wright?”

  “Unquestionably.”

  “Good.” Click.

  All Jacob wanted to do was take a long, hot bath and let the insanity of the day disappear. He tried to remind himself that none of it was real. Couldn’t be. If someone wanted him dead, had gone to such lengths as to make him think dead people were after him, he most certainly was going to make their success as difficult as possible.

  He slid his key into the lock and shuffled right down the hall to his secret room behind the wall in his bedroom. “Now where did I leave my vest?” he asked himself as he rummaged through totes and shelves of all sorts of tactical gear. “I seriously need to clean this place. Looks like a goddamn Army & Navy store threw up in ... ah, there you are.” He lifted the Kevlar up to the light, admiring the craftsmanship that saved his butt multiple times, as demonstrated by the dents left by some not so stray bullets.

  With his determination renewed, he slipped on the vest and grabbed a new gun strap lined with reserve clips, just in case things spun even more toward the absurd. Jacob backed out of the handmade doorway in the wall and slid the fake panel back into place. Something tickled his sixth sense, the same reliable sense that had saved him on many a prior occasion. It rarely belied him.

  Someone whispered.

  Jacob whirled around and pulled his gun out in one fluid motion. He saw no one, yet he didn’t relax his aim as he surveyed the empty bedroom over the barrel’s sight. Seconds passed as he stood on alert. Finally satisfied by the silence, he lowered his aim and holstered his piece.

  He checked his alarm clock as he walked by the nightstand. “Christ! Running out of time.”

  A faint metallic, sickly sweet smell crinkled his nose as he neared the door to the hallway, giving him pause. His cell phone burst to life in his pocket and startled him dizzy. After a couple of rings, he grabbed it. “Restricted number?” Against better judgment, he answered the call. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Mr. Wright.” A man’s voice, thick with a Creole accent. “I hope this evening finds you well and that I’m not,” he started, only pausing to chuckle, “interrupting anything.”

  “Who is this?” Jacob asked. “How’d you get this number?”

  “Relax, Mr. Wright. No reason to get excited. I take it you received my message?”

  “What message? What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, I am sure you know.” His voice brimmed with confidence. “Have any bad dreams lately?”

  Jacob’s aggravation grew to exponential heights. “How did you know about ...
who are you?” Incredulous, he stared at the phone before placing it back to his ear. “Listen, fella, I have no frickin’ idea who you are or what you want, but you are fucking with the wrong son-of-a-bitch!”

  “The dream was the first of many things I have planned for you, as I’m sure you are intently aware.” He chuckled, again. Jacob could feel the man’s twisted coolness emanate through his phone. “Things are going to get much more interesting for you this night, Mr. Wright. Soon you will understand and feel my wrath, my pain.”

  “Eat me!” Jacob shouted. “You got some brass balls, buddy. I don’t have time for this!”

  As he was about to hang up, Jacob heard the man laugh, clearly amused. “Farewell, Mr. Wright. My son, Nicolas, wishes you safe travels on your journey. You remember Nicolas, don’t you?”

  Jacob’s face dropped; color drained from his complexion. His head spun, whipping up ghosts of the recent past.

  “He wants you to know that he will be there to greet you in the Afterlife!” The man continued to snicker.

  “Then I guess I’ll see him in Hell!” Jacob pitched his phone across the bedroom. It smashed into a mirror and exploded, raining fragments everywhere.

  Images flashed through his mind: the nightmare with no head in his dream, the woman he had strangled to death in her office late one night, the face of Nicolas when the bullet ricocheted and sliced through his carotid.

  That wasn’t my fault, his inner voice screamed. He was gonna be as good as dead soon anyway!

  Jacob, for the first time in years, began to panic. He was well aware that he no longer had time on his side, regardless of the job’s outcome. “Calm down,” he told himself. “Screw that voodoo horseshit.” He pulled his gun, reflexively checking the clip, and headed out of the bedroom. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  At the threshold that separated his safe haven from the lunacy befalling the world outside, Jacob took a deep breath and caught another whiff of that same coppery scent that had bombarded him earlier. He yanked the door open.

  Two hands reached for Jacob’s face and throat, intent on inflicting maximum damage. The nail of a crooked finger raked across his face, digging out a hunk of cheek with it. Jacob stumbled backward, losing his gun before slamming into the wall. The force of the blow knocked him into a coat rack and the hanging picture on the wall behind it. He fought to remain conscious after his brain collided with the inside of his skull from his abrupt impact with the laminate floor.

  Everything started crashing down around Jacob. Sanity no longer spun out of control; instead, it quickly rose to the surface like the dirtied water of a clogged latrine, threatening to overwhelm him. And here he was—without his plunger.

  With a cursed glint in his one good eye, Mr. Hammer-Smashed-Face lunged again. Jacob—with the determined, albeit sudden, wherewithal of a man in mortal danger—snatched a broken arm of the fallen coat rack and thrust it between the third and fourth rib, puncturing the half-faceless man’s lung before imbedding it with a sickeningly wet squish into his heart. That seemed to halt his forward momentum and he fell flat on top of Jacob like a sack of beef innards.

  Jacob gagged at the awful stench that oozed out of the wound. “Get the fuck off me!” he blurted as he shoved the man’s motionless corpse away with a mighty heave. “That’s the second time I’ve killed you. You asshole!” Whether the reanimated cretin had been breathing prior to having his lung ventilated, Jacob didn’t know. Jacob just stared as black sludge poured from the breach—glub, glub, glub—it’s wretched, oily appearance matched only by its revolting stink.

  He gave the corpse one last, solid kick for prosperity before scooping up his firearm. “Piece of shit.”

  “Hey. Is everything o—?”

  BANG!

  Jacob realized his adrenaline pump was on overload. His nerves were tighter than razor wires. His neighbor from down the hall must’ve heard the commotion and, in her infinite nosiness, decided to check out the situation. Now, her elderly brains streaked across Jacob’s front door, sliding down with the consistency of raspberry jam.

  “Why’d you make me do that? You stupid, nosy old bitch,” yelled Jacob as he holstered his gun and leapt over the reservoir of blackened sludge pooling on his floor. He already knew that Mrs. Fitzgibbons was gone, but he felt for a pulse regardless. While she was an annoying little snooper, she didn’t need to have her skull aerated in such a manner. Soon, all the noise and gunfire would rouse the other inhabitants of the apartment complex. Shit’s getting even deeper!

  As Jacob knelt before Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s corpse, he heard the distinct sounds of locks disengaging and door chains sliding off their guards. Fuck! He bolted down the hallway as all the doors opened in unison. He would have to forsake his abode and all his possessions, knowing that he could never step foot back inside this building. He was through ... done. No more jobs with The Collective and no more freedom if the police caught up to him.

  All the opening doors were a blur as Jacob made his hasty escape. He didn’t recall this hallway to the elevator being so long. Every time he turned a corner, he found nothing but more opening doors and the deadpan faces of his neighbors. In chilling unison, they all opened their mouths and spoke, their collective voice saying the same thing, “Feel my wrath ... feel my pain.”

  Right away, Jacob recognized the voice as the father of the man he accidently killed while on the job in Haiti, Nicolas In time, all the doors of the ever-expanding hallway opened and filled with the gaping and whitewashed eyes of his neighbors as they repeated Jacob’s tormentor’s mantra like a broken record.

  The hallway branched off to the right and Jacob kicked his pace up a notch, hoping that the exit to his current metric ass-ton of problems would be around the corner. He did his best to ignore the thunderous voice that filled the hall and vibrated inside his skull. All they did as he raced by them was glower while repeating the same thing. As he zoomed by one open door, he launched a right hook into one fellow citizen’s pale face to no reaction whatsoever, despite the resounding crack of the man’s head smashing into the doorjamb.

  Yet, he had the corner in his sights. Almost there—!

  No sooner than the thought popped into Jacob’s head, the ragged, moldy corpse of Nicolas turned the corner before him —all the way from Haiti. Everything switched to half-speed as Jacob’s face contorted into a grimace with a side order of what-the-fuck.

  Feel my wrath ... feel my pain ... feel my wrath ... feel my pain

  To Jacob’s utter dismay, the undead behemoth of a man lurched forward, looming like a mountain, his shadow engulfing the hit man’s puny form. Nicolas opened his mouth, “Feel my wrath ... feel my pain.”

  Jacob’s eyes watered and his vision wavered. “Oh my Christ! Stop saying that!” He scrambled backward, the treads of his shoes gaining traction in the cheap carpeting, clambering to his feet. Now that he faced the opposite direction, he noticed that Mr. Bullet-To-The-Head and Miss Garroted-Zombified-Bitch had joined the soirée. Behind them was the mindless throng of his neighbors, their cold eyes now blackened and dead.

  Feel my wrath ... feel my pain ... feel my wrath ... feel my pain

  The chant was getting too much to bear. Each one of them repeated the words in the Haitian man’s voice—all except the guy he shot in the face. He sounded like a quasi-catatonic slurping soup from a spoon.

  Nicolas shambled closer. Jacob could still see his mortal wound on the young Haitian’s neck amid the rancid decay and vermin crawling all over his mottled flesh. “I’m sorry,” shouted Jacob. “It was just a goddamn accident!” Nicolas kept coming. Jacob pressed up against the wall in between the incoming gang of walking nightmares. “I didn’t ... mean it ... I was,” he stammered, unable to piece together a full sentence.

  What Jacob knew as reality had evaporated. All that it left in its wake was this numbing sense of defeat and lunacy. He began to sob as he slid down the length of the wall into a broken pile of a man—once strong, logical, and capable, now j
ust a quivering heap of jelly.

  They advanced on Jacob, crowding around him like gawkers at a crime scene. With a sharp inhale, he threw his head skyward, eyes clenched tight and beseeching the heavens. “I’m so sorry,” he screamed over the droning of the mob, apologetic for the first time in his life. As his returning victims hovered over him—including Nicolas, his ultimate mistake—Jacob yanked his gun from his holster and pressed the cold barrel against his temple. With a vice grip on the weapon, he forced himself to look up at Nicolas.

  “With these bones I have crushed, make thine enemy turn to dust ... torment, fire, out of control ... With this hex I curse your soul,” chanted Nicolas in his father’s voice.

  “Fuck it!” Jacob responded, hoping, in the end, for a sweet release as he pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Empty.

  Nicolas smiled, maggots swimming through his gaping grin, as the horde converged upon Jacob, piling on to his screaming form with teeth and fingers ripe for rendering his flesh into dust. Nicolas’s reawakened corpse stood over the bloody maelstrom of ripping skin, pleased.

  Feel my wrath ... feel my pain.

  THE NIGHT GORDON WAS SET FREE

  BY BILLIE SUE MOSIMAN

  My name is Gordon and I know what I want. They just won’t let me be myself because they’re afraid. They’ve taken me to psychiatrists since I was seven years old (going on eight years now) and they were told I was special. The real words they kept using were psychotic and psychopath. I prefer special. Fucking psychiatrists. What do they know?

  Due to my special interests, I tend to get into trouble. I shrug that off. Trouble is in the eye of the beholder. It seems like fun to me, what they call trouble. Fuck them. Sorry, but that’s what I think about everything and everyone in the world—fuck ’em. If that’s all you ever know of me, it’s enough.