by Glen Frost
Contents
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
For Sean Rice,
I’m proud to call you my friend.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for handing over your hard-earned money for this book. If this is first of my horror stories that you’ve read, hopefully you’re well aware of the type of story this is. For the uninitiated, this is a novel of extreme horror, with very graphic scenes of sex and violence. If you are squeamish, easily offended (or even moderately offended, come to think of it) then please stop reading now and return the book for a refund.
Obviously this is a work of fiction, and I in no way endorse, advocate, or approve of the kind of behavior that is depicted in the book.
If you have enjoyed this book (and I really hope that you have) then please consider rating the book at Amazon. I would really appreciate it!
Alright, now that’s settled, let’s go.
— GF
CHAPTER ONE
Unlike most people, John Minear hated the holidays.
For most people, Christmas and New Year were all about family and friends, gift-wrapped presents under the tree, or perhaps kissing that special someone under the mistletoe — in fact, they didn't necessarily even have to be special, in Minear's world: so long as they had a pulse, a vagina, and were conscious, then that worked for him.
The holidays were about stuffing yourself fit to bursting with massive turkey dinners, on plates piled high with stuffing, vegetables, potatoes, and cranberry sauces, all of it drowned in a sea of thick gravy.
No wonder so many people loved the holidays.
The reason that John hated them with the same passion that Republicans hated Democrats (and vice versa)wasn't that he was a Grinch. No. John Minear could out-Grinch the Grinch any day of the week and twice on Sunday...
...because John was a paramedic.
Like their colleagues in the police and fire departments, pretty much every EMT and paramedic loathed and dreaded this time of year. For two weeks straight, the dregs and scum of humanity crawled out of the woodwork and did shit that made people call 911.
Episodes of domestic violence went through the roof, particularly in the poorer areas of a big city like Denver. John had been a medic long enough to remember the days when DV was pretty much always asshole men beating up their wives and girlfriends; today, though that was still pretty much the statistical norm, you got girlfriends beating on girlfriends and gay dudes beating on other gay dudes.
Minear had thought about this a lot, and had finally come to the conclusion that people were just angrier this time of year. Maybe it had something to do with the size of the credit card bills that everybody knew were coming in just a few short weeks, the ones that nobody could afford but everybody racked up all the same in order to pay for this whole Christmas fucking crapfest. And all because somebody just had to have their five minutes of joy opening up the wrapping paper to reveal a waffle maker in the shape of the Death Star, or six more pairs of socks with the Denver Broncos' logo on them. All of it was shit that would get stuffed in a junk drawer and be forgotten before the calendar flipped over to mark the passing of another year and the arrival of a new one.
Maybe that was why tempers frayed, and as an inevitable consequence, fists and feet expressed the pent-up rage, taking it out on a significant other, or even worse, a child. Those were the 911 calls that made John see red himself, the ones where he caught himself clenching a fist and had to count to ten and take control before he slipped up and gave the perpetrator a fucking good dose of what they'd just dished out themselves.
The violence against others was bad enough, but equally tragic were the terrible things that people did to themselves. Apart from anger and frustration, perhaps the next most common emotion over the Christmas holidays was loneliness. Some people dealt with it relatively well, combating it by spending Christmas in a bar, or even by doing something more positive like volunteering in a soup kitchen...but for every one who coped well, there were more that didn't.
It was an open secret to practically everybody working in the emergency services that suicide season began just before Thanksgiving and didn't start winding down again until people went back to work in that first week of January. Over the course of that six week stretch, a massive chunk of 911 responses were to people who simply couldn't take it anymore and decided to employ a permanent solution for what was generally a temporary problem. Heads were placed in ovens with the gas supply on; hose pipes duct-taped to car exhaust tailpipes and fed inside through a tiny gap in a window; hangings were also fairly popular, with some people being more successful than others. If all went well and the unfortunate suicide had set things up properly, then their neck was snapped cleanly and death was instantaneous. More often that not, however, they wavered at the critical moment and ended up strangling themselves instead — a long, slow, excruciating way to die.
When the paramedics talked shop with one another, somebody always like to bring up the fact that men and women generally chose different approaches to ending their own lives. Women tended to be more successful, and yet their methods were less violent: massive overdoses of pills, usually washed down with copious amounts of wine or something more potent, was a popular way for them to shuffle off this mortal plane, whereas men tended to choose more overtly violent exit strategies. Stick the barrel of a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger, or perhaps climb into a warm bath after getting shitfaced and slice your wrists open with a razor blade. Those were more in line with the so-called 'manly ways' of checking out once and for all.
Then there were the crazies. John was absolutely convinced that there were more unmedicated psych patients wandering the streets now than at any other time in human history. Sometimes they were just crazy-weird, which he and his partner Jerry Holiday found made for some pretty epic stories every once in a while, but those weren't the ones he worried about. The psychs that he truly feared were the crazy-violent variety, like the woman who'd swallowed six pairs of scissors because 'the voices had told her to' and then tried to stab Jerry in the throat with a seventh. In the end it had taken fifteen milligrams of Versed injected into her arm to knock her on her ass enough for her to be transported safely to the hospital.
Luckily for the pair of them, tonight had been pretty quiet so far. One overweight middle-aged man with chest pain and a teenage boy suffering an anxiety attack were all that they had run. Then again, their rig had only been in service for two hours, so there was still ample opportunity for the holiday season to bend them both over and do them dry. Which is, of course, exactly what happened.
They were sitting at one of their favorite posts, the parking lot of a 7/11 convenience store, and watching the snow come down from the overcast night sky. Such places were tried and tested locations for ambulance crews to hang out; their restrooms were always open, they had plenty of junk food, and an ever-lasting supply of coffee and other caffeinated beverages
. John and Jerry were just getting into a spirited discussion about the relative merits of the Denver Broncos versus the L.A. Raiders when the radio cracked to life.
"Medic seven," the dispatcher began, "respond and stage in the area for a truck versus pedestrian, with possible shots fired. Law is already en route." They went on to supply the location address, which was nine blocks away from their post.
The two paramedics looked askance at one another. How did things go from a truck hitting a pedestrian to somebody pulling a gun and opening fire? Then again, this was Denver, and anything was possible.
"Want to start rolling that way?" Jerry asked casually. He was sitting behind the wheel, but they made all of their important decisions as a crew.
"Sure, why not? But let's keep some distance. Stage three or four blocks away."
"Roger that."
Jerry released the brake, applied some gentle pressure to the gas (the roads were still a little slick) and pulled out into the street. Traffic was light, mainly due to the shitty weather. They headed east. Jerry deliberately left the lights and sirens off; they tended to draw gunfire sometimes, and more than one ambulance had gotten lead poisoning because they had been mistaken for the cops.
The radio came to life again. "Medic seven, be advised that per a police officer on scene, the scene is safe for you to enter. You're cleared to go in."
"Copy that." John replaced the mic on its clip and peered out through the windshield, trying to see more than a few feet in front of them through the swirling mass of snowflakes. The ambulance headlights were hindering, rather than helping, lighting up the snow in their glare and dazzling the vehicle's occupants.
At the next intersection just up ahead of them, the paramedics could just about make out a truck that was static in the middle of the street. It looked as though there was something underneath the front end, which was splattered with blood.
"Is that a fuckin' arm?" John asked, squinting at the pulpy mess poking out from under the truck.
Jerry pumped the brake carefully, pulling the ambulance over to the side of the road. Despite his best efforts, the vehicle fishtailed, sliding to a stop with the left side wheels grazing the kerb. John debated leaving the rotating flashers off for safety reasons, but with the scene now supposedly being clear, he was more worried about the rig getting rear-ended by a drunken late-night driver, so he reached down and flipped them on. His partner used his foot to set the parking brake, and then the two paramedics hopped out of the ambulance and went around to the back for their equipment.
Dumping the big red medical bag on top of the wheeled cot along with the cardiac monitor, John snatched up the fresh IV bag that had been hanging in front of the heater since their last emergency run and tossed it on top of them. It was never a good idea to put cold fluids into the veins of a bleeding patient: assuming that they were already at death's door, making them even colder from the inside out was like kicking their ass across the threshold.
They had parked forty feet away from the scene. As the two medics made their way carefully toward the carnage, the soles of their boots slip-sliding on the frozen sidewalk, they were forced to lean on the heavily-laden cot for support. John and Jerry were both seasoned first responders, and had long ago grown accustomed to sizing up every emergency scene as they approached it. It was obvious from forty feet away that the poor fucker under the truck was dead on arrival. The only other possible victims on scene were a big man who was crouching down over a seated figure (they couldn't make out whether it was a male or a female yet) in an attempt to shield them from the worst of the snow, and his protectee.
John opened his mouth to call out, but he was rendered speechless when something hit the ground at high speed and began to slide across the snow and ice, heading toward them: Something human shaped.
"Fuck me," Jerry breathed.
The body had been flung through the air at high speed, flying for a good ten feet or so, hitting the ground with a sickening thud, and then slid down the length of the sidewalk in their general direction as if The Incredible Hulk had hurled it with full force.
John and Jerry looked at one another. Neither man could believe what they had just seen. Finally, John said, "Well that's not good..."
Quite understandably, the attention of both paramedics was fixed upon the battered and writhing human body that was now bleeding out onto the snow-covered sidewalk in front of them; which probably explained why neither John or Jerry glanced across the street, where an enterprising passer-by had stopped his car and was using his phone to film everything that was going on.
CHAPTER TWO
Anya was cold, both inside and out.
The snow was still coming down heavily, settling on top of her long dark hair and her shoulders. Under ordinary circumstances, the flimsy white cotton shirt that she wore would have provided little protection against the bitter cold; she would have developed hypothermia in no time at all. But ever since she had died and been resurrected, after making her own unholy 'deal with the devil,' Anya had been granted the powers and capabilities of a revenant — something akin to a dead woman walking, a corpse that refused to lay down until it had sated its lust for vengeance.
As such, feeling cold was her new normal. Although she had only come back from the grave a few nights ago, Anya was already halfway to forgetting what being warm and comfortable had ever felt like. She had left such things behind her in the shallow grave that had been dug by her former pimp, Piotr, along with her underwear...and any sense of mercy.
She had imagined that getting her revenge on Piotr and that fucking cretinous sidekick of his, Marko, would have warmed her cold heart, if only just a little. Yet it hadn't. She had visited a revenge of epic proportions upon the pair of them, so it certainly wasn't for a lack of trying: Marko was splattered all over the front end of a truck, and Piotr...well, compared to Piotr, Marko had gotten off lightly. Anya had taken his balls and his eyes, two things that he could live perfectly well without — assuming that the shock of his injuries didn't kill him — which meant that by the terms of her deal with the dark powers, so long as his heart kept on beating, she got to keep on walking the Earth.
Instead of feeling fulfilled, however, she felt hollow. There was no sense of closure to accompany the big, cold dish of revenge that she had just served up; there was only...emptiness.
Anya could hear more sirens in the distance, even through the deadening effects of the heavy snowfall. No doubt they were converging on the scene of her confrontation with Marko and Piotr, which was why her primary goal right now was to put as much distance between her and them as she could possibly manage while on foot. Yet as she walked, her body slipping easily into autopilot and quickening her stride, she found that her conscious mind was disengaging and dealing with other things...parsing what had just taken place, and dwelling on the possible ramifications.
The only thing she still wanted in this entire godforsaken mess of a world was to see her daughter brought safely to the shores of America, for her to start a new life...and above all else, for her to avoid the trap that she herself had fallen into: Human traffickers. Fucking vermin. They had made Anya promises about the promised land of America, how easy it would be for her to be smuggled into the country. Then, they had whispered silkily in her ear, it was simply a matter of making enough money from the fat, wealthy American men who wanted a slice of Russian exotica, and she could bring Darya, her precious Darya, to come and stay with her.
The lying pieces of shit.
Once she had arrived in the States, the reality had of course been very different. Oh, the parade of fat, sweaty men grunting their way to orgasm on top of her turned out to be real enough, and who knows, some of them may actually have been rich...but if that was in fact the case, Anya hadn't seen more than a fraction of it, measly table scraps at best. The bulk of the money had gone to Piotr, to fuel his rock star pimp lifestyle of drugs and alcohol.
Well, she thought to herself, one corner
of her mouth turning up into the faintest of smiles, he won't exactly be living that way any longer...not when he's pissing through a catheter for the rest of his miserable life.
The thought amused her, taking away just a fraction of her disenchantment. However, there was a bigger picture to be considered here, she knew: Piotr and Marko had been the lowest men on the totem pole, as the Americans liked to say, bottom feeders that subsisted on the dregs of the food chain. There was no way that either of them could have helped Anya get her daughter back, no matter how violently and enthusiastically she coerced them.
Guskov, on the other hand...
It hadn't taken much effort on her part in order to get Piotr to sell out his boss. Not even a moderate amount of torture had been required. Piotr had been a foot-soldier for a man he referred to only as "Mr. Guskov." She had heard the name before, in passing. It was one of the few names which her pimp had spoken of with any degree of respect...and a healthy amount of fear.
This was the puppeteer, the man behind the scenes pulling all the strings. If she could find this Guskov and apply the proper leverage, then her desire to give Darya a better life could perhaps turn out to be more than just a pipe dream.
Anya reached into her pocket and extracted a scrap of folded paper, one smeared with dry blood and blotted with runny ink because of the snowflakes which had already soaked into it. The phone number and address that had been hastily scrawled there were, thankfully, still legible.
Guskov's phone number and address.
Based on the zip code, she felt pretty sure that the address was somewhere in Boulder County. Finding it wouldn't be a problem, even though her phone was gone — probably for good — and she didn't know that area particularly well. That's what Google was for. The libraries all had free Internet access, if it came down to it, or she could simply use her natural talents to pick up, seduce, and charm a stranger to part with some cash and other resources. It was a technique that she had spent years perfecting.
