Primal Scream

by Michael Slade

  FOOOOOOOOM!

  BOOM! BOOM!

  The world behind exploded.

  Suddenly it was summer and the brightest high noon of the year. Wrangler blitzed the team up the bank and into the woods, no need for a command to seek shelter from the heat and glare. George gripped the sled as the Mad Dog threw his weight from side to side to steer, or lifted up on the handlebars to help it over bumps, or shifted the rear end to give it new direction, or held it steady to prevent upsets. He would have jumped off and pushed uphill had the snow been harder, jumping on to ride the flats and brake downhill, but that was out of the question. The most difficult feat in sledding is breaking trail on a slope, but somehow they reached the top.

  Halting on the crest, the Mounties gazed back down to the river.

  Black smoke billowed toward the moon from the hole in the ice where the sled had exploded, melted through, and sunk.

  The wounded rebel limped away.

  From the haze, the other three emerged.

  Behind them, undamaged, they lugged the remaining weapons sled.

  When the Mounties tried to call Zulu base to order a backup strike, they found a bullet hole through the Mad Dog's radio phone.

  Ghost Keeper's phone was down there.

  So all they could do was watch the rebels haul the sled away and wonder what weapons were hidden under its tarp.

  Horns of Venus

  Richmond

  Screaming . . .

  Moaning . . .

  Grunting . . .

  Groaning . . .

  Suzannah's House of Pain.

  Wherever else hell might be, it burned in Sparky's mind.

  House of Pain.

  Bomb shelter.

  Past and present.

  Hell then.

  Hell now.

  Inextricably mixed, as memories from Mardi Gras in New Orleans bled into perceptions from here and now so many decades later. Flash back. Flash forward. The killer's psychosis florid.

  The bloody satchel hung limp in one hand. The same hand gripped the severed head by the hair, and held the Horns of Venus twin from the altar box. The beheading knife and hurricane lamp grasped hi the other hand, the Headhunter descended the subterranean steps to the bomb shelter.

  Screaming . . .

  Moaning . . .

  Grunting . . .

  Groaning . . .

  Suzannah's House of Pain.

  "Will you be coming to Mardi Gras for Gesasserotik this year? Your Gauleiterin is waiting with her bridle, saddle, burs, and spurs. What guilt you carry from what you did during the war, Mein Heir General, so lay those diamonds you smuggle in from Paraguay at my feet, and I will ride you around below like the horse meat you are, until your plump white crupper is one ruby Mensur scar. Did you know my father in Vichy France? He collaborated with your ilk, when he wasn't fucking me in the stables of our vineyard. I don't have him, but I have you, Mein S.S. Assman, so Gesasserotik it shall be with my Horns of Venus. ..."

  Flickering glow from a hurricane lamp spilled down the stairs. Devoured by darkness, Robert watched as the killer descended: boots, then pants, then hands coming into view. One hand gripped a severed head. Oh, my God! He recognized the face.

  The Headhunter's trophy was Dr. George Ruryk. Poor George must have stared death in the eye, Sfor his eyes bugged from their sockets like those of a fish, and his mouth was frozen in a silent O of shock. Tears of blood ran down his cheeks. Lamplight danced along the razor-sharp edge of the blade that had claimed Ruryk's head. Blindly, Robert groped in the blood pool on the floor for his gun. The Headhunter's chest and throat came into view. One more step and they'd be face-to-face. Then the machete would come for him, hacking off fingers, hands, and arms thrown up in defense, until relentless cutting thwacked off his head.

  Wind down the open tunnel snuffed the lamp.

  Sparky's mind.

  The flashback:

  "If only he were your father," Suzannah snarled at the rack, under which, crablike, Sparky scrambled for safety.

  "Daddy! Where are you, Daddy! Help me, Daddy! Please!"

  ("i'm here, Sparky, i am you.")

  The general shrieked as the dominatrix mounted him again. The flickering flame of the hurricane lamp cast their humping shadows up the dungeon wall. They bucked amid surrounding shapes formed by the brazier dangling branding irons from its rim, and the spiked door of the iron maiden in the corner. Lamplight brushed the ivory grins on the skull rack overhead, and glittered off the surgical instruments below. The general wore the black uniform of the Nazi S.S., the dreaded Schutzstaffel that had run the extermination camps. Death's-head badges graced his collar. On hands and knees he bucked like a horse on the dungeon floor. A black and silver bridle cinched a bit between his teeth. The black saddle lashed to his back had spiked burs beneath. His black riding breeches were torn along the rear seam, exposing a bottom stark white above black jackboots. Spurs gouged his buttocks when Suzannah sat in the saddle, grinding the burs into the Nazi's back, but now the dominatrix rode her horse farther behind, yanking the bridle to pull him back for each deep thrust.

  The screams became gibberish when the broken bronc collapsed.

  Suzannah cried out in orgasm and crumpled on top; a hump or two more shuddered out like the primal climax of a satisfied male.

  She unplugged the general.

  And staggered to her feet.

  And turned toward the rack.

  And snarled with misandry.

  That snarl expressed a lifetime's worth of revenge against every male who had fucked, used, or objectified her. That snarl said, I grind your piggy leers to powder with my bit between your teeth. That snarl said, I flay your bony spine to scourge patriarchal rules that made me your slave. That snarl said, I ravage your plump ass to drive this home: when rape is inevitable, crawl and enjoy it.

  Suzannah was a woman a decade before her time.

  The ultimate feminist.

  Looming over Sparky was a hermaphrodite from hell, a Frankenstein monster stitched together out of warring sexes. Boots, spurs, and stockings rose to white thighs down which ran red garter lines. Bare below the corset where thighs joined, her black bush glittered with gold rings. The rings that pierced her labia were laced shut with a black thong, sealing her sex around the phallic Horns of Venus. One horn was buried deep in the womb that had carried Sparky to term, the other jutting from her crotch as proud as the engorged prong of any sexist male.

  The twisted mouth beneath the bald head high above spat words:

  "Are you your father's spawn? Or do you belong to me? Prove you're mine, and no one will hurt you. Unlace me, Sparky. Pull it out. And kiss your Mother's loving lips."

  Wind in the smugglers' cavern off the Mississippi snuffed the lamp.

  Flash forward:

  . . . snuffed the lamp.

  "Freeze! Police!"

  The rearming of the Mounties had yet to work its way up to DeClercq. First to get the new Smith & Wesson 9mm sixteen-round semiautomatic were Members on the street: the thin red line. The higher in rank, the less likely a cop would need a gun, so a chief superintendent was almost last to rearm.

  The dying flame of the hurricane lamp burnished the .38 on the sanguinary floor. DeClercq's fingers closed around the butt as the vault darkened. He still had the advantage of surprise, though the gun in his fist was a six-shot relic the Force had used since 1954.

  "Freeze! Police!" he ordered.

  Switching on the flashlight, he shone it directly at the Headhunter's eyes.

  Earlier tonight flashed through Sparky's mind:

  "I'm dead, child, yet I live on. Death is a door to afterlife. If he comes for you, come to me. Promise you won't let him take you alive."

  "I promise, Mommy."

  "Good. Give 'em hell."

  Sparky dropped the blade, head, sack, and dyke's prong. She ducked out of the blinding light and whipped the Smith semiauto from the holster at her waist. Black was the void before her unadjusted eyes, but the flash
light blazed as bright as an exploding sun.

  There was the target.

  The flashlight in DeClercq's hand.

  The 9mm barked in Katherine Spann's fist. A fiery tongue licked the darkness enveloping DeClercq. A sonic boom thundered in the close confines. The slug ricocheted off the bunker walls, ping . . . ping . . . pinging! around the hellhole. Before the ejected casing hit the floor, a hail of lead erupted at the black halo ringing the white, bullets blasting as fast as Spann could pull the trigger.

  The flashlight exploded.

  DeClercq cried out.

  Shards and blood sprayed the dark.

  The sun extinguished.

  Into a black hole.

  As Spann pumped more lead at where the light had been.

  DeClercq was there.

  He was hit.

  And if he wasn't dead, this volley would take him down.

  Superior firepower.

  The reason for rearming.

  The round from the .38 was lost in cannon booms. A popgun fart compared to the semiauto's blast. The slug, however, found its mark: the face of the Head-hunter lit by rapid muzzle flashes. The slug drilled the inspector between the eyes, dropping Spann from her crouch at the foot of the stairs.

  Five shots left.

  It took just one.

  For Spann was up against a military strategist.

  DeClercq had taken a hit, but he had held the line, drawing enemy fire into the void where he should be but wasn't.

  He stood in the dark with his gun arm extended out front, his wounded arm extended straight to one side at ninety degrees, the shattered flashlight held as far away as possible.

  Corporal Alfred Spann had taught him that trick.

  PART TWO

  Decapitator

  I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

  He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

  —Robert Louis Stevenson

  Homophobe

  Vancouver

  Wednesday, January 10

  Feeding frenzy.

  Never was DeClercq as thankful as he was thankful this morning that E Division Headquarters of the RCMP stretched four blocks along Heather Street in Vancouver from Thirty-seventh to Thirty-third avenues. Media Relations was officed in the Operations Building at Thirty-seventh, while Special X was way down here in the old Tudor-style Heather Stables at Thirty-third. So much blood had been shed last night between the dog-sled patrol north of Totem Lake and the shoot-out in the bomb shelter on Finn Slough that multimedia sharks by the carload were closing on H.Q. Both morning papers and all the audiovisual feeders had plumbed their "morgues" for background ties between him and Katherine Spann, as if squaring them off after the fight for a heavyweight bout.

  The sharks sniffed blood at Media Relations.

  With cameras and mikes and videocams, they circled Operations up the street.

  How long till they sniffed blood down here?

  So many links.

  So many stories.

  So many columns of print and minutes of airtime to fill.

  He hoped to get some work done before they swarmed him.

  Climbing to his office on the second floor, Robert told his secretary to hold all calls and turn away any civilians. He shut the door, shucked his coat, removed his hat, and hung them up on the antique stand. Then he rounded his horseshoe desk and sat down in the U on the barley-sugar chair crowned with the Force crest. As he eyed the morning papers on the leather in front of him, the first thing he did was phone Bob George at the Hazelton hospital.

  "How's the leg?"

  "Painful. It'll be crutches for me."

  "In for a while?"

  "Couple of days. The wound's infected."

  "I'll go after Winterman Snow until you're back on your feet. An excuse to get away from here will suit me fine."

  "Spann?"

  "Fooled me."

  "Fooled us all. Did you know her dad served in the area where Winterman Snow went to school? Close to the Alaska panhandle. The boy's in a class picture taken in 1955. So is Corporal Alfred Spann."

  "Residential?"

  "St. Sebastian Catholic. Run by a pedophile named Reverend Paul Noel. It's being investigated by the task force. The allegation is Noel raped the native boys in his charge. He bent them over a desk in his office so they faced two pictures on the wall. One was of Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows, the other of Rector Luke Noel, a missionary last century, draped in a Tsimshian headhunting blanket."

  "Noel around?"

  "Hanged himself. Autoerotic asphyxiation. Dressed in lingerie."

  "And Snow?"

  "Disappeared. He's not in class photos after 1955. Corporal Spann returned runaways to the school. If Snow fled, he got away."

  "To become a headhunting archer preying on whites in the woods?"

  "It seems. The task force has no file on Snow. All I have to send you is the master file. But I wired an e-mail search request to all native task force members in the field, and one just replied that he found the village from which the albino boy had been seized and sent to Noel's school."

  "Need a pen. Okay, shoot."

  "Gunanoot. A Gitxsan village. North of the Skeena. West of Totem Lake."

  "Dodd will know it. I'll fly tomorrow. You take care. I'll keep you informed."

  "Strange thing, Chief. The Mad Dog came by. To ask if I'd be his best man."

  "Surprised?"

  "I thought he was racist."

  "Last night I learned never to assume you know how someone thinks. Going to do it?"

  "Of course," said George. "A man saves your life, you owe him his."

  "Even if you saved his life two days before?"

  "We're blood brothers, I guess."

  The second call DeClercq made was to Zinc Chandler at the Command Center in New Hazelton.

  "How's morale?"

  "In tatters, Chief. We're not trained or equipped to fight a war, and may be forced to hand command over to the military. I don't know who's dug in deeper, the rebels or us. Hawks are demanding we storm the camp and take them down. Local whites are losing business by the millions. Herb McCall's grandson was beaten because his complaint to us about his land began the standoff. Hear the drums outside? Native supporters. They think we're provoking the rebels so we can shoot Indians and turn public opinion against them. The media have our Command Center under siege."

  "Tell me about it. You should see here. Sharks are coming at us from all sides."

  "The gunfights and living conditions have taken a toll, but what really sank morale was the arms slipping through last night. If they've got Stingers, down come our planes. If they've got mortars, Zulu base will be hit. If they've got armor-piercing shells, the APCs are tin cans. The military is jerking us around. We had to pull teeth to get four Bisons out of them, and only did so when we pledged to put our decals on. In front of me is an unsigned memo from Land Forces Western Area telling why: 'If anything goes wrong, we will not be seen as failing.' "

  "What's your feeling?"

  "We hold the line. This is law enforcement, not a civil war. The army will take over only if we give them total command. They're in enough shit over Somalia, and don't want this. We use their reluctance to get them to send technical support like eye-in-the-sky surveillance of the no-go zone. Meanwhile, I've asked Gitxsan elders to gather here for a powwow tomorrow. There must be a way to peace this."

  "Consult Ghost Keeper."

  "I have and will."

  "Can you spare Dodd tomorrow? I need wings. To fly to Gunanoot re Winterman Snow."

  "If you send him on to Fort St. James. One Gitxsan elder needs flying in. After he ferries the chief, Dodd can pick you up."

  "Good," said DeClercq.

  "Spann's a shock, huh? The amazing thing is that she slipped the net for so long."

  "Not really. We're conditioned to be blind. Try an exp
eriment and you will see. Pick an older person-man or woman—and ask if he or she heard about a traffic accident. A man and his son were driving down a highway in California when the car flipped; the man was killed, and his son was injured. An ambulance rushed the son to the local hospital. The surgeon scrubbed up, then froze, scalpel in hand. 'I can't operate on this man. He's my son.' Who's the surgeon?

  Even today you'll be stunned how many people have no idea. The surgeon is his mother doesn't enter their minds."

  "Kipling got it right," said Zinc. " Spann told me herself.

  "And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,

  That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

  "Prophesy?" he added.

  DeClercq was about to phone the Mad Dog at Zulu base to praise him for a job well done in saving George when his secretary buzzed. "Civilian to see you, Chief. Says it's important."

  "Damn media. They'll use any ruse."

  "It's Dr. Carlisle."

  "Oh," said DeClercq. "In that case, have Security send her up."

  His heartbeat quickened when the psychiatrist came hi, looking very businesslike hi a designer suit, the jacket pinched in at the waist to hourglass her figure. God, she looks like Genny! A second chance? Before Anda left, he swore he'd muster the courage to ask her for a date.

  "I see you made the papers. Front page," she said. "It isn't every day you stop a woman from plucking men off the streets to rape."

  "No," said Robert. "Spann turned the tables on us. Being a man, I've been free to go anywhere I please at any time without the fear of a sexual predator grabbing me. Until now I doubt any man grasped that fear. What it's like to have that in the back of your mind every day of the year."