by Apex Authors
The first shot dropped her and she stumbled and sat down, blinking, staring up at Ellie, who was screaming until her voice almost disappeared. “Go away! Go away! Goawaygoawaygoway!"
The pain spread in Rachel's chest. It was hard to breathe. She concentrated with the last of her strength.
Ellie fired again. The bullet exploded through the tendrils of plaque for one single bright instant, throwing Rachel's brain into sudden clarity. She looked straight at Ellie and said, “I'm here, Ellie. I'm here."
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Cain Xp11 (Part 2): The HenRy Lee Lucas Memorial Highway by Geoffrey Girard
Geoffrey Girard has penned dark fantasy and horror tales for such anthologies as Writers of the Future (he was a 2003 winner), Damned Nation and the recent Prime Codex. His first book, Tales of the Jersey Devil, was published in 2005 andTales of the Atlantic Pirates hit bookstores last summer. Two more Tales Of ... books will arrive in 2007. You can find out more online at www.GeoffreyGirard.com. This tale is the second installment of a four-part novella. The first is available online at www.apexdigest.com.
He caught up with Ed Gein just south of Cincinnati.
The true-life inspiration of such horror-movie icons as Leatherface, Norman Bates, and Buffalo Bill had been, fittingly, watching TV when Becker entered his house. Some countdown on VH1 about the fifty most “Outrageous Moments” in Rock and Roll history. Though, biting the head off a bat now seemed somewhat trivial. Compared to another history which, fifty years before, had included girls dangling from meat hooks and necklaces strung with nipples, skulls stained with vegetable soup, suits of skin stitched from half a dozen bodies ... and all the rest.
All the rest.
Becker was tired of the historical specifics. They always netted out to the same with these men, anyway.
Mutilation. Necrophilia. Rape. Torture.
Pain. Fear.
Death.
The detached freedom to do whatever they wanted, while also imprisoned by some Other inside that angrily demanded they act within those same freedoms. Enslaved freedom. Oxymoron. Contradiction.
Monster.
"You want another glass of milk?” said Becker.
"No,” Gein said, “I'm good."
The kid had already put away two. And a tall stack of pancakes, hash browns, a plate of bacon, and all of Becker's toast. Hadn't eaten a decent meal in almost two weeks.
For ‘Ed Gein’ it had been twelve days A.C.
After Cain.
After the others had arrived in the kid's driveway, as they had elsewhere before, as they would somewhere again. After they'd burst from the car like trolls breaking free from beneath some bridge and raced up the steps into his house. Smashed his father's face with a golf club as teeth bounced off the living room wall. After they'd dragged his mother and brother upstairs.
After Cain.
A single carload, filled with the psychopaths developed during the “Cain Xp11” project. The most infamous serial killers in history on the ultimate road trip. Ted Bundy, Henry Lee Lucas, Albert Fish, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer.
And not the Jeffrey Dahmer waiting for Becker back at the hotel room. The eleven year old kid with glasses and a soft voice. That was another one altogether.
Cloning was funny that way.
Becker looked over ‘Ed’ again.
Ed.
The boy ate steadily but quietly, the uneasy silence between them amplified by the bustling diner. The kid was fourteen. Cropped, dirty hair. He looked tired, like he'd done a couple tours in Fallujah.
The others had told the boy, just as they, themselves, had recently been told, who he was. That he was, in fact, a clone. A lab-produced photocopy of a notorious killer. That he'd been adopted and raised by strangers as part of some clandestine government test. That he was, in fact, a bred killer. They'd left him with that information and then, as they were done with the rest of his family, had gotten back into their car and driven off. Leaving him, for the first time, it seemed, to decide his own fate.
After Cain.
The first thing the boy had done was to cover his family's faces with open notebooks to hide their vacant, glassy gazes, the steadily graying skin. He'd emptied the kitchen closet for food. Found cash in his mother's purse. Got himself up to go to school each morning for two weeks. Afraid, he told Becker, of where the police would put him if they knew his parents were dead. Afraid he'd be blamed. Afraid they'd make him live with strangers.
Afraid.
But Becker couldn't worry about that now. He wouldn't.
In a couple of hours, the good doctors from DSTI would arrive. What happened then, where those men decided to reshuffle their fourteen-year-old lab rat, was not his concern.
His mission was only to hunt these boys down, them and their genetic brothers. To bring them back to DSTI. Back to the test tubes and computers. The neurochemical testing and mind games. Back to the lab where they'd all been made. And, if capture proved too problematic, he'd also been given other options.
His mission.
"You gonna eat that bacon?” Gein asked.
Becker looked up, collected himself back to the table. “No, go ahead."
The boy reached over to his plate and took the two slabs of half-cooked bacon. Becker looked away as ‘Ed’ started stuffing the greasy meat into his mouth. He couldn't help but wonder what other slippery meats had once passed over those exact same lips. What gristle those same sharp teeth had once chewed into. The same tongue savoring the taste of dead flesh.
It wasn't fair, Becker knew. This kid was not the Ed Gein. Not technically.
Nature/nurture, right?
Hell, the rest of the world knew the boy only as Trent Alsip. Dr. Jacobson's secret notes had simply read ‘ED—ALSIP'. Illinois? No, Becker decided, studying the doctor's other annotations; it was a name. An adopted name. It had been enough. Thanks to changes in “Homeland Security,” Becker now had access to better records, and he quickly had his list of the hundred Alsips in the Unites States with sons in the right age range.
Ages ten to eighteen. Almost ten years of monster making.
With that, it was just a matter of looking at the map again.
The Murder Map.
It had become Captain Becker's dearest and most trusted partner. There were three hundred homicides a week in the United States, almost half completely uncleared, unsolved. As many as a hundred murdered by complete strangers. Fed info from headquarters throughout each day, Becker always knew precisely when and where the last American life had mysteriously ended. Then, it was only a matter of making his red dots, starting to mark some lines along the various highways, and looking for possible paths.
Just like connect the dots. But with dead people.
The more brutal the murder, the better. The two women in Delaware. McCarty and Nolan. McCarty's son was still missing. The bodies of the woman and her children found in Zaleski State Park. Recent unsolved slayings in Unity, Ohio and Lovett, Indiana.
One group clearly heading west along Route 50.
Fresh blood. Fresh trail.
Alsip #42, son aged fourteen, right along the same trail. It had been worth a look.
Trent Alsip. Ed Gein.
One down, as many as fifteen left to go. But Becker wasn't discouraged. It was a start.
While TV shows made it seem that such things resolved themselves in an hour, Becker lived in the real world. He'd recently pursued Al Qaeda chief Ibrahim Yassin for eleven months before completing the mission. If the assholes at CNN didn't get that, so be it. He did. And so did his bosses, who simply wanted matters concluded discretely and thoroughly. There'd been more than 16,000 murders in the US in the past twelve months, almost 100,000 rapes.
What was another hundred?
Based on some of the imaginary lines Becker had drawn on his map and what the boy, Gein/Alsip, had overheard, it appeared the original group had picked up John, the one who wore a clown suit, in Pennsylvania that first night out. A
nother small group had already split off and was apparently staying along the East Coast. The geneticist, Jacobson, the father of them all in his own horrible way, had apparently gone on alone shortly after freeing them.
But it was the group heading West that Becker was most worried about. The freshest trail. The bloodiest trail.
"Becker,” the boy said. “Can I order another side of something?” His face was already wet and shiny with bacon grease and for just a moment, Becker thought it was blood.
"Sure, Becker said, looking away again. “Why not?"
* * * *
Emily purposely led Allison slowly into the apartment. She didn't want her little sister to miss a thing.
It smelled musty, like a dirty gym locker room. Like too many boys. And the slight odors of pot and of sex still lingered in the room. Allison had paused in the doorway, and Emily took her arm to gently lead her beyond her instincts. The door shut behind them.
It had been a couple months since she'd last seen Allison. Ever since Emily'd moved out of the house, or been tossed out, or whatever it was that had happened, they just weren't that close anymore. But a simple phone call was all it took. A big sister inviting her old pal over to watch a video and grab some pizza. Allison said yes almost immediately. She was a nice person, that way. Always had been.
Pretty, too. Even prettier than Emily remembered. Grown her hair out long and straight like all the others, which the boys would like for sure.
Two of them, Al and Jeffrey, were watching TV again. Al liked to bite. Jeffrey was the only one who hadn't done her yet, or her roommate, actually. He liked boys, it seemed. So he, John, and Ted had gone across the hall one night. Visited the thirty-something who lived there. That had been funny.
The nurse, Ms. Stacey, sat between them on the couch, the head tilted slightly to one side. Her eyes were bare, dark slits, the whites behind still fluttering wildly. Her two breasts had been pulled out and over the top of her t-shirt.
None of the three seemed to notice that Emily had entered the room. “That's Jeff and Al. ‘Ms. Stacey,'” she introduced Allison to them anyway. “And John, of course."
Slumped in the room's only other chair was a boy dressed as a clown. The red and blue makeup was smeared and patchy, his collar stained a dark red where his chin rested on the top of his chest. A bag of Doritos rested on his crotch. Over one eye, a huge, red, puffy ball dangled from his lopsided hat. He'd turned slowly as they entered the room and tracked their movement deeper into the apartment. His red lips had formed into a moronic smile.
"Emily?” She felt Allison tugging at her arm.
"Hey,” a low voice said from the kitchen behind them. “This her?"
"Allison,” Emily smiled, took her hand away. “My baby sister. Ain't she the sweetest li'l thing?"
"Sweet, sweet.” The boy laughed. He looked older than the others by a few years. Long, wavy dark hair and scorching blue eyes. “But she ain't no baby, is she?” His eyes moved slowly over the girl, while he bit at his lower lip. “What up, Allison? I'm Ted."
The girl had lowered her head.
The dried blood on the kitchen floor looked just like smeared chocolate.
"You being mean to my friends?” asked Emily.
"No, I...” The girl's voice had trembled. “I ... nice to meet you."
"That's better.” Ted moved closer, grinning with a distinct and totally hot smile Emily had grown to recognize. This was gonna be fun, fun, fun. “Nothing to be afraid of, right? Your sister said you were pretty cool. She sure got the pretty part right. You smoke?"
Emily liked Ted the best.
Ever since the first time he'd raped her. His hands closing so tightly around her throat as he pushed her to the living room floor. The life and air leaving her body as one. Her roommate's frantic screams, muffled with duct tape, so very close. The other naked shapes moving above her. Then Emily had looked into his eyes and seen it.
Nothing.
No rage. Not even amusement.
Nothing.
Thrusting into her like a piece of machinery, the blackness of death spreading over more of her teary-eyed vision, the guy honestly didn't care if she lived or died.
She'd never cum so hard in her life.
He knew that she had and laughed. Then he squeezed harder until everything went black. She awoke hours later when he was raping her again. “I thought you were dead,” he'd smiled.
Oh, yes. Emily liked Ted the best.
How they'd finally met was simple enough.
Al appeared on MySpace six months before. Just another kid on the Internet who liked talking about killing soccer moms. Dreamed of strangling one in the back of her minivan while her daycare brats ate Happy Meals in the front and waited for him to finish. Had a hard-on for serial killers. Who didn't? Wanted to blow up a mall one day, send body parts flying among a rain of Payless shoes and Abercrombie boxers. The guy was pretty funny.
Then, one day, the kid sends an email and says he and a buddy are heading west. Would she be cool if they stopped by to party some time? Bring some pot or X. Guy was probably younger than he was pretending, but she wasn't past hooking up with a high school kid. Sure, what the hell.
Five teens showed up that day.
Al, Jeff, Henry, John, and Ted.
They'd taken their time with the two girls.
Emily and her roommate Kim.
Days.
But Ted and Henry were tired of Kim. Wanted more.
Always wanted more.
Emily knew just who to call.
Allison. Pretty, perfect Allison. Ms. Eponine in the school play and Ms. Cheerleader Squad and Ms. Honor Roll. Fourteen. You really want scary? Forget Bundy and Dahmer. How ‘bout another Britney-fucking-Spears clone? The good girl. Princess of the known world. At least according to their mother.
Not the fuck-up. The stupid one, the druggie, the slut who'd had the abortion. College dropout. Twenty-two years old and working second-shift food services at Wal-Mart. Princess of Nothing.
Who'd finally found her King of Nothing.
Oh Mom, if you could only see us now.
"What was that?” Allison asked, her eyes grown wide just like one of those anime vixens.
Emily giggled. You could hear Kim in the bathroom again. Thumping and mewling in the tub.
"Come on.” Ted put his arm against Allison's back. “I'll show ya."
Down the hall, the sounds became more distinct. The strange gargling noise. The slow and steady THUMP of something hitting a wall, perhaps.
"Emily?"
The bathroom door was open just a crack, and Ted pushed it back with one hand, positioned Allison to look within. It was dark inside, the hall light creeping in almost carefully, the smears and trails of blood leading to and from the bathtub black against the shadowed tile floor.
THUMP.
Something moved in the tub. Shifted back and forth in the flawed darkness.
"Not sure how much she really feels,” Emily said behind them, as she peeked in on her roommate. “She's so high on ‘Special K’ right now."
She'd been amazed how easy it was to buy ketamine on the street. Just like the boys said it was.
THUMP.
"The cuts were made below the elbows and knees, so it was easy to stop the bleeding."
"Easy?” Ted laughed. “Like hell."
"Well,” said Emily. “Easy enough."
"Yeah,” he agreed. “I guess it was."
One of his hands now held Allison against the doorframe, keeping her from collapsing. In the dark shadows, it was tough to know for sure...
"What ... what did ... Emily?"
"Shhh, sweetheart. Don't you worry about any of that just yet,” Ted told the girl, as the thing in the tub burbled and flopped. “We were just having a little bit of fun is all. You like to have fun, don't you? No? Your sister told us you were a fun girl."
"Fun, fun, fun. When did he take her lips?” Emily said.
"Last night.” Ted shook his head. “Craz
y fucker. That dude'll eat anything.” Albert had already taken so much. Both breasts. An eye. “Kinda wish they'd just left her alone."
"I like her like this,” another voice said behind him. “Better time. This the sister?"
"Yeah.” Ted turned. “Allison."
"Proof of God."
"Yeah, for sure,” Ted agreed. “Allison, this is Henry. He's a good guy."
"You going first?” the new boy asked.
THUMP.
"Nah.” Ted smiled. “Go ahead. A promise is a promise."
"Cool.” Henry took hold of Allison's arm.
"Back in one piece,” Ted reminded him.
Henry puckered his lips. “Not a problem."
Allison turned to her sister and started to speak, but no words came out of her mouth. Only a rasp of breath as Henry led her down the hall towards the bedroom.
"I'm gonna watch,” Emily said.
"Like hell. What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” Ted's face didn't look interested. It looked angry.
"Not a prob,” she said, and pulled out her cell phone. “Gimme a sec."
His pupils had dilated, eyes grown almost completely black.
"Hey, Mom,” Emily said into the phone, waving him away. “It's me. Yeah, hey, listen. Allison's over here. She's pretty upset about something."
Ted grinned now.
"No. You should probably come over.” She rolled her eyes.
Muffled screams now trickled from the end of the hall.
Another Princess of Nothing.
"Yeah, Mom,” Emily said. “We'll be waiting for you."
* * * *
"There's Kansas. We got Kansas yet?"
"I don't remember.” Becker ignored the car and its plates as they passed.
"Ummmm.” The boy checked his paper, grabbed the pen. “We didn't.” He added it to his list. “That's...” He counted. “Thirty-two. Not bad with all these back roads."
Becker turned the radio back on.
"You always want noise, don't you?” the boy said.
Becker flipped through the stations, found nothing again, stared straight ahead. Indiana moved by in a blur of one-storey homes, rotting churches, and Dairy Queens. “I guess,” he replied.
