You Only Die Twice

by Christopher Smith

  But Kenneth, in the full throes of the Lord and how he had sinned against Him, lowered his face to Ted’s boots. He pressed his cheek against them, he kissed them, he lifted his hands to Ted’s calves, he leaned his face against his knees, and he cried. When he did so, the car came over the hill and Ted nudged Kenneth with his foot.

  “Get the fuck up!”

  But it was too late. The sight of a grown man on his knees in front of another grown man in a barren place like Monson was enough to get that car to slow down and for its driver to take notice. As if in a fog, Kenneth turned to it slowly, tears streaming down his face as the car rolled to a stop beside them. It was a gold LeBaron, probably from the early eighties, with barely any treads on its tires and eaten through with rust. A portion of one of the rusty holes was covered with a bumper sticker that said, “Honey Boo Boo is Ma Boo.” Inside were three men, all wearing orange vests and orange caps. Rifles probably in the trunk.

  Hunters.

  The passenger, an obese man with a thick, grisly gray beard that was so bushy, it concealed his mouth, raised his eyebrows at them and pressed a button that rolled down the passenger-side window. Sitting in the passenger seat was a skinny man half the driver’s age with a thin black mullet. He was chewing something that wasn’t gum or food.

  Tobacco, Ted thought.

  The passenger sneered down at Kenneth, who was still on his knees, and then he looked over at the man who was driving. Ted noted that the driver’s gut was so big, it sagged upon the steering wheel.

  “What’s goin’ on?” the driver said.

  “My friend here just got the news that his daddy died. He’s not taking it well.”

  “That so?” the driver said.

  Ted nodded. “Just got the news on his cell.”

  “Well, if that’s true, that sucks. But between us? It looked like he was about to give you a blow job.”

  “A what?”

  He raised his voice. “I said, it looked like he was about to suck your dick. Right out here in public.”

  Everyone in the car broke into laughter. Kenneth stood and faced them. For a moment, it was clear that they were assessing his size and his sheer muscular bulk, and that they were surprised by it. Then something else flickered in their eyes. Recognition.

  “How do I know you?” the driver asked.

  “You don’t.”

  “Not true. I’ve seen you somewhere before. Recent.”

  “You’ve never seen me before.”

  The men in the car exchanged glances. “He look familiar to you two?” the driver asked his friends.

  They nodded, but all agreed they didn’t know why. “It’s not as if we hang around with a couple of fags,” the man with the mullet said.

  “What makes you think we’re a couple of fags?” Kenneth said.

  “Because you were on your knees about to suck him off. Looked pretty fuckin’ obvious to me.”

  “I said he lost his father,” Ted said. “I told you he was upset.”

  “Why don’t I believe that?”

  In Ted’s jacket pocket was his Glock. It would be easy to grab and to use, provided they didn’t have guns in their laps, which they might. “I don’t give a shit what you believe.”

  A silence stretched.

  The driver stared at Kenneth’s face. “I know you, boy.”

  Kenneth stepped forward. “Want to know what I know?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “I know that sloth is a sin. And so is gluttony.”

  “Gluttony? What the fuck is gluttony?”

  “Greedy and excessive indulgence. Since you probably don’t even know what that means, let me bring it down to your level. It’s eating everything in sight. It’s not stopping. It’s gorging yourself full of food and then eating more.”

  “You callin’ me fat, boy?”

  “Are you suggesting that you’re not?”

  “He’s callin’ you fat, Roy,” the man in the passenger seat said.

  “Actually, I’m saying that Roy here is a lazy fat fuck. And as for you, Smokey, it looks like Satan himself ate away at your diseased teeth and rotten gums.”

  “You got a mouth on you, boy.”

  “And least I can see mine,” Kenneth said to the driver.

  “Nobody calls me fat, motherfucker.”

  “I believe I just did, Roy. That, and you’re a disgrace. You’re a sinner. And the rest of these beasts in this shithole of a car with you? They’re all the same, because sinners attract sinners like flies to a piece of dog shit. You all breed sin. I can smell it on you. It reeks of filth. It’s spoiling the air.”

  “Can you believe this shit?” the man in the backseat said. He was somewhere in his fifties with short, wavy blond hair. His skin was pockmarked and had a reddish complexion. “That cocksucker is tryin’ to take us on. What fag thinks he can take on the three of us? Couple of fruits, that’s who. Boys, we got us a strawberry and a dingleberry thinking they can give us shit.”

  They started to laugh again.

  While they did, Ted Carpenter pulled his Glock out of his jacket pocket and pointed it at the driver. “Hands up, Roy,” he said. “That also goes for the rest of you.”

  But nobody moved.

  “You think no one is gonna hear a gunshot, asshole?” Roy said. “Or three gunshots? Or twenty? Because that’s what it’s going to take to take us out. This place ain’t nothin’ but a pool of silence. They’ll hear it all, they’ll call the police and you’ll roast in hell. Fuck you if you can’t take a joke.”

  “So, now it’s a joke?”

  “Sure, it’s a joke―on you, shitfuck. Go ahead. Shoot. Or do you even have the balls to shoot us? When someone hears it, your asses will be hauled to prison, and in the end, even if you do kill us, you’ll die in court, you’ll be sent to prison, and right there, all of your faggot dreams will come true. Your asses will be fucked long and hard by dozens of other faggots, which I bet is just how you’d like it.”

  “Have you noticed that my gun has a silencer?” Ted asked.

  Three sets of eyes looked on the barrel of the gun. By their blank expressions, they hadn’t noticed. They looked back at him and said nothing.

  “Put your hands up where I can see them.”

  The driver, Roy, looked at the man beside him.

  “I asked you to put your hands up.”

  “Just do it, Jimmy,” Roy said. “Fuckin’ do it.”

  “You’re name is Jimmy?” Ted said to the man beside Roy.

  “You don’t need to know my name, faggot.”

  Ted cocked the gun and pointed it at the man’s forehead. “I’ll ask again. Is your name Jimmy?”

  The man looked at the gun and swallowed hard. “Look, we didn’t mean to cause any trouble, OK? We’re all just a little drunk. We spent the morning at Judy’s in Bangor. Beer and eggs, but I ain’t gonna lie. It was mostly beer. Shootin’ the shit, watching some TV. Now, we’re going huntin’. Yearly tradition. That’s all. No need to take any of this personal―” He stopped short and turned to Kenneth, his eyes wider than they were a moment ago. “The TV,” he said. “You’re the guy in the drawing they showed on the news. That was your face. That’s how we know you.”

  “You saw my face on the news?” Kenneth asked.

  Roy leaned down and looked at Kenneth. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s you. You’re the one this whole fuckin’ state is lookin’ for. You’re the one wanted for rape.”

  “So, there goes your faggot theory,” Kenneth said. “And just so you know, when I raped that whore, I pounded the shit out of her. I made it hurt. And right now, behind me in those woods, is her friend Cheryl Dunning, another whore we’re going to kill because that’s what we do. We rid the world of diseased sinners like them and, frankly, like you.”

  Knowing this had to end now, Ted Carpenter pulled the trigger and Jimmy’s head, with its ratty mullet and his ruined teeth, exploded onto Roy’s face and his balloon of a gut. He yelped in horror, pushed Jimmy
off him and scrambled to put the car in gear while the man in the back seat started to scream.

  Ted aimed his gun at his screaming mouth, shot and silenced him. Then, before any other car could appear on either horizon, he took aim at Roy, who was trying to get the LeBaron’s thankless transmission into gear, and blew a hole through his temple, which sent his head smashing through the side window.

  But he didn’t die. At least not then.

  Like some sort of massive, maimed animal who couldn’t be brought down with a single shot, he started to convulse. His jaw yawned open and his tongue darted out as the shock of his own impending death pressed down upon him. No part of his body knew what to do with itself. His hands quivered as his arms lifted and slammed against the dashboard. His legs raised and fell. Because of his enormous, rock-hard ball of a stomach, which was wedged against the steering wheel, he couldn’t really move. He was imprisoned by his own gluttony. When his head turned sharply in Ted’s direction, the man’s eyes seemed to have doubled in size. From the bottom of his bottomless gut, he let out some kind of roar. Was it anger? Fear? Didn’t matter. Whatever the sound was, he was certain it was Satan speaking to him, and so Ted put a bullet through one of those bulging eyes and Roy, who had a Honey Boo Boo bumper sticker covering a hole in the side of his car and who had eaten himself into a four-hundred-pound birthday suit, slumped forward, dead.

  Ted looked at Kenneth, who seemed thrilled by the kills.

  “Why do I want to eat them?” he asked.

  “Take that up with God. We need to hide the car. Now. Your face is out there. She obviously went to the police and didn’t take your advice. But that’s fine. We knew the risks. We want our cause out there. We want people on alert so they’ll change their ways. But anyone could come by at any minute and recognize you, Kenneth. So, move.”

  But Kenneth didn’t. “Let me eat them,” he said. “Or just let me have a taste. Come on, Ted. Let me eat the fat one.”

  “Move your ass, Kenneth. I’m serious. We need to get them and this car off the road before someone else comes along.”

  After they pushed the car into the woods, Ted stood in the middle of the road and assessed the situation.

  What he saw made his stomach sink.

  They’d done their best, but he knew someone would see it. He knew that as well as he knew God Himself. The LeBaron’s gold trunk was sticking out like a massive gold brick. Sunlight glinted on it. Somebody would see it, they’d find the men inside, the sheriff would be notified, then the state police would get involved, and a search would commence, especially since their truck was parked on the side of the road.

  He turned to Kenneth with a stone look on his face. “Gather branches,” he said. “Get them from the fir trees and cover the car with them. We’ve got to make sure you can’t see any trace of it.”

  “What about the tire tracks going into the woods?”

  “I’ll rough them up with my boots and cover them with leaves. You tend to the car, I’ll tend to the tracks.”

  When they finished, it was just past sundown, but still bright enough to tell that in daylight, you wouldn’t be able to see the car.

  Still, that didn’t stop Ted Carpenter’s worries. Earlier, the men said that for them, hunting was a “yearly tradition.” He had no reason to doubt that because he was certain that’s how they fed their families over the winter months. Someone would eventually miss them. Phone calls would be made. “Have you seen Roy?” “I haven’t. Have you seen Jimmy?” “No.” Then the chaos would unspool. Their families knew in which woods they hunted. The police would be called. And if a police dog was brought anywhere near here? It would smell their bloody bodies in an instant and the chase would ensue.

  He looked at Kenneth. “Get the goggles,” he said. “We find Cheryl Dunning now, we kill her and then we get the hell out of this state before it’s too late.”

  CHAPTER TWE

  NTY-FIVE

  “At some point, she’s going to be desperate for water, if she isn’t already,” Kenneth said as they walked into the woods. “My suggestion is that we go on the path until we come upon the wetlands. Then, we make a decision to go left or right. Maybe we split up. We’ll figure it out together at that point. She needs water to survive. Last night, she drank nothing but alcohol, which dehydrated her. If she hasn’t found water yet, she’s trying to find it now because she needs it in order to live.”

  “Agreed. But I’ll warn you now. It was in the wetlands that I came upon that moose. I don’t think they’re nocturnal, but what do I know? The sun is down, but for the moment, it’s still reasonably light out. We’ll need to be careful. Do you know anything about moose?”

  “I know that the Lord created them.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking, Kenneth.”

  He shook his head.

  “I would imagine they bed down somewhere. Like deer. We’ll need to be careful. Bear also are in these woods, and I know for a fact that they are nocturnal. So are a host of other creatures, like skunks and porcupines. Keep your gun at your side. Be prepared to shoot if you have to, but only if you have to. We don’t give ourselves away unless we have no choice. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  As they started to move forward, Maria Fuentes, the stripper they strangled at the Circus Circus in Las Vegas, stepped out of the thick of trees off to their left and walked to the center of the path, where she stood with her hands on her hips. Kenneth froze while Ted continued to move forward.

  “Kenneth,” she said.

  “Ted. Stop. Don’t go near her.”

  “Near who?”

  He pointed at Maria, who was still in her stripper costume with the elaborate pasties covering the nipples of her otherwise naked breasts. Now, her pink feather boa was tied around her throat, probably in an effort to hide the bruises they left when they strangled her. She smiled at him.

  “What are you talking about?” Ted said.

  “Don’t go near her.”

  “You’re hallucinating again...”

  “She’s real. They’ve always been real. I told you that. Why can’t you see her? It’s Maria Fuentes. I know you can see her. Are you messing with me?”

  “Kenneth, you’re under a lot of stress. You need to take a breath and clear your mind.”

  “What he needs to do is give up on Cheryl Dunning,” Maria said. She put her hands behind her head and started moving in such a way that the tassels on her pasties started to whirl around. “It took me years to acquire this skill. People used to throw me twenties when I did it, and believe me, I did it often. Do you like it, baby?”

  “I’m so glad we killed you.”

  “I told you earlier that you won’t get her, but you refuse to listen. So, I’ll say it again. She’s too smart for you. She grew up around here. She knows these woods. You’ll never get her. This is a time suck for you both and you’re going to get caught. Finally, you’re going to get caught. I can’t wait to watch it all go down.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said.

  “You’ll find out for yourself that I’m right. Your face is everywhere. The police are searching for you. Won’t be long now. And at last, you’ll pay for what you’ve done to us all.”

  “I should have cut your fucking head off,” he said.

  “Looks like you screwed up there, too, Kenny.”

  “I could do it now.”

  “I’m afraid not. If you tried, your hands would slip straight through me. You missed your chance, stud.”

  “Kenneth,” Ted said sharply. “No one is there. You’re talking to a ghost. Get it together. We don’t have time for this shit.”

  But Kenneth Berkowitz was transfixed. Maria Fuentes was now lewdly grinding her hips. “I can feel Cheryl’s energy,” she said. “She’s a strong one. She has a real will to live. More than ever, I know that you’re no match for her. I’ve been watching her. Helping her. All of us girls have. Most are with her now. They’re ready for you two.” She held up a hand to c
orrect herself. “Wrong. They’re ready for you two if you can find her, which I doubt that you can because she’s hidden herself real well.”

  “We’ll find her.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  When Ted grasped his arm, Maria Fuentes disappeared. He blinked and, after a moment, he seemed to come back into himself.

  “We need to move.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “She was never there. You were hallucinating again. You need to accept that.”

  “Don’t tell me what I see, Ted. She was there.”

  “Fine, she was there. Whatever. It’s getting dark. Put on your goggles and let’s go.”

  “You heard her. She said we have no chance in finding her. And even if we do, the other girls are there waiting for us. They’re going to protect her. Maybe we should cut our losses and leave.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that maybe we should leave. Someone is going to come down that road and see our truck. Someone is going to question it, particularly if they come upon it at night. They’ll think we’re poaching. Is she worth it? She’s one whore out of many. She very well might die of exposure in these woods if she can’t find a way out. We may have to do nothing. Maybe He will take care of her for us. In fact, He probably will.”

  “No, He won’t. That’s why we’re here. This is our calling. We work for Him. We’ve been doing all of this for Him. We don’t back down. We finish the job and then leave.”

  “I disagree.”

  And Ted Carpenter, who was nothing if not God’s servant, pulled back his free hand and slapped Kenneth Berkowitz hard across the face.

  Stunned, Kenneth took several steps back while Ted aimed his gun at the man’s forehead.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Keeping you in line.”

  “Put down the gun.”

  “We work for Him. Do you understand that? Do you get that? I’ll say it again and again if I have to. We work for Him and by working for Him, that means we get the job done for Him. Each job. We don’t just back out when things become difficult and hand everything over to Him. Now, grow a pair, Kenneth, pull yourself together, put your fucking goggles on and help me find Cheryl Dunning.”