by Bryan Smith
Leave it to Miss Huffingtwat to kill a bitch in the middle of a goddamned thunderstorm.
With a grunt he thrust the shovel blade into the wet earth, scooped up another load of mud, and tossed it onto the growing pile beside the big hole. The hole was maybe three feet deep at this point, about half what it needed to be, and at this rate he’d be out here another hour before he was done. The job had to be done right. You couldn’t half-ass a thing like this. The hole had to be deep enough to prevent animals from digging the dead bitch up.
He paused in his work to glance at the sky. The rain was still coming down in thick sheets. The thunder and lightning hadn’t let up either. Everett cursed the headmistress again and prayed he could get this over with before one of those silver-white electric daggers struck him and turned him into two-hundred pounds of human hamburger. It was insane that he was being made to do this tonight. He’d begged Huffington to let him stash the corpse somewhere safe until the storm had passed, but she’d insisted that the job be done immediately. And so he was doing it. He’d had no real choice. Everett was an ex-con with a record longer than the average Stephen King novel. After being paroled this latest time, he’d had little luck finding gainful employment with any kind of legit business. Until, that is, he’d finally caught a break and got hired on by the SIMRC.
Well, he’d thought he was catching a break.
Way it turned out, Sybil Huffington had been looking for a man with his kind of dubious background. A man she could trust to perform certain kinds of sensitive errands. Corpse disposal, of course, but also the procurement of illegal drugs and “outside entertainment”. The latter was a typical Huffington euphemism. In this case it referred to strung-out hookers willing to do anything for a buck. He’d buried two of the skinny whores out here in the woods that bordered the SIMRC property. The girl tonight was only the second SIMRC enrollee she’d offed. And Everett hoped she’d be the last for a while. The girl’s sudden disappearance from the center would cause questions. The cops would come sniffing around, same as last time. And Miss Huffington would tell them the girl had chafed under the center’s strict behavior policies and had simply run away. A believable enough story. The kid had been a delinquent. They all were. Running away was the kind of thing a kid like that would do. Hell, it was what Everett would do in their place. Even so, the cops weren’t stupid. They’d take a closer look at things out here if the kids started “running away” too frequently.
And then things would get mighty uncomfortable in a hurry.
Everett put the matter out of his head. It was a thing to worry about later, if at all. Maybe after he was back in his apartment. After a long, hot shower and a calming glass or two of bourbon. Then he could devote some time to thinking of ways to extricate himself from this fucked-up situation. Or maybe not. Maybe he would just get drunk and try not to think about all the bad things he’d done over the last couple of years. Like always.
He slammed the shovel blade into the ground yet again, grimacing as it scraped stone. He yanked the blade out of the wet earth and tried again in another spot. Another scrape of stone on metal. Three more shovel probes yielded the same result.
“Fuck!”
The water at the bottom of the hole was up around his ankles and rising. The hell with it. Four feet down would have to be good enough. He tossed the shovel out of the hole and started to climb out. The soil at the edge of the hole was loose and mushy beneath his gloved fingers. He almost slid back into the hole, but at last managed to haul himself out.
The girl’s body was wrapped in a tarp at the edge of the small clearing. He trudged over to it and grabbed an end of the rolled-up dead girl. Huffing and grunting, he dragged her over to the grave. The muscles in his arms and shoulders tensed as he readied himself to heave the body into the hole. But he hesitated. A strange and powerful impulse to have a look at the girl before he consigned her to the earth gripped him. It puzzled him. It was morbid and not like him at all. He wasn’t some sicko. Hell no. He was simply a regular guy who’d made a lot of dumb choices in his life and was stuck in a bad situation. But the urge to check the body out was strong and undeniable.
He set the tarp down and reached inside his yellow rain slicker to extract an X-Acto knife from his tool belt. Then he knelt and used the knife to slice through the thick layers of duct tape he had used to seal the girl up in the tarp. In another few moments he was rolling the tarp open, and then there she was.
His breath caught in his throat.
And he felt a swelling against the crotch of his jeans. A flush of deep shame followed, but the excitement remained.
This isn’t me!, insisted a desperate, clamoring voice from the depths of his mind. I’m not a bad guy. I’m not like this.
The rain quickly soaked the dead girl’s hair and the absurd school girl outfit. Her wet, glistening face looked more delicate now, almost angelic. Beautiful. He placed a hand on one of the girl’s pale thighs and shuddered at the sweet softness. He grunted. His nostrils flared. His cock pushed and strained against the fabric of his jeans. His moved his trembling hand along a cold inner thigh, his fingers brushing over an intricate tattoo of some shirtless and scrawny rock star leaning over a microphone. The tattoo included two words at the bottom: RAW POWER. Then his fingers moved past the tattoo and slid beneath the hem of the pleated skirt. In another moment his fingers were entering her. He started working at the clasps of his rain slicker with his free hand.
Then white light filled the sky.
Everett’s head snapped up. He frowned at the white streak moving quicksilver fast across the sky. At first he thought it must be an especially spectacular blast of lightning, but he dismissed this idea an instant later. The white streak trailed what looked like a blazing ball of fire. The object was coming in low and fast, and looked to be burning brighter the nearer it got to the ground.
Everett gulped. “A fuckin’ meteor. Shit.”
Terror flashed through him as he tracked the meteor’s trajectory and realized it would likely hit somewhere in the vicinity of the clearing. Everett yanked his fingers out of the dead girl’s pussy and stood bolt upright. His head was still turned toward the sky. His jaw hung slack as he watched the great, fiery orb bearing down on him. He felt like a doomed man standing on train tracks and watching the approach of the Hellbound Express. His legs shook. He whimpered.
The meteor was coming down too fast.
There was nowhere to go.
Except…
He glanced down and loosed a burst of mad, helpless laughter.
The light above burned brighter than ever, enveloping the clearing in a warm glow like daylight. A roaring filled his ears and his mind screamed at him to jump.
He jumped.
Another moment passed. The air above crackled and hissed.
The ground began to shake.
Then the explosion came, a sound so huge and all-encompassing that for a time it seemed to obliterate all of existence.
4: LIGHT UP THE SKY
The convenience store was two miles down the road from the Southern Illinois Music Re-Education Center. Wayne turned into the Kwik Mart’s parking lot and parked next to a phone booth. Another crack of lightning lit up the sky as he pawed through the pockets of his leather jacket for change. The search produced thirty cents in dimes and nickels, more than enough.
“So I’m gonna call my dad, let him know we’ve arrived safely at your mom’s place.”
Steve Wade snorted. “Right. Dear ol’ mom.” He grinned, but there was a disturbing emptiness in his eyes. “Can’t wait to see the bitch.”
Steve almost never talked about his mother. Carol Wade had deserted her family several years earlier. Wayne rarely questioned his friend about it. It was clear he was still haunted by it, so Wayne had been shocked when Steve suggested a trip to see his mother as a cover story for their highly illicit expedition.
Wayne arched a brow. “Does she really live around here?”
Steve shrugged. “She did
as of a couple years ago, anyway.” He grunted. “Like to drop in on her and give her a piece of my mind. Stupid whore.”
Wayne frowned. “Huh.”
An awkward silence followed. Then Wayne blew out a breath and reached for the door handle, pausing a moment to steel himself for the ordeal ahead. The phone booth was less than a dozen feet from the driver’s side door, but the distance may as well have been the length of a football field.
Then he thought, Fuck it. Stop being such a pussy.
He pulled the handle and shoved the door open. A gust of wind lashed rain sideways into the Jeep. He leaped out and threw the door shut behind him as he dashed toward the phone booth. He jumped over the curb, splashed through a puddle, and hurled himself through the open door. He slammed the door shut and shook like a wet dog. Water streamed off of him and pattered on the phone booth floor.
He shivered and picked up the phone’s receiver, cradled it between ear and shoulder, and dropped the dimes into the coin slot. He got a dial tone and heaved a sigh of relief. The phone’s dial was one of the old rotary jobs. A real relic. He hooked a finger in one of the little holes and began to spin the dial. As he dialed the last number, he became aware of a bright light filling the booth. He glanced up as the first ring sounded in his ear, frowning at a bright white streak coming in low over the horizon.
“What the fuck?”
The line clicked and his dad answered the phone. “Devereaux residence.”
The white streak flashed by overhead and Wayne turned to watch it head in the general direction of the SIMRC. “Holy shit.”
“Wayne?”
Only then did he realize his dad had answered. “Uh…hi, dad.”
“Son, are you okay?” His father’s voice was tinged with mild concern. But Wayne knew Tom Devereaux trusted his only son to act responsibly. It would never occur to the man to think his son might be up to something truly reckless. A stab of guilt made him frown. “Are you and Steve at his mom’s house?”
“Uh…yeah. Got here about a half hour ago.”
“Uh huh.” A pause. There was something in his father’s tone that made his stomach clench. Maybe the old man wasn’t as blindly trusting as Wayne thought. “Look, Wayne, can I talk to Steve’s mom for a second?”
Oh, shit.
Wayne’s stomach did a slow roll. A moment of blind panic almost tripped him up. Then he thought of Melissa and snapped out of it. In that moment a plausible-sounding excuse popped into his head, and he smiled. “Afraid not, dad. Carol isn’t feeling well and went to bed early. She stayed up just long enough to see Steve.”
“Uh huh.” Tom Devereaux sighed. “Well, you boys stay out of trouble. See you Sunday, son.”
“See ya, dad.”
The line went dead and Wayne returned the receiver to the cradle. He muscled the booth’s door open and trudged back to the Jeep, not hurrying because there wasn’t much of a point—he couldn’t get a whole lot fucking wetter than he already was. Soon he was back inside the Jeep and again ensconced behind the steering wheel.
Steve was wired like a motherfucker. Like a dude who’d just done a whole 8-ball of coke all by himself. He bounced in his seat, barely able to contain the wild energy thrumming within him. “Dude! Did you not fucking see that fucking comet or whatever it was? That was amazing! I’ve never seen any shit like that in my whole fucking life, dude! I mean, shit, did you see that?”
“I saw it.”
Steve cackled. “Well…was that fucking amazing, or was that not fucking amazing?”
“It was pretty impressive.”
“Fuck yeah, it was.”
“I also saw that it was headed in the general direction of the center.”
“Oh.” Steve instantly sobered. He glanced over his shoulder at the Jeep’s rear window. “Yeah. You’re right. Shit.” He looked at Wayne. “Um…I’m sure it didn’t hit the center, man. Melissa…she’ll be all right.”
“I don’t think it hit the center. The meteor, or whatever it was, was coming in too low to make it all the way out there. Might’ve hit somewhere in the vicinity, though.”
“Right, right. That’s what I think, too. No doubt about it, man.”
Steve’s tone belied his words, though. He wasn’t sure. Wayne wasn’t either, really. But it was pointless to freak out over it. He was no superhero. He couldn’t leap into the sky and swat the thing back into space. It was going to do whatever it was going to do. Period. End of story.
Regardless, he did feel a greater sense of urgency now. He twisted around in his seat and reached through the gap between the seats to snag a burlap sack nestled in the floor behind the passenger seat. He’d swiped the sack from the utility shed back home. It was old and grimy. Stenciled on the side in black block letters were the words US ARMY.
Steve was frowning as Wayne settled in behind the steering wheel again. “What’s in the stinky old bag, dude?”
“I’ll show you. Don’t freak out.”
Steve snorted. “Right. Like I’d do that.” His frown returned. “Unless you’ve got some dude’s head in there. You don’t…do you?”
Wayne uncinched the sack’s drawstring and pulled it open. Then he reached inside and withdrew the its contents.
Steve’s eyes bugged out like those of a cartoon character. His mouth dropped open. “Whoa.”
In Wayne’s hands were a Colt.45 automatic and a Walther 9mm. The guns belonged to his dad, who had inherited them from his father. They were old and hadn’t been oiled or used in a lot of years. His dad had stashed them on a high shelf in the utility shed long ago and had probably forgotten he even owned them. There’d been a fair amount of rust on each weapon, but Wayne had done his best to sand away the most obvious brown patches. They looked almost like new now.
Steve shook his head. “Dude. No. You can’t be serious.”
“What do you mean?”
“What’re we doing here, blasting our way in and out like a couple of old time outlaws?”
Wayne smirked. “What, you think I’m crazy?” He passed the Walther to Steve. “They’re not loaded. And I don’t have any ammunition for them. They’re for intimidation purposes only, to be used only as a last resort. If we find ourselves in a situation where we have to get past a security guard or some other asshole, we haul these out and wave them around, acting all hardass and shit.”
Steve grinned. “Psychological motherfuckin’ warfare.”
Wayne nodded. “Something like that. The sight of the guns alone will be enough to make most people think twice about fucking with us.”
“They’ll be too busy shittin’ their pants to get in our way. Fuck it. Let’s do this. But it’s my turn to pick the tunes.”
“Okay.”
Wayne put the Jeep in gear as Steve opened the glove compartment and began to root through the assortment of cassette tapes stored there. Steve’s taste ran toward the heavier stuff. Slayer, Metallica, Diamond Head, Mercyful Fate, like that. Patches for many of these bands were sewn into the fabric of his denim jacket. He found something apparently suitable, snapped open the case, and slapped the tape into the cassette player. He cranked the volume knob to the right as Wayne guided the Jeep back onto the road and stomped on the accelerator.
The roar of the music rattled the Jeep’s interior.
The Misfits. Horror Business.
A surprising choice, given Steve’s tastes. Wayne grinned his approval and sang along at the top of his lungs as the Jeep rocketed toward the SIMRC and back into the thick of the storm.
5: CHILDREN OF THE GRAVE
The ringing in his ears had only just begun to fade by the time Everett realized he was still alive. The blazing wrecking ball masquerading as a meteor hadn’t pulverized him after all. So he was lucky in the most important way. Still had a pulse. Downside, he was lying at the bottom of a dead girl’s grave, covered in filth and muck and choking on several inches of standing rainwater.
He forced himself to his knees and sat there for several long moments.
He still needed some time to gather his strength, but at least now he wouldn’t drown. He shivered and his teeth chattered. The temperature was around forty degrees. Not arctic conditions, but more than cold enough to render an already unpleasant situation downright miserable. At last he could stand it no longer and climbed out of the grave. He saw immediately how close a call he’d had and shuddered. The meteor had skimmed over the clearing, then had crashed through a line of trees, tracing a blackened path deeper into the woods. He could see the smoking crater from where he sat. The meteor itself lay in several smoking, glowing pieces. It was smaller than he’d imagined. Big enough to obliterate anything in its path, of course, but intact it’d been maybe the size of a van. On approach, of course, it’d seemed about as big as the sun.
The reality of his survival and its implications began to sink in. He didn’t think anyone who’d noticed the meteor’s descent would come out to investigate on a night as nasty as this one. But it wouldn’t be smart to base any decisions on that assumption. There was still a dead girl to put in the ground. He’d best get it done and get the fuck gone before any looky-loos came poking around. And no more messing with the dead babe’s goodies either. He remembered those strange moments before the approach of the meteor and experienced a moment of profound self-revulsion. He figured maybe being around Miss Huffington had scrambled his brain some. Some of her depravity had rubbed off on him. And it didn’t take a genius to figure things would only get worse if he continued to stick around and do her dirty work.
“That’s it, I’m leavin’ this fuckin’ place.”
A coughing fit overtook him and he glanced again in the direction of the crater. The pieces were still glowing. Some kind of weird bright green color. And shit, they were emitting something toxic, too. A white mist swirled over the blackened landscape and drifted into the clearing. Another coughing fit came over him as the fumes invaded his nostrils and made his eyes water. He began to panic. No telling what fucked-up kind of outer space gunk that thing had been carrying. It could be poisoning him even now.
