The Sound

by James Sperl

  Kaplinsky lowered the bag.

  * * *

  The man tied to the chair in the kitchen wasn't who Inferno expected to find. When he learned Clarissa and her group had gone to the home of a reclusive scientist, he anticipated a modern, technology-rich house, inside of which lived a nebbish, bespectacled person with fly-away hair.

  Not this.

  Inferno had always been accepting of people's lifestyle choices, even before when he was Travis. He didn't care one way or the other if a man wanted to wear a dress, masturbate to Japanese manga, or fuck a sheep. Despite his reputation as an intolerant warlord prone to remorseless violence, it wasn't his place to tell others how to live.

  But no one denied him what he wanted.

  Especially, cross-dressing ex-scientists.

  Inferno dragged a kitchen chair in front of Kaplinsky and sat down. He looked at the bearded man, who sat less than three feet away. Inferno gave the guy credit. If Kaplinsky was afraid, he didn't show it. In fact, he looked rather at ease with the whole situation, as if this was simply an inconvenience he had to endure before he could resume his day. Typically, the sight of the skull mask and the disconcerting timbre of Inferno's voice was enough to coerce information from a person. Not for this dress-wearing man. But that was okay. Inferno had solutions for that.

  “Mr. Kaplinsky,” Inferno said.

  “Yessir,” Kaplinsky replied. He crossed his legs demurely and passed his eyes over several of the eight people who surrounded him and glared.

  “We know Clarissa and the others came to see you. The hospitable folks in Orion confirmed this. There are fresh tire tracks in the yard. So why do you continue to lie? Why are you protecting people that, up until yesterday, you had never met? People who mean nothing to you? Why put your life at risk for total strangers?”

  “Those are all very good questions,” Kaplinsky said. “And rather eloquently posed. I must admit, based on your unique appearance, I expected you to have the social graces of a second-tier video game character.”

  “I'll take that as a compliment.”

  “As it was intended.”

  “Thank you. But I'm still waiting for your answer.”

  Kaplinsky looked at the ground, but it seemed like pretense. “Why am I protecting them?” he said. He leaned forward, the movement prompting Mr. Stitch, who stood behind Kaplinsky, to clap a hand on his shoulder. Kaplinsky, though, was unfazed. “Because if I don't protect them from you, who will?”

  Inferno gazed at him for a long moment. The man might wear a dress, but he was unshakable. For now. When he had finished sizing up his adversary, he stood.

  The move caused Kaplinsky to flinch—so he did fear—and he watched with growing alarm as Inferno strolled over to the kitchen counter and the row of drawers below it. Starting at the farthest end, he opened and closed one drawer after the other, until he found what he was looking for. It was in the fourth one. He smiled to himself beneath his mask.

  “Isn't it fascinating,” he began, “that no matter the person, no matter from what background he or she hails, everyone has a junk drawer in their kitchen?”

  He looked at Kaplinsky, who bravely tried to pretend he wasn't concerned.

  “It's funny how quickly these drawers accumulate things. Things you can't remember having bought or received as a gift, yet there it is taking up space. It used to be all we needed was knives and spoons, perhaps the occasional biscuit cutter or potato ricer or corn cob holder. Now we have Teflon ties, chip clips, adjustable measuring spoons, heated ice cream scoops, and playful egg molds. The sheer number of seldom-used items clogs these drawers, and yet we can't seem to find it in ourselves to throw them out. For example...”

  Inferno rooted in the drawer. Metallic objects clanked as he shifted them aside in search of the one he was after. After a tense moment, he withdrew a set of kitchen shears. He faced Kaplinsky and held them out for him to see.

  “Take this. When was the last time you used it? Have you ever used it?” Inferno waited for a response to his mostly rhetorical question then continued. “I've never understood the point of them, especially when there are usually nice sharp knives sitting around to do the same job. Then again, I'm not that sort of chef.”

  Inferno stepped in front of Kaplinsky and handed the shears to Mr. Stitch. He made a point to pass them in plain sight of Kaplinsky's wild, searching eyes so his mind would fill with horrific scenarios of pain and torture. What the imagination conjured was often more frightening than anything he could physically do to a person. Still, it never hurt to try to live up to expectations.

  Sitting back down, Inferno stared at Kaplinsky and saw a man slowly beginning to realize his predicament. His stoicism was admirable, but Inferno knew the man would break eventually. They all did.

  “Do you know what the best part of this new world is?” he said. Kaplinsky didn't reply. “It's that it's like one big video game: no rules, no authorities, no restrictions. A person can do whatever he wants, and there's nothing to prevent him. I know it was that way in some places around the world already, but before the Sound, acts of cruelty and violence—nine times out of ten—had an agenda behind them, be it religious, political, what have you.

  “But now the playing field has been leveled. Government politics don't matter anymore, and if there are still people who believe there's a God in a time like this, well, they're too busy praying for their soul and redemption to wage any holy war.” Inferno inched his chair forward and leaned into Kaplinsky's personal space. Kaplinsky recoiled as much as the chair back allowed.

  “Which leaves those who excel at using violence as a means to an end. People who have no qualms or hesitation in performing the vilest acts on a person to get what they want. People who enjoy it.” Inferno inched even closer. “People like me.”

  Kaplinsky's Adam's apple danced anxiously. He looked at everyone again, landing last on Ludi, who gaped at him with a deranged, girlish grin.

  “I never used to be this way,” Inferno went on. “Before, I was just a two-bit pusher-chemist. I know. It's not normal. The cook mixes the product, and the dealer pushes it, but I like to be in charge of my business as much as possible. However, as you can plainly see...” He motioned to the armed men and women who stood stone-faced around him. “...I still require the assistance of associates. But make no mistake. I am in control.”

  “What...” Kaplinsky began but immediately quieted. He shot a glance over his shoulder at Mr. Stitch to confirm he had permission to speak. When no one assaulted him, he resumed. “What do you hope to accomplish? What do you want with those people? Have they wronged you? Did they steal from you?” He weighed his final question for severity but asked it anyway. “Did one of them turn you down for a date?”

  Inferno accepted the insult with calm detachment. Words didn't hurt. Only pain did, as Kaplinsky would soon find out.

  “Say you find them,” Kaplinsky went on, “then what? Do you kill them? Enslave them?”

  “And if I did either or both of those things?”

  “What would be the...” Kaplinsky sighed and took a collective breath. “Is that really how you want to live? Is that the sort of world you want for yourself? Where everyone solves their disputes and quarrels through violence?”

  Kaplinsky stared at Inferno pleadingly, as if he expected an answer.

  Inferno chuckled.

  “It looks like the missus has lost her marbles all the way out here by herself,” he said to his guards. They laughed, but it died down in an instant. “Don't you see?” he said to Kaplinsky. “It's always been this way. Human beings have always used violence to get what we desire. Want that land? Send in an army and take it. Want that oil? Send in an army and claim it. Want peace? Send in an army and make it.

  “Before, we were a world of necktie assassins, cowards who hid behind desks in offices and signed papers that killed people on the other side of the world. That form of hands-free murder is gone now. What’s left is upfront and in your face. You have to look
a person in the eye to take what you want, the way it should be. And what I want right now is to know where Clarissa and Valentina went.”

  Kaplinsky swallowed, his throat clicking dryly.

  “I...I'm not sure. They didn't tell me. But, but I thought I heard them say something about South Carolina. So if I had to say where, I guess it would be there.”

  Inferno exhaled with the measured exasperation of someone who learned his favorite menu item was temporarily unavailable. Removing his sunglasses, he placed them in his jacket pocket then proceeded to peel off his mask.

  Kaplinsky's expressions contorted with each wet, sticky sound; apprehension, incredulity, and horror each took a turn on his face. After Inferno had finished removing the neoprene covering, he leveled his gaze at Kaplinsky and delivered a penetrating glare. He was through fucking around.

  “You almost had me convinced,” he said. “Almost.” Then, “Ludi.”

  Like a viper, Ludi descended on Kaplinsky and snatched up his leg. She pulled it straight across her body, her aggressive move so sudden it left Kaplinsky unable to bend it. He squirmed in the chair.

  “It was a nice attempt,” Inferno said, as he motioned to Mr. Stitch with a nudge of his chin. “If only you hadn't hesitated, I might have believed you. But now I know you're lying.”

  Mr. Stitch walked around Ludi then knelt by her side in front of Kaplinsky's foot. He stared at Kaplinsky with the cold, calm demeanor of a seasoned killer—which he most assuredly was—but one who understood his place in the world, where even the most abhorrent individual required guidance. He awaited a go-ahead from Inferno to do what he did best with unsettling patience.

  It's what Inferno loved about him. He was a rocker switch of carefully but brutally dispensed ultra-violence: clicked off, he was a coiled spring awaiting release; clicked on, he was an executioner of the highest order, whose devotion to bloodshed would shame even the most notorious serial killers.

  Things just got real for Kaplinsky. His breathing became erratic, and every time he struggled, Ludi gave him a controlling twist to his knee. He looked at Inferno, his eyes both beseeching and wanting to look away at the same time.

  “Please,” Kaplinsky said. “I don't know where they went, I swear. I don't—”

  Inferno held up a hand, quieting him. He sat back and casually crossed his legs.

  “Did you know that during the Vietnam War, some men shot off their own big toe to avoid the draft? The conventional wisdom was, of course, that with nine toes a soldier would be too impaired to fight. But that turned out to be a load of shit. Here, look.”

  He gestured to Mr. Stitch, who wasted nary a second before he gripped Kaplinsky's big toe between the blades of the shears and clamped down. Kaplinsky howled as the flesh above the knuckle separated. Rivulets of blood spilled in an instant, Mr. Stitch working the rusty shears through the skin until it scraped dully on the bone underneath. Kaplinsky writhed uncontrollably, forcing two of Inferno's associates to step forward and further pin him to the chair.

  Mr. Stitch showed no emotion as he did his job. Though Inferno knew he felt joy, his face was a blank canvas. He twisted back and forth until the bone cracked and the toe popped off like a cork. He cut the remaining connective tissue away from the foot as if trimming a steak. Then he set the severed toe carefully on the ground in front of Kaplinsky.

  Kaplinsky bucked in his chair and let out constrained moans behind white-clenched lips. He huffed through his nose in heaving breaths, his eyes affright with the stark horror of having been mutilated.

  “Now,” Inferno said, “while it may feel different, the body will adjust for the missing toe. Shoes will feel strange for awhile I hear, but you should adapt just fine once things heal. You'll even walk normally—assuming you keep the other nine, that is. So, I'll ask again: Where'd they go?”

  Kaplinsky gritted his teeth and hissed saliva. “I'm...telling you...I don't...know.”

  Inferno nodded. He never once looked at or even acknowledged Mr. Stitch, but the cruel torturer bore down immediately on a second toe just the same.

  Kaplinsky shrieked horribly, as Mr. Stitch sawed at his second largest toe with the shears. Within seconds, it was snapped clean from the foot. Mr. Stitch placed it beside the first one on the floor and readied himself for a third go-around.

  Kaplinsky blinked feverishly, his eyes becoming glassy and distant. Inferno sat forward and snapped his fingers in front of Kaplinsky's face.

  “Stay with us, little miss,” he said. Kaplinsky's jaw tightened, and his body started to shake. “That sensation you're feeling? That's shock. Your brain's trying to rectify what's happening to your body. And unless you cooperate, things are only going to get worse.”

  Kaplinsky shuddered, his body reacting to pain and psychological trauma. It took him a moment, but he managed to corral his shakes down to occasional shivers. When he resumed breathing normally, he lifted his head defiantly and stared at Inferno.

  Inferno offered him a split-lipped smile, which caused blood to trickle down the raw, exposed skin of his chin. The man in the chair was not easily persuaded. That was okay. Mr. Stitch was up to the task.

  “In all fairness,” Inferno began, “I suppose I should have told you what I learned at Orion before we embarked down this road. Then perhaps you would have felt more compelled to tell me what you know and forget this pathetic attempt at ignorance. But that's my fault. That's on me. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

  Blood pooled on the floor beneath Kaplinsky's foot, the puddle large enough to stream up against Mr. Stitch's shoe. He made no attempt to move it.

  “So, then, the facts: We know your friends were looking for a place called Rosenstein Biotechnologies, and June and Ward Farmer thought you could help them find it since they remembered you saying that you worked in the field. Incidentally, their daughter was a real charmer.”

  Kaplinsky glared at Inferno through a different level of pain.

  “So let me rephrase my question: Why are Clarissa and her friends looking for Rosenstein Biotechnologies, and where can we find it?”

  The question was far from funny, yet Kaplinsky laughed. It started off as a deep-throated chuckle that escalated to an all-out guffaw. It lasted only seconds, but the short-lived reaction made Inferno want to drive the kitchen shears into the man's eye sockets until the tips collided with the back of his skull.

  “So that's what this is about after all,” Kaplinsky said through a wince. “It is over a broken heart.”

  Inferno felt the eyes of his guards dance questioningly to him. He glowered at Kaplinsky.

  “You don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Don't I? There were eight people here...and so far you've only mentioned two of them, but of those two, you've referred to one of them three times: Clarissa.”

  Inferno stood up and looked down on Kaplinsky, but Kaplinsky wasn't intimidated.

  “Let it go, son. Whatever you think you're owed...whatever wrong you feel was done to you, it's in the past. All this misplaced rage is going to suffocate you. Just let it go.”

  The tone in the room had shifted. With a handful of insightful sentences, Kaplinsky had managed to turn the tables and bring into doubt Inferno's intentions in the eyes of his followers. Rather than a sadistic drug lord hell-bent on controlling coast-to-coast traffic by any means necessary, Kaplinsky had reduced Inferno to a love-struck sap who tended heartsick wounds. Inferno felt the sneaked glances of uncertainty leveled at him by his people—this was something he could not have.

  “Mr. Stitch,” he said, holding out his open palm. Mr. Stitch passed him the bloody shears and moved away. Inferno knelt in Kaplinsky's accumulating puddle of blood on one knee.

  “Your advice is appreciated,” he began, “but unwarranted. What I feel for Clarissa is far short of love. I'm not even sure the word hatred accounts for how strongly I feel toward her and her friends. But it's what I have, and it's what gets me through each day, this belief that we will meet
again.

  “Perhaps when there was a Before, I might have been moved to such flights of fancy as love and forgiveness, of hope and redemption. But there's nothing anymore. There's only now. And in this particular moment, Clarissa should be the very least of your concerns. So, I will pose the question to you a third time...”

  Inferno angled the shears over Kaplinsky's foot, but rather than single out an individual toe, as Mr. Stitch had, he slid the bottom blade of the shears underneath the remaining three. He delivered his adversary a look of unwavering determination.

  “Where is Clarissa?”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, the vehicles in Kaplinsky's yard rumbled to life.

  Inferno had underestimated the man in the dress. He'd had to ask his question another three times before he got a satisfactory answer. In the end, he got what he wanted. He always did.

  He wasn't a total savage, though. He left Kaplinsky a parting gift. The man was apparently a tea enthusiast. His cupboards were full of odd and mismatched teacups that ran the gamut from collectible to utilitarian. Inferno used one of them—a yellow glazed one with a decorative handle fashioned in the shape of a vine—to store Kaplinsky's toes. It even matched his dress.

  With the sun cresting the treeline, Inferno climbed into the SUV and led his people down the hill.

  Then he pointed his caravan in the direction of Massachusetts.

  CHAPTER 42

  The Sound rang across the sky an hour shy of reaching the New York state border.

  Clarissa still caught herself looking up when she heard it, even though she knew full well there was nothing to see. The metallic screeching noise never failed to work its nerve-twisting magic on her. Today was no different, despite having heard a possible explanation for what caused it.

  The previous evening, she considered telling Kaplinsky and the others of the dream she'd had of the Nothing Place and the skulking creatures that lived there, but she chose to withhold it. She couldn't explain why, but she felt an intrinsic connection existed between the Sound and that hellish world. Something happened there, something that played a crucial role in the disappearance of people from around the world. She just didn't know what.