Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 1

by Jeff Strand

  I could see it. Ace looked a lot more like a bartender than what he was. If he'd stayed at home, he might this very moment be happily tapping pints of Smithwicks somewhere along the Falls Road.

  It was time to let a little air out of his bubble. "We don't know how big a load we're going to take. We'll have to wait and see." I took up the water jug from the floorboards and drank.

  He was quiet for a moment, then sat back. "Ah, you're right. I'm just hoping to see enough from tonight's labors to get out of all this, you know."

  His speech lapsed into the rhythms of his youth as he finished the sentence. Over the years he'd worked to rid himself of his brogue, only slipping into it in times like now, when he felt sorry for himself or for comic effect when his mood was up. "I didna' leave the old place soon enough to lose it from me speech, not completely," he liked to say.

  He hadn't left soon enough to stay out of the kind of trouble that prevented his return, either. He'd never gone into detail, but considering his heritage and disposition, it was a good bet that some of the boyos from the Royal Ulster Constabulary would like to have a talk with him.

  He waved away the water as I offered it.

  "This should be a good payday," I said. "Let's do the job and be done with it. We haven't worked all that much lately."

  It only got him worked up again. "I'm well aware that we've not worked in recent times. I just can't be as casual about our upcoming transaction as you seem to be. I don't trust the prick. He's selling out his associates just so he can realize a slightly larger profit. What prevents him from treating us in kind?" He gripped the top of the windshield as we rolled over a depression.

  I looked back and forth between him and the trail and said, "These aren't his regular guys. Kuhn thinks they're deserters from Botswana—it doesn't matter. He doesn't trust them to play fair. So he decided to take it off them. We can't really expect the same money these guys were going to get. They've been hunting—hiding out for days. We're only looking at a few hours work."

  Ace was unconvinced. "I don't like it." He spit over his shoulder and folded his arms across his chest. "I don't like dealing with the kraut. Fucking middle-man."

  He was starting to annoy me. I shifted a little in the seat; the .357 I carried on my belt was digging into my hip. "Look, he's doing a job neither of us wants to do—neither of us could. I don't like him either, but we don't have the contacts. Without him we have a truck-load of pretty tusks we can't sell."

  I shouldn't have bothered. The worst thing to do to Ace was point out that he was wrong. "I still say I want at least five. Bello won't wait forever." It was his way of ending the conversation.

  I'd lived with the man's mood swings since I'd met him in Bahrain fifteen years earlier. The four days it had taken to liberate Kuwait hadn't been enough for me. He'd been looking for someone handy to help him with "a bit of business." We'd been doing this and that together ever since.

  I kept my eyes focused on the trail. It gets dark fast in the grasslands and I couldn't use headlights. Our presence in the bush with the hardware we carried would be difficult to explain to any government men that might happen upon us. A pair of Heckler-Koch MP5's was on the seat between us.

  In the absence of conversation with Ace, I could hear Frederick jabbering away to Joseph in the bed of the truck. They were pros, in this since they were kids. I knew what they were doing without looking at their reflection in the rear-view mirror. They'd be sharp, eyes open, but Freddy would look at his older comrade from time to time to see if his point had been taken.

  Joseph would smile and nod, rarely adding anything of his own. It was his habit to finger a small two-headed ivory carving that hung around his neck on a leather thong and mouth something to himself, a prayer maybe, his lips moving with the recitation of a silent litany. I sensed that Joseph had long ago grown weary of this life but was trapped, knowing nothing else.

  I liked the work and the countryside, only going into the cities now and then for a taste of real liquor and a woman who wouldn't give me something that would make my cock fall off.

  The sun was well under the horizon and I spotted the moon through the twilight, nearly full, off to my left. There were more and more trees; we were on the edge of the forest.

  Frederick called out. I sat up in the seat and looked at his reflection in the mirror. He pointed to our right. About fifty feet off the trail, a pack of wild dogs was making short work of a deer carcass.

  Ace shouted at them. A few of the dogs looked up, curious. Their eyes reflected the moonlight and seemed to glow. The animals were lean and vicious. Their ribs stood out, making zebra stripes of shadow across their mangy coats.

  They went back to their meal as we rolled by. Ace said, "Some big cat probably took that down and got barely a bite for himself before that lot showed up and chased him off." He spit over the door and turned toward me. "Lousy scavengers. Capitalizing on another's hard work."

  His analogous reference to our situation with Kuhn wasn't lost on me, but I was too busy to indulge him in his petulance. He took one more shot, "If you're ever unfortunate enough to be facing down a pack of dogs or a pack of Zulus," he nodded in the direction of the two in the truck bed, "the proper course of action is the same: keep a prayer on your lips and save the last round for yourself." He patted my revolver with the back of his hand.

  I drove on, following his directions to the ambush site he'd picked out. It was a natural bottleneck, the trail hemmed in at this point by the tree line and a sharp curve in the dry stream. The bunch we were taking would need to travel miles out of their way to avoid this choke point.

  We knew they were heading to meet Kuhn at the outskirts of Tsumeb, the rail junction in this part of the country. They'd come down from ivory poaching in the Kavango region, ranging even into Angola. The big elephants didn't travel this far south in the dry season.

  Using the winch mounted on the front of the truck, we dragged a downed tree trunk across the trail on the far side of the curve. Then we hid the truck in the bush and took up positions. And waited. Nightfall revealed a million stars.

  They came in two vehicles. I could see that they were green hands, inexperienced—the truck carrying the tusks was following too closely behind the lead vehicle, some Asian version of a Rover.

  Ace and I had them flanked on their left side. Joseph and Frederick waited fifty yards up-trail, blocking any possibility of their doubling back.

  We fired at the same time, the two of us putting a pair of rounds each into the truck driver's ear, turning his head into oatmeal just as the lead vehicle braked to a stop at our improvised roadblock.

  It worked out better than we'd hoped; the truck slammed into the back of the Rover. Steam geysered from the crushed radiator. The driver's headless body fell forward onto the steering wheel and the horn blared. We kept firing, picking them off easily as they scrambled from the damaged vehicles.

  Frederick and Joseph did their share, killing the gunmen in the back of the truck before they could recover and return fire.

  Only one of the poachers showed any field-craft at all, rolling off the far side of the truck and staying low, firing bursts in our direction to give us something to think about. If they'd all been as good as him we'd have had more of a contest on our hands, but as it was we had him bracketed. Joseph got the angle and ended it.

  We approached cautiously, running crouched. Frederick got there first and went among the vanquished poachers, dispensing headshots as insurance.

  As I got closer, I saw that they were kids, child soldiers, the oldest not yet twenty. Their clothes were tattered. The insides of their mouths were stained red from chewing khat.

  Sub-Saharan armies used kids for clearing minefields and other suicidal tasks. These boys had tired of their roles as cannon fodder and struck out on their own, like Frederick and Joseph had years before. They just hadn't been as lucky.

  Ace went straight to the truck, looking into the bed, inspecting the load of tusks. "It's not eno
ugh," he shouted over the truck horn. He loosed a stream of tobacco juice onto the parched ground.

  Joseph wandered among the dead poachers. He found the last of them, the one he'd killed. The body rested on its side face down. Joseph rolled him onto his back, gently lifting the slain boy's shoulder with the toe of his boot.

  The boy appeared to stare off into space, eyes wide with the abruptness of it all. A fly lit on his right pupil.

  Ace wrenched open the driver's side door. Grabbing a handful of shirt at the shoulder, he dragged the body out of the cab. It fell in a heap. The horn was silenced.

  He reached into the cab and brought out a huge rifle—an elephant gun. "Here's something, anyway." It was double-barreled like a shotgun. He broke it open, hinged at the breech, and looked down the barrels, then inspected the markings on the stock. "It's an old Beretta, Jimmy." He set the rifle across the bench seat in the cab. "Fucking hell." He spat again.

  + + +

  Joseph was still looking at the dead boy. He leaned over to inspect something more closely and started to cough, quietly first, then more violently. I went to see what was wrong.

  He looked up at me, the whites of his eyes big and round, freakish-looking in the moonlight. He started jabbering away in Ovambo, shaking and pointing at the boy.

  I bent to see what he was talking about but couldn’t understand. Frederick came up and looked. “It’s Ekwnesu. The talisman. Around his neck, like Joseph’s”

  I looked again. The dead boy had a figure on a string around his neck like Joseph did, but his was damaged. One of the heads was missing, obliterated by the shot that had killed him.

  Frederick said, “One head is Chukwu—God. The other is Ekwnesu—Devil. Joseph shot off the good head, leaving the bad. He’s frightened. This upsets the balance of things.”

  I looked around. Ace was ignoring us, going through the pile of ivory. Joseph was hugging himself, muttering, the fingers of his right hand worrying his own ivory figure. I looked back to Frederick. “What should we do?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’m a Lutheran.”

  I looked at him a moment and then started howling. I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks and I was doubled over. Frederick joined me.

  I was gasping as I looked back up at Joseph. His face was a horrible thing to see. He stared at us as though we had betrayed him.

  I sobered and began to apologize when Ace shouted, “I’m glad you ladies are enjoying yourselves. Anytime you could tear yourselves away I’d fucking appreciate it.”

  That was when I first noticed the whining of the dogs. They gathered, circling on the edge of the brush.

  I looked at Joseph, then Freddy. He said, “Go on. I’ll take care of Joe.” He went to his friend and put an arm around the man’s shoulder, speaking softly.

  I walked to the truck. The Buck knife I carried on my left side was slapping against my leg. I put down my rifle and made fast the thong fixed to the scabbard’s end—lashed it around my thigh.

  I stood and was about to ask Ace what he wanted when I saw the tusks. I put my hand on one of them. “It’s good quality stuff, Ace.”

  The tusk was huge, almost six-feet long—the animal it had come from must have been enormous. In the moonlight it looked creamy and finely grained, and was smooth, very smooth to the touch. It curved, twisting from its rudely hacked stump to the gracefully rounded point. “It’s good stuff,” I repeated. I heard a yelp; the dogs sounded closer.

  “I fucking well know it’s good stuff, Jimmy. It’s just not enough.”

  I was still looking at the load but could hear that he’d turned away as he said, “Not split four ways.”

  It took a moment for that last bit to register. I wheeled around, too late to stop him. I heard his HK speak twice and finished turning in time to see Joseph and Frederick fall.

  I’d dragged the .357 out of its holster as I’d spun and was sighting down the barrel at the back of Ace’s head. He raised both hands, the rifle still in his right. “Easy, Jimmy.” A thin wisp of smoke oozed from the skyward pointed muzzle.

  “What the fuck, Ace? What are you thinking?” I glanced at their bodies and repeated, “What the fuck?”

  Ace stood very still. “We needed to do that, Jimmy. You know I’m right.”

  “I don’t know that at all. Neither do you.” I didn’t know what to do. “You’re the one that’s been crying that we can’t trust Kuhn. You just killed the two guys we could trust.” I pulled the hammer back on the big revolver. “Why should I trust you?”

  “You should trust me because I’m telling you that you can.” He turned his head a little bit. “I didn’t have anything against those fellows, Jimmy. They just had the misfortune of outliving their usefulness. I need this money. Bello won’t wait—”

  I fired a round past his ear to shut him up. “Pat Bello died eight years ago. I’m sick of hearing you go on and on about some dive you’re never going to buy. You’ll piss this money away like you always do, you fat little prick.” I looked over at Frederick and Joseph lying dead. “I’m sick of you.” I pulled back the hammer again.

  “You have to trust me, Jim-boy.” He turned more and faced me. “You have to. What else can you do? Kill me? You’d have to walk away from all that ivory.” He gestured in the direction of the truck with his free hand. I kept my eyes glued on him.

  He grinned. “You can’t bring it in by yourself. Put down the howitzer and let’s go get our money.” He spat tobacco juice. “Come on, Jimmy. I wouldn’t be so stupid as to kill them with you at me back if I wanted you too, would I?”

  The hell of it was that he was right. I motioned with the gun barrel. “Put your rifle on the ground and go get the truck.”

  He smiled. “That’s the ticket, Jimmy. I’ll be right back.” He lowered the weapon and trotted away into the dark. I picked up both of our rifles and kept the pistol in my hand.

  I walked over to Joseph’s body. The carved ivory piece with two heads was resting on his chest. I reached down and took it, snapping the leather thong. The head on the right was clearly that of the god. The other wore an expression of evil, almost a sneer. The dogs sounded closer still.

  I looked up as I heard Ace starting the truck. I looked back at the figure; the god face’s eyes were closed. Hadn’t they been open?

  Ace pulled the truck around. Mentally I shrugged; it was dark—I hadn’t looked at the faces carefully. I put the figure away in my shirt pocket.

  We brought the trucks back to back and handed the tusks from the poacher’s to our own. Emboldened by our lack of concern, a dog reached one of the dead and tore into its body with a snarl. Others joined it. Watching them, my skin hurt. I split my attention between the dogs and Ace.

  The truck loaded, I said, “You drive.”

  Ace smiled. “Good thinking, Jim-boy. That way you can see my hands at all times. Right?”

  I didn’t say anything else, just moved around to the passenger’s side. Before he got into the driver’s seat he said, “Be a shame to leave that grand, fine gun. We should take it with us.” I stared at him. “Christ, it’s yours, okay? I just don’t want to see it go to waste, that’s all.”

  “All right. Hurry it up.”

  He trotted back to the cab of the ruined truck and drew the elephant gun off the seat. He kept the breech broken open as he walked back and put the rifle on the floor of the cab between us. “Got some ammo, too.” He handed me five monstrous shells—.50 caliber, more than two-inches long. Nothing smaller would penetrate elephant hide. I put them in the pouch on my belt.

  Ace got behind the wheel, put the truck in gear and made a wide sweeping turn. We drove toward Kuhn and the money. Now that his spirits had recovered, he kept up a steady stream of chatter, always coming back to the cash and what he’d do with it. He made no further mention of Mr. Bello’s pub.

  I ignored the content of his words. I looked forward to taking Kuhn’s money and parting ways with Ace forever.

  I idly reached into my poc
ket to finger Joseph’s talisman. As I touched it, something pricked my finger. “Shit.” It had felt like a bite.

  I’d interrupted Ace’s monologue. “What?”

  “Nothing.” I brought the piece out. I reasoned that there must be a sharp edge. I ran my fingers around it; it was as smooth as talc. I was about to put it away when I thought I saw the evil head wink.

  Ace heard it first. He let off the gas and cocked his head. Then I heard it too—a rumbling sound and then an angry trumpeting that could only be one thing. I put the figure away and said, “Step on it.”

  Ace picked up speed—as much as the truck would bear on the uneven trail. We couldn’t tell what direction the big animal was coming from, we only knew it was coming. Ace glanced away from the trail to me and then to the big rifle on the floor. “Might do us some good if you were to load that.”

  I picked up the rifle. It was a monster—it must have weighed twenty pounds.

  The great animal trumpeted again, and this time I looked in the right direction and spotted it. He was off to the right, maybe fifty yards away, silhouetted by the moon, a huge bull elephant in full charge. Heading our way. “There he is.”

  Ace said, “I see him, Jimmy.” He gave it more gas, but we were carrying too much weight and bottomed out as we hit a chuckhole.

  The elephant wanted us and was gaining. Bellowing, enraged. What was he doing this far south in the dry season?

  Ace spun the wheel and we slewed left, angling away from the animal. I dug two of the cartridges from my pouch, thumbed them into the breech and snapped it shut.

  Was the creature enraged by thirst? Did it want a female? I didn’t know. I did know it was going to catch up with us shortly.

  Ace was forced to come back to the right as the creek bed curved toward us. The elephant bore down on us broadside. I stood, my right knee on the seat, and hefted the weapon, bracing it on the wooden truck side. Was it the tusks?