I’d have known the bastard anywhere, despite having never met him before.
He approached my table with a confident ease, stopping just outside of my shield, and looked around as if he actually saw its outline. I sipped my wine and met his gaze, doing my best to seem unimpressed.
He chuckled, offered me a thin smile, and asked, “May I join you?”
Without dropping my shield, I told him, “Of course,” and motioned for him to sit down.
He reached behind himself, pulled a chair from the next table over, and stepped effortlessly through my defenses and seated himself, holstering his pistols.
“Wine?” I offered.
“No. I don’t drink that slop.”
He waved his hand at the table, and a bottle of Jagermeister and a shot glass appeared before him. He poured a shot and drank it, and I got the sneaking suspicion that there was deer blood in the bottle.
“So, you’re Erik.”
“Yes.”
He downed another shot while the tides of death ebbed and flowed around us. In the distance, the faint wail of sirens headed our way. We sat for a while, an infuriating silence between us. I knew that Erik was feeling me out, waiting for me to lose my patience and speak, but I wasn’t about to play his game.
He chuckled. “How much do you know about me?”
“Only what Louis has told me.”
“Calls himself Louis with you, huh? I’ve always known him as Loki.”
I rolled the name of the Norse god of mischief and evil around in my head for a moment.
“So, what has he told you?” he asked.
“He says that, like me, you’re some sort of god.”
He cut me off with a burst of laughter. I seriously considered killing him.
“A god, is it?” he managed. “No, I’m no god. I’m a berserker, a vassal of Odin, but I’m no god.”
“So you don’t have the same powers as me?”
“These?” he asked, sheathing his right hand in flame and then extinguishing it, “Of course I do. They’re gifts from the All-father; he gives power to those who take it—they’re nothing more.”
“Sounds good,” I scoffed. “But I don’t worship Odin. Hell, I don’t even believe he’s real.”
And just like that, his gun was out and pointed at my face. I’d set my mind to be ready for this sort of thing, and I drew my own gun and pointed it square at his tattoo barely a fraction of a second later.
“You watch your fucking mouth when you talk about the All-father.” He withdrew and holstered his gun. “But feel free to fire if you want to. Death holds no fear for me—each man’s wyrd is his own.”
I squeezed off two rounds. They disintegrated about an inch from his face.
“You see?”
“What the fuck do you want?” I spat. “Did you come here just to ruin my dinner and compare dick size, or do you have something to say?”
“I want to beat you,” he said.
“What? You want to fight?”
“No, that would be a waste. Odin has uses for you yet. My killing you is against his wishes. In lieu of that, I want a contest.” He paused to let that sink in. “We’ll compete against each other to see who does the greater murder.”
“What do you mean greater?” I had to admit he intrigued me.
“Better, larger, more difficult, more stylish, more ludicrously audacious—whatever. Simply put, I want to best you in the act we both excel in. I want to show that I’m better than you. I’m sure we’ve both done enough killings to be able to fairly admit which of us wins.”
“Why? What the hell reason is there to do this?”
“Because,” his eyes narrowed in obsession, “I must best you. I’m not permitted to kill you—the All-father won’t allow it.” He shot me a warning look. “Otherwise you’d already be dead. But I will not tolerate equality. I must remain first among my lord’s servants. I will have my contest and I will defeat you.”
He relaxed again.
“I’m sure you have your own reasons why you’ll agree,” he finished.
He was right—I did have my own reasons.
“All right,” I said. “You challenged, so I’ll set the rules. We get one month. After that, we’ll meet. Whoever’s done the better murder wins. Then I never want to see your face again. Agreed?”
His face broke wide in a grin. “Agreed.”
The sirens reached the restaurant, and police and swat teams surrounded the building. They screamed out identification, demands for surrender, and threats of retaliation—all the usual.
Erik rallied his men around him, and they left the same way they’d come in—through the front door and shooting. All of them except Erik died that night (although they took seven police officers with them). Later on, no one seemed to be able to conclusively remember Erik. A few had hazy recollections of him among the others, some seemed to recall the group having a leader, but no one had a single clear memory of the man.
Me, I just walked invisibly out the back door to my Hummer and drove home.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Back at my house, I set about preparing for the month ahead. I packed three bags with all the supplies that I figured I’d need to pull off what I planned to be my greatest slaughter yet. I called my dealer and ordered up way too much cocaine, a pound of really kine nugs, and an ounce of meth. Normally, I leave the synthetic shit alone, but my upcoming adventure had me geeked, and I wanted something with staying power to see me through the long days ahead.
After my dealer dropped off my order, I packed four changes of clothing into a garment bag and cruised out of town behind the wheel of my Hummer.
I did about a gram of meth during the first hour of my drive and spent the rest of the night riding out an amazing rush. I started the trip with Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma in the CD player but soon switched to some Hank Rollins in order to really get my juices pumping. Following Hank, I played some NOFX and Pennywise, then settled into a Dead Milkmen marathon.
Around seven the next morning, I arrived in Kentucky, still pretty tooted up off of the crank. I snorted three big rails of coke anyway, just to top the buzz off.
I pulled into a small mom-and-pop diner at about eight-thirty and ordered a breakfast of sausage gravy and biscuits, toast, and black coffee. I ate my meal, paid the check, and killed everyone in the place. Five minutes later, I sat back behind the wheel of my Hummer, smoking a joint, and listening to Digable Planet’s Rebirth of Slick.
Things went on pretty much the same for the next few days. I drove for long periods, occasionally stopping to eat. I’d pull off in some out-of-the-way town to do a little killing—most of the murders pretty unremarkable, your standard shoot and stab shit, but a couple were worthwhile.
In Missouri, I lucked into a chance meeting with a local politician and had the grand pleasure of castrating him with a serrated hunting knife on the front steps of the capital building. He begged for his life more than anyone I’d killed so far. It drove me crazy, all the pleading and blubbering, and I ended up poking out his eyes and slicing his throat.
I hate whiners.
Eventually, I wound up in Kansas, in a small city named Saltenberg, smack dab in the middle of the state. I checked into a nice hotel and took an hour-long shower. After days of travel, it felt beyond good to just stand under the steaming water and allow myself to drift. I’d been cranked out for the last three days and hadn’t slept at all. I rolled up a good-sized joint, laced it with a line of cocaine, and smoked. Three minutes later, I fell fast asleep.
I woke up a day later, finished the joint, and put together my plans for Saltenberg. I browsed through the room’s phone book and looked up the address of the town’s police station. I planned to cause quite a bit of mayhem to the cops of Saltenberg. It seemed poetic to me, massacring a bunch of pigs in the dead center of the most all-fired Republican State in the Union. This was Kansas after all, the place where Dorothy and Superman grew up. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen there.
I showered, shaved and dressed, and drove down to the police station. I spent the first half of the day scoping the joint out, watching the cops come and go, and getting a feel for the place. Far as I could tell, the station had three entrances: one at the front—used for the general public—one at the side down in the parking garage—used for police coming on and off duty—and another in the rear, used for bringing in the folks on the wrong side of the handcuffs.
Once I’d memorized the outside down pat, I strode into the station for a more personal look around.
The place was neat and efficient. Three cameras (that I saw) monitored the people in the front, and a variety of areas were kept off limits to the general public through the use of bulletproof glass and reinforced steel doors. I walked around the place for about five minutes before anyone asked me what I wanted. I told the officer who asked me that I was from out of town and needed directions on how to find City Hall. He gave me a derisive look (do cops ever look any other way?) and offered directions. I thanked him and left. Ten minutes later, I was on my way out of town, headed for California.
The centerpiece of my plan was the slaughter in America’s heartland, but that was far from all that I had in store. I had two places more to go.
The trip to California was a quick one. Only once did I stop off to kill anybody, and then only because I couldn’t pass up the chance to kill Mormons in Salt Lake City—it wouldn’t have been right.
I left California three days after I arrived there. I stayed just long enough to find a huge Hyatt Regency that specialized in hosting large conventions and had one coming up in a couple of weeks. It was a good convention too—a meeting of software designers and computer industry executives. Once I had the place scoped out, I drove back across country to New York City.
In New York, I located a pretty sizable concert hall with a show scheduled for the same day that the convention in California was going to kick off. I did a bit of reconnaissance, checking out every inch of the place that I could get access to (and with my cash flow, there wasn’t much I couldn’t get access to). When I was sure the place was perfect, I booked into a small out-of-the-way motel outside of the city and made some calls.
I had to contact several different members of the Community before I found what I sought. In the end, though, my searching paid out, and I became the proud owner of two canisters of CX nerve gas and fifty pounds of plastique explosives. I made one final call and arranged to pick up my plan’s coup de grace in Saltenberg on the day of my greatest murder yet.
I drove down to Tennessee to pick up my CX and then back up north to Kentucky for the plastique. With all my materials loaded (and very carefully loaded, I assure you) into the Hummer, I set about my final preparations.
My first stop: the concert hall in New York City. I had to kill three night watchmen to gain entry into the place, and even then I gingerly navigated through a web of alarm systems. When I’d scoped the site out originally, I’d located what I thought would be the perfect place for a canister of CX to go, way up in the ceiling fixtures. My plan was simple: on the night of the massacre, I would trigger the canister to fall from its hiding place in the ceiling. It would crash to the ground (hopefully crushing someone with its initial impact) and burst open, spewing its gaseous death throughout the crowd.
Levitating myself and a canister to the ceiling, I placed it where it would be unnoticeable and secure until needed. The canister fit wonderfully into the ridges of the ceiling’s acoustic ripple effect, and I was sure it would go undetected. Still, it occurred to me that there would be an investigation and most likely a thorough search brought on by the deaths of the watchmen. I figured that, what with the ceiling’s stupendous height and the canisters being so well hidden, they’d be safe from discovery. Just to throw the police off the track, though, I stole about twenty-five-hundred dollars worth of electronics and stereo equipment. Let them think it had been a crack-head.
I left immediately after that for California, and, riding the tail of a wicked crank and coke binge, managed to make it there in four days by driving almost non-stop. I reached the Hyatt at about seven p.m. on the fourth day and found it infinitely easier to infiltrate than the concert hall had been. I only had to kill one hotel maintenance man in order to get his badge and uniform. After that, it was a simple matter of going undetected for the next two hours while I placed and set the primers on forty-five pounds of plastique explosives, wrapping it around the foundations of the convention center. That much C-4 pretty well guaranteed the entire joint would be reduced to a heap of wrecked concrete and mutilated bodies.
And that’s just what I had in mind.
Still balanced on the slippery precipice of long term crank abuse, I boarded my Hummer and set off for Kansas. I pulled into Saltenberg two days later, intensely geeked, strung out, and concentrated on the reality of what I intended to do. My agenda for the afternoon consisted of not one or two, but three simultaneous acts of national terrorism. Once the link had been made between the convention center, the concert hall, and the police station, this would go down as the single worst mass murder in U.S. history. It would make both the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings look amateur.
A bi-coastal action of this sort would convince any number of government agencies—not to mention militias, cults, right and left wing extremist organizations, and good ol’ mom-and-pop America—that there is an organization of undreamed of power and resources operating from right within the borders of the United States itself.
I laughed. When my deed was done, I knew that I was going to be hunted worse than any bastard since…actually, there was no one to compare it to at the time. They’d probably catch me too. At least, that’s what I planned.
Still toying over the multitude of possible futures that faced me, I stopped by my next to last destination. I’d arranged one final pick up from a Community member who lived near Saltenberg. A kindly old guy, he looked like he could have just emerged from a particularly heart-warming Norman Rockwell painting. In reality, he’d more likely come from something Robert Maplethorpe had photographed in his darkest, most twisted nightmare. Evil wears many faces, and most of them resemble the things that we as a society love most.
The old man gave me the two items I’d ordered and offered me a cup of Irish coffee. I declined and gifted him with fifty thousand dollars in large bills for his trouble. I took the items to my Hummer and stored them away in the glove compartment. Minutes later, I pulled up in front of the Saltenberg Police Department and prepared for my masterwork.
I closed my eyes and let my mind clear, pushing all thoughts and distractions away. Several deep breaths helped me along, and I envisioned the concert hall in New York. I built it up in my mind, from the ground to the ceiling, with detailed specifications for every area of the building.
Moving my mind like a video camera, I zoomed in on the canister of CX I’d hidden, reaching out with my will to seize it. I ran mental hands over its casing, caressed it with my awareness, and then zoomed back out, maintaining my hold on the canister.
I panned back out slowly, and the concert hall of my memory shimmered and changed, adjusting itself in my mind to become the hall as it currently was. Light by light, sound by sound, person by person, the scene filled itself in until I gained a full and perfect view of the hall and all that was happening within it.
With a firm hand, I gripped the canister and willed it to move. It resisted me at first, seeing no natural reason why it should move, but then it gave way, lurching forward to plunge towards the crowd, seemingly eager to expel its poison upon the masses. It didn’t kill anybody with its impact, but it did break open. I allowed myself a minute more of clairvoyance to watch the first of many die but then I forced myself to pull away and move on to the convention center.
I repeated the process, building an image from my memory of the convention center’s foundations and then bringing it into line with reality. Mentally, I triggered the series of detonators I had ri
gged into the plastique, pulverizing the hotel’s foundations in a blaze of fiery wrath.
I pulled myself reluctantly away from the image of hundreds of people being buried alive, took a deep breath to steady myself, and made for the police station. My black leather trench with my .45s nestled inside it drew the stares of almost every cop when I entered the station. One hazarded a “Something I can help you with?” and I made his head explode.
Before any of the others could regain even some of their senses, I drew my .45s and fired. My first four rounds tore through a young policewoman, destroying her jaw and removing the right corner of her head. I drank in her demise and shot another cop, this one an older male. The bullet hit him square between the eyes.
At that point, the instincts and training of the fifteen or so cops I’d begun to kill kicked into high gear. Four of them drew their weapons and fired; seven dove, scrambled, or ran for cover while drawing their weapons; and the remaining four attempted to tackle me.
With the merest brush of my will, I threw back the four tacklers, shooting two of the cops who were firing at me as I did so. Each of my targets received two bullets, one in the neck and the left shoulder, the other in his gut and groin. I felt four rounds strike me. Two in my chest, one in my left thigh, and one grazing my left bicep. Focusing my mind, I shut their pain away and willed them to heal while I continued the slaughter.
With lightning speed, I moved to the cop nearest me as he opened fire and broke his neck with a vicious snap. The cops who had originally sought cover also opened fire. Their shots rang out all around me. The tacklers I’d tossed aside drew their weapons, and the two original shooters continued firing. I let my mind reach out to the oncoming bullets and took hold of them, arresting their momentum. I swirled them around my body; they orbited, rotating in wild patterns. The cops, though visibly shocked, continued firing at me, and I added each of their bullets to the maelstrom of lead that encompassed me. At the same time, I gunned down three more of them: two with head shots and one with a round to the chest.
Sex and Murder Page 24
