Prey Drive

by James White, Wrath

  “MMmm. Why did it have to end? I was so close. I think we need to stop for a while. I’ll rent us a room. Drive to the nearest motel,” Selene said.

  “Maybe we should keep going? We’ve got a long way to go,” Nathan interjected and the look Selene gave him would have melted steel.

  “I need to rest. We all do. Just for a couple of hours.”

  Joe did feel tired after the orgasm and the near-death experience. He’d been fucking and killing since late the previous evening. His body was on overload. The meat he’d eaten weighed heavy in his belly. He hadn’t eaten real food in almost a full day. His belly was still fat off Cindy’s flesh.

  “Okay. We’ll stop at the next hotel.”

  “I need to stop at a pharmacy or a gas station first. I’m still bleeding.”

  Selene’s breasts were awash with red where Joe had bitten off her nipple. Blood dripped steadily from the wound.

  “Wow. You guys make quite a couple, you know that? I’ve never seen anyone fuck like that. I thought you were going to tear each other apart. That was pretty fucking intense. You had the car going over a hundred and ten miles an hour at one point, just before you came, Joe,” Nathan said. “I really thought we were all going to die. It’s funny, but I was cool with that, you know? Weird, huh?”

  Joe nodded, still staring at Selene’s breasts as he tucked his own cock back in his pants. He was getting hard again. He’d had so many orgasms in the last twenty four hours that getting an erection hurt. The monster throbbed in pain and Joe had to tear his eyes away from Selene’s blood-soaked globes to keep from attacking her again. He stared at the road and forced his mind to avoid thoughts of cannibalism.

  Her breasts were so much fuller now. Cindy’s tiny bosoms had been wonderful, but barely more than a snack. Selene’s would be an absolute feast. He remembered the white hot fire that coursed through her blood stream, the taste of her passion that had nearly scalded his tongue and seared his brain as it ignited inside of him. He wondered if his blood tasted the same to her; the blood of a kindred monster.

  Selene managed to get the bleeding under control by putting pressure on the wound with a rolled up sock. She slipped back into her shorts and T-shirt. Joe felt a pang of regret as her breasts were once again covered. They passed a sign that announced a rest stop at the next exit.

  “We’ll stop here. You should probably go clean up,” Joe said.

  “Pass me my bag, Nathan. I need a change of clothes.”

  Nathan hefted a small suitcase into the front seat and Selene quickly rifled through it for new underwear and something to wear. Blood was already beginning to leak through the one she was wearing. Luckily, she wasn’t bleeding half as bad as she had been.

  They pulled to a stop in front of a gas station that was also a restaurant and general store. Joe pulled up in front to let Selene out.

  “Does anyone else want anything? Something to drink?”

  “Can you get me a soda?” Nathan asked.

  “Sure. What about you, Joe?”

  “I could use some milk and maybe an energy drink. We’ve still got a long drive ahead of us. I need something to keep me awake.”

  Selene frowned.

  “I thought we were going to stop at a motel.”

  Joe shook his head.

  “I think it’s best if we drive straight through to San Francisco.”

  “That’s still five hundred miles away. It’ll take us another seven hours to get there. You can’t drive that long.”

  Joe shrugged. “I can try.”

  Selene walked off in a huff, leaving Joe sitting in the car in a cloud of confusion. He had originally planned to kill both Nathan and Selene, but he was finding their company enjoyable and he feared now that killing anyone else would curse him forever. He hadn’t felt human in years and he longed to rejoin the society of man. Sitting in the bloodstained SUV with the taste of Selene’s blood and flesh still fresh on his tongue, he felt anything but human.

  Joe reached into his pocket and took out two small pills wrapped in cellophane. After his last meeting with Professor Locke, the professor had given him Riluzole pills to try instead of the ketamine injections. They were designed specifically to modulate glutamate in OCD patients. Joe hadn’t taken them, but had palmed them instead to save for later. He’d known he would be escaping the next day and didn’t want anything blunting his aggression. Now, he needed something to quiet the monster. It was the only way he could resist the urge to eviscerate and devour his two traveling companions. Joe looked back at Nathan.

  “Nathan, after we get to San Francisco, I think we need to part ways. You’ve been a great help. Really, I can’t thank you enough for helping me get out of that place, but if you stay with me, I’m afraid it’s going to end badly for you.”

  Nathan was silent, but Joe could sense the man wanted to interject something. Joe waited, but nothing was ever spoken. Minutes went by in complete silence. Joe’s thoughts drifted back to his mother. After their last meeting, Joe had partially blamed her for what was wrong with him because she had known what her husband was up to or at least suspected. Now, he found himself forgiving her, understanding her more. There was something charismatic about murderers, something magnetic and attractive. From John Dillinger to Ted Bundy, society has long been fascinated by them, women in particular. Joe suspected it was the instinctual attraction to the alpha male. Females of all species were wired to seek out the strongest mating stock available and the man who hunted other men naturally stood out as a powerful mate as proven by his dominance over other members of his species. Even other men were programmed to follow the leader, the alpha male, the one who was the most violent, the most powerful. It was a genetic predisposition of social animals. Men like Nathan and women like Selene, Cindy, Alicia, and even his own mother may have had no choice in the matter. The more they were in tune with their primal instincts, the more those instincts would lead them to men like him. Nathan’s pull toward Joe undoubtedly came from the same dark, primal place, from his Neanderthal, primate brain. Either that or he was just a sick fuck getting off on the carnage. Maybe they all were.

  Joe thought back to how his mother had been before his abduction by Damon Trent, before the monster had begun to emerge. He never had any clue there was anything wrong with his family. His mother had always been loving and affectionate. His earliest memory of his mother was of pies. It seemed she was always baking. The house smelled of fresh pastry. He still associated his mother with the taste of cherry pie. He remembered her hugging him and mussing his hair when his father wasn’t looking. Joe’s dad didn’t think boys should be hugged too much. He was of the opinion that too much affection turned boys into homosexuals. So, Joe’s mother always hugged and kissed him secretly.

  The clandestine nature of his mother’s affection had almost made it feel dirty, wrong. As he got older, Joe often wondered if perhaps he’d been molested and just couldn’t recall. He just remembered the way he would stiffen and feel uncomfortable whenever his mother touched him, expecting his father to come around the corner and punish them both. After joining Sex Addicts Anonymous, he had considered that his lust for the flesh may have been partly due to love and affection being a dirty secret in his home. He never saw his parents show each other affection and his father had never hugged him that he could recall. So, he had grown up starved for human touch, sensual love. Perhaps it was as simple as that. Perhaps his lust for the feel of human flesh had simply morphed into a lust to consume it. He had to at least consider the possibility that his psychosis was strictly a mental illness and that there was no viral component to it at all.

  During their last few sessions, Joe had gotten the distinct impression Professor Locke was no longer pursuing the viral theory of signature sex murderers. When Joe was first incarcerated, the professor had hired a virologist and a geneticist to study Joe’s blood for signs of infection. That lasted only a few weeks. The last few years, he’d mostly employed a neurologist, studying Joe’s brain for phy
sical and chemical abnormalities. If the professor didn’t believe him, perhaps it was all a fantasy Joe had concocted to justify his psychosexual rampages. And if that was the case, killing his grandfather wouldn’t do anything but end a man’s life and make Joe’s addiction that much stronger.

  “No more killing,” Joe whispered. Hearing himself say it made it more real for him. “No more killing,” he said again. From the backseat, he heard Nathan clear his throat to speak but seemed to think better of it and fell silent again. Moments later, Selene returned, looking refreshed in a canary-yellow summer dress and Birkenstocks. The dress seemed to hug her curves in all the right places and Joe wondered how she could make even such a formless garment seem sexy. Her bloody clothes were rolled into a bundle and tucked under her arm. She carried a bag full of drinks.

  “You look good,” Joe said timidly.

  Selene beamed.

  “Thanks. I feel a lot better. I took a bit of a whore’s bath in the women’s room. It was hard cleaning all the blood off my skin. Here, I bought you an energy drink. And I bought you a cola,” Selene said, handing a fountain drink over the backseat to Nathan. Joe noticed the drink had no lid and thought it odd, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He popped the tab on his energy drink then and tore open the little package of cellophane-wrapped pills.

  “What are those?”

  “It’s Riluzole. It’s to control my compulsions.”

  Selene frowned.

  “You mean it’s to chemically neuter you. You still want to change what you are? How can you still think about that after what we just did together?”

  Joe shook his head and looked down.

  “I can’t do it anymore, Selene. I never wanted to be a monster. I never wanted this. I just want to be normal and I feel like I’ve gotten worse since they locked me up. I’ve forgotten who I am. I let them make me into a monster. That’s not who I am, Selene. That’s not who I want to be.”

  Selene sneered. Her face turned a deep red. She looked like she was about to attack him.

  “I thought we would be together, Joseph.”

  Joe struggled to make eye contact with her. Her fury was so evident it was like a fiery wall between them, like staring into a hot oven.

  “We can be together. But, if I don’t change, every second you’re with me your life is in danger. If I hadn’t already eaten, do you think I would have stopped at just biting off your nipple? I would have killed you, Selene.” Joe gestured toward the backseat. “I would have killed both of you.”

  Selene nodded. Her face relaxed and her shoulders slumped.

  “Okay. Okay, Joe. We can do it your way. Here, I bought you some milk like you asked for. You should probably take it with this instead of the energy drink. You never know about chemical reactions and stuff.”

  Selene handed Joe a small, quart-sized carton of milk. It was opened. Joe thought about it for a second and then figured it was just her way. Nathan’s container had been open too. Joe didn’t notice that Nathan had not moved since he drank the cola. He popped the Riluzole and chased it with milk, chugging down the entire container.

  “All right,” Joe said, shifting the car into drive. “Let’s get back on the road. I think I can drive straight through.”

  Joe fastened the seatbelt and turned the steering wheel. His arms suddenly felt weak and the road blurred. He never made it out of the parking lot.

  Forty-Six

  The smell of frying meat was the first thing Joe noticed, before he opened his eyes. The smell and the screaming. The next thing he noticed was the man in the shiny, dark-gray, pinstriped suit. He had an oily ponytail, just like the last guy, only he was balding in the front and the gray had clearly been dyed out of his hair. He had a scar in one corner of his mouth as if someone had tried to widen his smile with a knife. His eyes were the same beady, black orbs, staring out of a face hardened by life. Joe guessed there was probably a line in the man’s face for every cruel thing he’d ever done or bore witness to. It looked like a roadmap.

  Joe tried to move but his arms and legs had been duct-taped to his chair. His clothes were missing. He was naked and helpless. He looked around, surveying his surroundings. They were in some sort of warehouse. Dust-covered machinery sat in shadows just beyond the glow of a naked incandescent light bulb. Beneath the cone of light emanating from the bulb, Nathan lay duct taped to a wooden table, crying out in mortal anguish. He was bleeding from what looked like a dozen or more wounds. Pieces of him were piled in a foil container on a small table. Selene stood beside him, sticking the poor man’s arm into a big, stainless steel fryer. His arm was covered up to the shoulder in a thick cream. It took Joe a few seconds before he realized what it was— batter. Selene was deep-frying him … alive.

  Nathan was already missing one arm. Joe looked around and found the missing appendage sitting beside him on a platter, roasted to a flaky golden brown. It smelled marvelous. Nathan’s fried limb was the scent that had greeted him when he first awoke.

  Selene stood beside Nathan wearing nothing but a pair of thick, blue, rubber gloves rolled up to her elbows. Two empty gallon containers of peanut oil lay overturned on the floor. Two more unopened containers sat beside those. Joe assumed those were for him. A five-pound bag of Bubba Jake’s Fry Batter Mix sat beside a large stainless steel bowl. Joe had been correct. She had batter-dipped Nathan. Despite himself, Joe’s mouth began to water.

  “What are you doing, Selene?”

  She didn’t hear him. She was too preoccupied with Nathan. He was thrashing about and the duct tape had begun to loosen, splashing hot oil everywhere. A few drops landed on Selene’s naked flesh and she danced away, cursing in pain. The guy with the ponytail ran over to help restrain Nathan so Selene could continue to cook him.

  “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”

  This time she heard him. She turned toward him with a smile that looked like a horror show. She had obviously started eating without him. She walked over to Joe, carrying a large buck knife in one hand and what looked like a half-eaten pectoral muscle in the other. It too had been batter-dipped and fried.

  “I’m making dinner for us, lover. I promise you’ll love it.”

  Ponytail pulled Nathan’s hand from the deep fryer. The fingers looked like fried chicken strips. Nathan made eye-contact with Joe and his pitiful expression was absolutely heartbreaking. Joe could not imagine his pain. It made him think of what he’d done to Cindy. She hadn’t deserved to suffer. Neither did Nathan.

  “Why are you doing this, Selene?”

  She smiled and took a bite of the fried meat. It was tender and moist. Grease drooled from the corner of her mouth as she chewed. She swallowed and licked her lips and then her fingers, one by one.

  “Because I want to. Because it gets me off,” she finally replied.

  “You’re just a spoiled little girl, Selene. You want it all. Your daddy’s money. Me. But why Nathan?”

  She shrugged.

  “He was there. I wanted it to be the bartender, but you had to go develop a conscience and let her go. You didn’t really leave me with a choice, Joseph.”

  “Who’s your helper?”

  “He’s the guy who helped me clean up the hotel room after my little meal. That poor piece of shit you killed was just a chauffeur I hired.”

  “So what happens now, Selene? You going to fry me up too?”

  Selene frowned and shook her head. “No! Of course not.”

  “Gaining all this weight to look more like Alicia, giving me that taste of your flesh, hiring a lawyer for me, getting me moved to general population, helping me escape. It was all so you could get the curse? Just so you could get off, you spoiled, over-privileged, little slut! You did all this for pleasure? Well, it’s bullshit, Selene. There’s no curse. You did all this shit for nothing. There’s no werewolf or vampire virus. I’m just fucked up! I’m crazy, just like they said I was and so are you. We’re both a couple of psychos!”

  Selene scowled. Tears welled in her ey
es. She shook her head vehemently.

  “No. No! Why would you say that? Why are you being like this? I love you! I just want us to be together. I want you to be like you were!”

  Joe shook his head.

  “That’s not going to happen, Selene. I’m done with all this.”

  Selene slapped Joe hard.

  “Stop saying that! You think you’re not a killer anymore, just because now you conveniently feel remorse? Now that you’re free? Did you feel anything but your own hard dick and that bitch’s meat when you were fucking and eating her? A lot of good this conscience of yours did her. Now that she’s dead and you’ve already cum. Just like a fucking man.

  “And what about all the people you killed to get out of prison? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do it again given half a chance. You’re not rehabilitated. You’re not fucking cured. You’re not sensitive or misunderstood. You’re not the hero, Joseph. You’re the fucking monster! All those people you murdered, you think there’s redemption for what you did to them? You think it matters one bit that you’re sorry for what you did? You did it because it gets you off, the same reason I’m doing this. It’s okay for you to treat women like a piece of meat, but when the roles are reversed then I’m the bad guy? Fuck you, Joe!” She slapped him again and wagged her finger in his face.

  “You don’t get to sit there acting all morally superior! You’re the bad guy, Joe! You! Not me! You talk about how much you loved Alicia, but you didn’t love her, Joe. You objectified her. You used her like you use everyone. I’ve never heard you mention a single conversation the two of you had. All you talk about is her ass and her tits and how wonderful she tasted. You loved her pussy, not her mind. Don’t you get it, Joe? You’re not some romantic hero. You have no idea what love is. All you know is lust. I just want to know it too.”

  She sighed and covered her face with her hands, looking up at the ceiling as if expecting some bloodthirsty deity to come to her aid and force Joseph to kill again. “Can’t we just be bad together?”