Merry Christmas.
Dead bodies are a bitch to carry, even if you are strong. I ended up draping the man across my shoulders. He was starting to stiffen, but I did get him into position after a lot of work. The blanket didn’t stay in position while I worked on bending him, though. By the time I got him onto my shoulders, the blanket barely covered him. This would fool nobody.
Wonderful. I put him down again, took off my coat, and spent some time trying to wrap the body up in the blanket so nothing showed. This wasn’t how I wanted to be spending my time. Every motion I made rubbed my clothes against my skin. My breath was ragged and I was achingly frustrated. The third time I failed to get the blanket wrapped correctly, I yanked the blanket off and kicked the body. I got so mad I did kicked him again. Useless. I yanked one arm out of its socket to get it to go the right direction, cursing to myself.
Finally, I got the body wrapped, but by then it was no longer shaped to fit my shoulders. I repositioned the body again, difficult now, because the body was stiffer.
There went the blanket. Round and round I went, taking me far too frustratingly long to get the body into position and properly wrapped. If I didn’t know for a fact Keaton would put me through gruesome abuse, I would have just left that body in the house.
After far too much effort, I did get the body on my shoulders, wrapped in a blanket, with my coat over all of it. I doubted this would be much of a disguise, but in the end, I didn’t care. I carried him out to my car.
Then I did the same with his wife.
I did learn, on this hunt, about the effect cold had on me – I needed to eat more than normal. After I disposed of the bodies, I dunked myself in the Delaware River to avoid a cop in Allentown. To my surprise, I found I wasn’t even uncomfortable in the icy water, or even later, when I walked around in ice covered clothing, hunger driving me out of my mind.
The day after I returned, Keaton came back to the warehouse early with a man in tow. I knew what this meant: whenever she brought a man into her place, it was to torture him, generally to death.
She hauled the man out of her car and forced him bodily ahead of her. He was a big man, tall and muscular, but Keaton bound his hands behind him. Keaton didn’t have any trouble with him. As they rounded the corner around the stacks of boxes, she pushed him ahead of her. He fell to the ground on one of the few mats. When he turned back to face her, she pointed a gun at him. He froze.
“Asshole,” Keaton said, getting my attention. She didn’t use my real name. She hadn’t used my real name in weeks.
“Release the man’s hands,” she said. I did as she ordered. The knot on the ropes around his thick wrists was tight, but I managed to release the knot after a few minutes by persistent picking. Keaton never moved her gun off the man. I made a point of not getting between the man and her gun.
The man was impressive. He appeared to be about thirty, with a hard face and the beginnings of a receding hairline. He wore faded dungarees, a checked shirt, and a beat up felt jacket. He stood a couple of inches taller than six feet, with a beefy build that said ‘construction worker’ to me. He glared at Keaton’s gun, more angry than afraid.
“What’s going on here?” he said.
Keaton smiled. “I have a deal for you,” she said. “You’re going to fight with dipshit, here. If you win, you get to live. If she wins, she gets to eat dinner.”
What?
I wasn’t fool enough to say anything, but I didn’t need to. Macho man here asked my questions for me.
“What the hell? You want me to fight this girl? Are you crazy, lady?” he asked. Keaton wore women’s clothes, so the man picked correctly when he identified Keaton’s sex. He didn’t like the demeaning way Keaton referred to me, and Keaton’s abuse made him even more unhappy with the situation here. He suspected something twisted, and he was right.
I didn’t understand Keaton’s test. This was a full-grown man, and muscular besides. Being an Arm made me stronger, but this was ridiculous. Was this another of Keaton’s mind games? Did she want to convince me I had a chance so my failure would hurt more as I endured the hunger from my lost meal?
Keaton smiled wider. She fired her pistol between the man’s legs. The bullet hit just inches from his crotch. He jumped and bent over, giving Keaton a look of horror.
“Hurt him a bit, dipshit. See if you can get some fight out of him,” Keaton said.
What the hell. I aimed a punch at his privates, and he moved both hands to defend himself. With my other hand I punched him in the stomach. Then I aimed my fingers at his eyes, causing him to raise his right arm in front of his face to defend them. His defensive move gave me another opening, so I hit him again, this time in the abdomen. He hunched over with pain, so I hit him in the clavicle with the edge of my hand. He scrambled desperately to get away from me and to get back on his feet.
“Stop,” Keaton said. I stopped. “Back off.” I backed off, a robot under Keaton’s command.
The man finally gained his feet as I backed away from him. I noted, with a little bit of guilty pride, that he had to struggle to stand. I hadn’t hurt him much, but he felt it. He stared at me, standing ten feet away from him, and at Keaton, still pointing the pistol at him.
“I don’t under…” the man said.
Keaton cut him off. “Shut up,” she said. The man stopped speaking. He got less angry and more frightened by the minute.
“I have no problem at all with killing you,” Keaton said. “In fact, I would enjoy it. But I’m giving you a chance. If you can defeat dipshit here in a fair fight, I’ll let you live. If you lose, or if you refuse to fight, I’ll kill you. Do you understand, or do I need to kill you and find someone smarter? Fight back, you idiot toy!”
The man’s gaze flickered all over the warehouse, searching for an escape. His eyes soon returned to Keaton, the crazy with a gun. Then he looked over at me, and his face set. His life on the line, he crouched down ready to fight.
I also crouched into a fighting position and tried to figure out what I should do with a man half again my weight.
He didn’t move to attack me. He stood well back from me, over by the parallel bars, and watched me. Even with Keaton’s threats, he didn’t have his heart in the fight. We watched each other in silence. Keaton had circled around us, and she stood back by the exercise bike on the other side of the gym. She frowned, getting impatient.
I decided the man wasn’t much of a fighter. Probably never been in a fight as serious as an all-out bar brawl. My chances wouldn’t improve by standing still, so I moved on him. I moved as quickly as I could and used one of the kicks Keaton taught me. Too slow to block the blow, I caught him in the hip, and backed out of range. I didn’t want to get into a situation where he could get his hands on me.
Or, I tried to back away. He followed me and aimed a punch at my stomach. I batted away his slow punch. His fist clipped my side on the way by, and my forearm hurt from blocking his arm.
We went on like this for a minute or two, a ridiculous fight. Neither of us wanted this. Neither of us was good at fighting, either. He pummeled me. I kicked him and pummeled him back. Faster than him, I was careful and stayed out of his grasp. I believed I would lose. He believed he would win. Eventually.
Eventually came, when he managed to grab me and pin me.
“Give up, dammit. Give up,” he said, as he struggled to pin my arm down. His thick muscles bulged and his shirt split its seam under his left arm. I said nothing at all. My breath hissed through my clenched teeth and I forced my arm slowly up.
My arm went up. He forced my arm down with both hands and the leverage of his weight, and he couldn’t keep my arm in place.
I was stronger. He was a large muscular man, I was a medium-sized woman, and I was stronger than he was. He figured this out about the same time I did. Panic filled his eyes.
If I was stronger and faster, then what was I doing on the bottom?
I bucked, turned, rolled, and for a brief instant, I was on top.
We rolled again. I tried to grab his neck as we rolled and he tried to hit me. We rolled again and this time I got on top, extending my legs wide for leverage. I gave up on his neck and grabbed hold of his wrists, pinning him to the cement.
He struggled briefly, a futile struggle. Wherever he tried to get leverage, I got there first, and used my strength to defeat his efforts. A moment or two of this and the man gave up, laying there, gasping for air, sweat dripping from his face and neck.
Keaton padded over. We had rolled all the way over to the wall of the building, and just a few feet from the middle of the three big loading dock doors. The shadow of one of the tightropes fell across the man’s face.
“Kill him,” Keaton told me.
I wasn’t surprised. I looked down at him. Eyes closed, I wondered if he prayed, or just waited for death. I took out my knife and moved to cut his throat. With Keaton standing behind me, any reluctance to kill in cold blood disappeared. Keaton interrupted.
“Slowly,” she said. “I expect you to take at least two hours. I expect to hear screaming the entire time.”
Damn Keaton. I frowned at her for interrupting me and the glare she gave me for my defiance did not bode well for me later.
With Keaton standing behind me, my reluctance vanished before I even said a word.
I turned my thoughts to dealing with the man below me. I held his ribs so tight he had to struggle for each breath. What should I do with him? I couldn’t get off of him without allowing him to start fighting again. I needed some way to restrict his ability to fight or run away.
I wrapped my hands around his thick neck and cut off his breathing. He bucked for a few seconds and passed out, too weak to struggle much.
Well, I decided, he wouldn’t go anywhere if I broke his leg, and I was supposed to cause him pain. I went over into the gym and picked up a twenty-pound dumbbell. My hands shook and my breath came in little pants as I broke that unconscious man’s leg.
Dark emotions seeped into the cracks of my mind as I studied the helpless prey in front of me. Madness. I turned my mind away from the mad twisting of the monster inside. I was Carol Hancock, and sane, I told myself. I would not give up my sanity. I forced my conscience into a dim dark corner of my mind and, as Keaton ordered, got to work.
I screwed up anyway. A half-hour into my vile efforts he went into shock. He died ten minutes later, long before the two hours were up.
Keaton made me pay. She made me pay for my rebelliousness. She made me pay for screwing up her orders. She had demanded two hours of the man’s screaming, and the man had only supplied a little over a half-hour. Therefore, I owed her an hour and a half of screaming.
Afterwards, I lay on my mat in the storage room and shook. I knew not to cry, but my breath came in little short gasps. Sometimes I let slip little whimpering noises. The horror of the hour and a half with Keaton still went through me like a knife and my mind refused to deal with the horror.
I knew this stage of the process. This wasn’t the first time I had been through a torture session, and it wouldn’t be the last. I would recover.
I knew my moment of rebellion made this punishment so terrible. With Keaton at normal juice levels, such as now, a simple screw up of her orders wouldn’t normally bring on punishment like this. Keaton didn’t tolerate rebellion in any form. She didn’t tolerate weakness. She expected me to be strong and smart and independent, and she expected me to be slavishly subservient. The fact these were mutually contradictory didn’t bother her at all.
The moment of rebellion wasn’t the real problem, though.
The problem was what Keaton made me do to the man. By making me torture him, she pried open the darkness inside me, the foul place each of us holds inside ourselves, what she considered the true nature of the predator. Her trick worked; the creature in the darkness twisted around inside of me and struggled to break free. The beast inside was always strongest when I did something terrible. The terrible thing within me fed on cruelty and murder and pain. On the blackest evil a person could do.
It called to me, a lure of evil and destruction. Madness. The true monster. The beast inside. Black insanity gnawed at my mind, a twisting, gibbering monster, the permanent loss of all reason. Was this the predator that she wanted? No, she wanted the beast. If I gave in to the beast, I would be lost. Carol Hancock would evaporate, become history. Keaton didn’t care and I couldn’t stop her.
(12)
Keaton and I sat at the breakfast table together. I made enough pancakes and sausage for both of us, so I was able to eat. I still hurt from what she did to me last night, after I came in from my latest hunt. My soul still ached from what Keaton forced me to do to the guy she made me fight and torture, a few days before I started my hunt.
I thought my latest hunt was a success, but Keaton didn’t. Two days ago, I faced my first real problem: I found a kill in a state penitentiary, a kill I had to walk away from. After that, I got a bit frantic and took a kill in public, right in front of the kill’s friends.
Public kill snatching was number four on Keaton’s ‘things to never ever do’ list. I did manage to dodge the police afterwards, but Keaton hadn’t been pleased with me.
She tapped an index finger on the kitchen table and I met her gaze. I smelled punishment coming. Keaton didn’t disappoint. “I’m tired of having to give you money. You’re an Arm. You need to figure out how to keep yourself in money. I’ve taught you all you need to know. Just keep your idiocy out of the Philadelphia area.”
Crap.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I didn’t ask my questions. The expression on her face told me to keep my yap shut.
Keaton worked in her office for most of the morning. I hated it when she stayed around in the warehouse during the day. Stressful. Lucky for me, she didn’t work in her office often. I spent the morning trying to impress her with my industriousness.
After late lunch (Keaton had changed the schedule to five meals a day: breakfast, early lunch, late lunch, supper, and late supper) Keaton left the warehouse. She took her duffel with her, so I suspected she would be hunting or working on some of her personal business, and would likely be gone for a day or more. I breathed a sigh of relief as I shut the garage door after Keaton’s departing car.
Keaton ordered me to raise money, which meant theft. Outside of Philadelphia, which meant a car. Dammit!
Baltimore was two hours away by car. I would be able to go there in a morning and get back by dinner. I went back into the kitchen and started cleaning up the dishes. I thought some more as I worked.
I didn’t have a car. I would have to do something about that. I could steal one, or I could buy one. I didn’t have any money of my own and I couldn’t use the grocery money stash for this.
I could steal a car. Keaton had taught me how to pop a lock on a car and how to hot-wire it. I wondered how long I would get away with driving a stolen car. Where could I steal it? Keaton made it clear I wasn’t supposed to steal anything in Philadelphia. I might steal a car in Baltimore, but I still needed to get to Baltimore to start with.
I needed money to take the bus to Baltimore and steal a car. Keaton’s grocery money? Perhaps I might use the grocery money for the bus fare and steal some money in Baltimore to pay back the grocery money stash. However, if I took the bus to Baltimore, I would arrive in mid-afternoon, with no transportation, and only limited knowledge of the city. I might not be able to make back the money I borrowed. Keaton would have my hide. Even if I made the money back, she might still want my hide.
I started drying the dishes and putting them away. The clink of dishes and the low hum of the overhead fans offered no ideas for me. I would have to be damned careful about my money making. I didn’t want to do anything to alert the authorities about any Arm activities in their city. Doing so would piss off Keaton.
After a couple of hours of trying to come up with a reasonable way to get to Baltimore, I gave up and went to the A&P. Keaton had the car, so I took the bus. I went through the stor
e and picked out bread, eggs, and milk, several dozen candy bars, four bags of potato chips, and a few other emergency supplies. I went through the checkout line, and headed out to the bus stop.
After I left the checkout counter, a young man wearing an ‘Ed Mackey’ nametag stopped me and asked, “Did you find everything you needed?”
I glanced at him, startled. I wore my mod teenager disguise and I thought I got it right. “Yes, no problem, thank you,” I said.
“My name’s Ed. I’m the assistant manager here at this store. I’ve noticed you come here often, and we always like to make sure that our regular customers are happy.” Ed was about twenty-two, my height, and thin and awkward. He had sandy blond hair and a little bit of a complexion problem.
“I’m happy, thank you. Everything’s fine.” This was definitely a strange conversation. I didn’t see any reason he should be talking to me. Worse, I was only two days past my last kill. With a young man standing in front of me, talking to me, what I wanted to do was jump into bed with him.
Oh. Right. Here was a man making up reasons to talk to me. I knew what kind of powerful signals I gave off after a kill. He was interested in me. Interested in sex with me.
Well, well, well.
“Can I help you with your groceries?” he asked.
I let him take my groceries from me and followed him out into the parking lot, thinking through my options. Keaton had left with her duffel. The warehouse was clean and I didn’t have anything major left undone. This appeared to be a good opportunity to take some time for myself. My only worries were the perishables in my grocery bags, but I didn’t want to miss an opportunity like this over a dozen eggs.
All Conscience Fled (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Two) Page 14
