Just as she did every other night, as she dreamt of her mother.
Slim knew this was no dream.
The things she’d seen, the things she’d done...it was all real.
The ruined child on the porch with the broken neck and caved in skull, was real.
Her brother was most likely dead, and her father was one of these...things, these animals who valued human life to be less than that of an insect.
He was now the sort of man who would kill a child.
Who would kill her, given half the chance.
She’d lost everything in the last few hours. All her world... burned away in the blink of an eye, no more than dust in a storm.
No...not everything.
But she still had Meg.
Strong, vital, beautiful Meg.
And she’d be damned if she’d lose her, too.
Slim opened her eyes, set them on the two women locked in mortal battle, and finally found her strength, hidden with the contours of her love.
She pulled herself to her feet and, roaring, she charged the woman.
John wanted out.
Enough was enough.
That fucking maniac outside had been swinging a baby at the door...by its feet.
He could still hear the thud in his ears now, as the boy’s limp form smashed into the oak door. He wanted to rip the damn things from his head and stomp them into mush.
Wanted only to be deaf, and blind, and free of this fucking madness.
He knew he was losing what little grasp he still had on the situation.
It had all been too much.
Sam’s family...Meg’s family...all this fucking insane talk of demons and devils and fuck knew what else.
Too much.
Too crazy.
And now they were under attack again. This time it looked like the fight was a losing battle. This new guy, the ‘demon hunter’, was down and out, and Slim looked like she’d finally crossed over into fucking cuckoo-nest territory.
Meg was on her feet, and fighting with a ferocity that John could scarcely believe, considering her recent trip to the realm of the shell-shocked. She looked incredible as she charged the enormous woman with her knife held high. The two came together like two bulls locking horns, and were it not for the terror that was presently threatening to release his bowels, John may have paused to admire this Amazonian battle in all its furious majesty.
But fear, like a slithering snake, had coiled around his senses and began constricting, chocking off any other focus beyond self-preservation.
He climbed to his feet, took one last look at Slim as she stared around the room in a dead-eyed daze, and ran.
He was out the door and swallowed by the darkness only seconds before the girl he loved, whom he’d now abandoned to certain death, got to her feet, and charged into the fray to help Meg, with a scream that could freeze blood.
The two women, Meg and the psychopath, were a mess of tangled limbs, smeared blood and raking fingernails, as Slim ploughed into them.
She knew she may hurt Meg in the attack, but also knew that without her help, her friend would most likely lose this battle. The other woman was huge, with shoulders like those of a well-built man, a neck like a bulldog’s, and arms like two legs of lamb.
Still, Slim felt no fear at all, as she slammed into the heavyset woman.
No fear that she was without a weapon. No fear that the woman outsized and outgunned her in every way. No fear that the bitch was as crazy as a rabid hound.
Her only thought was to help her friend.
And to tear the evil bitch apart.
With a scream she lunged onto the larger woman, who even now had Meg in a headlock and was chocking the life from her, and grabbed for the woman’s long, blood saturated hair. She grasped it with both hands, clutching two huge handfuls of the bitch’s mane, and pulled with all her might.
Slim couldn’t hear the tearing sound, nor the high-pitched wail that crackled from the woman’s throat as she yanked on the hair as hard as she could, but she saw the agony in the monster’s eyes when she pulled her head back with all her might and ripped two huge clumps of hair out at the root.
Warm blood gushed from the wounds, as the woman let go of Meg and spun on Slim, one hand pawing at her torn up scalp and the other raising that damned axe.
She’d somehow managed to reclaim the weapon after letting go of Meg.
Slim would have been done for, but the blood that ran in rivulets from the psycho’s head quickly reached her eyes, temporarily blinding her.
She swung wildly with the axe, and almost caught Slim in the neck. She could feel the rush of air as the blade cut through the space directly in front of her. The woman snarled as she lost her balance, following her swing to the left.
Slim saw her chance.
As the woman straightened up, desperately rubbing her eyes to clear them of the crimson flow, Slim swung her leg out as hard as she could.
And kicked the massive bitch directly in the groin.
The woman let out an animalistic squeal and she crumpled to the hallway floor, the axe falling from her grasp, completely forgotten. She mewled and wailed; her quaking hands tending to her groin as her bowels loosed.
Slim wished she could hear the sounds the cunt was making, but she made do with the look of torture on her face.
She smiled, sensing victory, and reached for the axe.
Time to lose one’s head, bitch.
She felt an arm on hers, gentle, with little pressure, and turned to see that Meg had gotten to her feet. Her best friend rubbed her throat, and coughed. Her eyes blurred with tears, as she held onto Slim for support.
Slim’s auditory capacity was coming back, at last. It sounded far off, but she could now hear the woman moaning at her feet.
It sounded like Sinatra, Presley, Charles and Cash, all rocking out at the same damn time.
“This cunt’s mine, honey,” Meg said.
Slim turned to her friend, whose voice grew in volume with each word, as the world of sound returned to her.
Slim managed a grim smile.
“Be my guest, babe.”
Meg nodded, raised a boot, and brought it down on the wailing woman’s face.
The woman’s nose cracked and spread across her face.
The second stomp caved in the bitch’s right eye socket and the upper part of her skull.
As Slim watched, she understood.
This was for the baby.
For that poor, dead little boy laid by the door.
When Meg brought her foot down for a third time, she screamed her rage.
The woman’s jaw snapped, her teeth caved in, and finally, her hands moved away from her groin. She raised them in supplication.
Meg kicked them aside, breaking a few fingers in the process, and continued stomping.
By the time she was done, there was little left that could be called a woman.
Neither within her own self, or in the desolation of her victim.
Slim felt nothing but pride.
CHAPTER 22
John was thinking of hide and seek.
He knew these backyards well; had done since he was the tender age of seven, when he and his childhood friends would spend their evenings exploring the forbidden realms of their neighbour’s gardens. Every fence, every rose bush that had so frequently drew young blood, every tree that cast sweet and comforting shadows.
Shadows where the children would hide, finding sanctuary from the lights beaming out into the night from warm, welcoming households, populated by that most alien of creatures – grown-ups - unaware of the intruders who prowled their lands under cover of the American night.
Many times he and his friends had spied in these windows, watching the movements and rhythms of the lives inside, from the blanketing darkness of the lawns, bushes and trees. The thrill had been incredible, vivid in its hyper-reality; a tension that John would never find himself able to replicate in the years following, as his burgeoning a
dulthood swept aside the adventure and majesty of youth with almost imperceptible force.
It had never occurred to John or to any of his friends, as they made their way from one backyard to the next, that the people inside the homes, with lights burning bright, were all but unable to see them out there in the dark.
Had he and his friends known, it would perhaps have spoiled the magic, and as he got older, John had always been glad of that small blessing. Childhood was a wonder...its magic and mystery tragically fleeting, as formless as wind. The lights in those windows had held real fear for the children. An innocent, harmless dread and apprehension that was both delicious and frightful.
As he scoured the murk of the backyards now, making his way as far from the madhouse he had just fled as possible, he longed for those lights again, to see the families move within, courting normalcy as though it was something eternal, and not a comfort every inch as fleeting and vaporous as his own lost innocence.
Each and every window was now dark. John could easily imagine families behind the glass, but these families would be far from normal, if they were alive at all.
And without light, there was always the chance they could spot him, out there amidst the trees and the bushels. There was always a chance that little Johnny, all grown up and above the wonder of the charms of ‘hide and seek’ played in forbidden suburban kingdoms, would be surveyed with hungry, perverted eyes, and dragged from one darkness to another, altogether more terrible darkness.
He stopped to gather his thoughts and catch a breath, making sure to be as quiet as he possibly could. The garden he stopped in, he recognised as though he were only here yesterday. It was the property of Mr and Mrs Elan, a lovely couple who had moved here in their long-gone youth, fallen in love with the town, and never ever left.
He eyed the house, and the dark, soulless eyes of its windows eyed him back.
This was the last house on the row. Once John hopped the fence, he would be back out on the street.
The thought filled him with terror.
Much like the homes, the streets had seemed all but deserted as he and slim...
Slim.
...had made their way to Meg’s house earlier.
From what they’d witnessed on the streets back in that charnel house, it seemed as though many of the crazies had grouped together and found a purpose in their bloodlust.
The crowd that had passed the house they’d been holing up in with that guy, Tim, had been testament to that, hadn’t they?
Thinking of what he’d just fled, John wept.
He’d left her there, surrounded by those evil fucking psychopaths...left her there, shell-shocked and defeated on the floor; a fallen Tim to one side of her, a dead baby to the other.
Inside, John crumbled. Self-disgust rose like bile in his throat and he longed to let it be free, a primal scream borne of cowardice, selfishness and the loss of light.
She was probably dead by now.
Slim.
Meg, too.
And the hunter.
Ripped apart.
John tried not to think about it, but his mind’s eye seemed hell-bent on making him endure the self-loathing he felt.
What kind of a man would turn tail and run, while the girl he loved was in mortal danger?
No kind of man worth a damn.
His father had been right all along.
He was a worthless shit.
A pussy.
A wimp.
A shit-stain.
The best part of him had run down his mother’s leg and soaked into the fucking bed.
He imagined Slim, beautiful and strong, torn to shreds by that woman’s axe, or worse, kept alive and left to the devices of yet more of the crazies.
Raped and cut and beat and used and...
John was horrified to find that he was growing hard at the thought.
He wept openly more for himself and for what he was, than for the fate that could have befallen his beloved Slim.
Time passed, he had no idea how long, and John found what tiny shred of courage, or self-preservation, he had left, and made his way to the gardens border.
As quiet as a cat, he peered over the fence.
The street was deserted, nothing moved out there but the trees rustling in the evening breeze, and the occasional children’s swing blowing on the wind.
He gulped, pulled himself up and climbed over the white picket fence.
Standing on the kerb, John gazed left and right. Up and down the street, no sound of life could be heard, no shadows moving between streetlights. Not even the mewling of a stray cat, nor the barking of an unattended dog, craving its master.
The town was dead.
John found himself almost wishing for a police siren, a scream, anything to break the awful spell the graveyard silence cast.
Choosing a direction, north, he made his way for the outskirts of town. His plan...get to the countryside, travel through the night, and get the fuck to safety and far, far from this lunatic asylum, never to return, before dawn.
He’d walked across the street and down a small lane, when his half-wish for signs of life was granted.
To his left, he heard grunting.
Animalistic.
Rhythmic.
A man and a woman.
He could make out male and female sounds, squeals of delight from her, and grunts, growing ever louder, from the male.
John stopped in his tracks, terrified to make even the slightest move.
A tall fence, around six feet high, stood to his side. They were just beyond the fence, separated from him by nothing more than an inch of cheap wood.
He could hear his heart beat in his throat.
And as he realised what they were doing, he felt a familiar throbbing in his groin.
Pleasure and fear...one and the same...were coursing through his system like summer wine.
The sound increased in intensity, the woman was moaning, almost purring, with each grunt from the man. John’s cock pulsed, as his mind burned with images of what was going on, one small step away.
He took a step closer to the fence, laying his trembling hands on the wood panels; sweat trickled down his forehead and into his eyes, stinging.
He lowered one hand and reached for the throbbing bulge in his slacks, and began to rub.
And then, he was on his tiptoes, straining to see over the fence, heedless of the danger, caught in the pull of his growing lust.
What am I doing?
I could be seen.
I could be killed.
He looked over the top of the fence, his vision adjusting to the gloom as he took them in.
The woman was on all fours, naked and glistening, slick with exertion.
She was beautiful.
Her perfect breasts slapped together in time with the man’s thrusts, as he determinedly slid his sex-soaked cock all the way out of her, before slamming it back in hard, all the way till his balls slapped on her pussy lips, in perfect erotic sync with the slapping of her tits.
John undid his zipper, no longer concerned with the sound it would make. He had his cock in his hand and was stroking furiously before he even realised he was doing so.
On the wet lawn, the woman licked her lips. “My ass. Stick it in my ass,” she moaned.
The man followed her command.
John watched, his orgasm building to its inexorable climax, as the man squeezed his enormous erection all the way inside her. She screamed in delight, as every inch of his length stretched her and probed her.
“Cum in me!” she screamed.
With a final thrust, the man expelled himself inside her. She came right along with him.
John’s own tension loosed, as he spurted jet after jet of his own semen onto the rough wooden fence.
In the throes of his orgasm, he moaned, helpless to stop it, as the best nut of his life tore his senses in two.
From the other side of the fence, the man growled, “What the fuck was that?”
John held his breath, his orgasm still rippling through his body in tiny, ecstatic waves.
“Who gives a shit? Just get down on your knees and eat it out of me!” the woman barked, still panting.
John reached for his fly, tucking his junk away as fast as he could, careful not to make any noise.
“There’s someone over there,” the man’said. “I’m having a look.”
“Jesus, Rod. We don’t have time for this!”
“We have time. Don’t get your titties in a twist, hot stuff.”
John heard rustling, and realised the man was rising from behind the woman. He stepped back from the fence, terror engulfing him, as a hairy knuckled hand clutched onto the top of the fence from the other side. With a grunt, the man pulled himself up, and peered over.
He smiled, “Well, what have we here?”
John took another step back, tripping over some foliage and almost losing is footing.
“I’m sorry, mister. I didn’t mean to watch,” he gasped.
The man squinted his eyes. “You’re a good looking kid. Shame we’re all done. You could’ve joined in.”
Joined in?
The gruff looking man caught sight of John’s hand, and the mess that dripped from his shaking fingers. “Looks like you had some fun, anyway, huh kid?”
“I’m sorry...I...I’ll just go.”
“Rod!” the woman moaned. “Just kill the little fucker and let’s get going. They’ll be waiting for us.”
John felt warm piss run down his leg as the man raised his other hand over the fence. In it, he held a small pistol. He pointed it at John and grinned.
“You heard the lady, son. Looks like that’s it for you...” His finger twitched on the trigger. John closed his eyes, bracing himself for the end.
He wondered if it would hurt.
He wondered if there was a hell.
He thought of Slim, abandoned back there in that house of death...left all alone to fend off the murderous gang.
He reckoned if there was an afterlife, then his would be one filled with torment.
And I’d deserve it.
I’m not any better than these whack-jobs.
All this passed through his mind in the blink of an eye.
AFTERTASTE Page 16
