by Bryan Smith
Floyd got a grip on himself long enough to say, “That gun ain’t loaded, boy. I can see the empty chambers from here.”
James gave the gun a closer look, his gut twisting as he thought, Shit, he’s right.
Chainsaw Guy wedged the base of the chainsaw against his crotch and thrust the blade at James like an enormous silver phallus, whooping with insane glee. “You are fucked now, boy!”
James knew he didn’t have many options here. There was only one, really. But first he called out a warning to his other friend, from whom there hadn’t been a peep since the start of this confrontation. “Harley! Run for your fucking life!”
This was almost certainly a useless gesture. Harley was lost in the clouds and proably unaware of the tragedy unfolding around him. James could do nothing else for him. He would only get himself killed by taking the time to drag him out of the car. And now Floyd had leaned down to peer into the Mustang.
Harley’s fucked. Go!
Running was all he could do now. Run and pray like hell.
Well, there’s one other thing.
James switched his grip to the Magnum’s long barrel and threw it at Chainsaw Guy. The gun whipped through the air and struck the man in the forehead. The blow rocked him backward an inch or two as the gun bounced off his head and fell to the street. The stupid grin faded from his face and he yanked on the chainsaw’s starter cord.
It roared instantly to life.
James turned and ran into the woods.
Running wasn’t something James did a lot, rapid flight from inbred degenerates with chainsaws not being a part of the job description when you inked people’s flesh for a living. But sheer terror and an overload of adrenaline propelled him forward with the speed of a star halfback bursting through the line and running for daylight. As he ran, he shrugged out of the black button-down shirt that had been hanging open over his Misfits T-shirt. This allowed him to pump his arms harder and run even faster.
It also marked the path of his flight through the woods.
After a while the buzz of the chainsaw dimmed and he began to believe he might live to see another day, after all. He nimbly jumped over vines and shouldered his way through low-hanging greenery. A sense of exhilaration came over him the deeper he plunged into the woods. He hated that he hadn’t been able to save the lives of his friends, but goddamn it, he was getting out of this bullshit. This was the thought going through his mind when he stepped in the leaf-covered hole and broke his ankle as he pitched forward and hit the ground.
James whimpered in agony as he carefully pulled his foot out of the hole and rolled onto his back. He cried out as he braced his palms on the ground and pushed himself backward until he was able to put his back against a tree. When he got his first good look at his broken ankle, he felt like crying and screaming at the same time, the unnatural angle of it was so grotesque. But the distress he felt in that moment was nothing compared to what he felt when he heard the buzz of a chainsaw running at idle. With mounting desperation, he scanned the area around him for a decent hiding place—some dense thicket, perhaps—but there was nothing suitable.
The idling of the chainsaw grew louder.
And then Chainsaw Guy came into view in the distance, threading his way through the trees and greenery. James shook his head in helpless denial and moved away from the tree, trying to get upright and hop away on his one good leg. But he screamed in pain when instinct caused him to put his bad foot down. He again fell to the ground and rolled onto his back.
Chainsaw guy was standing right over him now. He raised his voice to be heard above the buzz of the chainsaw. “Been meaning to get some new ink for a while.”
He then cackled like the maniac he was and planted a huge booted foot on James’s stomach to hold him in place while he went to work with the chainsaw’s long, whirring blade. James screamed and felt like he would go insane from the pain as the blade chewed through flesh and bone, taking both of his arms off at the shoulder.
Chainsaw Guy cut the engine on the chainsaw and snatched up the severed limbs. He began to walk back to the road at a nonchalant pace, sounding like the most contented human being on earth as he whistled “Dixie.”
This sound was the last thing James heard as he bled out on the forest floor.
16.
The smell of decay kept getting stronger. With the flashlight held at shoulder height and the gun extended in front of her, Jessica took a cautious turn around a corner and continued down a shorter stretch of hallway. Some half dozen strides brought her to another door. This one was locked but not padlocked. It yielded more easily to the crowbar than the outer door. Through the door was a large supply room. It was here where she found the executed employees.
She counted seven desiccated bodies. One appeared to have been an older man. He wore the white lab coat of a head pharmacist. The name Len was stitched on a patch above the breast pocket. A possibly younger male wore blood-stained blue scrubs. No name patch, but he’d probably been a pharmacy assistant. The remaining victims were all female. All of them had name tags pinned to work smocks. Someone had herded all seven into this room and shot them dead.
It was too easy to imagine their terror and confusion. Not everyone in Hopkins Bend had been connected to the murderous activities of the so-called “old families”, but the black ops unit dispatched by her father’s cronies had opted for a thorough cleansing of the town rather than a surgical strike. These people likely had no idea why they were being killed.
But I know, Jessica thought. You’re all dead because I called my father and asked him to rescue me, only I never guessed the full extent of what that would mean.
But this was just another exercise in self-delusion. It was true she hadn’t known until later that the entire town would be wiped out, but she had known a great many people would die. She was having a lot of second thoughts about the advisability of coming to Hopkins Bend. It was starting to seem like the exact opposite of a perfect hiding place and not only because of the close call with the redneck in the cruiser. Everywhere she looked she was confronted with more evidence of the consequences of her actions here.
Jessica moved the flashlight beam away from the bodies and conducted a quick visual check of the rest of the room. She played the beam over rows of metal shelves crammed with back stock of merchandise no one would ever buy—toys, boxes of canned goods, household items, and an array of health and beauty products. Jessica was surprised it hadn’t all been taken away and dropped in a landfill somewhere. It was apparent evidence of a very cursory cleanup operation, which appeared to have been limited to hauling away all the cars and locking down the buildings.
Leaving the bodies behind was an act of hubris so staggering it suggested something other than mere sloppiness. The men her father’s friends commanded weren’t stupid or inept. There would have been some reason behind this. What that reason might be was a mystery, but she could hazard a good guess. It was possible they had considered carrying out a similar exercise in some middle-of-nowhere pissant little town for years, perhaps as a test of what kind of operations they could feasibly conduct and contain on homeland soil. It was also possible they weren’t as finished with Hopkins Bend as she had been told. They weren’t worried about bodies being discovered because…
Because they’re still here.
With her paranoia surging, Jessica had zero desire to continue her exploration of the store. She wanted only to get back out into the light and away from the accusatory stares of the dead. The latter, of course, was nothing more than a product of imagination, but knowing this did nothing to diminish her unease.
Fuck this.
Jessica retreated from the supply room and hurried down the dark hallway until she arrived panting at the back door seconds later. After banging through the door and emerging into the glare of the late afternoon sun, she tossed the crowbar in the back of the truck and climbed into the cab.
Billy frowned as she dug the handcuff key out of a hip pocket. “You�
�re kind of empty-handed.”
Jessica unlocked the cuff attached to the steering wheel, leaving the other cuff clamped around his left wrist. “There’s nothing in there.”
“You’re shitting me. Nothing at all?”
“It’s been picked clean.”
“Huh.” Billy’s tone was doubtful and the distrust in his expression was plain to see. “It’s just you weren’t in there very long and when you came back out you looked sort of spooked. Almost like--”
Billy’s head snapped hard to the right as Jessica’s fist crashed into his jaw. He had little time to recover from the first blow before a second one was arcing toward his face. It landed with even greater force, loosening some molars at the back of his mouth. He cringed against the door and raised a shaking hand to cover his face, but Jessica drilled her next punch into his bandaged wound. The sound of his agony reverberated in the cab’s interior. Jessica pressed the assault as his hand came away from his face, his pain doing nothing to lessen her rage. The whole time this was happening she understood she was lashing out at her own inner demons as much as she was punishing Billy for doubting her.
Her hand was throbbing when she finally stopped hitting him. She stared at it and thought about how she should feel bad about what she had done.
But she didn’t feel bad.
Not at all.
Billy sagged against the door and sobbed like a baby, holding his wounded arm as he whimpered and occasionally called for his mama. This elicited no pity from Jessica. What she actually felt was a growing contempt. This was a good-looking guy, but he was a wimp. Jessica couldn’t respect the weak-willed or the cowardly. Her father had taught her to look down on such people, another of many lessons she’d taken to heart.
So she didn’t bother with apologies or explanations as she started the truck and drove away from the CVS. The sounds of Billy’s suffering became increasingly pathetic as she took the truck back through the center of town. She turned on the radio, tuning it to a country station to cover his blubbering.
A series of random turns led her out of Hopkins Bend’s modest downtown. She passed some other locked-up buildings that had once been home to various businesses on the outskirts of the town’s commercial hub before yet another turn took her into a residential area. The houses lining the streets of this neighborhood were typical middle class single-floor dwellings. These all looked essentially the same, with the occasional exception of a house here and there that had a covered carport or fenced backyard.
As with the downtown area, there was no evidence of an ongoing human presence. The yards were overgrown and there were no cars anywhere. She had a growing desire to get out of Hopkins Bend and take her chances elsewhere, but she recognized the urge as counterproductive and possibly suicidal. The paranoia she was feeling had to be reined in before she started making some unwise choices. There might be some good reasons behind the paranoia, but she had to make her decisions based on known facts. According to her father, law enforcement agencies were actively seeking her. Should she venture back out into civilization, her chances of being apprehended would skyrocket. This was indisputable fact. Her suspicions about the military’s possible ongoing interest in this town had no foundation in anything provable.
So here I stay. For now.
Jessica pulled into the driveway of the next house she saw without a fenced yard and drove around to the back of the property to park the truck out of sight from the road. She switched off the engine and took the keys from the ignition. The lonesome-hearted lyrics of a Hank Williams song cut off in mid-warble. “We’re getting out now, Billy.”
Billy sniffled and didn’t say anything.
Jessica took the gun from the dash and pointed it at him. “Open your door and get out. Make me say it again and I’ll kill you.”
Jessica couldn’t say exactly why she did what she did next, except that it was a continuation of the same impulse that had caused her to beat him, another example of a burgeoning new capacity for sadism. She placed the suppressor against his head, smiling at the way the sudden pressure against his skull made him whimper and hunch his shoulders. Body instinct was such a funny thing, all those nerve endings responding to the primitive delusion that a tightening of muscles could prevent or minimize harm to the body. A bullet fired from the gun in her hand would make a bloody mockery of that idea.
Jessica chuckled softly and said, “Bang.”
Billy sobbed some more.
Jessica took the gun away from his head. “Get out.”
Billy let out a shuddery breath as he finally opened the door and slid out of the truck into the tall grass. After grabbing her purse from the floor and sliding the strap over her shoulder, Jessica got out, too.
There was a small wooden deck with rails at the back of the house. On it was a propane grill, a wrought-iron table, and some chairs. One of the chairs had been kicked over. A single empty beer bottle sat near the center of the table. Jessica kicked aside the knocked-over chair and crossed the deck to the back door. After a glance inside at an empty kitchen, she used the gun to knock out a window panel. She reached inside to turn the door lock and patted her fingers gingerly along the edge of the door until she found a deadbolt latch. The deadbolt didn’t want to budge at first, but she bore down harder and it eventually surrendered to the pressure, the bolt retracting with an audible thunk. The door then swung inward with the expected creaking of rusted hinges.
Jessica glanced back at Billy, who was watching her with a wary expression. She stepped aside and waved an arm at the open door. “Ladies first.”
“You know what’s funny?”
“What’s funny, Billy?”
“In the beginning, I thought you might be a decent person. You know, despite the whole kidnapping thing. I thought we could even be friends once you had your troubles sorted out, whatever they are.” His eyes glinted with what looked like genuine sadness. “But now I know better.”
Jessica’s tight-lipped smile failed to mask the rage building inside her. “Is that so?”
“No really decent person gets a kick out of hurting other people.”
Jessica’s phony smile faded and she waved the gun at the open door. “Inside, Billy.”
Having said his piece, Billy went inside without another word.
Jessica followed him inside and shouldered him out of her way with a degree of force far in excess of anything necessary. She then began a methodical room-by-room search of the house, which didn’t take long because it wasn’t a big house. It was one floor with two bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen and dining area, and a living room. After confirming that the house was empty, she marched Billy into the living room and made him sit on a tacky old tartan sofa. He complied without hesitation or comment and stared at the haphazard stack of old magazines on the coffee table in front of him.
She aimed the gun at his face. “I need to make a phone call. You sit still and keep your mouth shut while I’m talking. Got it?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
Jessica shrugged the purse strap off her shoulder. She took out the last of the disposable cell phones she’d purchased earlier in the day. After activating it, she punched in her father’s number and put the phone to her ear.
He answered on the second ring. “Is this who I think it is?”
She bit back the reflex to gush at the sound of his voice. Her old man was hardass, old school military, all business in times of trouble and conflict. She needed to show she was cut from the same cloth. “It is.”
“Are you where I think you are?”
She didn’t say anything.
He grunted. “Good. I’m still doing all I can for you, but it may take longer than I initially hoped. There are people higher up the chain of command with a vested interest in seeing you permanently neutralized.”
Jessica couldn’t suppress an exasperated gasp. “Why?”
Her father sighed. “You’re seen as a loose cannon. No one wants word getting out about what really happened in Kab
ul.”
“But that’s ridiculous! I’ve got as much to lose as anybody if that ever went public. Hell, more to lose, since I was the one with my finger on the fucking trigger.”
Her father was silent for a few moments, allowing her time to compose herself. When he did speak again, it was in the same measured tone as before. “I still believe I can fix this. It’s just going to require more time and finesse than I originally thought. In the meantime, I need you to stay out of sight. Are you in a secure location?”
“I’m in a house. Pretty sure the owners won’t be returning any time soon.”
“It would be in your best interests to remain there until I can get the situation resolved.”
“How long do you think that’ll take?” Jessica asked, a tinge of anxiety creeping into her voice again despite her best efforts to emulate her father’s resolutely calm tone.
“At least one more day. Maybe two. If at any point you need to leave the house for supplies, I suggest you do it under cover of night. One more thing.” There was a brief pause from her father’s end. “Are you alone?”
Jessica looked at Billy, wondering whether she should tell her father about him. She knew he would tell her to kill him and she wasn’t quite ready to do that.
Just lie. No need to complicate things unnecessarily.
“Yes. I’m alone.”
Billy’s face betrayed profound confusion. His mouth opened as if he might say something. Jessica put a shushing finger to her lips, her fierce glare a promise of a severe punishment to come if he gave the lie away. Billy closed his mouth.
“Good. Keep the faith. I’ll clear this up. I promise.”
The line went dead.
Jessica dropped the phone in her purse and aimed the gun at Billy’s face. He started trembling again and his eyes brimmed with fresh tears. She attributed his increased terror to the comment she’d made about being alone. The guy had no idea to whom she’d been talking, but she had a hunch his imagination was running wild. He probably believed she was a contract killer for the mob or some other kind of shady individual, which, really, wasn’t so far removed from the truth. And he would, of course, assume the person she’d been talking to was her boss. He might further assume the moment of his death was at hand, that she was getting rid of him to comply with the interests of this imaginary boss.
