by Bryan Smith
The other one said, “Reckon you’ll share her now and then, Floyd?”
“Don’t see why not.”
Floyd finished tearing Jessica’s top away. He tossed the flimsy scrap of fabric to the floor and again pawed at her breasts, sliding thick fingers inside the cups of her bra. She squealed and tried again to raise her cuffed hands, redoubling the previous effort. He whipped a hand across her face, a blow so hard it blurred her vision and rendered her woozy for a moment.
“That’s enough of that mess, missy.” One of his hands went to her throat and squeezed hard enough to make her wheeze. “Ordinarily I like it when bitches struggle. Sort of enhances my overall enjoyment. But I’m too riled up for any of that foreplay nonsense. So here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna take my dick out and put it in your mouth and you’re gonna give my hog a good ol’ suck.” He relaxed his grip on her throat. “Understand what I’m sayin’, girl?”
Jessica sneered. “You try that and I’ll bite the fucking thing off.”
Floyd tilted his head back and brayed maniac laughter. He slapped her again. It felt like getting hit with a side of beef. She felt dizzy and her head hurt. Despite the defiance boiling in her veins, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop him. Frustration rose up inside her, burning as fierce and hot as her rage. She had thought she was done dealing with the backwoods cretins of Hopkins Bend forever. The unit had killed them all. Only now it was looking like some of them had slipped the net. Or someone had allowed them to get away. She would have scoffed at this possibility until just a few minutes ago, but Zelda’s revelations about her father had cast things in a new light and the notion no longer seemed at all ludicrous. She didn’t want to believe any of the woman’s wild accusations, but everything she’d said fit the few verifiable facts too perfectly.
Her father was a monster.
He was no better than this loathsome Floyd pervert.
Jessica flinched at the sound of a zipper sliding down. Her first thought was that Floyd was making good on his threat, but he hadn’t maneuvered himself into position to do that yet. She glanced at the other redneck creep and saw that he was removing his pants. His briefs came off next, revealing a dong as big as some monster porn movie dildo. She was mystified by what he was doing until he went to his knees and began to work at removing Zelda’s clothes from her corpse.
Jessica cringed in disgust.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Is nothing too low for these animals?
Floyd had also taken note of his friend’s apparent flirtation with necrophilia. “Uh, Cletus? Whatcha doin’, man?”
Cletus grinned as he finished pulling off Zelda’s tight black pants and tossed them aside. “You know what I like about dead girls, right?” He ran one meaty hand up the length of one of Zelda’s shapely legs. “They don’t ever say no.”
Both men laughed heartily at this.
Floyd focused on Jessica again as his friend tore off the dead woman’s panties and climbed between her legs. He smiled and his hand clenched around her throat again. “Here’s the deal, little lady. You ain’t biting shit off. My boy’s too big for that. You’re gonna have all you can handle just trying to breathe.
He sat up and reached for his zipper.
The tab had just started sliding down when an ear-piercing scream filled the room.
“What the hell!?”
Jessica sat up as Floyd climbed off her and got to his feet. Her first instinct was to make a grab for the rifle. Handling it would be awkward with her hands cuffed, but she thought she might be able to get off one shot. She wouldn’t be able to brace the stock against her shoulder, which meant the recoil from that one shot would knock the weapon out of her hands. But the circumstances were too desperate not to attempt it anyway. Hopefully she could put that one shot through Floyd’s thick, ugly skull, thus cutting the threat facing her in half.
But any thought of making a lunge for the rifle left her head as she got a look at what was happening to the other depraved son of a bitch. Zelda was alive, despite having taken a high-caliber rifle slug through her chest, and she was fighting back with stunning ferocity. Cletus was struggling to disengage himself from her, but her limbs were wrapped tightly around him, showing surprising strength for a mortally wounded woman. For a moment Jessica thought maybe she had been wearing a flak vest under her leather jacket, but then she remembered opening her eyes in those first seconds after Zelda was shot and seeing all that blood. When she saw the assassin sink her teeth into Cletus’s shoulder and tear out a big chunk of flesh, she realized there was an alternative explanation.
Zelda had died.
And now she was back.
Because she’s a goddamn zombie.
The how or the why of it didn’t matter. In the military she had been taught the value of pragmatism in relation to rapidly changing circumstances. She trusted the sensory input of her own eyes. This was happening. Accepting that and dealing with it was all that mattered.
Floyd gaped at the gory spectacle and ran shaking hands through his hair. “Holy fucking shit!”
My sentiments exactly, you inbred freak.
The big man stood rooted to the spot, the whole of his attention fixed on the inexplicable, impossible thing happening to his friend. This was something so strange and so far outside the scope of his experience that he was momentarily incapable of action. Jessica had a hunch he was truly frightened for maybe the first time in his adult life. But it soon dawned on him that if he didn’t act soon his buddy would be dead. When Zelda tore another bloody chunk of flesh loose from Cletus’s shoulder, Floyd took some hesitant steps toward the grappling twosome.
The time to act was now.
Jessica made a grab for the rifle.
Floyd sensed what was happening and twisted at the waist to make his own belated grab for the weapon. He seized it by the barrel in the same instant she was able to slip a finger through the trigger guard. His eyes widened when he realized the barrel was pointed right at his head. He tried to twist away and yank the rifle from her grip at the same time, but Jessica managed to squeeze the trigger before he could tear it from her.
The gun boomed. Floyd’s scream of agony as the bullet tore through his shoulder was almost as loud. As expected, the recoil ripped the rifle from Jessica’s grip. Floyd staggered backward and crashed into a bookcase. The man was badly wounded, but he wasn’t dead. Jessica knew she had to press the attack while she had the advantage. She grabbed the screwdriver she had used on Billy earlier, surged to her feet, and let out a warrior’s battlefield cry as she ran at Floyd. He gasped as the screwdriver plunged deep into his abdomen. Jessica screamed again as she twisted it inside him. He at last managed to push her away, but she immediately came at him again. This time she readjusted her aim and the screwdriver punctured his throat. He gurgled and spit blood.
Jessica backed away from him and stood there in the middle of the room, breathing hard as she watched her would-be violator drop to his knees. She took a quick step forward and kicked him in the face. He toppled over and landed moaning on his side.
Zelda made a guttural sound as she turned her head toward Floyd. She reached a grasping hand in his direction. The other one, Cletus, had expired, his body now a massive slab of deadweight atop her. She was just like the zombies in the movies, craving warm, living flesh. Which was really pretty strange, there being no logical reason for reanimated bodies to eat people, but whatever.
Jessica dropped to her knees next to Zelda and raised the screwdriver high over her head.
“Fucking movies better be right about this shit, too.”
She brought her hands down as hard as she could and the flat head of the screwdriver punched through Zelda’s temple.
The zombie’s body jerked once and went still.
Jessica heaved a breath. “Thank fuck.”
She repeated the procedure with Cletus as a preventive measure. With that out of the way, she allowed herself a brief, quiet moment to freak out just a little bit.
Zombies! Holy motherfucking shit!
Her whole body shook as if in the grip of subzero temperatures. After a few more moments of this, she was able to pull herself together. Still gripping the bloody screwdriver, she got awkwardly to her feet, staggered backward a few steps, and plopped down on the edge of the coffee table. She then went to work on the zip-tie cuffs with the screwdriver, working furiously at the latching mechanism until she was able to pry herself free, albeit not without scraping some flesh. No big deal. At this point, a little scraped flesh was nothing.
She flexed her wrists and rubbed at them, relieved to be free again. While she did this, she stared at Floyd, who was still hanging on by the proverbial thread. He was flat on his back now. His moans were becoming softer and his eyes were becoming more unfocused with each exhalation of breath.
Jessica shook her head. “Oh, no, Mr. Floyd. You’re not going out that easy.”
She opened the toolbox and pulled out the removable tray. In the larger compartment beneath was a Black & Decker power drill, along with a set of drill bits. She removed both items, selected a long, threaded bit, and attached it to the drill. Floyd had managed to lift his head a little as she did this and was looking at her with a bleak expression.
Jessica smiled. “I’m so glad we have power now. And so happy this drill is a corded model.”
Floyd tried to scoot backward as she got to her feet, but he was too weak.
Jessica stepped on his wounded abdomen, eliciting a whine of pure misery. “Sorry, you’re not going anywhere, except maybe to hell.”
She plugged the drill’s cord into the nearest outlet and stretched it to its fullest extension. It was just long enough to suit her purposes. She kicked Floyd’s legs apart and dropped to her knees between them. “We have unfinished business, Floyd. You were about to take your dick out and shove it down my throat. Remember?”
Floyd moaned.
Jessica smiled. “You still want me. I can tell. Come on, Floyd, let’s take that hog of yours out.”
She worked fast, knocking his hands aside and getting his pants open in just a few seconds, leering at him as she tugged his briefs down and pulled his cock out. It was as big as she’d expected, but now this pleased her.
More meat to grind.
She inserted the threaded drill bit through the head of the penis and worked it as far into the urethra as she could. By this time, sensing the horror that was about to engulf him, Floyd managed a very meager rally. He tried to slap Jessica’s hand off the drill trigger. Instead of knocking the drill free of her grip, however, he caused her to depress the trigger. The drill buzzed and spun rapidly inside the tube of meat. The pain this caused was intense enough to very briefly bring Floyd back from the brink. He sat bolt upright as Jessica grabbed hold of his cock and held tight while she pressed the trigger again.
Jessica laughed.
Floyd screamed.
And the drill kept on buzzing.
27.
The actual duration of the gunfire in the dining room was less than a minute, but to Daphne it seemed like it would never end. The shots came in several short bursts rather than one at a time. There was initially some screaming and some shouted pleas for mercy, but in the end the only thing speaking was that gun. Daphne didn’t know squat about guns, but she’d seen enough movies to guess it was some kind of automatic or semi-automatic weapon. She spent the entire assault shaking on the toilet seat, a hand clamped over her mouth to stifle any involuntary whimpering. Her hope was that the shooter was someone unknown to her. In that case, it was just barely possible whoever it was would leave without checking the bathroom.
There was a light knock on the door.
Guess not.
“You should come out now, Daphne.”
The voice belonged to Vivian Hunt. This came as a substantial shock to Daphne, who’d assumed the shooter was someone else, either a disgruntled employee or some relative of one of Vivian’s victims come to take vengeance. Of course, she wasn’t privy to all the interpersonal nuances of the relationships between Vivian and her guests, but it seemed unlikely she would end associations with people who were apparently powerful in their own right in so deadly a fashion. But these were people who ate other people. It was just as reasonable to assume that some of the usual rules of decorum might not be applicable here.
The knock came again.
“Daphne?” Vivian sighed. “You really need to come out now. It’s no use pretending you’re not in there. Horst knows. And if you don’t come out, he’ll just shoot you through the door. Given the mood he’s in, I wouldn’t trifle with him.”
Daphne frowned.
Horst?
Daphne’s heart started thudding harder. Horst being the shooter came with some obvious and terrifying implications. The man’s daughter had been murdered. He was grieving and enraged and probably not in his right mind. And given that this was a man who made a living chopping up human bodies and serving them as food, what that really meant was that an already dangerously unbalanced man was now completely off the rails. Not only that, but he’d been put right back to work after his daughter’s death. Daphne had only the faintest grasp of the employer-employee dynamic, but she was inclined to think this might have been a miscalculation on Vivian’s part.
And then there was the most frightening possibility of all, that Horst had decided Daphne must be his daughter’s real killer.
Oh, shit.
Vivian knocked on the door a third time. “He’s pointing the gun at me, Daphne. Maybe if you come out now, we can reason with him. If you stay in there, he’ll just kill us both. You’re not a stupid woman. You need to come out now to have any hope of living.”
Daphne took her hand away from her mouth and spoke in a halting voice. “I’m coming out. I just…just…I just need a minute. My stomach…”
“The big brute doesn’t care if you have a tummy ache. Get off your ass and come out here.”
Daphne winced at Vivian’s more strident tone. Interlaced with the aggravation was a pronounced note of fear. This shook Daphne almost as hard as anything else that had happened. Vivian seemed like a person who was never afraid of anything and was always confident and in control regardless of the situation.
That impression, apparently, had not been entirely correct.
“Goddammit, woman.”
Daphne bit back a whimper. “Just a second. I’m coming out.”
She tore off a large wad of toilet paper from the dispenser, wiped, and dropped the soiled wad in the toilet bowl. After flushing the nastiness away, she stepped to the sink and looked at herself in the mirror as she washed her hands. If she was going to her death, she could at least do so exercising good hygiene. A woman had to have standards, even with the Grim Reaper looming nearby. She stared at her reflected visage a moment longer. It was horrible to think this might be the last time she got to admire its lovely, exquisitely-sculpted contours.
Her expression turned sad.
Oh, well. I’ll make a pretty corpse so long as that German bastard doesn’t shoot me in the face.
She dried her hands and opened the bathroom door. The scene that greeted her was like something out of a gangster movie. There were bloody, bullet-riddled bodies everywhere. The walls were pocked with bullet holes. Everyone but Vivian and Horst were dead, including Klaus, the pianist, and all the members of the serving staff who’d been present at the time of the massacre.
Except that wasn’t quite right, after all.
An almost inaudible whine came from the hibachi table. The grill’s power had been cut and Kate’s bonds had been removed. Somehow she was still alive, although just barely. Her head turned very slowly in Daphne’s direction now, but other than that she didn’t move. That, at least, made sense. The woman’s backside was an inflamed mass of thoroughly cooked meat. She wasn’t getting off that grill without a hell of a lot of assistance.
Daphne looked at Vivian. “What’s going on here?”
“It seems Horst has some g
rievances.”
Horst had been standing near the hibachi table. Now he approached Daphne and aimed his gun at her midsection, making her cringe and cross her arms in front of her, which was really sort of laughable. Her arms were just more vulnerable flesh and blood. His bullets would tear through them as easily as they’d rip open her abdomen. She didn’t know what kind of gun that was clutched in the butcher’s big right hand, but it looked like one of those mini machine guns with a pistol-like grip drug dealers were always waving around in movies. There were some extra ammo magazines in the pockets of his blood-stained apron.
“Admit that you killed my Lexus.”
Daphne blinked rapidly a few moments before finding her voice. “I can’t do that.”
He came a few quick steps closer, his face twisting with rage. “I’m no fool, you stupid whore.”
Daphne took an instinctive step backward. “Whoa, hold up. I never thought you were a fool. Please calm down. Let’s talk about this reasonably.”
His nostrils flared as he sucked in a big breath with his mouth closed. This made him look even more savage and unhinged. It was all Daphne could do to not faint on the spot. His volcanic rage was rolling off him in waves of almost palpable heat as he forcibly unclenched his teeth and moved yet another step closer to Daphne. “Fuck. That. Bullshit. My baby’s body was closer to you. Too close.”
Daphne shrugged. “Kate might have kicked her really hard.” Another of those pitiably low moans came from the hibachi table. “If it had really gone down that way, I mean.”
Horst’s features shifted, conveying deep perplexity. “So you admit your guilt?”
Daphne gave her head an adamant shake. “Fuck that. It wasn’t me who killed your daughter. And it wasn’t Kate.” Her eyes flicked to the hibachi table. “Sorry I had to throw you under the bus, Kate. I was too scared to tell the real truth.”
“And what is this so-called ‘real truth’?”
Vivian frowned. “I’m sort of curious to hear this, too.”
Daphne feigned a look of regret tinged with relief. “I’m sorry, Horst. Vivian killed your daughter.”
