Dragging his fat ass up the stairs had probably been the hardest part. It’d taken close to an hour, with frequent breaks so that Matt could pant for air while he stretched his aching back. By the time they’d made it to the little hallway at the top, Mona had knocked Earl into oblivion so many times that the crutch was bent and the side of his face was nothing more than a swollen bruise.
Now the large man was propped in a chair with his arms stretched out before him. His head lay on a tabletop and the couple stood on either side of him, smiling at one another.
“You ready to do it?” Matt asked playfully.
Mona nodded her head so quickly that she looked like one of the bobble-heads people put on the dashboards of their car.
“Yeah,” she said, “I wanna see what it’s like. See what the big deal was.”
“Okay then, sweetie. One the count of three. One . . . .”
“I love you, Mattie.”
“I love you, too baby.”
“You said two.”
Mona’s eyes sparkled and she winked at Matt, who smiled back.
“Did not. I said too, not two.”
“Same difference.”
“Two . . . .”
“Now you’re just repeating yourself.”
“Three!”
The couple simultaneously swung the hammers that Mona had found in the shed behind the house after they’d killed Mary. The metal hit the heads of the spikes that their other hands held in position, but the metallic ting was overpowered by the bloodcurdling scream that blasted from Earl’s wide mouth. His eyelids flew open as the sharp tips of the nails rammed through his hands but by then Matt and Mona had already swung again. The nails thudded further into the same tabletop that they’d found Darlene Honnicker impaled to and Earl tried to yank his hands away from the torture that burned within them. But it was too late: he was securely staked to the butchers block table and the action did nothing more than send bolts of agony racing along his arms.
“So,” Matt asked as he stepped back to admire their handiwork, “what do you think?”
“I don’t know . . . . I mean, it goes with the room and all. But it’s just not my style, you know? I’m just not into the whole shabby-chic thing.”
Matt shrugged and picked up the red can that sat by his feet.
“Yeah, I can see what you mean. It seems . . . I don’t know, kind of like American Gothic meets The Scream. Interesting conversation piece, for certain. But, in the end, it’s just not us.”
As he spoke, Matt walked around the room, liberally splashing gasoline on the floor and table. He walked out of the room backwards, leaving a wet trail to mark his passing and continued through the bedroom and into the hall. When the can was nearly empty, he screwed off the little spout, returned to the windowless room, and doused the rest over Earl’s flailing body. The fumes were sharp and pungent and wavered in the air like heat in the desert. Almost immediately, he and Mona began coughing as their eyes watered with tears.
“Come on, Mattie . . . let’s blow this joint.”
Mona slipped her arm around Matt’s shoulder and allowed him to pick her up as if she were a bride being carried across the threshold. Kissing him gently on the cheek, she glanced down at her bandaged leg and smiled.
“If I’d known I would get this type of treatment, I would’ve got myself stabbed in the leg a long time ago.”
Matt carried her down the stairs, opened the front door, and set her gently onto the porch. Turning back toward the house, he removed a disposable lighter from the pocket of his parka while his wife handed him the container they’d prepared earlier. It was an old Coca Cola bottle from a time when they’d still been made from glass, and the couple had carefully siphoned the amber liquid from the gas can into it. Then it’d been stuffed with strips of rags and left to wait on the porch for them like a faithful puppy.
Flicking the wheel of the lighter, Matt held the yellow flame to the gas-soaked rags which immediately caught ablaze. As clouds of black smoke billowed from the improvised wick, he leaned back inside the front door and stared intently at the top of the stairs. Then, with an expression of grim determination he lobbed the molotov into the house.
It arced upward and smashed into the upstairs wall. Almost immediately there was a loud whoosh and a fireball shot down the staircase like breath from a dragon. A blast of heat washed over them, but by then Mona was already leaning against Matt.
“Mind if you use me as a crutch?” he asked. “My arms are pretty damn tired.”
“What? Are you saying I’m fat? Is that what you’re saying? That I have a fat ass?”
Her tone was light and cheerful as she leaned against her husband and draped one arm over his shoulder. Curling his arm around her waist, Matt helped Mona limp across the porch and down the front steps.
“You got to understand, I hauled that giant bastard all the way . . .”
“Oh, so now it’s a giant bastard, is it? I may have put on a little weight, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call it giant.”
“You dork.”
“I’m your dork.”
She pecked him on the cheek again and by the time they’d made it to the police cruiser, the air was thick was the scent of burning wood. They could hear the fire roar behind them as it hungrily devoured the old wood amid sharp pops and crackles.
“We’ll need to ditch this thing first chance.” Mona commented. “I’d say the cop who owned it is probably dead.”
From behind them came a shattering of glass that was accompanied by a yell that sounded like a tortured soul roasting in the flames of Hell. The couple spun around just in time to see a shower of window shards cascading to the ground. But, in the center of them was a huge fireball that hit the earth with a dull thud. The fireball rolled into the snow and Matt raised his eyebrows.
“I’ve heard of stop, drop, and roll before . . . but that drop was a bit extreme.”
Earl’s body hissed as the snow extinguished the flames and revealed the charred and twisted form that had hidden beneath them. Smoke curled from skin that looked like a burnt hot dog and pieces of broken shin bone jutted through the leg. But this hairless, burn covered thing still tried to claw its way forward. The nails that were still embedded into its hands plunged into the ground like a mountain climber’s pick and, inch by inch, it drug its smoldering hulk toward the young couple.
Matt let out a low whistle as he turned to look at his wife.
“I’ll be damned . . . he would’ve had to have pulled those nails right out of the table. sucker just won’t stay down.”
The couple watched for a moment as Earl crept across the snow like a crispy inchworm. His lips looked as if the fatty tissue had started to bubble and boil away and they could see patches on his body where it looked almost as if the clothes and flesh had melted into one another.
Removing her arm from Matt’s shoulder, Mona hopped through the drifts of snow until she was standing just out of the thing’s reach. This close, the stench of singed hair and charred flesh was so strong that a gag got stuck in the back of her throat.
Earl opened his mouth and gurgled something that could have been words had his tongue not looked so swollen that it almost filled his entire mouth. The tip of it was missing and Mona assumed he’d inadvertently bitten it off when his body hit the ground. This, however, didn’t keep him from trying to form words that, judging from the tone of the wet rasps, would have been none too kind.
Stepping around him, she rolled her eyes and squatted over his back like a sumo wrestler preparing for battle. When she spoke, there was no anger in her voice, only exasperation.
”Just shut the fuck up and die already . . . .”
Her hand seized Earl’s wrist and the flesh seemed to shift and slough beneath her grip. This didn’t deter her, though, from lifting his arm from the ground and driving the nail that pierced his palm directly into his throat. An arc of crimson sprayed from the wound and pattered against the snow, reminding her briefly of the c
attle she’d seen on T.V. who had their necks pierced by tribal spears.
“Hey baby . . . I don’t know how to tell you this. But I think I killed him.”
The fire had spread through the entire upper floors of the house and plumes of black smoke billowed into the morning air. Through the raging wall of fire, the supports and framework stood out like a skeleton of cinders and the couple could hear entire sections crumbling through the rush of the flames.
“Come on, babe . . . won’t be long until someone sees the smoke and phones it in. And I’d prefer to be somewhere else when that happens.”
She glanced up at Matt as a wry smile crossed her face.
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time. Hell of a honeymoon, Mattie.”
Matt smiled back at his wife while Earl’s blood slowed to nothing more than a trickle.
“You think this was something? Just wait until you see what I’ve got planned for our anniversary.”
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For more information on the author, including how to order a print version of Cry Havoc, please visit him online at http://www.williamtoddrose.com
Shut The Fuck Up And Die! Page 18
