“He's been living well off of my life savings from that damned civil suit,” Gary said to himself, just to hear the words. “He's escaped justice for too long now, but one way or another it's headed his way. I just hope the bastard is still alive and not one of those creepy gray fuckers already.”
Gary walked back out to his car and popped the trunk. He took out two extra clips of ammo and put them in his pocket. He also grabbed a Spyder knife he had in a kit in the back, just in case. He didn't know how hairy the shit was going to get out there on the road and he wanted to be prepared. He shut the trunk and stepped back, taking in the sight of his vehicle. It looked like he'd taken it for a spin through the driving range at the golf course. Amid the dings and puncture holes there were bloody handprints, and in one place strings of hair. He was surprised the windshield wasn't cracked.
He turned and stared at the line of sports cars in the driveway, then walked over and began to inspect the one that had caught his eye the night before. It was an exact model of one used in Leo's last action summer blockbuster – a Lamborghini Sesto Elemento. Its sleek gunmetal gray paint job was like a skin-tight bikini over its lust inspiring curves. It was a futuristic ride, one he never dreamed of sitting in – let alone driving! But there was no one to tell him no now. He opened the door and slid inside. He felt his heart jump in his chest as he realized that the keys were still in the ignition.
It was one of the last cars they'd made, with only a limited number making it as far as the United States. He'd seen something about it in the Lifestyle section of the L.A. Times one forgotten weekend forever ago. He didn't remember much. He'd only briefly flipped through the article. All he knew was that it was called the ‘sixth element’ because it relied heavily on carbon fiber for its design. It had a V-10 that was cooled by hexagonal holes in the engine cover. Translation? It was light and high-powered, built for speeds that easily went over two hundred miles per hour on the open road.
The interior was all gray, a softer version of the body color…like the muted skin of a shark. The steering wheel was bright red and so were both of the seats. The wheel was shaped like a rectangular hexagon, with big sections on the side for easy gripping.
“Even in my dreams I've never imagined a car this nice,” Gary said aloud to himself. He liked the way his voice sounded, like he still had hope for some kind of positive outcome in life, when he knew he was screwed no matter how things turned out with Randy.
He got behind the wheel and turned it on. It purred as it came to life, sounding at least as expensive as it looked. He knew that if the world had not ended there would be no way he would ever have gotten to know what it felt like to fire up an exquisite machine like this, and it made him sad for a moment.
“I should be driving this thing on the Autobahn,” Gary said, still speaking to himself as he put it in gear and began to back up toward the gate. “Guess I'll just have to settle for the canyon.”
The gates parted and he backed through them and turned toward the Valley. He gunned it onto Mulholland, the engine roaring to life and echoing down through the trees onto the city below.
“Randy Whitmore,” Gary said as he took the first turn. “I'm coming for you.”
*** *** ***
Gary slapped Randy hard across the face but it seemed to have little effect, other than to spray the wall behind him with a fresh coat of blood. Randy's head fell forward and his body weight hung limp against the series of leather restraints he'd devised to keep his victims awake and upright in his sexual torture device. It was exactly the kind of object Gary had expected to find all those years ago when he jumped the warrant in search of a missing girl and ransacked Randy's apartment.
It's ironic that by doing that I gave him the chance to use my own money to bring his nightmarish contraption to life, thought Gary. But not nearly as ironic as the fact that he's going to die strapped into it.
“Wake up jerk off,” Gary sang to Randy, slapping him lightly in the face once more. There was a trickle of blood working down Randy's cheek in slow motion, like amber sap from a newly cut tree branch glistening as gravity tugs it vertically into sticky rivulets. His eyes rolled dramatically back in his head. Gary didn't know if it was from the heroin or the shock. Then again it might have been part of an act, one last grand performance from an escape artist waiting for Gary to slip up and let his guard down so he could vanish and be reborn anew someplace else. Only that wasn't ever going to happen. He was going to die in his device no matter what, and Gary was going to be the one to bring some well-deserved justice to this pedophile.
No one who preys on the weak and the innocent deserves any less than this.
Gary had raced through the canyons, slowing only once to let a coyote pass across the road in front of him. There were no signs of people up in the hills and that made him feel safe, for the time being at least. He'd hit a cluster of newly reanimated dead people at the bottom of Coldwater Canyon, and then more at each intersection he drove through. By the time he turned onto Ventura Boulevard there were big groups of mangled looking corpses, aimlessly walking about sniffing at the air and searching for signs of life. What he didn't see were any actual living people. If there were survivors they were hidden away.
He'd been dreaming of racing the Lamborghini as fast as he could down the deserted stretch of Ventura Boulevard, but it was overrun with people who had died, only to make their way down to the street in search of new victims to share in their collective misery. By the time he'd passed Casa Vega, one of his favorite Mexican restaurants in the entire Valley, he was so frustrated that he wished he'd never left the safety of Leo's hilltop mansion. He was grateful to be behind the wheel of an exotic sports car, if not for the speed then for the superb handling. He dashed the car in and out of the angry-looking mob, shooting down a side street and taking Moorpark, which was far less congested.
“Even in the apocalypse there is traffic in Los Angeles,” Gary laughed to himself shaking his head.
He parked a few houses down from Randy. Normally if he were attempting to sneak up on a suspect or get a better view of them, he'd drive past their house a number of times over the course of a few hours from different directions, then park a few blocks away and make his way toward their house. Now that he didn't need to worry about following the law, he wasn't so worried about being seen. He could drive a Humvee right into the side of the house and step out guns blazing and the end result would be the same. Still something told him he'd never be satisfied with simply killing Randy. Putting a gun to the side of his greasy head and pulling the trigger was too good a fate for this kind of monster. He needed something more satisfying, and in order to get that he'd still have to rely on the element of surprise. But being exposed now out on the street was the same as loudly sounding one of those La Cucaracha horns on a lunch truck – like the ones that lined the streets of Downtown. Or as his partner called it when he stopped to grab a chili cheeseburger one afternoon during an investigation, a ‘roach coach.’
Gary hurried to the side of the house to check the gate, but it was locked shut. The grass was overgrown and there were weeds flourishing in the flowerbeds near the covered windows, indicating that the house had gone into disrepair long before the world had. While the neighboring houses all featured freshly manicured lawns and trimmed trees and hedges, Randy's place looked like it was owned by some kind of white trash redneck. The only thing missing was an old Chevy raised up on blocks in the front yard.
Gary tried to peep into the house to get a lay of the land, but every single window had been boarded up from the inside. There was even tinfoil on some, reflecting the bright hot sun back into Gary's eyes as he searched for an uncovered space that would allow him to peek into Randy's bedroom. It was all in vain. He wondered if that had been planned out long before the zombies as well. It had to have been. Gary wondered what the neighbors thought of having Randy on their block, or if they had even known anything about his troubled past. He decided that given Randy's disgusting habi
ts and the general appearance of his house that his neighbors must have hated him as much as anyone else who'd ever met him. Randy was a natural born creep. He had that same effect on anyone who got to know him on more than just a surface level. It stood to reason that with a wad of money that saved him from having to put on a presentable face in order to get work to survive, that his overall level of creepiness would only get worse.
Gary walked around the front, ready to try the garage door or maybe hop the fence and head through the back. He stopped when he heard the sound of a low moan coming from behind him. He turned to see the neighbor across the street thumping on the wide front windows of his house with blood-smeared fists. His skin was a sickening shade of gray and there was fresh blood on his mouth and down the front of his once clean dress shirt. He stared at Gary with his lifeless eyes and cried out in a low howl that could be mistaken for nothing other than hunger pains. He slammed his fists and the glass rattled. Gary's breath caught in his chest as fear shot through him. If the window gave in he'd have a whole different problem on his hands. He let out his breath and sighed when it was clear that the glass would hold the man back.
I'm safe for now, Gary thought. Let's just hope it gives me enough time to take care of what I came here for.
He didn't know how long he had before the steady thumping of the neighbor would lure in a fresh crowd of undead assholes intent on ruining his big plan. On a whim, he decided to try the front door and see if it was locked.
Fuck it, he thought. It's the end of the world. Maybe he thought he didn't need to worry about locking his door since zombies can't open doors and almost everyone else is dead.
To his surprise, the knob turned and the door slowly swung open. The inside smelled like dust and old cigarettes. It was as dark as a neighborhood bar and the walls were covered with names written in blood. There was a sickly sweet smell that Gary recognized at once as death. He raised his gun as he slowly stepped inside, ready for anything.
In the main living room he found a sofa and a big screen television. Next to it was a large aquarium filled with piranha. There was a black light in the tank that made them look even more ominous. There were piles of magazines and newspapers sitting by the sofa. Gary knelt down next to them and quickly leafed through. He couldn't make out the headlines, which were all in Spanish, but the images of countless mangled bodies made it clear they were gore porn of some sort. There was a stack of home movies among the magazines, some marked and some left blank. Nearly all of the marked videos had the word RAPE handwritten on them. Gary's stomach churned at the sight. He wondered where the smell of decomposing flesh was coming from. He prayed that it wasn't Randy already long dead.
That would be unbearable, he thought, to come this close and end up having him already be peacefully dead.
He rose and gingerly walked toward the kitchen where the smell grew stronger. In the corner, past where the kitchen table should have been, was a pile of young girls’ dead bodies. They all had the signs of being strangled. The oldest looked like she had been there no more than a week. It appeared that Randy had lost all control before the shit hit the fan and impulsively started killing again. He no longer felt the need to show the bodies off to the world, or maybe there was some bigger plan that the end of the world had rendered pointless. He'd written their names in blood on the wall, along with the dates he killed them. In total there were seven – one for each of the previous days, including the day before. There was a blank space where today's victim would eventually go.
Fucker is making up for lost time, Gary thought.
He heard a girl's voice cry out from inside the house, snapping him back to full attention. He raised his gun and followed the sound back through the living room and into the master bedroom. He expected to see Randy hard at work on his next victim, but instead what he saw filled him with rage. A young girl no more than sixteen, with visible signs of retardation, was strapped with a series of leather belts onto a large metal device. It kept her propped up with her legs fully spread. Gary could see her sex cuddled beneath the thatch of dark, untrimmed pubic hair. The girl’s hysterical sobs racked her body, causing her loose skin to jiggle. There were fresh track marks in her arm, and a noose made out of fiber optic cable around her neck held her up. To her right was a shiny silver tray filled with various devices for eliciting pain. On it were knives and scalpels, along with pliers; there were bamboo spears used to hold meat for barbequing, and a bottle of nitrates for reviving victims. By her feet was a blowtorch. Gary winced at the sight of it, unable to fathom the vast depths of her tormentor’s insatiable cruelty.
Randy was passed out cold on the bed. He was naked; a rubber strip was tied around his arm with a needle still sticking out. Next to him on the dresser was a burnt spoon, a Bic lighter, a wad of bloody cotton, along with a plate of white powder that Gary knew from experience was heroin. He had a small leather band tied around his genitalia to keep himself aroused.
Gary moved quickly into the room, making eye contact with the girl and warning her not to make a sound. She whimpered, but then obeyed. He quickly freed her from the device and she fled from the room as fast as her legs would carry her. On the way out her arm hit the side of the mirrored closet door and it gave a resounding echoing thud, causing Randy to stir but not bringing him back all the way out of his drug coma.
“A thank you might have been nice,” Gary said softly. “‘Gee mister, I appreciate you making sure I didn't end up on the pile of bodies in the kitchen with my name sketched on the wall.’ I don't think it's too much to ask. Kids today. They just don't teach 'em any manners. Wouldn't you agree, Randal?”
He stood over Randy, pointing the gun at his head.
“Don't let her leave the house,” Randy pleaded in a distorted voice, his eyes unfocused. He turned over and sat up on the bed sticking his hand out in the direction of the bedroom door. “She can't get away or she will ruin everything.”
“Oh I think we're a little past that now, Randy,” Gary said, cocking his fist back and driving it straight into Randy's face as hard as he could. Randy fell back on the bed without another word. The needle fell out of his arm and onto the bed next to him. Gary was tempted to climb on top of him and just start swinging until there was nothing left but a bloody pulp, but a quick glance at the machine that had held the girl made him change his mind.
“I was just going to make you beg for your life while I broke every bone in your body,” Gary said, pulling Randy's limp and complaint body back up to a sitting position. There was already swelling under the killer’s eye from where Gary's fist had connected. “But I've got a better idea that’s more fitting for you.”
He spent the next ten minutes moving drugged-out Randy over to his metal device and carefully strapping him in. When he was sufficiently immobilized, Gary began to work on him using the torturous objects from the silver tray. He started by cutting off both of Randy's nipples, which brought him out of his stupor as he shrieked in blinding pain at the top of his lungs.
“Good,” Gary said. “That's good. Now I've got your attention.”
He walked out of the room and went back to the kitchen. Ignoring the stench of the decaying bodies, he dug through the cupboards until he found a large pot used to make spaghetti. He hurried back to the bedroom where Randy was still screaming and crying, pausing only to shut the front door left open by the escaping girl.
“I'm back, sweetheart,” Gary sang to Randy. “Did you miss me?”
He slid the metal pot between Randy's shaking legs. A burst of urine shot out of Randy the minute Gary stood back up, trickling down his legs and into the waiting receptacle.
“That wasn't what I had in mind but I guess that works, too.”
“You can't do this to me,” Randy whined. “You're a cop.”
“I was a cop,” Gary explained. “From the looks of this shit hole I take it you don't get out much. That's too bad really. When was the last time you turned on the news?”
“The cable went
out yesterday,” Randy whimpered. “I must have forgotten to pay the bill. Internet is down, too.”
“So you have no idea what's going on out there? Classic.”
“I know my rights, man,” Randy said, but Gary slapped him hard in the face, causing his head to swivel in the noose that held him up.
“You don't have any rights,” Gary said. “Not anymore.”
“Please,” Randy said as Gary leaned back in with the scalpel. “Please just take me in. I will tell them everything.”
“Oh, I think it's a little too late for that now.”
“No! Wait! You're angry. I get that. I taunted you and then took your money. I hurt your career and your pride. I was wrong to treat you that way.”
“That's very big of you to admit,” Gary said, while carving into the soft white flesh of Randy's stomach and eliciting a fresh howl of pain.
“Wait! I'll give you back your money. Every cent. And whatever I'm short I'll find a way to repay you.”
“Money's not important any more,” Gary said. “Money doesn't have any value. The only things that matter now are clean food, water, and shelter. I can get all of that on my own.”
“I'll confess,” Randy cried out. “I'll even take you to the rest of the bodies, including the ones in Florida. I've killed more girls than Ted Bundy. You'll be a famous detective, a national celebrity.”
“It's a beautiful sentiment,” Gary said, reaching down between Randy's legs and taking his package in his hand, “but I think our time is over now. I've come to make you pay for what you did to those girls, not what you did to me. I've seen your face every night in my dreams. I've waited for this moment to come and now it's finally here. I just wish I'd thought of something better to say.”
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