Before she could move, he lunged forward, pinning her to the counter, and she kept saying, “No, no, no!” over and over. He grabbed at her bikini bottom, roughly pulling the fabric away from her sex as he leaned in and nipped at her neck. His eyes were empty and bloodshot, but his brow was wrinkled in gross determination.
There was only one thing she could do if she wanted to get out of this, get away from him.
She reached between them, taking hold of his wet, sticky cock. His mouth twisted upwards as he practically purred. She pinched him between thumb and forefinger, meeting his gaze and offering a dead smile.
She pinched harder and flicked her wrist hard, snapping his rigid dick in half. While he screamed, before he could get away, she grabbed his balls and squeezed and twisted.
He backhanded her and sent her flying off the sink. She hit the bathroom floor hard, saw Jacob’s prone, broken body just a few scant feet away.
Closer was the cricket bat, which Jeff had dropped as she ruined his genitals. She grabbed it, fighting to stand, but she felt dizzy from the blow to her head.
“You fucking cunt!” he screamed, twisting to find her, cradling his junk in both hands, red-faced with tears streaming down his cheeks.
Good, she thought, with more than a bit of vicious satisfaction. “Fuck you!” she screamed, swinging the cricket bat around and clocking him across the face.
The blow was hard enough to spin him around into the countertop, and she hauled the bat around again for a second swing. The wood was stained a muddy crimson, small bulbs of tissue stuck in the grime. Her knees knocked together with the realization that some of this mess was Jacob.
“You motherfucker!” she screamed, slamming the long, thick plank of wood into the back of his skull. There was a sharp crack and a spurt of blood flung across the mirror as his nose shattered against the countertop’s edge. He dropped to his knees and tried to turn to face her, blood pouring from his mouth. Teeth were scattered across the counter and along the floor.
“No,” he whined, hands raised.
She screamed, loud and primal, some ancient sound of fury rising from her gut, strong enough to force spit from her mouth. She raised the bat, turned it toward its flat edge, drooling as if she were no more than a savage, angry beast. When she brought the bat down, the wood cleaved Jeff’s skull in two, the bat lodging in tight just above his caved-in nose. His collapsed in upon himself and toppled forward. Lauren had to step back quickly to avoid him.
The handle of the cricket bat hit the tiled bathroom floor and popped free of Jeff’s skull, rolling aside and plopping into the pool of gore.
Lauren stood stock still, chest heaving.
The bathroom door was violently pushed aside again as Scott strode in, overtaken by the shock of what he was seeing, of the stink from the two dead men and the creeping pools of blood on either side of his daughter.
“Lauren, baby,” he said, and then she was pressed against his chest, his arms around her.
“Are you,” he started, his voice hitching. She knew what he was seeing, how bad it must have looked, even if his presumption was only half-right. These two men, Jacob’s pants half-off in the toilet stall. “Did they—”
“No,” she said. “No, no. I’m fine. I’m good.”
“Christ, Lauren,” he said, if only to say something.
Eventually she stepped back, turning toward the sink and the corpse that rested there. She stuck to the outskirts of the spilled blood, the pool widening and waving through the white grout and inching toward the drain in the center of the room. Her t-shirt was crumpled in a sink, still wearable despite the freckles of gore, and she self-consciously readjusted the cups of her bikini to cover her breasts. She reached for her shorts, but they were ruined, soaked through in blood and utterly unwearable. She let them fall back to the floor, then hugged herself. Her hands left bloody stains on each bicep, but she barely noticed.
“C’mon, honey,” Scott said, nodding toward the door. He held it open, using his free hand to wave her forward, to take her hand so he could guide her out.
Before she took his hand, she reached down for the cricket bat. The plank above the handle was soaked and dripping, but the handle was clean enough. She could wipe off the rest with paper towels, which she grabbed by the handful from the dispenser, doing her best to rid it of all the grime. She let the sodden tissues fall to the tiled floor, not even bothering to throw them away. What would be the point?
“Might need this,” she mumbled, and Scott nodded.
“That might be a good idea,” he said. “Let’s go, hon.”
“Go where?”
“Shay was supposed to go down to City Hall. Maybe we can find her.”
“Long way to walk.” Even to her ears, she sounded distant—entire leagues away, in fact. “Maybe we can take some bikes?”
There were dorms on campus, and she had seen more than a few bike racks positioned outside the front of the various buildings.
“Those’ll have to do,” he agreed. “We should go to the women’s dormitory, see if we can find you some clean clothes.”
She nodded dimly. She would need pants, denim preferably. Something to cover her, something that would maybe be tougher for dogs to bite through.
“How are you on ammo?”
They walked down the corridor, back toward the radio station. Scott veered toward the stairs, but she went in the opposite direction.
“Where you going?”
“I need a beer, Dad. Like, desperately.”
He looked at her, but she couldn’t read his eyes. Eventually, a mirthless laugh escaped his lips, and he said, “Yeah. I guess you do.”
“Ammo?” she reminded him.
“We get some bikes, we’ll head over to the office, then move on to City Hall.”
She nodded. The office. That was what he always called the police station, a sort of private joke.
Inside the broadcast room, she collapsed onto the sofa near the cooler. She found a beer, snapped it open, and took a pull long enough that she had to gasp for air once she unlocked her lips from the can.
“You want to talk about it?” Scott asked.
“No, I don’t.”
She drank more, noticing the waning daylight. There would only be a few hours of light left, but she pushed aside the thought.
Too close, the dogs howled.
14
SHAY’S BACK ACHED, HER hips throbbed, and each step sent a jolt of pain through her ankle and knee. Red spots danced across her vision with each stifling movement. Her arm burned, a constant ache where pain blossomed anew with every heartbeat and tunneled through her skull. The arrow was still intact and stuck through, her arm bent across her belly.
She stood at the glass entrance of City Hall and had been watching the street for the last five minutes.
The wolves Mayor Harbin had sniped from his office were still there, of course, but they’d attracted carrion. Black birds had been picking and tearing at the meat, but a pack of three mutts had chased them off. Those mutts then claimed the dead wolves as their own and began eating enthusiastically.
Shay’s stomach flopped and she choked down the vomit. A gurgle bubbled in her belly, reminding her of the organ’s emptiness. She was starving but pushed the thought of food aside, feeling queasy at the idea of eating. She couldn’t stand to watch the obscenity before her, but she had no other choice. She had to know when the path was clear, and then she had to run as fast as she could. The way her head was hammering, and with how faint she felt, she did not think she would be moving very fast.
A long strip of bloody fur and skin tore free from a ribcage, while another mutt nuzzled into the belly meat. A thick pile of intestines spilled out onto the blacktop, and the dogs happily dug in.
Aw, Christ, Shay thought, pressing a clammy hand to her sweaty forehead. She was sweating up a storm, her whole body burning up and feverish. She shut her eyes from the horrors and heard instead a steady plink, plink, plink as her blood dri
pped onto the tile floor.
Breathing deeply, she fought to stay awake. She could not lose consciousness, could not give into the weakness claiming her whole, making every appendage heavy and thick.
Harbin, that sick fuck. The way she was feeling now, that was all his fault. Fucking Harbin.
Harbin.
She turned back toward the atrium and the grand staircase where she had left him.
Where she should have killed him.
He was gone. Nothing where he was but blood, most of it hers she reckoned.
Oh no, nonononono, she mentally screamed, limping back toward the stairs.
A mess of footsteps and slick runners of blood stained the tiles, but the trail was clear enough. He was still on the ground floor.
How the hell did I not hear him? she wondered. Of course, the way her own pulse was clanging in her skull and the constant buzzing in her ears, she should not have been too surprised.
Stupid, Shay. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She stood still, listening for his noises. He was hurt badly, at the very least. She had clocked him good a few times with that stupid glass paperweight pyramid.
The pyramid was gone, too. Better stay out of arm’s reach then, she thought. She had seen firsthand the damage it could cause, and she was fucked up enough as it was.
She couldn’t hear him, and could barely hear herself think through the miasma of pain. All she could do was follow the trail, so she put one foot in front of the other, treading slowly and as quietly as possible.
She kept the crossbow at waist-level, her finger off the trigger but within the trigger guard, ready to pull.
In the silence of city hall, her own breathing sounded catastrophically loud. The quiet was eerie, a thick void unto itself.
Shay kept her head on a swivel while following the trail. The line of blood was a jagged mess, but the overall direction was consistent. Still, she made sure to observe her surroundings and to keep a watchful eye.
Harbin was a sick, twisted piece of shit, but clearly a killer of some merit. She could not ignore his hunting exploits, or the possibility that this trail was a ruse meant to lure her and keep her guard down. If he was playing the victim, and she fell for it, that could be her ruin. She tried to put herself two steps ahead mentally, to out-fake his fake out. The truth was he very likely could be hunting her as much as she was hunting him.
She also knew that backing an injured animal into a corner was a very dangerous gambit.
The line of gore twisted around a corner, and she hugged the edge of the wall, peeking around it and seeing only an empty passage. Slowly and carefully, she tread forward.
The hallway terminated at a glass door, an unlit EXIT sign over it. The blood trail stopped before reaching the exit, and instead turned toward a solid wooden door. Shay had been here enough times to know that the room beyond was the public auditorium for City Council meetings, without needing to read the small sign hanging on the wall.
A large red handprint stained the brass push plate, giving her no choice but to follow. She nudged the door open with her boot, her breathing quick and shallow as she limped through the entry.
The smell hit her immediately.
Copper and feces slammed into her nasal passages and she gagged in reflex. The stench of death was overpowering.
She forced herself to breathe slowly through her mouth, forced herself to keep the crossbow steady. Most of all, she forced herself to look.
Two rows of wooden benches led to a waist-high wooden railing, a podium centered at the front of the seating area between the benches. Beyond the railing was a curved stage where the council convened, their names displayed at each seat in front of the microphone.
The council had convened one last time, apparently. Perhaps summoned here by the mayor, the councilmembers had been butchered, and then arranged in their assigned seats. The pale flesh and dry, gaping wounds indicated the council had been slaughtered some time ago.
Their heads hung loose on slit throats, tilted back to make it look as if obscenely large smiles had bloomed in the middle of their necks. Each was naked, their torsos opened and gutted. Their innards hung across the council stage like streamers thrown in a perverse sort of celebration.
Harbin stood in the center of the chamber, his back to her. He was naked and covered in filth. When he turned to face her, she saw he was gnawing on a thick lump of meat. As she limped closer, she could tell by the shape that it was a kidney. A kidney from one of the council members. Harbin had twisted a long rope of intestine around his neck and chest, wearing the viscera like a scarf.
His face was swollen in spots, depressed in others. The pyramid must have fractured bone, sunken parts of his face when she had hammered in his skull. One eye was gone, leaving behind a shiny black crater rimmed with oozing sores. His hair was pasted to his lumpy head by blood. He continued to eat, seemingly oblivious.
His eye held hers, even while he noisily bit and sucked at the kidney; a squelching wet noise and the clicking of his teeth.
“What the fuck,” she whispered.
Shay could not even begin to comprehend what was happening. What had happened.
Another part of her mind told her not to worry about it. Just shoot the bastard. Kill him now, and do not fuck it up this time.
His lone eye wobbled in its socket, but he still held her in his gaze. She limped closer, afraid that if she held her distance she would miss with the crossbow. He made no movements, just stood there, eating and watching her.
This was not quite the same man she had encountered early, and that threw her.
He bit into the organ, growling as she drew closer. A primal, animalistic warning sign, but she did not heed it.
Harbin jolted suddenly, lunging toward her.
She fired the arrow. Missed. He leapt over the railing, bolting toward her, and tackled her, his jaws snapping.
She got her hand up between them, holding him back with his chin cupped in her hand, the stink of blood and offal dizzying this close. His drool turned her fingers slick, and his mouth was constantly moving, his teeth snapping loudly.
She brought her knee up for a groin strike, but it didn’t faze him. She wondered if he were on drugs, maybe hopped up on something, but quickly dismissed this idea, somehow knowing he wasn’t jacked up on anything.
She brought her leg up again, pulling it in between them and tried to roll and heave away from him.
“You son of a bitch!” she screamed.
She fought through the pain of her ruined arm, brought that up and hooked her thumb into his good eye, pressing hard with her nail.
He howled and twisted away from her. The pressure off her chest was an immediate relief, but she had no time to recover. He was fast, too god damn fast, and she was beyond exhausted.
She didn’t have any other choice, so she grabbed the arrow shaft jutting from the front of her bicep and snapped it. Her scream ended abruptly as he slammed into her again, but this time she had an arrow at the ready.
Shay slammed the arrowhead into the thin shelf of his temple, the results instantaneous. He went still, slumped atop her.
She wriggled her way out from under him, the awful stench of his gore and the viscera he had garbed himself in embedded in the fabric of her ruined uniform.
She had never felt as tired in her whole life as she felt in that moment, pushed so far beyond the edge of reason and emotionally broken. Her brain could not compute any of this madness, this insane hysteria infecting the world. She wanted to curl into a ball and cry.
But she was also hungry. Incredibly hungry, in fact.
She grabbed onto the arrow haft sticking out of Harbin’s skull and pulled it free. Then she jammed the point into his knee, wriggling the arrow beneath the patella and carving it free from the skin and tendons that held it in place. His kneecap came loose with a moist rip, and she brought it to her mouth, gnawing on the ligaments and tissue that had held it into place. Once she had loosened the meat, she slurped
it up as if it were an oyster, and then tossed the cap of bone aside to carve heartier serving from his quadriceps.
She ate, but with each bite the hunger grew.
15
AFTER LAUREN FINISHED HER beer, she retreated into herself. The emptier the can got, the more withdrawn she became.
Her reaction was common enough given the trauma Scott imagined she had experienced. He figured his imaginings were far worse, but the reality was still damn grim. Whatever had happened in that restroom, her boyfriend was dead and she’d had to beat a man to death. Certainly she had no reason to be chipper or raring to go, and if only at the very least, she had earned that beer and plenty more.
He didn’t want to push her, but the day was drawing shorter and he didn’t want them to be out in the open come nightfall. He also did not want his daughter drinking too much and going outside plastered and lost in an alcohol-induced fog.
She set the can down on a beat-up end table, and he was glad to see she didn’t immediately reach for a second. The dogs were howling back and forth. He had looked out the window a few minutes before and didn’t like what he’d seen. More mutts fighting each other, snapping and clawing and barking their way into a frenzy of mutually assured destruction.
“We need to get going,” he said.
Lauren nodded dimly, and then pushed herself up off the sunken sofa cushion. Walking to the door, he watched to make sure she was walking in a straight line and didn’t seem too shaky. He had conducted enough field sobriety tests in his days to feel confident she was sober enough to continue. If she hadn’t been, they’d have been bunking down here, an option he was happy to avoid.
“There’s a nurse’s office on this floor,” Scott said, remembering the directory he had seen near the stairwell on their way up. “We’ll stop there first.”
Mass Hysteria Page 12
