The clouds in the sky seemed to dance with the distant glow of flames and the smell of smoke was thick and heavy. There weren’t any buildings that had been firebombed on this block yet, but — in the brief moments of silence that sometimes settled over the city –she could hear the crackling of fire, the roar of a hungry beast that devoured homes and buildings and left nothing more than blackened skeletons in its wake. But those instances of silence were few and far between. For the most part, the night was filled with the revving of engines, with gunshots and the tinkling of broken glass; screams and cries for help that went unanswered until they were abruptly cut off mid-sentence.
It was like the whole world had gone insane and she couldn’t help but wonder where the military had went. Where were the soldiers, the cops, the keepers of law and order? Shouldn’t they be out there in the streets, fighting their way through this urban nightmare and protecting those who simply wanted everything to go back to the way it was? But she hadn’t seen so much as a Humvee since she’d ran out of the apartment building, much less any type of organized retaliation against the anarchists who now seemed to hold the city in their grip.
What the hell was going on here?
Cody really was dead. She knew that now. At first she tried to tell herself that Richard was lying, that he was trying to gain control over her mind and emotions just as he’d tried to do with her body. But when she reached the bottom of the stairs Polly had seen his body sprawled across the foyer, sprawled in a pool of his own blood. She’d tried to look away but wasn’t quick enough: the images of broken bones jabbing through his flesh and clothes, the way his head seemed completely flat on the side facing the floor, the bizarre angles his legs and arms were splayed out in. All of these things had been burned into her consciousness and returned to haunt her visions each time she closed her eyes.
But she couldn’t think about that now. She had to push it all deep down inside, to swallow the pain and try to find something else to fill the void that threatened to cause her to implode. Cody would want her to survive, to go on, to fight tooth and nail if she must. And to do that she had to keep a clear head. There would be plenty of time for grief later, but for now she needed to focus. To stay alive.
After scrambling over the pile of bodies outside the main door, she’d made her way to the entrance of the apartment complex. The wrought iron gate that had once kept the world at bay was lying in the center of the street, the bars twisted and bent as if they had been pulled free with a force greater than a single person could ever manage. Poking her head around the corner, she saw a few people zigzagging back and forth through the darkness. But the majority of them seemed to be a block or so to the south. She could see their silhouettes, the way they dove through the air at one another, rolling across the ground as they grappled for control, bright bursts of gunfire, complete and utter chaos.
She slipped into the shadows along the wall and inched her way north instead, trying her best to stay low and quiet. She felt like her white shirt was as clear as a billboard, advertising her presence to anyone who might happen by. But she would need to replace it soon anyhow. During the struggle with Richard, it had been stretched and ripped to the point that it no longer really held its shape and kept trying to slide down over her breasts.
What the fuck had gotten into him anyway? He’d been like an animal, his lips pulled back into a snarl, that hungry look elongating his features, seeming to change him into a stranger right before her eyes. There was no doubt in her mind what he’d planned on doing to her. He’d made that abundantly clear. But how far would it have went? If she had decided to take the so-called easy road, like she did when she was a child, would he have been content to simply have his way and leave her crying on the table? Or did he have darker designs on her? If Jane hadn’t showed up when she did, God only knows how all of that would have turned out.
Richard. Sweet, unassuming Richard. It just didn’t make any sense. Sure, she’d caught him ogling her on few occasions and at the time had thought it was kind of funny. She and Jane had used to joke about it at the club, how he had this little schoolboy crush on her, how they could probably blow his friggin’ mind if she just slipped out of her clothes and hopped into bed with them one evening.
But there’d never been any indication, never any sign, that he was capable of something like this. And that, quite frankly, scared her more than anything else that had happened over the course of the last several weeks. How quickly and completely someone whom she thought she’d known could change. How he could go from being this mousy little office worker one minute to a drooling psychopath the next. And what exactly had happened to Cody? Had Richard been responsible for that as well? No, he couldn’t have been. The gashes in his shirt, the bloodstains that had seeped all across his torso… that was definitely murder. And she couldn’t believe that her best friend’s boyfriend could just outright kill one of their own. In cold blood, no less…
“Yeah,” she thought, “well yesterday you never woulda pegged him for a sicko fuckin’ rapist either, would you? Don’t put anything past that son of a bitch, girl.”
She knew her inner voice was right. The only person she could trust now was herself. Everything else had changed too much. Everything else was too damn confusing.
She picked her way through the remains of a plate glass window and into the darkness of Wilson’s Department Store. She could barely see racks overturned, clothes strewn about the floor, broken jewelry cases, and mannequins posed in vulgar positions. Finding another shirt in this mess would be tough, but it was necessary. She needed something dark and, as much as she hated to admit it, something tight fitting. She couldn’t afford for a skirt or a baggy t-shirt to get hung up on something if she needed to make a quick getaway. So she’d take her time and pick through the wreckage that used to be the women’s section, find exactly what she needed and go on from there.
The problem was everything seemed so much different in the dark. She’d been in this place a hundred times, had gotten some of her favorite bags from their purse and shoe section; but now she may have as well been picking her way along the dark side of the moon for all it was worth.
Somehow, Polly had found her way to the hardware section of all places. Talk about an alien environment…. However, she was pretty sure that this was on the opposite side of the store. At least it was in most shops, almost like they thought if they could put enough distance between husbands and wives the two sexes would never know how much money the other was spending until it was too late. So it seemed as if she’d been going in the wrong direction all along. She cursed to herself, took a step, and then felt as if the carpet of the world had suddenly been pulled out from beneath her feet. She pin-wheeled her arms, struggling to maintain balance, but — as one of her many t-shirts often reminded her — she had to obey gravity… it was the law. She fell to the floor and landed flat on her ass so hard that her spine jarred and her teeth clacked loudly.
At least she hadn’t tried to break her fall with her hands, though. It would’ve been very easy to snap a wrist that way. And that was definitely the last thing she needed.
“What the hell?” she mumbled as she picked herself up with a wince. “What the bloody hell?”
After a moment of searching, she found the culprit: a big, yellow screwdriver that had apparently spilled out of some overturned bin and then lurked in the shadows, just waiting to trip up an unsuspecting woman.
“You little bastard, you won’t be doing that again.”
Tucking the screwdriver into the waistband of her skirt, she began feeling her way through the darkness again. It was a bit easier this time as her eyes had started adjusting to the gloom. She began to recognize landmarks along the way: the cosmetic counter which was now covered in a fine layer of white dust, the beloved shoes and bags, the escalator which lead up into sleepwear.
Finally she was searching through the piles of clothing on the floor, looking for a simple black t-shirt and dark jeans in her size. As usual, finding something that actually fit her was like panning for gold; she had to sift through layer after layer of worthless silt until she finally found her treasure. Down near the very bottom of the heap. Of course.
Stripping off her ruined shirt almost felt like shedding a skin. It was as if Richard’s hands had somehow tainted the fabric; as if whatever sickness had changed him into a maniac had colonized the cotton and fibers, leaving the garment feeling dirty and almost greasy to the touch. She flicked it away between pinched fingers. The skirt had to go too. He’d been all over that piece, squirming his nasty body over it like some sort of legless fucking lizard, fumbling and pulling and yanking.
A shudder coursed through Polly’s body and she stepped out of the skirt, trying to put thoughts of the ordeal out of her head. The screwdriver clattered to the floor and she scooped it up like a bird of prey catching a rabbit.
“Oh no you don’t. Fool me once, shame on you and all that jazz.”
She was just reaching for the t-shirt when she heard something. A slight scuffling in the store. She froze in place and listened as she held her breath. For a moment everything was quiet and she had just begun to think it was her imagination when she heard it again. Furtive and sneaky… not an animal. A stray dog or cat wouldn’t care if anyone in the store heard them. Human? In all likelihood, yes.
Richard? He wouldn’t come looking for her would he? No, that was ridiculous. She’d seen Jane stab him with what looked to be a pretty good-sized knife. Even if, for whatever twisted reason might possess his deformed mind, he did want to come after her, Polly seriously doubted he was in any shape to do so. Hopefully, Jane had killed the bastard.
A whistle echoed through the silence of the store and it took a moment before she recognized the tune. It was the theme from the Andy Griffith Show. Now that it was obvious that she wasn’t alone in the store, her heart began to race so fast that should could feel her pulse twitch in her left eyelid.
“Hey girlie-girlie-girl….”
The voice was high pitched and slightly nasal. Definitely not Richard.
That, however, didn’t mean that this stranger was any less dangerous.
“I know you’re in here. I saw you come in.”
There was a loud clang of metal on metal, as if he had swung some sort of pipe and hit one of the beams that the price check machines were attached to.
“Come out and play, girlie-girlie-girl. Come to, Daddy.”
Another clang.
“It won’t hurt… much.”
Laughter echoed in the darkness and she made her way toward the escalators, still dressed only in her bra and panties. Of all the rotten damn timing…. She’d always rolled her eyes when she’d watched movies and the heroines stripped down only to find themselves immediately placed in the path of the monster or psychopathic killer. She’d thought it was cheesy and more than a bit trite. But now look where she was. All she could keep thinking as she slipped through the store was you gotta be frigging kiddin’ me.
She tried to ease up the escalator in sort of a duck-walk fashion, hoping that the sides would at least keep her partially hidden from view.
From behind her, she heard another clang. This time closer. Louder.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are….”
Almost to the top now, sleepwear and lingerie.
Clang.
She struggled to keep her breathing steady: slow inhale through the nose, exhale softly through the mouth. Just like in yoga.
“Keep it together, girl. You are not going to die in this place.”
Laughter again, this time seeming to swirl all around her, as if it were forming from the very molecules of air itself. A hundred million tiny voices all giggling in unison.
“There you are! Daddy’s home… why don’t you come and give him a big, wet kiss?”
Shit. The man was at the bottom of the escalators. No time for stealth now. She broke into a run, scrambling up the few remaining stairs as he banged his pipe off the bottom step, this time resulting in more of a dull clunk than a clang.
He continued up the rest of the escalators slowly, pausing on each one to smack the step ahead of him. He was whistling again, the bastard.
Polly stood as motionless as possible and concentrated on her breathing. So shallow, so soft, that she even her breasts didn’t rise and fall. She stood rock still and watched as he worked his way through the racks, thrusting his pipe into the middle of each one in case she was hidden within the clothes like a rabbit in a warren.
“I’m gonna getcha girlie-girlie-girl. I’m gonna getcha….”
He was close now. So close that she could see dark stains covering his jacket and shirt. Stains which, in any other situation, she probably would have mistaken for motor oil.
But in this new, fucked up world she knew exactly what had caused those stains.
And she knew that unless she was very, very careful within the course of a few seconds she would be adding a few stains of her own to the ensemble.
And that couldn’t happen. Not after all she’d been through, damn it. It simply couldn’t happen.
“I’m gonna getcha….”
It was utterly glorious. The smoke. The fire. The blood that formed Rorschach patterns on the streets and sidewalks. Bodies were starting to pile up, heaping one on top of the other like mass Cambodian graves. Everything was swirling in chaos and Richard felt as if he were a general strolling through a victorious battlefield. The weak were falling and the strong were emerging as the dominant species, claiming the golden thrones that had awaited them for so long; even his leg didn’t hurt, not really. He’d ripped up one of Polly’s t-shirts and tied it so tightly around the wound that the leg of his pants almost seemed to bulge up around the tourniquet. Downing half a bottle of Captain Morgan had further dulled the throbbing pain and he found that he was able to walk with only the slightest of limps.
When he’d made his way out of the apartment, he’d caught a glimpse of something shiny peeking out from underneath one of the bodies crumpled by the main entrance. He’d tossed the corpses aside as if they were nothing more than bags of garbage; which — in a way — they were. Simply meat sacks now, waiting for decay to set in and reduce their soft parts to a smelly ooze. Completely disposable. And once they were out of the way he’d found his treasure beneath, gleaming like a sacred relic and waiting to be claimed.
The machete felt good in his hand. Almost as if it were simply an extension of his arm. He took a couple test swings, enjoying the sharp whack it made as the blade sank into the skull of one of the bodies. Placing his foot against the head for leverage, he pulled the weapon free and smiled.
Oh this was good… this was really good.
When he hit the street he’d allowed himself to be distracted. He’d seen the action a few blocks away and made a bee-line for it.
He made no attempt to hide. He walked openly down the center of the street, swinging the machete at his side, as he placed one foot in front of the other, allowing the double yellow lines to guide him into the fray.
When he was close enough to smell the tang of the blood, to hear the moans of those who’d been left to bleed-out on the asphalt he broke into a quick trot, weaving back and forth across the lines now like a serpent on a branch. His pulse quickened and the trot became a jog, the jog a run, and then he was totally oblivious to the fresh blood streaming down the side of his thigh as his wound puckered with each flex of the muscle like some grisly mouth expecting a kiss.
Richard burst through a crowd of hooligans and suddenly he was spinning and ducking, whirling like a dervish on meth, his arms swinging the blade of the machete in wide arches. He felt flesh and cloth rendered beneath his attack, felt the spray of warm blood on his face, and heard the unmistakable sucking sound of chest wounds as he ran people through. Some of his victims staggered around with their hands clutching their throats, trying to contain the arc of blood that gushed from the wide slit on their necks. Others had arms, legs, and hands drop uselessly to the asphalt: phantom impulses caused the fingers to twitch, as if they could somehow claw their way back up the street and reattach themselves to their former bodies.
And it was everything he’d ever dreamed it would be. The confusion. The sounds of the battlefield, of skirmishes lost and won in a conflict that had no clearly defined sides. He could give or take life as he saw fit, could claim the spoils of war as he pleased… out here he was so much more than the sum of his parts. He was a machine: a perfectly timed, precision juggernaut that couldn’t be stopped.
Molotovs were tossed from somewhere, the glass bottles shattering across the concrete as blue flames whooshed into existence and spread like lakes of Hell across the road. Those close to the point of impact were engulfed by the fire and they stumbled around, human shaped torches, screaming in wordless agony as their fat hissed and bubbled, melted and dripped away from their skeletons.
Damn idiots. Stop, drop, and roll mother fuckers. Stop, drop, and roll.
He noticed a group of men clustered together on the sidewalk, watching all the carnage go down. They were all dressed in desert camos with boonie hats flopping on the top of their heads, mirrored shades reflecting the light of the fires so that it almost seemed as if flames were burning somewhere deep within their skulls. Not military: their equipment had the look of surplus, of hand-me-down goods from an older brother they hated with a passion. One of the militias then.
Another strolled up the sidewalk to join the group and he raised his fist at a ninety-degree angle and mouthed the words freedom or death. The others repeated this display and Richard felt the urge to laugh.
How sweet. They had a secret handshake for their little club.
Richard began backtracking, slaughtering his way in reverse so to speak, the blade of the machete singing through the air like the voice of the angel of judgment. There. Over behind the parked car. The one that, miraculously, hadn’t been firebombed yet. He thought he’d seen it out of the corner of his eye, but now he knew for certain.
Oh man, was this going to be great….
The members of The Sons of Eternal Freedom stood beneath the awning where they would be safe from any incendiaries lobbed from above. They watched the people on the street as knives flashed, as Saturday Night Specials spit deadly little peas into eye sockets and ears, and money changed hands back and forth.
“I got twenty on the little fella in the football helmet.”
“Put me down for fifty on the chick with the mohawk.”
And, as often as the cash was passed back and forth, so was the bottle of Vodka one had pulled from his rucksack. They’d expected to see more action, actually. But once things really went to hell in a hand basket, the military had pulled back for some reason. At first they huddled in stores, believing that a bombing run surely had to be on the way. But the sky was never parted with the shrieks of jets and the only explosions rocking these streets were homegrown ones: IDEs, cars crashing into the sides of buildings, gas stations in the distance giving up their precious oil to the fury of the uprising. It was actually better than they could have even planned themselves but required little intervention on their part.
“Shit,” one of them drawled, “wonder where the hell Machete Guy done run off to? Dropped two-Gs on that mother fucker. Never figured him for a coward.”
The street wars were like their own personal Ultimate Fighting Championships. However, the losers of these matches paid the supreme cost; none of them would be coming back within a few weeks to have another go at the title.
“Anyone know exactly what they hell they’re fighting about anyway?”
No one did. But occasionally one of the brawlers would get a bit too close. Or maybe they’d be foolish enough to point the barrel of a gun at the spectators. Either way, this display of unsportsmanlike conduct was dealt with swiftly and decisively: it was a proven fact, time and time again, that even the thickest human skull was no match for a Mark XIX Desert Eagle with a fluted barrel.
One of their members came shambling along the sidewalk, the brim of his hat pulled down low and sunglasses gleaming in the fading light of the fires. Before long they’d have to remove the shades or they’d be running blind in a night fight… which wasn’t something any of them wanted to experience. Not on this scale, at least.
“That Roy? I think that’s Roy. Where in tarnation has he been? Done missed all the best parts.”
The newcomer stood in front of them and raised his fist in salute.
“Freedom or Death.”
The others raised their hands in return and were mouthing the slogan when it began to dawn on them. Something wasn’t right. That didn’t really sound like Roy at all and the pants were a bit too short weren’t they? Besides, Roy always wore white tube socks not those pansy argyle sons of bitches.
But by then it was too late. In a fluid movement, Richard ripped the machete from the duct tape that had held it to his back and began his dance of death all over again. He concentrated on the raised hands first, lopping them off at the wrists so they wouldn’t be able to slide the pistols from the holsters slung at the men’s sides. As the so-called freedom fighters struggled to remove weapons with their weaker hands, they were cut down one by one with a blade that had learned to like the taste of blood and only craved more.
Richard stooped and started grabbing the wads of cash the men had been gambling with; all this action had made his leg flare up again, so he took a look tug on the vodka, enjoying the burning trail it left down his throat.
And then it hit him.
That bitch Polly. She was out here somewhere. And he’d wasted precious time playing with these bozos. She never would’ve come this way. She would have tried to stay out of sight, would have followed the path of least resistance.
He had to double back.
He had to find her.
It was a matter of principal now.
The sweetest blood he could ever taste on this, the night of his greatest glory, belonged to that blond haired slut.
And he aimed to drink deeply from that crimson well long before the sun gathered enough courage to peek over the horizon.
The man smelled like cabbage which made Polly want to gag as waves of revulsion crashed over her body. The smell brought back memories of childhood, memories that she would have rather kept buried in the depths of her subconscious. It was all too easy to imagine that the man was her grandfather, slinking through the shadows of her bedroom while the rest of the house was still and quiet. He’d smelled like cabbage, too. She’d had to taste that rancid stink every time the old man shoved his tongue down her throat, every time he whispered in her ear that if she ever, ever told anyone that he would kill her little brother. He’d make it look like an accident, he said. And nobody would believe the word of a little girl who’d developed a reputation for spinning tall tales since her parents had died; they would all think she was lying, that she was simply trying to get back at him for not buying her the doll house she wanted or that pretty yellow dress. No, who would believe a little girl over him? She’d just better be a nice little girl and do exactly what he told her if she knew what was good for her….
So night after night he’d slip into her room and hurt her in ways a little girl should never be hurt. All the while telling her how beautiful she looked, how sexy she was, and how he knew she wanted this as much as he did by the way she stared at him when he was chopping wood. She would bite her bottom lip to keep from screaming, would squeeze her eyes shut so tightly the tears were forced out like water from a sponge, would pray that her father would somehow burst through the door to save her, that everything could go back to how it used to be, before the car crash. But no one ever came. Night after night, year after year… even when she’d tried smearing chicken blood inside her panties to make him think she was having her period. Even when she really did have her period. And each time there was the smell of cabbage souring the air around her, suffocating her in its stink….
But she didn’t need that bastard haunting her. Not now. Not with so much at stake. She had to bring her attention back to the present, to remember that it was her life she was trying to protect this time.
Focus.
The man was whistling again and he drug the pipe behind him, allowing the metal to grate across the floor with a scraping that set her teeth on edge. And he just kept circling her: never moving away, never drawing too near. It was almost as if he had some sort of onboard radar that let him know she was close… so very close… without ever giving away her actual position.
She wasn’t sure how long she could keep this still and quiet. The muscles in her legs were beginning to ache, her arms and shoulders becoming sore. She tried willing individual muscles to flex slightly, just enough to keep the shakes from setting in; but it required so much concentration she was afraid something else might suffer. That she might exhale a little too loudly. That her bladder might give way and mark her location with a pungent puddle. There were so many little things that could go wrong.
Maybe this wasn’t such a bright idea after all.
And the cabbage… it had to be cabbage, didn’t it? Her stomach acids churned and she felt them threatening to shoot up her esophagus, to flood her mouth with the bitterness and sting of bile. But even the smallest hitch, even the slightest wretch, and it would all be over.
She could hear the man muttering under his breath now. So very close.
“Where you at girlie-girlie-girl? I know you’re around here somewhere. Come to Daddy. Come on now.”
He retraced the same path he’d been traveling for the last ten minutes: through the circular clothing racks, past the mannequins in their slinky black teddies and baby doll nighties. As he passed each one, the fucking perv trailed his free hand over their cold, plastic breasts.
“Damn it, I’m tired of this bullshit!”
His yell made her eardrums feel as if they were trembling and was so sudden and unexpected that she was surprised she didn’t jump. Or at least gasp. But no, she’d somehow managed to remain as still as the dead; maybe she had more control than she’d ever given herself credit for. Maybe she was really as strong, after all, as her t-shirt slogans lead the world to believe.
“You come out now and I’ll make it quick. Hell, I might even let ya live. But I definitely won’t make you suffer. Not if you just come out right now.”
He was standing in front of a mannequin dressed in a rather plain set of bra and panties, scanning the darkness with a slow swivel of his head.
“Shit, bitch,” he mumbled, “you’re gonna suffer so bad you’ll wish I had killed ya.”
He reached out as he peered into the gloom and gave the dummy’s left tit a little squeeze. The breast flexed slightly beneath his fingers like a balloon filled with warm water.
“What the….”
The mannequin’s raised arm swooped downward and for a fraction of a second the man who smelled of cabbage screamed. His yells echoed through the empty department store as if mocking the searing pain that had exploded through his skull; but then he fell silent as blood oozed from his ear and coated the yellow handled screwdriver that had somehow sprouted from the side of his head.
Polly let go of the tool and the man immediately fell to the ground as if her grip had been the only thing keeping him aloft. He laid there, twitching and jerking, as a crimson halo blossomed around his head. His eyes were still moving so he was still alive… technically. Not really much of a life, though. How much could you actually function with a six inch screwdriver embedded into the soft tissue of your brain? Judging from the smell of shit wafting from the rear of his trousers and the dark stain spreading across the front, not a whole hell of a lot.
Polly bent over and picked up the pipe that lay beside the man’s convulsing body. It was heavier than it looked; lead probably judging from how solid it felt in her hands. She took a practice swing and frowned at the amount of strength it took just to control the pipe’s arc. But it would have to do. Unless something better came along, that was.
She stood in front of the man’s body and the image of a golf pro lining up a shot sprang to mind. She began by touching the pipe gently against the end of the screwdriver and then pulled back slowly as if for a swing. She held the position, both hands gripping one end of the pipe, the other held over her head and almost horizontal with the floor; she watched him spasm, watched his eyes dart from the business end of the metal rod to her grip on it. No doubt thinking about how far a single swing would drive the screwdriver into his head. If, that was, he was still capable of thinking at all.
None of the emotions raging within Polly were betrayed by her expression. She stared down at him with all the blankness of the mannequin she had pretended to be: the rage, the years of frustration that had been shoved down so deeply within her, the humiliation and pain. All of this barely touched her face as she watched this twitching, pathetic worm of a man.
She took a deep breath and swung the pipe.
It whistled through the air in a deadly arc and the man’s pupils widened as his eyes seemed to bug out from his head; but the end of the pipe passed harmlessly above him, the breeze from its passing doing nothing more than rustling his hair.
“I don’t think so, prick.”
Polly knelt next to him and closed her eyes for a moment. In the darkness of her mind she saw a blond haired girl: dressed in a white nightgown spotted with golden princess crowns, the child was solemn and silent; she, too, was kneeling and before this little girl was the crumpled body of a man with sparse gray hair and a milky cataract filmed over his right eye. He was frail and wasted, nothing more than a skeleton hiding beneath skin as thin and wrinkled as tissue paper.
This was the girl’s grandfather from years later: after she’d put on all the weight during her teen years, the cancer had ravaged his body as thoroughly as he had her own. She’d never visited him in the hospital and everyone had assumed that it was simply because she couldn’t bear to see him in that state. That she wanted to remember him as he always had been, not as this zombie-like shell of a man. But still they urged her to pay her respects, to wish him a final goodbye. She would regret it later if she didn’t, they said. But she secretly knew that the only regret she would ever have is that she hadn’t killed the old bastard herself.
The little girl placed her lips close to his ear and prayed that he could actually hear her, that he could comprehend the whispered words coming out of her mouth. But when she spoke, the voice was that of an adult woman and fantasy overlapped with reality.
“You’re gonna suffer so bad you’ll wish you were dead. Mother fucker.”
Polly stood, tucked the pipe beneath one arm as if it were a parasol, and left the man lying on the floor with the screwdriver burrowed into his head, as helpless and scared as an abandoned baby. And with him, she also left something else: a part of her that had always hidden beneath those loose baggy clothes, a part which she had tried for so long to forget had ever actually existed. As she walked away, tears trickled from the corners of her eyes and her steps felt as if she’d just removed twenty pound weights that had been strapped to her ankles for decades. She cried and she smiled… after all this time, the little girl was finally free.
She dressed quickly, slipping into the jeans and t-shirt without ceremony. As an afterthought, she picked out a good pair of track shoes, black as well, and some nice dark socks. That ought to do.
She then picked her way through the department store, slipped out the window through which she’d initially entered, and was back on the street.
She’d keep heading north, see if she could make it out of town. Surely this type of thing couldn’t be happening everywhere. She understood from the news that all of the major cities were entirely embroiled in chaos; but there had to be small town, little villages and hamlets, where life went on as it always had. Places where all the violence and killing were nothing more than pictures on the television, something to worry about and discuss over dinner… but not something that really effected your life. That had to be out there somewhere, didn’t it? It had to be.
So she kept moving forward. Whenever possible she crept through long rows of hedges and shadow, laying flat and still in the dirt when she’d hear the sputtering of a motorcycle or the wild whoops of savages on the rampage. She’d become quite adept now at holding her breath, at taking only the minimum amount of air necessary for consciousness. Her experience in the department store had showed her exactly what she was capable of and the lengths to which she would go to simply survive. She knew that she lacked the physical strength to take on every threat that crossed her path. But as far as she could tell, these were more like rabid animals than human beings. They seemed to attack with little to no reason. Sometimes the victorious looted the bodies of the fallen as if it were nothing more than a mugging taken to the extreme. But, more often than not, it seemed as if they were killing simply for the sake of the act itself.
The two men in the parking lot of Tateman’s Funeral Home, for example. As she hid behind a dumpster, she’d seen them charge one another, each brandishing a baseball bat like a samurai sword and running like shogun locked into mortal combat. Their yells quivered in their throats, breaking and straining as they sprinted full force with the bats raised above their heads.
At the last possible second, both men swung and there was a sharp crack as the wooden weapons smacked into one another. From that point on it was a viscous attack of swings and dodges, blocks and misses, neither man showing mercy as he struggled for dominance.
The larger one, whom she’d begun to think of as Curly, took these shuffling side-steps backward, fending off a particular furious barrage of swings from the smaller man, whom she’d dubbed Moe due to his dark, bowl-cut hair. Maybe she’d moved slightly or perhaps it was something else; but for a split second Curly was distracted and he stumbled over one of those oblong concrete dividers that keep cars from backing into one another. He fell on his rear but Moe showed no quarter, swinging his bat instead with a renewed sense of urgency.
Curly held his own bat by both ends, slightly over his head, and blocked the swings of his attacker again and again as he tried to scoot across the parking lot on his ass. Each time the bats connected there was a loud pop, sharper than the one proceeding it, and Moe’s nostrils had begun to flare wide as his face pulled back into a rigor of unadulterated fury. Again and again he brought the bat down as cracks began splitting his opponent’s weapon lengthwise until, finally, Curly’s bat splintered in half.
Moe seemed to see this as his coup de tat: he shook his Slugger over his head like an angry gorilla and prepared to bring it down with one final sweep. At the same time, however, Curly had tossed the fat end of his bat aside and held the remaining piece by the grip-taped handle. As the little one made his swing, Curly thrust the sharp shards of broken wood upward; his weapon sank into his opponent’s chest at the same time Moe’s bat cracked open his skull. The two men collapsed upon each other, neither one emerging as the victor, both dying as their blood mingled on the asphalt.
And that was the way most of the skirmishes seemed to play out: nothing more than blind rage devoid of any reasoning or strategy as far as she could tell. It was as if the rioters were relying almost entirely upon brute force and animalistic instinct. But Polly, she had cunning on her side. She had the ability to think things through, to not simply allow consequences to dictate her course of action. And that, perhaps, just might be the edge she needed to keep her ass alive.
After witnessing the battle at the funeral parlor, Polly managed to go several blocks before she had to duck into a butcher’s shop. There was a body builder type who was running down the road at full speed. He didn’t seem to have any obvious weapons, but his sheer size made him a big enough threat to warrant evasion.
Luckily, she’d been able to slip into the store before he caught a glimpse of her. She picked her way through the darkness carefully and made her way to the back where she found a shiny cleaver partially embedded into the skull of a man with a bushy mustache and blood spattered apron. There was no way to tell if the blood were animal or human, but it didn’t really matter. The lead pipe had been bulky and cumbersome; it slowed her down when she was on the run and had almost given her away several times with its attempts to roll away. But this cleaver… it was light and deadly, easy to swing without taking a toll on her already exhausted body, and specifically designed for hacking through flesh and bone. Yeah, the clever would work nicely….
Under normal situations, it would have only taken Polly half an hour or so to reach the other side of town. But this was stop and go, slink and stealth, run and hide: progress was made in small spurts and she had to stay patient after she’d left the butcher with her new weapon in hand. After all if she just broke out into a full on sprint for the finish line, she’d never make it. Not in one piece, at least.
She kept on, slow and steady, until finally she was nearing the outskirts of town. Just around the next bend and she’d be leaving all this madness behind. She’d find somewhere where she could begin trying to put the pieces of her life back together again. Somewhere normal where she could finally find time to cry for Cody. Hell, where she could finally find time to cry for herself….
And fuck this place anyway. Let all those crazy bastards kill each other. Let them keep right on going until not a single one was left standing. She didn’t care anymore and wanted nothing more than to put it all behind her.
As she rounded the corner, she was suddenly bathed in lights brighter than any she’d ever seen. They warmed her face with the heat of a dozen tanning beds and she squinted into the glare as she shielded her eyes with the crook of her arm.
Great. What fresh hell was this, then?
And in this stark field of vast whiteness she heard a voice that sounded as if it were being broadcast over some sort of loudspeaker or bullhorn.
Do not attempt to cross the yellow line….
What the hell?
Her eyes had begun to adjust to the light and she could see it now. Painted in bright yellow, nearly six feet in width, was a large strip that bisected the road horizontally. On the other side of the yellow stripe was a bank of lamps that illuminated the landscape as if it were day. Further beyond that was a row of military transports, parked so closely together that a piece of paper wouldn’t have been able to pass through their bumpers. They entirely blocked both lanes of the road.
The use of deadly force has been authorized. I repeat….
In front of the vehicles was another row, this one of soldiers standing nearly shoulder to shoulder. Their faces were entirely cast into shadow beneath the netted helmets atop their heads; but she didn’t need to see their expressions to realize exactly what was going on. For each soldier held some sort of machine gun. And each machine gun was raised slightly in her direction.
Do not attempt to cross the yellow line….
She’d been this way. He knew it. It wasn’t as if there were tracks he could follow or that she was leaving scraps of clothing here and there. But it only made sense. She would probably be trying to get out of town, to put as much distance between herself and him as she could. And since the majority of the fighting was going down on the South Side, she had to be heading north. He almost imagined that he could smell her scent in the air, that aroma of wildflowers after a spring rain. But tinged with something else: the acrid stench of fear seeping from her pores. She was alone, defenseless, a mere woman turned loose in a world of Gods. In fact, there was a good chance that she was holed up somewhere, perhaps in a burnt out storefront, crying softly and wishing that everything would simply go away. That she could rest and find peace… that she could close her eyes and never have to worry about pain or illness or suffering ever again.
He imagined himself stepping over blackened timbers, the trusty machete by his side, his shadow falling across her delicate form. She would look up with streaks of makeup smeared across her face; she would tremble as he extended his hand to brush her bangs away from her eyes; but as his fingers graced her skin, she would sigh softly. Polly would realize that it had been a mistake fighting the first time; that she simply should have given in. After all, who does not sooner or later bend to the will of God?
And he would rip her clothes from her, tearing them from her body so easily that the threads may have as well been dry rotted and held together more by faith than any actually skill in tailoring. She would tremble before him, perhaps shyly covering her breasts and pubis… that was to be expected. But her body would quiver for entirely different reasons once he was inside her, once she knew the gift he’d been trying to bestow upon her. He would feel the tiny spasms of her muscles, the rise and fall of her perfect breasts against his chest as her breathing quickened. The warmth of her sighs tickling the little hairs lining his ears.
Then, once he’d had his way and the hunger had been sated, he would save her. He’d take her life from her, sparing her the all of the horrors of a world that he knew now that she could never survive in. He would be her hero and she would go willingly into that cold, eternal night. And as the light slowly faded from her eyes, she would hear the galloping of hoof beats and know that finally, at last, she had been delivered into His kingdom.
But first he had to find the stupid bitch. There were so many places she could be hiding and he simply didn’t have time to check them all. So he moved forward on instinct, searching shoe stores and newsstands, coffee shops that looked as if a tornado had passed through them, and all the little places she might find a modicum of comfort in. Sometimes he got the distinct impression that she had been there. Nothing more than a gut feeling really. But it was enough to urge him to continue on, to drive him forward.
And it was all still so glorious. The dead weren’t as numerous on this side of town but every so often he could see would-be contenders to the almighty throne who had tried to prove themselves and were found wanting. Early in the search, there was a pathetic puddle of a man who laid shivering in fear as Richard approached. What looked to be a screwdriver had somehow found its way into the side of his head and he watched this lost soul for several moments, laughing at the way the man’s eyes would flinch every time he cut off a finger. And yet the fool never tried to pull his hand away. Not even once. After all the digits had been severed, Richard stuffed them into his pocket: they might make an admirable necklace sometime, a reminder of the hunt which now defined his life. He considered taking the head as well, but figured it would be bothersome to transport and would tend to get in the way in the midst of a fight. So he left the man lying there, bleeding from the remains of both of his hands as well as the ear in which the screwdriver was impaled.
Part of him had to truly admire the warrior who’d done that. Humans are as slippery as eels, tricky and quick. To actually shove a tool that far into the brain… well, that took something of a special gift. Not one as great as his own, of course, but a talent none-the-less. What he wouldn’t give to face this worthy adversary in battle, to know his blood upon the blade of the machete. It would be an honorable death, one the unknown destroyer could take pride in.
Later he came across two idiots who looked as if they had taken each other out in unison. Now they were locked in Death’s embrace, clutching each other like lovers. For these two, he had no respect what-so-ever. This was more of a clown show, an amusement for children who weren’t yet old enough to witness the true bloody spectacle of the circus; unzipping his pants, he took a piss on the corpses and chuckled as he imagined that it was actually Polly and Jane lying there.
Where the hell was she anyway? He was getting closer to the edge of town with each passing moment… was it possible he’d be wrong? That she hadn’t been hiding at all? Perhaps even now she was miles from this place, hitchhiking along some country road, praying that someone would pick her up who would end it all. Perhaps a drunk driver who would crash them into the river when he took out the guardrail of a bridge. Or one of those traveling amateurs who kill twelve or so helpless women, hiding them in garbage dumps and shallow graves almost as if they are ashamed of their work. They pretended to aspire to greatness but never really possessed the courage to reach out and take it. Even the homo-erotic clowns in the funeral home parking lot possessed more honor than these would-be saviors. At least those buffoons had some measure of pride in what they did; at least they understood exactly what all the killing was for. Even if they did it so badly.
But, no. He was positive that wasn’t the case. He was meant to rescue her from all of this, it was his destiny, the labor he must complete before his full glory could be completely known. He had to claim his prize, to prove that she had not, indeed, bested him back in the kitchen.
The kitchen… that seemed so long ago now. As if it had all taken place in another life, perhaps to a different person. And, in a way, it had. The God had always been slumbering within him, waiting for The Great Change to awaken it, to allow him to ascend to glory. He’d just never possessed the courage to simply take whatever it was he desired. If he was angry, he should have struck down the person who ired him; if he was lustful, he should have taken the woman who had stirred his loins with passion. Things would have been so much different if only he’d realized all this so much sooner.
But, as Jane used to say, better late than never. It was probably the only true wise thing to ever come out of her mouth. And because it was better late than never, he would find Polly. He would find her, he would take her, and then he would save her.
And she would thank him for it.
He’d allowed his mind to wander, to drift off into thoughts of things to come. Which was dangerous out here. You had to keep yourself in a constant state of hyper-awareness, to remain as sharp and focused as a laser sight. Every little sound, the slightest of movements in a darkened window, that prickling sensation on the back of your neck that made you wonder if someone were watching you, lurking in the shadows as they awaited the opportunity to pounce: these things were very real, very important. These things would keep you alive. Richard knew this. And yet, somehow, he’d still allowed that bitch to distract him again.
Something that felt like a runaway brick wall plowed into his body with enough force to lift him off his feet. For a moment he was pressed tightly against a mass of rock-hard muscle, being carried by the momentum of whatever had slammed into him, and it was how a bird must feel right after it had flown full force into the grill of a speeding car. But then he was soaring through the air, the city nothing more than a streaked blur around him, falling and flying all at the same time, struggling to recapture the breath that had been forced from his lungs by the collision.
His back skidded across the road and the machete flew from his hand, clinking faintly as it tumbled over the asphalt. Before he’d even had a chance to roll, something solid and heavy crashed down onto his groin, something that felt like a boulder dropped from above; Richard doubled over as nauseating pain radiated from testicles that now throbbed like twin hearts. He instinctively cupped his hands over the tender area but then fresh pain exploded in his lip as the coppery taste of blood flooded his mouth. Again and again something pounded on his lips and nose with flat, wet smacks and he was vaguely aware of a face leering down at him, eyes ablaze with the thrill of the hunt and lips pulled back into a sneer of brutal enjoyment.
Richard’s fingers grasped for a handful of hair but it felt short and bristly, as if it had been shaven close to the scalp, and they found no purchase. He went for the eyes instead, raking at his attacker with fingers hooked into talons; but the man threw his head back slightly and the fingernails simply peeled curls of skin from the cheeks instead.
And still the fists rained down like a pair of pistons: hammering, bashing, pummeling, jarring teeth loose from gums, shattering bone in the bridge of the nose, spraying droplets of blood as the knuckles connected again and again with Richard’s battered face.
He writhed beneath the man, trying to squirm free even as his left hand groped blindly along the gritty street, searching for the familiar handle of his weapon. But this dude was thick, as dense and hard as an iron girder, and from that first moment of impact he’d refused to give up the edge that the element of surprise had blessed him with. He was a fucking death engine, fueled by high octane adrenaline and concentrated testosterone: no need for guns or knives or clubs; no need for anything, really… except those two solid fists wrapped in boxer’s tape and their lethal fury.
Bursts of darkness had begun to blossom in Richard’s field of vision, like time-lapse flowers unfurling their black petals in a world that seemed slightly blurry and out of focus. Small at first, no bigger than pinpoints. But as his face continued to absorb the shock of each new punch, they fed on the pain like it was fertilizer, growing in size and number.
All of the storybooks had it wrong. Death wasn’t some gangly skeleton enshrouded in a black cloak: no… the true bringer of darkness was a juiced-up meat head in a yellow wife beater and spandex shorts that barely contained the muscles bulging against them. And he was simply going to kneel on Richard’s chest as if it were a prayer rug and offer up blood sacrifices to whatever dark god he served. He would usher his victim into the inky waters of the river Styx and Richard’s short reign as Lord of this World would come to an untimely end.
And it was all her fault.
That stupid, distracting little cunt.
Polly.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The brightness of the lights reflected off the cleaver, momentarily blinding Polly again with the unexpected glare. She squinted her eyes and pressed her face into her inner elbow as she opened her hand and allowed the tool to jangle against the street. She’d actually forgotten that she was holding it. No wonder they wouldn’t let her pass. It was all some big misunderstanding. Raising both arms into the air, palms facing outward, she turned in a slow circle.
“No,” she yelled out, “it’s okay. I’m not one of them. See? I’m not armed! It’s okay!”
Once she’d made a complete revolution, she took a few steps forward. Very slowly. Very deliberately. She didn’t know how well these guys were trained. Were they soldiers hardened by the sand and heat of distant deserts? Or green recruits who might get spooked at any sudden movement and reflexively pull the trigger on an unarmed woman? No sense taking chances.
“I don’t want any trouble! I just want to leave, okay?”
Her feet were mere inches away from the yellow stripe. The stripe which had quickly become a sort of magical barrier she had to cross. As if none of the insanity within the city could possibly spill over that bright paint. Just beyond was freedom. Just beyond was hope.
Do not attempt to cross the yellow line!
She stopped in her tracks and her wrists swiveled slightly on her raised hands as if in an exaggerated shrug. She didn’t understand… maybe they hadn’t heard her.
“I’m not one of them!”
She yelled louder this time and her voice echoed through the silence.
“My name is Polly Wainwright… I don’t have any weapons on me! I just want out of here, okay? You don’t know what it’s like in there….”
She’d taken another step as she pleaded and there was a salvo of clicks as the line of soldiers snapped their weapons to full attention. For some reason, the phrase lock and load flirted through her mind. But this was crazy. They had to have heard her that time. There was no way they could be mistaking her for one of them. No, she’d explained everything, had shown them that she posed no threat.
Glancing down, she saw that the tip of her left shoe had edged up against the border of the stripe in the road.
I repeat… do not attempt to cross the yellow line! Deadly force has been authorized, ma’am.
She shuffled back several steps without even thinking about it. The soldiers, however, kept their weapons trained on her.
This was fucking insane! They were supposed to protect her. They were the damn army for Christ’s sake!
“I just want to leave!”
Her voice quivered as she yelled and she felt frustration and fatigue begin to work its way through her body. Her muscles felt as if they were dissolving, liquefying with each passing second, and she’d begun to tremble as if suddenly afflicted with palsy.
“I just want out!”
No longer capable of supporting the weight of her own body, her knees buckled and she fell to the ground, kneeling before the almighty yellow stripe as if in supplication. She realized that her cheeks were warm and wet, that tears were streaming from her eyes like water from a ruptured main. The trembles had turned to outright shaking now and, oddly enough, her teeth were chattering as she wept. As if she were out in the freezing cold instead of a warm, spring night.
“I don’t understand….”
Her voice was softer now, something just above a whisper and every few syllables were punctuated by a sniffle or sob as her shoulders convulsed with tears. It didn’t matter, though. She wasn’t really talking to them anyway.
“Why won’t they let me leave? Why? I just want to go….”
Her palms were tightly pressed into her eye sockets and she rocked back and forth as she slowly shook her head. She took a deep gasp of air through her mouth and held it for a moment, picturing the healing white light her Yoga instructor always had them visualize. But no. That wasn’t right. She tried inhaling through her nose, the snot bubbling and gurgling as she felt her diaphragm balloon out.
That’s it… breathe.
She imagined the white light seeping into the tension in her muscles, loosening its grip on her body like salt dissolving in warm water. Diffusing through her chest and abdomen. Warm, like the rays of the sun. Soothing. Relaxing.
Now exhaling, slowly through the mouth, envisioning a dark plume carrying away all the toxins, all the filth, all the poison that had built up in her soul. Inhale. Hold. Repeat.
A beach, the waves of the sea crashing against the breakers. Gulls overhead, soaring high in the cloudless sky, riding the currents of the wind. The scent of the ocean carried on the breeze, salty and invigorating; warm sand between her bare toes… sunlight sparkling on deep blue waters as if billions of miniature diamonds were surfing the peaks and troughs.
Exhale.
Repeat.
Polly opened her eyes.
Had they really just stood there? Watching her break down without so much as a word? Without even a fucking sound?
They were just as heartless and calloused as any of the savages back in town. Perhaps more so. At least those running rampant through the streets were doing what they wanted to do, however fucked up those desires may be. At least they weren’t simply following orders like good little sheep.
Fuck these people. There were other ways out of town. They couldn’t be blocking them all could they?
She stood with as much dignity as she could muster, taking a moment to brush the dust off the knees of her jeans and push the hair back from her eyes.
“I hope you’re all so very proud of yourselves.”
Her voice was even and cold. No hints of frustration. No confusion. No fear.
Not anymore.
“And I hope you remember this moment clearly. When you hear that your wives and girlfriends, your sisters… your mothers…. When you hear how they were cut down and left to die on the wrong side of some fucking yellow line. I hope you remember this well.”
The ranks were as silent as a church at midnight; but she was sure she’d planted a seed in at least one of their minds. A seed that would hopefully bloom into compassion. She may not be the one to harvest the crop she’d planted; but if at least one innocent person was able to make it to safety because of her… well, then it would have all been worth it, wouldn’t it?
She walked over to where she’d dropped her cleaver and was beginning to stoop down when there was finally a response.
Do not attempt to pick up that weapon!
Seriously?
“They’ll kill me, you know.”
A statement of fact. She was beyond begging now, beyond pleading.
I repeat, do not attempt to pick up your weapon….
So that’s how it was. That was their master plan: just let everyone kill each other off until order was restored to a depopulated city.
But it wouldn’t work. She knew it wouldn’t. She’d seen the savagery, the brutality, the determination these people invested in their violence. In some ways, it almost seemed to be a matter of pride for them. Before long, this wave of mutilation would come crashing down over their precious yellow line and they would find themselves being swept away in the torrents of the flood.
So be it.
She stood to her full height and glared into lights that cast long shadows behind her.
Strong.
Defiant.
Determined.
“Okay, then. But just remember… I didn’t want this. I only wanted to leave. You created me. You. Remember that.”
Polly turned her back on the blockade and faced the city. She watched as the flames danced on the horizon, as black smoke billowed into the air like the wings of unholy angels. She listened to the distant sound of gunfire.
She had no choice. If she wanted to make it out alive, she had to go back into the fray.
But she was different now.
Changed.
She knew that to survive the gauntlet of butchery and death she was preparing to go through meant that, in a way, she had died out here on the other side of the yellow line. She’d tried to give the soldiers the gift of compassion because she knew that would be a luxury she wouldn’t be able to afford. Not anymore.
To survive them, she would have to become one of their own.
No retreat, no surrender.
It was the only way.
“Bring it on, baby.” she whispered to the burning city. “Momma’s comin’ home.”
Somewhere close by another explosion rocked the city. This one sounded big, like maybe the Gas-n-Go had given up its pumps to a Molotov or out of control car. Richard could feel the shock waves tremble through the street and into his back, almost as if a small earthquake had shaken the very foundations of an already devastated city.
The behemoth he was pinned beneath ducked slightly as his head snapped to the side. At the same time, Richard had yanked hard on the yellow wife-beater and the shirt tore from the man’s muscular frame; as the shirt was ripping, the juicer’s arms flew up, forming the shape of an X above his head as his eyes flinched shut. It was a move of pure instinct: trying to reflexively shield his face from the possibility of white-hot shrapnel, the body builder had opened himself to a much more real, and deadly, threat.
Before the brute could recover from his mistake, Richard grabbed his own wrist with the other hand, squeezing so tightly that his entire right arm quivered. Tensing the muscles from shoulder to wrist, he rolled his body forward and upward with a quick snap. His elbow and upper forearm slammed into Meathead’s throat and he heard a sound like a sharp gag as the man’s Adams apple took the brunt of the blow.
Reflexes again. More instinct as the huge bastard dropped his hands to his own throat, wrapping them around the cord-like veins and muscles as if choking himself. He struggled for a gulp of air, but Richard could feel the momentum building, could feel the battle swinging to his favor. He formed his first two fingers into a stiff V and thrust them forward, directly into Meathead’s unprotected eyes. There was a slight squish, a second of something cold and wet on the tips of his fingers; the body builder’s hands moved again, this time pressing the palms against his now useless eyes as he bellowed in pain. Exposing the throat again.
Wrapping his hands around the back of the man’s skull, Richard pulled him forward. At the same time, he bent at the waist as if trying to sit up. Instead, he sunk his teeth into Meathead’s bottom lip and bit down with a grinding motion.. The idiot tried to pull away and there was a wet, ripping sound as a once solid piece of flesh was reduced to nothing more than a bloody strand.
Keeping his teeth clamped down, Richard jerked his head left and right like a dog shaking the life out of a snared rabbit. Meathead was screaming now, scrambling backward across the street as blood gushed from his ravaged mouth. Richard spat the gristle out of his mouth and stood slowly; his eyes scanned his surroundings methodically, covering each inch of street until they finally rested upon what he was looking for.
After retrieving the machete, he walked calmly toward Meathead. He stood over the blind, lipless freak and smacked the flat part of the blade against his palm as if it were a paddle.
“Nothing personal…”
His voice was thick and raspy, partly from the smoke that snaked through the avenues and alleys, partly from exertion.
“… but this is going to get ugly real fuckin’ quick..”
He didn’t have time to do all the things he really wanted. He had to be satisfied with hacking off the arms and legs… but not quickly. Oh no, that would have been too good for the fallen giant. So he held back, not swinging the machete with as much force as he could, sinking the blade only a few inches into flesh and bone at a time. Not so much dismembering the body but rather hacking it to pieces, one carefully placed blow at a time. Now the once-mighty warrior looked more like some freak attraction from a traveling sideshow of the macabre: a bloody gaping maw where a mouth should have been, the corners extended almost back to the jawline from where the blade of the machete had been slowly drawn across what remained of Meathead’s lips; no real limbs to speak of, just jagged stumps that — for a while — had caused the man-like creature to kind of rock back and forth, as if he were attempting to roll away.
But now Richard could feel a pressure growing around his eyes, like hundreds of tiny hands that had been dipped in molten glass forcing the skin to puff outward. They were slowly narrowing, becoming nothing more than mere slits, and if he didn’t do something to relieve the pressure soon he knew they would eventually close up completely. And then he’d be left, stumbling through the streets like a sacrificial cow….
He’d considered using the machete, but was wary of that prospect. Despite the workout he’d given it, the blade was still extremely sharp. If he accidentally cut too deep, it could be very bad; and then he’d have no one to blame but himself when the unseen executioner came to finish him off. No, he needed something smaller, a razor blade perhaps. Wasn’t that what they always used in the boxing movies Jane had hated with such a passion? Yeah, he was pretty sure it was.
Directly across the street from the inchworm that had once been Meathead was a brownstone. One of those apartments had to have a razor blade somewhere in a medicine cabinet. Or even a little paring knife. Something. Anything.
He staggered across the street and necessity forced him to rely on his ears, rather than peripheral vision, to safeguard himself. He could hear people shouting, probably a couple blocks away, a woman’s shrill scream crying out like the sound of a cougar in a concrete jungle; a slight breeze that had picked up litter which rattled across the street to his right. His own footsteps slapping against the pavement. His own heartbeat.
He started up the front steps of the brownstone, guiding himself with the smooth iron railings by his side. For a moment, he felt as if he’d stepped out of his life and been plopped down in the middle of a slasher film (which he’d always secretly enjoyed, despite what Jane considered to be a reprehensible lack of artistic merit.) It was almost like he was looking at the world through the oblong eye-holes of a mask with everything else surrounded by a perfect field of darkness. The raspy sound of his breath. The wooden door looming closer and closer with each step. Real John Carpenter type of shit.
By the time he got to the top of the stairs, Richard had to physically tilt his head down just to see the doorknob. But something was off with his depth perception and it seemed like he had to reach much further than he should have before he was able to turn it and open the door.
The inside of the brownstone was dark and quiet; even under optimal conditions, it would have been hard to make out details in the gloom. But his eyes now felt as if the skin around them were pulsating in perfect synchronicity with his heart, each throb sending needles of pain through his cheeks and brow. So much darkness now that he could barely make out the door with the little gold numbers on it. 1A? 1B maybe? Not that it mattered. As long as there was a razor. And as long as he could still see to find it.
If it had been like looking through a mask before, now it was more like peering through the slightly raised slat of a venetian blind. He couldn’t waste time checking to see whether or not the door was unlocked. Best to assume it wasn’t. He angled his body toward the door and then ran with every ounce of strength he could summon. Part of him worried that with the depth perception problem he simply might slam into the immovable wall but, as it turned out, that wasn’t an issue.
His shoulder hit the door like a battering ram. There was a sharp crack, a metallic ting as if something metal had broken off, and the door was flying open as he tripped over his own feet and fell onto the plush carpet of the apartment.
He could hear a child crying, very close. A woman screaming over and over get out! Get out!
A smell like dirty socks from somewhere.
And then something like the crackle of a bug zapper. Or a mad scientist’s lab in one of those old RKO films. Something electric.
I swear to God I’ll shock your ass if you come any closer!
That crackle and zip sound again: he could perfectly envision the little blue sparks jumping back and forth between the posts as the woman pressed the button on her stun gun to illustrate her point.
He could picture the scene perfectly, but that was it.
His eyes had finally swollen completely shut.
Richard was blind.
She had to find a weapon. And fast. Judging from the progression of the fires, the battle was slowly making its way toward this side of town. There’d been a massive explosion earlier and she’d watched as this giant fireball shot into the sky like a demon breaking free from the gates of Hell. It had almost seemed to hang in the air for a moment, the flames roiling and lashing out at the smoke and ashes in the sky. It was easy to imagine the blaze igniting the atmosphere, spreading across the heavens like a giant pool of gasoline set ablaze, blotting out the darkness above until it would seem as if the entire city were simply encased within a globe of fire. Instead, the column below it seemed to be sucked up into the mushroom and then, in the time it took to blink, the fiery apparition was gone.
The buildings of the city had begun to close in around her again, the sounds of the fighting growing louder with each step. For a while she hadn’t even heard the gunfire. Or the screams. Or the screeching of tires and rumbling of engines. It had all been background noise, static on the radio dial of reality. Every now and then, however, it had come roaring back into sharp focus as if to remind her that she couldn’t allow anything to become commonplace. She had to consider every aspect of her environment if she wanted to make it out of this alive. So Polly tried to concentrate on the sounds, to use them as her guide. If they seemed to mostly be coming from the North End, then she would head west. If the growl of a motorcycle was steadily growing louder and higher in pitch, she would duck into the shadows until it passed. And this method seemed to be working rather well for her. She’d navigated through several blocks without so much as seeing a soul. Or, more importantly, without a soul seeing her.
Now she’d reached the corner of Bentley and Jefferson. Wasn’t that where that asshole Richard had gone that morning? To get the box of supplies? It had to be. She could just make out what looked to be yellow tape stretching into the distance along Jefferson. Two horizontal bands, spaced just far enough apart for a person to be able to stand comfortably between the two.
Fuckin’ yellow lines, man. If I never see another yellow line in my life, it’ll be too soon.
A sound in the alley to her right caught her attention and her head snapped to the side as her hands formed into tight fists. She didn’t bother calling out “is someone there?” like those ditsy bimbos in movies and books. Of course someone was there. The sound had quite obviously been the scuffling of feet.
From the shadows of the alley a woman emerged. She was wearing a tattered dress smeared with the same soot that darkened her cheeks and forehead. Her hair was a tangled mess, as if she had went to bed with wet hair, woke up, and went about her business without bothering to pass a comb through it. In her hands she carried a small bundle: what looked to be a fuzzy pink blanket with some sort of cartoon characters patterned on it; it was cradled in her arms at an upward angle and, through a gap in the blanket, Polly could just make out a round little forehead and tiny nose. Miraculously, it was sleeping through all of this. Which was probably a blessing, actually. The last thing this woman needed was a crying baby on her hands when she was trying to hide.
As the woman stepped closer, Polly could see streaks in the soot on her face. As if she’d been crying and the tears had cleared swaths of clean skin through the grime and grit.
“They turned you away too, didn’t they? Wouldn’t let you leave?”
Polly nodded her head but remained silent, allowing this stranger to do all the talking.
“I have a baby. A baby for crying out loud. I asked… I asked if I could lay her on the yellow line and walk away. If they could wait ’til I left and take her somewhere safe.”
The woman had a slumped and defeated look which deepened with every step, every word… almost as if the story was the only real substance she had left and the telling of it was slowly deflating her.
“They wouldn’t do it. Why wouldn’t they do it? Why wouldn’t they take my baby?”
Funny. This entire time Polly hadn’t even considered the children. Where were they in all this madness? Where they huddled into basements and closets, hiding from the monsters which rampaged just outside their walls? Were their bodies piled among the faceless dead? Or, God forbid, were they joining in on the mayhem, taking out one another just like their adult role models were doing?
“Why wouldn’t they save my baby?”
Now Jane, she probably would’ve thought of the children first thing. That’s just the way she was. And that’s probably what she’d meant when she kept muttering those poor, poor people as they watched the news. God that seemed like such a long time ago…. It was hard to believe it had only been a matter of hours. That things could deteriorate so quickly once set into motion.
“Will you take my baby?”
Polly finally spoke.
“I don’t want your baby, lady. You should get back in that alley and hide. You don’t want to be out here.”
The woman looked around her, as if taking in the street for the first time before turning back to face Polly, who was now only six or seven feet away.
“Why won’t you take my baby?”
“Look, I’ve got enough to worry about on my own without….”
The woman dropped the baby as if it were nothing more than a sack of potatoes and broke into a run. The lost and confused look had disappeared from her face, replaced with a contorted mask of rage.
“I want your fucking shoes, you blond haired bitch!”
There was something shiny in the woman’s left hand, the one that had been hidden under the baby. Something that looked sharp.
The woman thrust the blade at Polly but she, somehow, was ready for it. She’d never really trusted this lady from the start. Something about how she’d kept saying my baby but never actually mentioning the child by name.
Polly pivoted gracefully on her heel, spinning her body out of the path of the knife as easily as if it were something she did on a daily basis. At the same time, she latched onto the woman’s arm and twisted it backward and down in one steady movement. The blade sank into the woman’s stomach and she gasped as her mouth and eyes formed perfect circles. Her fingers loosened from the hilt just enough for Polly to gain control and yank it free.
With her other hand, Polly pushed the woman’s back hard enough that she stumbled and fell several feet away.
“I swear to God if you’re not on your feet and out of here within the next five seconds, I’m gonna cut a bitch to shreds.”
Not a threat. Just a simple, flat statement.
The woman staggered to her feet and scrambled away, hunched over and gripping her stomach as if she could somehow keep the blood from spilling out of her body.
Shit. The damn baby….
As it turned out, Polly didn’t have much to worry about in that regard. What she hadn’t been able to see in the semi-darkness was that the baby’s face and lips were a subtle shade of blue. What looked to be the terrycloth belt of a bathrobe had been tied so tightly around the infant’s little neck that it had practically burrowed into the skin. The poor thing.
She couldn’t just leave it laying in the middle of the street like some piece of rubbish tossed from a passing car. It was true that she knew there was no place for compassion in her heart, not now at least. But she was still human, damn it. And it was the type of animal who did this that didn’t deserve her mercy; the kind who would murder the perfectly innocent and then use its body as nothing more than a prop in some fucked up ruse.
She could just make out the outline of a carriage in the shadows of the alley. The least she could do, then, was to place the baby back into the pram. It wasn’t a proper burial but in this city it was probably the closest anybody was going to get. So she laid the child’s stiff body down gently, next to a diaper bag overflowing with bottles and rattles and…. cigarettes?
She could see the shiny foil reflecting in the bottom of the bag, the red and white logo on the crumpled pack, the perfectly round and white tips of the filters. Like a starving woman who’d just found a candy bar, she snatched them from the bag. And where there’s smokes, there’s fire right? Yes! Just underneath a stack of diapers was a little orange lighter. God, she could really use a smoke right now.
She shook one of the cigarettes loose from the pack and placed the filter between her lips, relishing the firmness of the filter between her pursed lips.
But wait… if she lit up out here the flick of the lighter would be a beacon. The winking ember each time she took a drag would betray her presence in the shadows. Hell, the smell of the smoke might even draw in any crazy mother fuckers who might be lurking nearby. True, there were probably about twelve different kinds of smoke hanging over town: burning rubber, oil fires, gasoline fires, natural gas fires… but she would never underestimate the ability of someone who was really jonesing for a puff to be able to separate that particular smell from all the others. Hell, how many times had she tried to quit? And it was the smell, every time, that brought her running back.
So not here, then. Somewhere more secluded. Where she couldn’t be seen. Or smelled. Where she could enjoy half the damn pack if she chose to. But where?
She pictured a map of the city in her head, laying out the grids as best as she could and matching them up with landmarks. What was she on now? Bentley. Just a little past Jefferson. If she kept going up a couple blocks then she should come to 17th Street. And 17th led Oak which led to Hoover Elementary. Perfect. She could sit in the hallway, far from any windows, and smoke to her heart’s content. And she couldn’t imagine that there would be anything in a school that the rioters and looters would actually want. Not when there was an entire city to sack.
So it was settled then: Hoover Elementary. True, it would be a circuitous route. In a normal situation it would’ve been quicker and easier to head back the way she’d just come and loop back around. But she had a feeling that if she took the easier path, she’d be walking into her own death. It was an unshakable feeling somewhere deep in the pit of her gut. And if there was one thing she’d learned out here, it was that you had to trust your instincts.
She just hoped that the hunch she was allowing to guide her wasn’t leading her astray. That it really was the voice of instinct… and not the silver-tongued whisper of addiction coaxing her into a slow and painful death.
Richard still gripped the machete in his hand but he knew that if he tried to use it, he would simply be swinging blindly. The screaming kid made his eardrums tremble with its high pitched keen which, in turn, made it hard to judge exactly where the woman’s voice was coming from. There was a good chance he would swing the blade only to have 700,000 volts zapped into his body. Which would debilitate him completely. It was a chance he couldn’t take.
“Look, I need a place to hide, they’re crazy out….”
“Get the fuck out of my house!”
She wouldn’t hear it. Wouldn’t even give him a chance to try to sweet talk his way out of this one like he’d done with Jane. But, of course, Jane had wanted to believe… and that made all the difference in the world.
From somewhere on the street he heard the sound of a gunshot, followed by heavy return fire. And suddenly he heard the shattering of glass, probably a window, the thunk of something burying itself into the plaster wall beside him.
This caused the kid to really let loose with a series of short, shrill shrieks. Then footsteps padding across the carpet, someone running across the door toward the open door, toward him. Someone small.
“Ashley, no!”
Using the sound of the kid’s fear to guide him, Richard’s hand shot out into the darkness with the speed of a striking snake. He snatched a tiny ankle, heard a thud as the child fell to the floor, heavier steps running toward him, the mother hysterical, screaming, crackling her stun gun again and again, getting closer.
But he was quick. So damn quick. His hands scrambled up the little girl’s body, found pigtails, the head, the throat… all while sitting up at the same time. He held the girl tightly, his arm encircling her small neck as she tried to wriggle out of his grasp.
“Back off! I swear to God, I’ll snap this little bitch’s neck like a fuckin’ twig!”
The heavier footsteps stopped immediately. The kid was screaming mommy mommy mommy like some kind of chant and he tightened his arm slightly, just enough to cut off some — but not all — of the girl’s oxygen. Just enough to lower the damn volume a bit.
“You let her go, you son of a bitch! You let her go now!”
“Drop the taser!”
“Let my daughter go, you bastard!”
“Drop the fuckin’ taser or I swear you’ll be burying this little girl!”
He heard something thud to the floor. When the woman spoke her voice was an odd mixture of fear and anger. He could practically feel her seething, probably wishing she could claw his throat out with a fork.
“Look, I don’t want to hurt you! Either of you.”
He dropped his voice, made it sound as if he were on the verge of tears.
“But I will… if I have to. I don’t want to, but I will.”
Heavy breathing from across the room. The little girl crying now, her attempts at resistance losing some of the force with the restricted air flow.
“I found a way out… out of town. I was going back for my wife, Janey, when these guys jumped me. They beat the hell out of me. Bruised me up real bad. I’m friggin’ blind here!”
He pulled his teeth back into a grimace that he hoped looked like anguish. Lord knows he wouldn’t be able to squeeze out a tear, no matter how hard he tried.
The woman however sounded as if she were crying, however.
“Just… let my daughter go. Please, don’t hurt my baby….”
“Why the hell would I want to hurt her? Damn lady, I just want to get back to my own little girl. Polly. I just want to get back to her and Jane and get them the hell out of this shit hole.”
He forced his voice to sound excited.
“You can come with us. You and your daughter. I can keep us all safe, I promise. You just gotta help me and I can get us all out of this mess.”
Silence in the apartment, except for the little girl’s sobbing and Mom’s labored breathing. Then the sound of feet again, pacing across the floor. Probably wringing her hands.
“You let Ashley go… you let Ashley go and I’ll help you.”
“Lady, if I let this little girl go you’re gonna zap me with that gun of yours….”
“I won’t!”
“How do I know that?”
“Please, I promise….”
“You help me, then I’ll let her go. Then maybe you’ll see that you can trust me and we’ll all get out of this alive.”
More pacing in the darkness; he could almost taste the uncertainty in the air. The fear and trepidation.
Finally a small, soft voice:
“What do you need me to do?”
Richard looked out at the street through the bedroom window, really appreciating vision for probably the first time in his life. Which was one of the best things about The Change: it made you see everything in a different light, to cherish all the little things you used to take for granted in your day to day, humdrum life. The beers he’d just chugged down, for example, were the best ones he’d ever tasted: ice cold, the almost yeasty taste of the barely and hops… the way it seemed to fizz down the back of his throat. And that was an off brand, for Christ’s sake.
He took a long slow breath and adjusted the gauze that had been wrapped around his forehead to keep the blood from dripping down into his eyes.
The woman, whose name he’d learned had been Donna, had done a good job. He was worried that her hands might tremble, that she might accidentally slip and cut his eyelid with the razor. Especially since he was sitting there with her little girl locked in a death grip. But perhaps because of this, and not in spite of it, she was extremely steady. He’d warned her that if she tried anything funny with the razor little Ashley would be the one to pay the price. And apparently she’d believed him.
When the blood drained out, it felt like a great pressure had suddenly been removed from his head. Donna had went to the kitchen to get the beers out of the icebox, saying that he needed something cold on his face to help ease the swelling and pain even more. By this time, the blurriness was clearing and he could see the bathroom he’d been led into. White grouted tiles, a little toothbrush holder held by suction cups to the mirror above the sink, blue fish decals on the tank of the toilet she’d sat him upon.
Once he heard the refrigerator door open, he’d snapped Ashley’s neck. Quickly. Cleanly. Silently. He lifted her body and placed it in the tub, closing the curtain as softly as he could.
The machete, of course, hadn’t been brought into the bathroom with them. So instead, he removed the lid from the back of the toilet tank and draped a towel over where it had been as a disguise. After blowing out the candle and plunging the room into darkness, he positioned himself behind the door, working out the angles that would allow him to see the mirror without being seen himself.
When he first saw her, he almost gasped. She looked so much like Polly. A Polly who had let herself go perhaps. A Polly who drank a little too much beer, whose already round face had taken on an almost puffy look and whose belly was no longer tight and firm. And her hair was cut shorter too but it was the same color, had the same little ringlets.
He’d must have won Donna’s trust over completely with the stories of his life with Jane. She walked into the darkened bathroom without hesitation, her voice registering confusion but not fear or panic.
“Rick? Ashley?”
He breathed in long and slow, relishing the memory of how the tank lid felt as it smashed over her head. That dull thud. The jolt that traveled up his arms as a crack spread across the heavy porcelain.
She’d fallen to the floor and the back of her head was almost instantly drenched in blood. But she was still alive, existing somewhere on the borderlands of consciousness, moaning softly every few seconds as her fingers twitched.
He’d drug her into the bedroom then, stripped her, and had his way, timing the punches to her face perfectly with the thrusts of his hips, calling out Polly’s name over and over as the rhythm gained in speed and ferocity.
When he’d finished, she was motionless. Not even the slightest rise and fall of her chest. He’d dressed then and raided the refrigerator, polishing off leftover meatloaf and downing the four beers that were still in the little side compartment.
It was good to be King.
To take what was rightfully his.
On the street, he saw a woman slinking by. Black shoes, black pants, and shirt. For a moment, he simply stood there with his jaw hanging open. It couldn’t be. The clothes were too tight, the t-shirt too plain. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
Polly.
He dropped the beer he was holding and ran for the front door, his heart hammering so loudly that he half expected it to break a rib.
Donna had been fun, but she was nothing more than a cheap substitute. The off brand.
No, what he craved was the real thing.
And now he knew it was right within his grasp.
She’d broken a window with a large rock that she’d found out near the playground, making sure that she was well hidden from view of the street. She’d had the feeling that she was being followed, that someone was tracking her as if she were a deer in the forest. But every time she’d try to steal a glance over her shoulder nothing was there. She even tried to catch a glimpse in the side view mirror of a parked car, hoping this little trick would reveal whether or not someone was slipping through the shadows behind her. But that disclosed nothing as well, so she’d continued on and chalked it up to nerves.
The neighborhood surrounding the school was chiefly residential which, in turn, meant it had been mostly spared from the looting. There were a few cars with spider web cracks stretching across their windshields, some broken glass littering the sidewalk, a couple of bodies lying in the street; but it was nothing like the other parts of town where the stores were all clustered together and ripe for the picking.
She’d climbed into the darkness of the school and made her way forward carefully, working her way through the labyrinth of rooms until she was in one of the halls. It was so quiet that her footsteps echoed as loudly as if she were wearing heavy boots. No one came running. No doors flew open to reveal murderous rage. But why would they? Who they hell would be in an elementary school at this time of night anyway?
She lit her cigarette, feeling slightly guilty when she noticed the sign on the wall that announced tobacco was prohibited on school property. But that guilt was quickly assuaged when her eyes had become better adjusted to the gloom: when she realized that the hallway was lined on either side with bright yellow tape.
Son of a bitch….
Polly stood, took the last drag from her cigarette, and crushed it out under her heel.
She would find somewhere else then.
Richard’s initial instinct had been to charge at her like a mad bull. To run her down the same way Meathead had done him. But he fought this urge, savoring instead the little game he was playing. She, the dainty little mouse, who kept looking back over her shoulder: afraid and helpless in this big ’ole maze of a city. He, the stealthy cat in the shadows: quick and slinky, master of the domain, perfectly bred for stealth and attack.
After several blocks, he realized that — in his haste to follow her — he’d forgotten to grab his machete when he’d left Donna’s brownstone. But no worries. He could go back for it later. It wasn’t as if he would actually need it. Not for her.
Around the same time it dawned upon him where she was heading. The elementary school. Wasn’t that just like a woman? To worry about the little kiddies when she should be more concerned with saving her own skin?
Oh man, this was going to be too easy.
The classroom was standard issue. Block walls painted some neutral color she’d never bothered to learn the name of. Row after row of desks perfectly lined up. Bookshelves. Learning based posters on the walls and a big chalkboard with the name Mrs. Haversham scrawled across it.
She’d plopped down into the teacher’s chair and looked at the day planner laid out on top of the desk. PTA meeting, 7:30 PM Wednesday. Field Trip-Zoo, 8:30 AM, two weeks from now. Sorry about your luck, Mrs. Haversham, but it looks like we’ve had to clear your calendar. Permanently.
As she swiveled back and forth in the chair, Polly toyed with the little American flags that had been poised on one corner of the desk. They were the type that had two poles jutting out at opposite angles from a single wooden base. Probably made in Taiwan.
Maybe she should rest here for a while. Wait for daylight and plan her next move. Smoke all she wanted or for as long as the pack held out.
Yeah, that might be for the best. There would probably be a lot less assholes to deal with out there by morning.
She stood and walked to the door of the classroom, placed the knife on the little bookshelf beside it, and turned the lock.
She wondered what had happened to Jane? Had her friend made it? Was she still back at the apartment? Or was she running, hiding, trying to find a way out of town?
Polly hoped she wasn’t dead. Jane was one of those rare people you met in life. The kind who actually take time to listen to what you’re saying, to show a sincere interest in how you’ve been doing.
But she couldn’t think about that now. Jane was a distraction. Just have a smoke and try to let it go.
He could see her moving about through the frosted glass of the door. Room 114. She’d just turned and was walking away, her silhouette growing fainter by the second. Probably locked it.
Poor, simple Polly.
Still believing that mere doors and windows were enough to keep her safe.
It was time to teach her a lesson.
One which she would never forget.
Polly had just lit the cigarette when she saw it. A man-shaped shadow outside the door. Dark. Hulking. Growing larger as it approached.
Shit.
Thoughts of Jane had distracted her and she’d left the fucking knife on that little bookshelf. She sprung from her chair at the same moment the glass in the window exploded inward in tiny little chunks that looked like crystalline boulders. They rattled against the floor, not crashing like normal glass, and the elbow that had smashed its way through straightened into an arm. An arm which easily flicked the lock and swung the door open.
Before her stood what appeared to be a monster. Its face was lumpy, bloody and battered beyond belief with lips swollen and split, a nose zigzagging at odd angles, hair matted with gore in some places, slick with blood in others. It’s clothes looked like some sort of tattered fatigues that had been cut and abraded to the point where there seemed to be more holes than fibers. For all intents and purposes, this thing looked like the victim of a fatal car crash who had just decided to pick up and walk away.
It stepped into the room, breathing so heavily she could see its shoulders rise and fall.
At the same time she took a step backward as she glanced around the room, trying to plot a way to circle around and get her hands on that knife.
“Looking for an escape route?”
The voice sounded as if it were speaking through a mouthful of mush. Which wasn’t surprising considering the state said mouth was in. But there was something familiar about that voice….
“No escape for you… not this time.”
She took another step backward, but her eyes stayed trained on the monstrosity before her. Watching for the slightest movement that would indicate the start of an attack.
“Pretty, pretty Polly.”
She gasped.
“Richard?”
The classroom filled with laughter.
“No, baby. I told you. Richard’s dead. Call me Rick. Or Dick. You like Dick, don’t you Polly? I know you do.”
More laughter again.
Seriously creepy deja-vu.
How the hell had he found her?
Her heart thundered like a herd of galloping zebras.
“I was hoping you’d have a message for me.” Richard said. “What a shame.”
He seemed to be speaking directly to her tits. Or maybe her shirt. But why would he do that?
Because he’s bat-shit crazy, dearie. Look at him. You didn’t even recognize him at first. How the hell do you think he got all fucked up like that? Crazy….
Richard stepped further into the room and he seemed to grow larger with each step. It was obvious that he felt powerful, completely in control of the situation. And, in a way, he was. She knew she didn’t have the physical strength to fend off his attacks when they came. She’d been down that road already. No, she needed some way to get to that knife. Some weakness she could exploit.
“I don’t know whether to fuck you and kill you,” Richard said, the words slightly slurred through his busted lips, “or kill you and fuck you.”
His laughter filled the room again as if he’d just told the joke of a lifetime. But it ended as abruptly as if he’d choked it off.
“But maybe I’m thinking I should just outright kill you.”
Polly had backed up to the point that she’d bumped against Mrs. Haversham’s desk.
Richard came closer still and she could now see the large bulge in the front of his pants.
“I’m thinking that might just be the thing to do, you little cock-tease bitch.”
That was it. His weakness. Now, she only had to work it to her advantage. She pushed her revulsion deep down within herself, tucked it away in a cold little spot somewhere behind her stomach.
She slowly wetted her lips with the tip of her tongue.
“Now, dearie, you don’t really want to do that do you? Not before you’ve had a little taste of this.”
She slid her hands seductively along the curves of her breasts, down her sides, to her hips.
There was a sharp intake of breath from Richard and he stopped for a moment.
“I shouldn’t have fought you back there, but I was scared. Because of Jane, see….”
“Jane’s dead.”
The statement was so cold, so as-a-matter-of-fact that for a moment her mind balked. But she knew she had to keep going, had to play this scene out to its final conclusion. They words were hard to say, but necessary.
“Good. Now there’s nothing… no one to get in our way, Richard, and…”
“Richard is dead!” he bellowed.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry. I’ll call you whatever you want.”
She tried her best to act simpering, subservient. Totally enthralled like a groupie in the presence of a rock star.
Sitting down on the edge of the desk she slipped out of the t-shirt and tossed it to the side. Licked her lips again and leaned back on the cool wood as her fingertips traced circular patterns over her bra. This had better work, God damn it.
“Come on, baby. Let’s do it. I want you inside me.”
For a moment Richard seemed to teeter on indecision. He started forward but then stopped. Started and stopped.
She moaned, really turning up the juice on her performance as she arched her back slightly.
“Oh god, I’m so wet…”
One hand over the mouth. Giggle. Shy. Coy.
“I need you, Richard. I need a big strong man like you in me.”
“I told you, call me….”
“I’ll call you anything you want, sugar, just do me. Do me hard.”
She’d finally pushed him over the edge. He came rushing at the desk and Polly held her breath, waiting to see if he were buying into all of this. Or if he really was coming to kill her.
He towered above her, staring down, practically panting through his nose, eye ablaze with some strange glow she’d only seen that one time before. In the kitchen….
His hand balled into a fist which he pulled up to chest level and his nostrils flared.
But then the hand opened and he was squeezing her breast so roughly it felt as if he were attempting to rip it off her chest.
“Be gentle.” she whispered.
“No. I’ll be whatever I want. Do whatever I want. Which is why I am God and you just another little whore to serve my needs.”
He lowered his face toward her chest, wanting to smell that scent… the wildflowers and spring rain. Never noticing her hand as it crept across the surface of the desk.
“Richard?”
It was a light, sing-song tone but anger flared within him. Fuck it. He should just kill the cunt now.
“I told you, call me… “
His bellow morphed into a scream as Polly rammed the ends of the little flags directly into his eyes. The sharp tips, like tiny spears, ripped into the tissue easily and they were spaced apart just enough so that each one plunged into a separate socket. Blood and some sort of milky white fluid oozed from the twin wounds as Richard reeled backward, screaming in agony.
Ripping the flags out of his eyes, he stumbled about the room, tripping over desks, falling, struggling to regain footing as he slid on pencils and books and loose sheets of paper from the toppled desktops.
Polly skirted around the perimeter of the room, over to the little bookshelf. The knife felt cool and natural in her hand. She watched as Richard spun in drunken circles, screaming repeatedly: You bitch! You Fucking Bitch!
Timing it just right, Polly dashed in and lunged with the knife, driving it deep within his back, near the left kidney. She pulled it out, ducked low beneath his swinging arms, and grasping it’s hilt with both hand, plunged it upward with all her strength.
No words now, only animal howls of pain as Polly stabbed the blade into his groin. Over. And over. And over.
Richard fell to the floor, cupping the shreds of his mutilated manhood and Polly dropped down, driving one knee into his throat. And then the knife was nothing more than a silver blur as it sliced the tip of his nose, jabbed into his cheek, plunged into the gore-filled eye socket.
And then she realized she was screaming, too:
This is for Cody! This is for Jane! This is for me and this is for me and this is definitely for me!”
She stood and kicked him in the side of the head once. And then, pointing the knife downward, she dropped again and the blade disappeared deep into his chest.
He was moving so very slowly now. The life draining out of him. Sprays of blood coming up with his weak coughs. The wheezing sound of chest wounds as he struggled for breath.
She leaned in close to his ear and whispered.
“How bad do you want me now, Richard?”
He tried to say something, to form words, but there was only a gurgle from somewhere within his chest.
“Oh, I’m sorry…”
She gave the knife in his chest a little twist.
“…dick.”
She’d watched him die in that classroom. Had waited to make sure there was nothing he could do, no way that he could wiggle out of this one. But she didn’t have to wait long. By the time two cigarettes had been smoked down to the filter and crushed out on his stomach, he was dead.
Outside, the sun had just begun to rise above the horizon. Time to move on. There had to be a way out of this town. And she would find it, even if it meant swimming ten miles upriver. She would find a way out and would try to reclaim her old life again. Or at least as much of it as she could. Be she would never be the same. She had changed. She knew this.
She reached for the black t-shirt on the desk and was getting ready to pull it back over her shoulders when she paused.
Instead of putting it on, she laid it flat on Mrs. Haversham’s desk and walked to the blackboard where she picked up a piece of chalk. Returning to the desk she scrawled a quick message across the front of the shirt, bearing down so hard that she snapped the chalk twice.
Then she pulled the shirt over her head and walked away from Richard’s mutilated body. He had no eyes to read this particular message, no brain function to interpret it. But that was okay. It wasn’t meant for him anyway. None of it ever was.
Polly stepped out of the school and into the morning sunlight.
The long night was over and, oddly enough, the birds were singing.
But she could still hear the gunfire. Could still smell the smoke and see the out of control flames licking at the skyline.
And she walked toward this warren of chaos, armed only with her knife and a black t-shirt with words scrawled in chalk across the front. Words which gave her hope and reassured her that, no matter what happened, she would find a way to make it out of this hellhole alive. She was smart. She was strong. And her t-shirt said it all: BE YOUR OWN HERO.
“Bring it on, baby. Mamma’s comin’ home.”