5 Read online

5 by Ripley King

  Dark Fiction

 

  A man seeks revenge.

  Another aspires to rule the world.

  A Dark Warrior appears on Earth.

  Just where did that little demon dolly come from?

  A young girl prays for death, becoming more than she bargained for.

  Stories and Cover Illustration Copyright © 2012 Ripley King. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locals, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over, and does not assume any responsibility for author or third party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the author is illegal. Please purchase only authorized editions. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Everything Ripley King

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  For those who need a little of the dark side.

  5

  Serve Revenge Hot

  Bryan with the bright green eyes saw it coming. His mother’s eyes, intelligent eyes, expressing love and joy. Eyes alive with wonder at almost everything this world had to offer. Eyes filled in their final moments with an unfathomable fear.

  He pushed his fat, raspberry colored, fluffy teddy bear Pudgy to one side, off the back seat of the car and onto the floorboard so Pudgy wouldn’t get hurt. Such a considerate boy.

  He closed those beautiful eyes, actually pinched them shut; then hunched his narrow shoulders and pulled a thin arm up to cover his handsome little-boy face.

  A useless gesture, like all useless gestures, conceived of in a moment of desperation. It was the best he could do. The only thing he could think of at the time. Nobody could fault him for it, he was only five fucking years old.

  The sawed-off scattershot blew his little arm and hand apart, a bloody wad. Bryan’s head splooshed into a cloud of red and gray, yellow hair and pinkish-gray brain tissue coating the automobile’s plush rear interior.

  Everything he was—the questioning crooked smile, bundle of feet running through the house when he was told repeatedly not to, stubborn foot stomping “I don’t wanna go to bed yet!” bouncing baby boy—gone. Just gone.

  “BRYAN!”

  Screaming your dead son’s name jolts you awake, your heart racing. The grisly vision of your son’s murder fresh in your mind. Cold clammy sweat pours off you to dry in the chill night air, realizing it was another nightmare, one of several, realizing it wasn’t quite light out yet, the dawn a couple of hours away from what the digital display says.

  You’ll never get back to sleep now, and it’s no big thing. You haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in three years. Five hours most nights, four hours this night.

  Did the neighbors hear you scream?

  Maybe the scream was all in your head. And if the walls did carry the sound, it wouldn’t be the first time. Frankly, you don’t give a shit. The nosy neighbors can kiss your hairy ass, for all you care. Give your farthest hole a good Frenching. Like they don’t have their faults?

  Old man Cruthers, across the hall and to the left, all gut and no ass, pacing the narrow hallway at night in his dirty socks, boxers and tee. The old man is tolerably lucid, and when asked can hold an interesting conversation about the state of the building or the weather. A serious attempt at an overall exercise program? Shed a few pounds?

  Walking, good for the soul.

  Or desperate Deena, forty-five years desperate, fat and ugly ta-boot. Nightly ordering takeout from every joint around the neighborhood, hoping to get lucky, hoping one of the delivery drivers is more desperate than she. Most waive the tip and run like hell. Once in a great while she gets lucky and gets laid. She has to have a hell of a job to pay for what little comfort she receives.

  The warmth of another soul, pushing the bush.

  Last but not least is Mrs. Boswellia directly across the corridor, hovering day and night by her peep hole. The only thing more exciting than NYPD Blue reruns or Oprah is the soap opera that plays out beyond her apartment’s windows or peep hole. Maybe Mrs. Boswellia has a thing for old man Cruthers in his boxers, fat gut and flat assed as he is.

  Maybe old man Cruthers is hoping desperate Deena will notice him and extend an invite. Give him a nut draining blow job or a roll on the carpet. Fat people sex.

  It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

  You push slowly out of bed, the pain grips you by your balls, threatening to walk you around the room on tiptoe. It’s bad today, but pain is your life. Every minute of every waking day is filled with mountainous pain. Physical pain that sharpens all your facilities. Emotional pain for surviving one more day. Pain you inflict upon yourself because you have to.

  The shower’s coarse spray heats your skin and warms muscles, stopping the dull ache in your bones. Underneath that magnificent flow of water is where you need to be, where you want to stay, but as the spray loses its potency you stop the wondrous cascade and exit, sorry it couldn’t last forever.

  The towel is rough. Water drips from your beard.

  Feast like a monarch in the morning, and grab what you can the rest of the day. Six extra-large eggs from the refrigerator, poached. A pound of bacon, salty, crisping nicely, spatters in the cast-iron skillet. A dab of grease pops out of the pan onto your bare chest. This pain is nothing.

  Six slices of heavily buttered toast—real cream butter, not flavored vegetable ooze—and your cholesterol level be damned.

  And it’s good. You finally learned how to cook. It’s not like you had a choice. After your wife and son’s deaths you had more than enough time to learn many things.

  Hate was new, but you learned how to hate. You simply let your mind dwell on what was taken from you, and hate bloomed like an endless spring meadow in your soul. Hate fed by needs you never truly understood before, but now have an intimate relationship with.

  You have a fourth cup of coffee, watching the sun rise over a nasty trash heap called a city. The only decent light you get from your cheesy apartment windows the entire day. It’s like the bright yellow globe rises for you alone.

  You want to sit for a fifth cup, watching the sun stretch into the sky, or a sixth cup as the rays warm your soul, but you can’t. The pain will only settle deeper into your joints, making the slightest movements agony. Soon that pain will be gone. The pain in your heart will always survive in one form or another, though it may dim with time.

  Pretend you’re fighting ten men at once. Slow, deliberate moves. Punch, kick, hands and feet, elbows and knees, turning small circles within the confines of your living room. Couch to one side, two chairs and an end table to the other side.

  Now move a little faster. Your joints scream, lacking proper lubrication. You ignore them.

  More imaginary opponents get in your face. It seems you have an endless supply of first-class fighters at your disposal, thanks in part to your rediscovered imagination. A gift from your son. Games of cars, his Batman to your Robin, wrestling, tag, story time. Silently you thank him, and promise to honor his memory.

  Every day of the week you work your body and mind to exhaustion. You know why. Plans can go wrong at the least, Murphy’s Law detonating in your face at its worst. Every contingency must be thought out, explored to its fullest, options devised.

  Faster. Feel the burn. Feel your once-damaged heart beat proud and t
rue.

  Suck more air, it’s not over yet. You have two days left out of three very long years of fierce preparation. Two glorious days.

  Today.

  Tomorrow.

  Two hundred pound squats with the bar squarely over your shoulders. Dip low, push up hard. Six sets of ten. Five hundred crunches, twisting at the top for maximum gain. Three hundred each: dips, pushups, chins. Then do preacher curls until your biceps threaten to burst. The harder you push yourself, the less likely you are to erupt before you’re ready, and you’re almost ready.

  “Never ever, not even in prison, have I witnessed one man work out with the single-minded intensity you give those weights. Absolutely possessed.”

  “Monk,” you say between breaths. “I’ve changed . . . that lock . . . three times . . . because of you . . . I’m going to start charging . . . for the repairs.”

  Monk laughs. “I do that to keep in practice. You’re not the only one. The occasional surprise inspection can yield stupidity or graft.”

  “More like get you shot.”

  “Think so?”

  “Why are you here? I didn’t think this early in the morning was your style, addicted to the nightlife and such.”

  “Shove enough crank up your nose, and sleep becomes a moot point. I want you to tell me about the other night. The niggers say they were short ten pounds of C-4.”

  Monk begins to poke around the place, and yes you took it, but he’ll never find it. The bulk of it is already in place.

  “Let me get that pesky closet door, Monk. Feel free to look under the bed or the couch.”

  “Tell me about the shipment, dude.”

  “Tommy boy weighed it out. He packed the boxes and sealed them. That’s the way he wanted it. We delivered the shipment with me at the wheel. He never let them out of his sight, and I never touched ’em.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  You were counting on it.

  “Sounds like them bangers are greasing our dicks, Monk. Masturbation isn’t my style.”

  “Not the first time.”

  Monk hands you a gym bag. Inside is a .45 and a digital camcorder. He says, “I think Tommy boy fucked up for the last time. Plant him. I want a first-rate epic.”

  Then he hands you an envelope full of Franklins, and says, “I want his cunt and brat growing maggots, too. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

  You shake your head.

  “My pleasure,” you say.

  “And while you’re out,” he says, “get us more gas.”

  “The tanker will be parked under Fletcher’s canopy before the afternoon is over. Have him dig a hole for three in the garden.”

  “We’ll dance on Tommy’s grave tomorrow night.”

  You pull a small black box off the kitchen table and open it for Monk’s inspection.

  “You like?”

  Monk says, “Is this the ring Baldy’s giving his ugly little slit? The stone . . . it’s so small. He bought this. Nobody in their right mind would steal something that tiny.”

  “You’re the best man. You want to take it now?”

  “Give it to me tomorrow. I might lose it between now and then. Christ that’s small.”

  Monk pops open a vial and spreads some gummy powder on a mirrored tray you keep handy. He cuts it into four fat lines and does two. You snort your two. The powder burns its way deep into your head. The rush hits almost instantaneously.

  “Whiskey,” Monk chokes.

  You pull a bottle and take a swig. Monk takes the bottle and slams half of what you have left.

  “If Tommy boy calls, Monk, go with it. Whatever I say.”

  You see Monk to the door.

  “I just want him dead,” Monk replies.

  “And next time, knock.”

  He gives you a look that could freeze Texas.

  “Yeah, right, knock.” He raps the door. “See? I’m knocking.”

  Monk closes the door behind him. You seethe.

  Your first hit, you didn’t think you could kill a man, but the asshole wasn’t a man, he was trash. Taking out the trash is a job real men do.

  Monk asked you to do it as a test. The dickless wonder pissed Monk off. He bothered Monk’s greedy sensibilities. Skimmed some drug money and bought himself a grave.

  You did it with your own two hands and a smile. Monk was highly impressed. He slapped your back and put you above many of his so-called friends, which suited you just fine. It made you money, not that you needed any, and gave you access.

  You flip open your phone.

  All the drugs you moved. Weapons, ammo, some of it Nam surplus, most was state-of-the-art. It all passed through your hands, and you had the pick of the litter. Death and mayhem sold on the streets to ignorant fools.

  “Wake up, Tommy boy . . . .”

  Then your second hit. The rest of the crew liked your work because you had style. You didn’t care one way or the other how they felt because it was Earth Improvement Day, and you just wanted to do your part.

  “Fuel. Monk wants you to take the bitch and brat. Look legitimate for me . . . .”

  Today.

  “We play well together, and it’s his sandbox . . . .”

  Tomorrow.

  “Be my guest. He’s waiting for you to do just that . . . .”

  Killing this waste of skin will be fun.

  Now for your second call, and this one is hard to make.

  Donna’s father Fred loved you like a son, once. Yet he disagreed with you in your darkest hour.

  Three years ago you woke up in a dimly lit bleached room, full of machinery. Ear-piercing bleeps, low-pitched buzzing, loud hums and rhythmic whooshes. You could smell industrial-strength cleaners, your own sweat, and someone else’s fecal matter.

  You were alive, albeit barely from the look and sounds of it all. Blood and other liquids were being forced into your veins drop by machine-fed drop. The beating of your heart was being watched for discrepancies. You slept for long periods of time.

  You knew where you were, but where was your wife? Your son? Were they in other rooms, struggling through their own tangle of tubes and machinery? Were they home safe? Could they, or did they visit?

  That night you had your first nightmare. You woke, wanting to die. The nightmare imparted the impression your wife and son were never coming to visit, not ever. Fred finally confirmed your worst nightmare was real. And as much as you wanted to die yourself, the damned stuff surrounding the bed wouldn’t let you.

  Pain relief and sleep came and went with each syringe added to your IV drip, but you endured.

  You even endured the endless parade of doctors, stopping in twice a day to collect their fair share of your insurance company’s green.

  Later, between sessions of physical therapy, with nothing to do all day but suffer and mourn, you watched hours of television. It didn’t take you long to realized why it was called an idiot box by informed advocates for higher IQ scores. Yet, many strange notions presented on various tasteless programs gelled into one seriously warped idea.

  That one idea sprouted into a forest of what ifs, the what ifs snowballed into a plan of sorts, and nothing told you, no matter how hard you asked yourself the necessary questions, the plan was bad. You told Fred.

  Fred listened, and left for the night, but came back the next night and asked you to move on. You shouted many things you’ve come to regret, and haven’t spoken to him since.

  “Myer’s Oil. Fred Carnes.”

  “It’s me, Fred.”

  Dead air. You can feel his thoughts shifting around in his head.

  “It’s been a while,” he finally says.

  “I need a big favor.”

  “What is it?”

  “I need a gas tanker. Full. The semi will be returned, but the tanker will be a total loss.”

  “It won’t bring them back. You know that.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “Why are you still doing this?”

  “To
stop them from murdering someone else, Fred. Three more times it’s happened, and no one has stopped them. The cops can’t do a thing. Everybody lies, and money buys justice. You, Fred, know that all too well.”

  More dead air. He’s had time to think.

  God knows you argued with him that day so long ago you thought about killing him. He held tight to his beliefs, and you never mentioned it again.

  “I’ll leave the key in the ignition," he says. "Truck 46. When can you steal it?”

  “One hour.”

  “Exit through the south gate.”

  Maybe he pays more attention to the news at night. Once his daughter and grandson became a statistic it was real for him.

  Maybe deep down in his heart he knows you’re right.

  “After this,” he says, “you will never contact me again.”

  And you feel a moment of pity for a man resigned to his fate as a silent accomplice.

  A strange sight, a fucking-big gas truck in a residential neighborhood, but this “hood” doesn’t have Betty C living on the block. Best Homes & Better Gardens is used to swat flies and roaches, and the Weekly World Dispatch is just another book in a strange bible, the words inside spread with fear and conviction.

  The old in their decrepit boxes, the young breeding a new generation of crime and death; multicolored weeds, dirt for yards, peeling lead paint.

  “I called Monk,” Tommy boy says. “He said to play it your way, but the kid isn’t here. He took off this morning when I slapped him upside the head. I caught the brat dipping into my stash.”

  Tommy boy’s woman tops off a bottle of pop with whiskey and hands it to him. The kid is a loose end, but it still works to your favor. The kid hasn’t made you, and can’t place you. When he realizes his parents are never coming home, maybe, with luck, the kid will find more to his life than drugs and prison. From what you know of the kid, he’s tarnished. Abused into a semblance of adulthood, possibly beyond redemption.

  “Fletcher’s,” you say, “but not too close.”

  The drive is a long one. Down a small little-used highway into the desert.

  Fletcher lives ten miles from the pavement in a box canyon. Ten miles, and you can see anybody and everybody coming. If it has value: guns, drugs, this gas, it’s there. And that’s the beauty of God’s grace. Sometimes things come together like tits on a Ritz. Good cracker.

  When you were incarcerated those many weeks in the neighborhood ICU, wrapped in pain, sleep was blessedly provided. The drugs couldn’t stop you from remembering, and it hurt to do more than let the tears slide silently down your cheeks, but still you cried.

  A detective came and asked you questions. You told him what you could, gave him their descriptions, and the one name you heard.

  No arrests were made, nothing happened, no prison for the killers of your family. You once asked the detective why, and he said there wasn’t enough proof to convict them. “Their high-priced lawyers would eat you alive in court.”

  They had each other as alibis.

  “Back it in here,” Fletcher calls out. “Get it covered!”

  You back the rig up, Fletcher unhooks the tank, and you pull forward a few feet and shut the rig down. Tommy boy and his woman help with the canopy. You cover it all with the camcorder.

  “Fletch,” you say, “take this off my hands.”

  “Yeah,” he somberly says. “Monk called me about that. I’ve known them for years, but you do what you have to, right? Can’t have them running their own show.”

  Tommy boy sees your piece just before you shoot him in the leg. Then you shoot his wife in the head. Only for her will you show an inkling of mercy.

  “Fuck me!” Tommy boy screams over and over as he tries to slink away.

  “You don’t screw the group!” Fletcher shouts back.

  You shoot Tommy boy again, in the gut, and watch him squirm some more. Then once more in the head. He twitches as he dies. Fletcher puts the camcorder down.

  “Too quick?” you say.

  He shakes his head and asks, “Where’s the boy?”

  “I’ll have to deal with him later. Seems he got caught pinching a bud. Tommy boy probably fucked him up.”

  Their bodies get slid into the hole Fletcher dug. No conversation is made until the newest mass grave is filled. A few stones get sprinkled about to make the mound look decorative.

  “How many are planted in this garden, Fletch?”

  “Now? Twelve. I have a buyer for the rig, dude. You get to take Tommy boy’s shit-mobile home.”

  “Not me. I’m walking home, just to see if I can. Take that garbage out and junk it.”

  “You’re nuts!”

  “Got a gallon of water I can take with me?”

  “I got your water, bro. How do you like the decorations for Baldy’s nuptials?”

  Kegs line the grounds, waiting for ice.

  “Which one’s mine?” you say. “Baldy, he gets him a whiff of pussy and has to tie the knot.”

  “At least she loves him. She is an ugly little thing.”

  “He shaves her twat and pulls her hair up into pigtails.”

  “You’re cruel.”

  “If you can’t enjoy life, what’s the use of living it.”

  “Bad man,” Fletcher says, and lights a doob and passes it over.

  “Water first," you say, "and sell me some snort while you’re at it.”

  “Here,” Fletcher says, and hands you a large vial. “Take it. You earned it.”

  A tiny spoonful goes up each nostril while you wait for the water, studying the rock wall in front of you.

  It takes half a day to get back home. Monk calls and you did a good job. A palm full of aspirin takes away some of the pain.

  In bed you think about tomorrow, and fall into a troubled sleep. You dream the nightmare you’ve lived with for so long. The same nightmare night after night for the last three years.

  It was a nice day. Not too hot for a Sunday drive. Bryan was excited, and Donna had packed the perfect picnic lunch. You left home not knowing where you would end up.

  You stopped at a place everybody called the “Bluffs,” and ate lunch in the sunshine. Crispy fried chicken with the works. Bryan tried to feed a lizard its meal.

  After lunch the rocks called out, and the three of you answered the challenge. The sweat poured, soaking your shirt. You realized just how out of shape you were. Breathing hard at your age was shameful. Donna thought it was funny. Bryan didn’t care, it was enough keeping him out of trouble.

  When you got back to the car it was surrounded by long hair, dirty beards and halter tops. A pack of stoners out for the day.

  You wished they had stayed home, scurrying into the shadows like good little roaches, doing whatever scum like that does. But they had claimed the spot for themselves, swapping smoke and spit and cheap beer.

  Trouble was the last thing you wanted. You said as much as you unlocked your car door, and they, in turn, smiled their evil smiles, said it wasn’t a problem, but they didn’t back off.

  You strapped Bryan in, but before you could unlock Donna’s door they had her on her knees with a .9mm to her head, a dirty dick shoved down her throat. You fought hard. Bryan was crying.

  The hairy fucker shot his wad, and then your wife.

  The fat bald guy shot your son to shut him up.

  The dude they called “Monk,” he shot you six times, point-blank in the chest, and then they all took turns kicking and stomping, listening to your bones break. They thought it was funny.

  Almost dead, eyes on the carnage, your soul had been re-forged in the flames of hatred, infused with a need for revenge, tempered by pain.

  Again, a slow morning, but the charge you feel within is building to a head.

  “Brother!” Baldy shouts. “Glad to see you. You have my ring?”

  “I don’t have the ring,” you say. “You have the ring?”

  “Ring?’ Fletcher says. “I gots no stinking ring.”

  Monk picks
up on the joke and carries it farther. “I have a ring around my bathtub, a service ring on my finger, and one around my dick made by your woman’s lips. Wanna see?”

  A good joke, but Baldy doesn’t have the patience for it on his special day. You say, “I have the ring.” And hand Monk the box.

  “Baldy’s Ring of Enslavement,” Monk adds. “Fucking small if you ask me.”

  “Well I didn’t ask you, asshole,” Baldy says. “This was the ring my daddy gave my momma.”

  “He pried it off her dead hand.” Monk pockets the ring and tops off his beer. “He dug the bitch up, and probably left with the casket still open.”

  Fletcher pulls you to one side. “Like the snort?”

  “I found it potent.”

  “You come back if you need more. I want to stay on your good side.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, Fletch. I’m going to kill everybody here.”

  “So,” Monk says as he nears, “the boy does have a me sense of humor. And all this time I thought you had something jammed up your ass.”

  “It’s called attitude, Monk.”

  “It must be an attitude thing. A baseball bat attitude adjustment could cure that, you know.”

  “And when the dead speak, the living can’t hear shit.”

  Two more spoonfuls go up your nose. The others are laughing at a joke only you understand. Monk gives you the eye, so, just to piss him off, you wink and tip your beer.

  Tina, Jackson’s new pump, whispers in your ear that she wants to suck you off. You tell her to do it here and now.

  She does.

  Jackson is pissed, but pretends not to see. Monk pulls his tool out. Tina doesn’t want him, but she can’t say no. She knows all the unspoken rules. She drains you then turns toward him. You decide to give them their privacy.

  Jackson sneaks up from behind and growls a threat in your ear. You grab him by the throat and ask for an apology, which you get.

  “This is a wedding,” you say. “Be happy.”

  Not an ordinary wedding. The vows traded today come from a code recorded in memory, not a Bible. The Bible would melt in their hands. The ceremony was born this century, and was about to start. Baldy fires his shotgun into the air.

  What you see only strengthens your resolve. A founding father stands before them all, guiding them into Hell. He speaks.

  “Baldy. Do you intend to enslave your cunt? To beat her without mercy if she turns into a bitch? To fuck her holes, using dick and dildo, or whatever else pleases you? To film what you do for fun and profit? Do you promise to keep her until she gives out and dies, sending her stupid cunt soul to Hell?”

  “I do.”

  “Cunt. Do you promise to take everything this man has to give? Abuse and cock? To work, so he doesn’t have to?”

  “I do.”

  “Let us party.”

  Cheers and gunfire boom across the landscape.

  It’s time. From this point on you focus only on your goal.

  With the debauchery in full swing you make your way to the rock wall. A series of cracks and stones form a path you climb like a ladder. Fletcher, yesterday, when you asked why that particular area looked unusual, called it his escape route. He had worked on shaping it for years. Nothing covers your back.

  Halfway to the top, in-between two rocks, is a device you take into your hand like hope itself. A remote detonator you placed the day before. It starts a timed bomb, sealing the entrance to the canyon, trapping all the scum inside. Three minutes, not really enough time to finish surmounting the wall, but it’ll have to do.

  Two minutes and fifty-nine seconds.

  You force yourself up, breaking through the pain.

  A few of the smart ones will realize where the attack came from and do like you, climb the walls. You can’t let them escape.

  One minute and thirty-five seconds.

  Faster.

  Eyes follow you up the wall, you can feel them, but they have no idea why.

  Faster. You have to climb faster.

  Three years. Three years of death and drugs everywhere your eyes fell. Innocent lives devastated time and again. Three years of the most excruciating, soul-wrenching pain ever conceived. Only God could understand how you’ve suffered. How much pain you let loose in the world by allowing these freaks to live, even this long. You knew the only way to end this disease on humanity was to formulate a final outcome.

  Three. Two. One.

  Eight pounds of C-4 explode. The concussion almost shakes you loose. Dust and stone pummel your head and back. The canyon's entrance seals, and you pray nothing large is headed your way. That would be the cruelest jest of all.

  The sound of the explosion is replaced by screams of terror. The sound is honey sweet.

  At the top of the wall you find another remote detonator. At the other end of the signal is the remaining two pounds of C-4, attached to Fred’s fuel tanker. This one isn’t on a timer. This one will blow the moment you push the button, serving the very idea of Hell on a gold platter made from the memories of your wife and son. You push it and dive for cover.

  Twenty feet into the air the heat pushes you, on into the sand and rock, which you willingly eat.

  Behind you is an inferno, cleansing the Earth. The smell makes you vomit.

  You look up and see legs. The legs belong to Monk. Monk has a gun to your head. He’s a little scorched around the edges, and definitely not happy.

  “WHY!” he screams into your face, eyes wild.

  “Three years ago, Monk. You think you can remember that far back? I was with my wife and son at the Bluffs. Baldy shot my son, just to shut him up. He couldn’t take the noise. Fletcher made my wife suck his dick, and then shot her when she didn’t do it to his satisfaction.”

  “And I popped you. Six shots to the chest.”

  “But I was still breathing, so you—”

  “I remember.”

  “Are you the only one to escape?”

  “I followed you when I saw you climbing the wall. If what you said was true, I was going to kill you, and here my paranoid ass is. I’m the only one. I’m going to empty this entire clip into your head.”

  “One question, first.”

  “Why not.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did we kill your family that day at the Bluffs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was something to do. That’s all. We were bored. Now to finish the job.”

  You jerk your head to one side just before his finger tightens on the trigger, spinning to the left, onto your side, thrusting your right foot into his kneecap, shattering it.

  Monk screams but remains standing, and lethal.

  You immediately spin back to the right, and the other foot sends the barking gun flying. Monk sits down, hard.

  The second shot grazed your shoulder, but this pain you don’t feel at all.

  Monk wants to survive, and heaves his body toward you. His hands are at your throat.

  You break his arms as easily as you would two cheap pencils.

  Losing it, his teeth gnash at your face.

  You make him eat them. Then snap more bone.

  He begs, offering hundreds of thousands you know he has.

  The words mean nothing to you. You give him one last minute to contemplate his death.

  “I’ll let you live if you ask me for forgiveness.”

  He spits blood in your face.

  You pull him up by his head and savagely twist it, but his face offends you, so you smash it with a rock the size of a watermelon.

  “It’s done, Donna. Rest, Bryan. Rest.”

  Over three hundred human beings are dead in the hole behind you. A question comes to mind, the same one you asked yourself the very moment you birthed your inspired plan.

  The question? Whether you can live with yourself afterward.

  Five miles out, next to a shrub, is an outfit in a grocery bag. A pair of scissors is in the bag. You cut your hair, trim your beard short, and bur
y it all, covering the hole with a rock and some scrub. You take a minute to finger your wound.

  The last item in the bag is a razor. Sweat helps it glide over your face, changing you, back into you.

  The answer to the question?

  Yes.

  And you know in your heart you’ll sleep the whole night.