AFTER (5 page)

When he finally reached the church graveyard, Sam was exhausted. He dumped them in their intended places: George beside his wife, who died of a stroke five years ago, and Millie to the right of Sam's own beloved. She and Estelle had been lifelong friends, so it was fitting that they rest beside each other in death. But when he finally caught his breath and prepared to dig, he discovered that he had forgotten his shovel. Too tired to go back and get it, he simply left them where they lay. He said a little prayer over them – the first prayer he had said in a very long time. After Estelle had passed on, leaving him alone and depressed, he and the good Lord hadn't exactly been on speaking terms.

He rested a while longer. Then, taking the wagon, he started back for Maple Street. He entered the fix-it shop and collapsed on the little bed in the back room. A wind-up alarm clock on top of the rolltop read 12:47. Sam lay there for a long time, thinking of Millie and George… of
Rott
and the puppies and kittens, of the bloody skins littering the sidewalks of Maple Street like furry bags with nothing inside. When sleep finally claimed him, it was a fitful one.

That night he dreamt of the boy again.

Sam was running across the front yard to where the boy sat on the ground, crying and rubbing at his right hand.

"What's the matter?" he asked him in concern. "Did you hurt yourself?" The boy's fingers were red and swollen.

He was shocked when the nine-year-old glared up at him angrily. "No! I didn't do it! It was Toby Hawkins and his buddies. Said I didn't need no extra fingers, so they reckoned they'd just yank 'em off. And they tried, Papa! I… I think they're broken!"

"Here, let me take a look, son."

But the boy wouldn't let him near him. He scrambled backward in the grass, until his back rested against the trunk of an oak. "Stay away from me! Haven't you done enough?"

Sam couldn't believe his ears. "What sort of foolishness are you talking, boy?"

"It's all your fault!" he cried. "You're the one who made me this way!"

He regarded the boy sorrowfully. "I didn't make you…
special
… like this. It was God's doing."

"Then I hate God's guts!" screamed the boy, his freckled face full of rage.

It sickened Sam deep down in his soul to hear his only son speak in such a way. But he had said nothing.

Maybe he should have.

The following day was a scorcher. According to the Orange Crush thermometer mounted on the front wall of the fix-it shop, it was 98 degrees in the shade. The heat shimmered in waves in the distance, both coming and going out of town, like a transparent barrier blocking strangers from entering and residents from leaving. Of course that was just an illusion, but that's what it felt like.

Sam sat in his place as usual, the Winchester resting across his knees and the .45 Colt lying in the seat of Estelle's rocker.
Rott
and his men were on the other side of the street, milling around, shooting the shit. They had looted the hardware store earlier that morning, taking every gun and round of ammunition they could find. They laughed and brandished their pistols and shotguns, like Mexican banditos in those old western movies.
Heaven help us,
thought Sam.
They really are an army now.

The only one who carried no firearm was
Rott
himself. He seemed contented and confident to stick with his tried-and-true cleaver. At the moment he was sitting on the hood of the black Mustang with Pickpocket next to him. The serial killer looked around, surveying the quaint buildings of downtown Watkins Glen.

"Did you ever see that old Clint Eastwood movie?" he asked the young black man.

"Which one?"

"The one where he made the town's people paint all the buildings red," replied
Rott
, thoughtfully.

Pickpocket considered it for a moment. "
High Plains Drifter
?"

"Yeah! That was it!" said
Rott
. He laughed and ran his fingertips over his beard. "That's what I want to do here. Paint the town. But
black
, not red."

A man nearby snickered, whether about
Rott's
plan or something else, Sam couldn't tell. But
Rott
didn't think kindly of it. He hopped down off the Mustang, strolled over to where the man stood, and put the heel of his cowboy boot in his stomach. The fellow doubled over and
Rott
grabbed a fistful of his dirty brown hair. "You laughing at me, boy?" he asked calmly, that wicked smile on his face.

"Hell no!" The escaped con's face was red and strained. Fear shone in his eyes as he stared at the sidewalk, which was stained with dried blood from the day before. "I wasn't doing a damn thing but cutting up with the guys!"

Rott's
jagged smile grew broader. "Cutting up? Sounds like a good idea to me." And with that he withdrew the cleaver and sank it's blade into the back of the man's neck.

Sam wanted to close his eyes, telling himself that he didn't want to see
Rott's
insanity. But he didn't refrain from looking. It was the old man's job to sit and observe, and that is what he did, like it or not. In a street full of madmen, Sam was the lone stabilizing factor, the only lasting constant that the rural town of Watkins Glen had left. Everyone else was either dead or somewhere in hiding.

The con shrieked as
Rott
went to work. His terror didn't last long. Three hacks of the cleaver separated the man's head from his body. As the body dropped to the ground, bucking and jittering like a headless chicken,
Rott
lifted his trophy at arm's length, blood drizzling from the ragged stump. "Listen up," he said, voice booming. "There will be no laughing without my permission. No eating, sleeping, no taking a shit without my seal of approval. I'm your warden now – your owner – and what I say goes, whether you like it or not. Does everyone understand?'

The men standing around him stared back with disgust and defiance. For a moment, Sam was sure they would rebel, that they would lift their weapons and cut
Rott
down right there in the street.
Do it!
his mind urged.
He's one and you're an even dozen. Don't let this madness continue!

It might have happened, too. But
Rott
beat them to the punch. He hauled off and angrily heaved the con's severed head through the big window of the pet shop, shattered the glass and shocking the others with his fury. "I said… DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

The stand-off ended as fear and uncertainty took hold. The men
Rott
had liberated from bondage grumbled and nodded solemnly.

The wave of tension diminished with the sound of a scuffle in the alleyway between the hardware store and the pet shop. There was a dirty laugh, followed by the scream of a woman.

Sam's heart sank as a big man with a red
mohawk
dragged a young blonde into the street. Her small breasts jiggled amid the tatters of her torn blouse. It was Tina
Mercher
, the grocer's daughter.

"Look at what I found lurking behind the grocery store," said Mohawk. "A sweet little piece of ass!" With a shove, he flung her into the crowd of men. Laughing, they grabbed at her, tearing at her clothes, groping her with dirty hands, tossing her back and forth among them.

"Please, don't!" pleaded Tina. Tears streamed down her face. "I…I've got to get back to my father. He's sick… I was trying to find him something to eat!"

Rott's
smile broadened even more, become wolf-like, predatory. "Daddy can wait, bitch." He turned his head and winked at Sam on the porch. "Ready for a little porn, old man?"

Sam said nothing. He could only sit there, frozen, and stare at what was about to take place.

"Strip her down and lay her out for me, boys,"
Rott
said, unbuckling his belt.

The men hooted and hollered as they obeyed. Soon they had the naked girl spread-eagled on the hot asphalt of the street. Two men held her ankles, while two others held her wrists. Tina shrieked and fought them, tooth and nail.

"She's a little wildcat!" said one of the cons. "I can hardly hold her down."

"I'll take the fight out of her," said
Rott
. And, with that, he walked up with the meat cleaver and hacked off both her hands at the wrists. They flapped and fluttered like two pale moths.

"Damn!" said the fellow on the upper left side, recoiling as blood spurted all over the front of his filthy white t-shirt. "You're brutal, man!'

"You haven't seen brutal yet," said their commander with a grin. "I'd say she weighs about a hundred and twenty. That gives us about twelve minutes before she bleeds to death. If everyone finishes fast, we can all have a turn at her." He looked over at the redneck and his dogs in the homemade cage. "Bubba, the bulls can have a go, too, if she lasts that long."

Sam watched, horrified, as
Rott
shed his jeans and boots and entered the mutilated girl. She could do nothing but lay there and take the violation as her life's blood pumped through the ugly stubs of her wrists.

Strike me blind, Lord,
Sam prayed.
I don't want to see this.
But his eyesight remained true and he did see it. Someone had to witness the atrocities of Maple Avenue and he was the chosen one.

Sam focused on Tina's face and was surprised to find her head turned, staring straight at him. Her lips moved silently and it took a moment for him to figure out what she was trying to say.

Kill me.

The old man stared into her pleading eyes and a memory came to mind. An Easter morning twenty years ago. Him standing in the church hallway with a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, handing it out to the children as they left their Sunday school classes. A pretty little girl of six dressed in a frilly pink dress and white patent leather shoes, her golden hair tied up in piggy tails. She had proudly lost her two front teeth a day or so ago, leaving a sizable gap between her other baby teeth. She had smiled shyly when he handed her the stick of gum. "Sank you,
Misser
Wheewer
!" the little girl had said with a whistling lisp.

Now those same lips, grown and full, asked a grim favor of him.

Please… kill me.

Sam's heart ached like it hadn't in years. He left his rocking chair, stood up, and lifting the old Winchester to his shoulder, took aim. Sam breathed in deeply and settled the sights on the space between Tina
Mercher's
tearful eyes.

Dear God… forgive me,
he thought, his eyes growing moist and hot.

Thank you
, she mouthed and gave him a weak little smile.

Sam squeezed the trigger. The .44 slug punched a hole above the bridge of the girl's nose, then exploded out of the back of her head.

"What the hell?" yelled the next con in line. "Shit, I ain't screwing no corpse!"

Despite the sudden death of the young woman,
Rott
continued his violation, only stopping when satisfaction finally came. He stood up, his member drying in the July heat. "You just made one bad judgment call, Pops." He picked up his meat cleaver and took a couple of steps toward the fix-it shop. Several of the others accompanied him, angry at having been cheated of their turn.

Sam levered another round into the rifle's breech and took aim, centering the sights on
Rott's
deflated penis. "Now ya'll can probably reach me in a few seconds flat, but I reckon I can turn two or three of you roosters into hens before that happens. And I'll start with the boss man here."

The group of men stopped in their tracks, aware that the old man wasn't bluffing.
Rott
took a couple more steps, though. He laughed and, reaching down, stroked himself. "I can get it up again… if you need a bigger target."

"You're a monster,
Rott
!" said Sam. His finger ached to pull the trigger, but he didn't. In the back of his mind, he knew the action would only seal his death warrant. Dick or no dick,
Rott
would cross the remaining feet of Maple Street, mount the porch of the fix-it shop, and split his head in half with the cleaver with one well-placed blow.

Since Estelle's passing, Sam had prayed for death on many occasions. But that afternoon he found that desire to be gone. He desperately wanted to live… if only for the sake of his invaded town.

Slowly, he backed toward the door of the fix-it shop. "I'm going back in here now," Sam told him. The rifle's muzzle never wavered, still in line with the murderer's privates. "You'll pay for what you did to Miss Tina."

"I just got the ball rolling,"
Rott
told him truthfully. "You're the one who killed her."

Sam eased to the door, opened it with one hand and stepped inside.

"See you tomorrow, Pops. We'll do our best to entertain you again."

The old man ignored
Rott's
comment. He closed the door, secured it firmly, then dropped the rifle and stumbled toward the back room. Sam saw a tall stainless steel trash can next to his work bench – the type with a lid that swung open when you pressed a foot pedal – and headed toward it.