Cry Havoc (8 page)

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.... ”

CHAPTER NINE

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.