Don't Read After Dark: Keep the lights on while reading these! (A McCray Horror Collection) (17 page)

“You really are a cop!” Evie cried. “Oh thank God! Thank God!”

Jake wasn’t quite sure why the sudden change of attitude. However, he wasn’t minding the trend. She raised her face to look at him. “How did you know that I was here?”

“Your friend Nancy reported you missing, and I tracked down the vehicle that abducted you to here.”

She rubbed her face against his chest. “Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“It’s just my job,” he said as he finally released into the contact and closed his arms around her. “Phase one complete…”

“What?” Evie asked.

“Oh, I was just saying how we need to get you out of here.”

“Yes, please,” Evie said as tears streaked down her face.

“So,” a voice said from deeper in the warehouse. “Does Darion know that you’re cheating on him?”

Jake thought he was on high alert, but he wasn’t ready for a sword to come slicing out of nowhere. He had to dive to the side to shove Evie out of the blade’s way. The sword left a red line down his arm. Jake counted himself lucky as he fired blindly into the darkness.

“This way!” Evie yelled, tugging him in the opposite direction. Which was fine by Jake. The further away from that psychopath, the better.

“I thought Starvin’ Marvin was an old fart.”

Evie ran faster and faster as Jake struggled to keep up.

“He was,” Evie said.

“Then who the hell was that?” Jake asked, probably not really wanting to know the answer.

“That was the Back Door Rapist,” Evie explained.

“From three years ago?” Jake asked for clarification. “From Boston?” Off of Evie’s nod, Jake gulped. “Jesus, I was wrong about Starvin’ Marvin.”

“Oh no,” Evie said shaking her head as they ran. “He was awful, but he was killed.”

“Starvin’ Marvin is dead?” Jake asked, getting more and more confused with every word out of Evie’s mouth.

“Yes,” Evie answered. “Andrew killed him, or at least he’s taking credit for it.”

Jake frowned now, feeling winded and confused. “Exactly how many bad guys are there?”

CHAPTER 17

Evie burst into the room, then realized her error.

“No!” she shouted. “This is the wrong way.”

They had ended up back in the blade room, rather than the control room. Quite the difference.

“You better believe it, whore,” Back said, stepping out from the shadows, his right eye a bloody ruin.

“Shoot him!” Evie screamed, and the cop was more than happy to oblige. He fired rapidly. She had to duck as ricochets pinged off the metal weapons and made their way around the room. She covered her head as a precaution.

However, Back seemed to slip between the shadows with ease, weaving and maneuvering with skill, his knife constantly in play.

Then the cop’s gun clicked as metal hit on metal. He was empty.

“Crap, crap, crap.”

He did the strangest thing. He tipped his gun to the side, then tried to fire again. It didn’t make any sense. The cop did it again, to the same poor effect.

“No automatic re-load in real life.”

No, there certainly wasn’t. The cop finally got it together and pulled a clip off his belt.

“How many clips do you have?” Evie asked.

“Just this one.”

Oh, that was not good. Not against Back. The rapist was fierce. Even Darion, the ‘Zard, had to flee from Back’s rage.

Just as the cop was slamming his clip into his gun, Back launched a full-out attack. The cop would have been taken down if Evie hadn’t lashed out with her loyal metal fragment. She caught the rapist’s wrist, making him scream and back off.

The cop fired to no effect. With Back, he might as well save his bullets.

“Cover me!” Evie shouted.

* * *

“For what?” Jake cried. Evie didn’t answer as she ran into the middle of the weapons. “I’ve lost him!” Jake announced, although in truth, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever really had the rapist.

Everything went silent except for the squeak of the hooks the weapons hung on. The blades swayed back and forth in front of him.

“Evie?”

No, this wasn’t creepy at all. He edged his way toward the weapons. Where had she gone? And why had she gone there? Jake checked his corners, which was a little difficult to do, since the room was round.

“Jake!” Evie screamed. “Up!”

He looked upward to find the rapist balancing on the rafters. Jake didn’t have enough time to swing his gun up as the guy leapt down on him. The weight knocked Jake off his feet. He struggled to get his gun free as they rolled on the floor. Luckily, the rapist’s knife was equally useless in their brawl. Then the rapist freed a hand and punched Jake in the jaw.

His lip split from the impact. Blood sprayed across his attackers face. They rolled into the wall, hitting hard just as Jake freed his gun. The weapon went skittering out of the room, into the hallway.

Jake elbowed the rapist just as he was about to take a swing, and the knife when catawampus, as well. Pushing up to his feet, Jake finally had a slight advantage and took it, throwing a one-two punch. The rapist was on his heels. It seemed only having one good eye and hand was taking the guy down a notch or two.

Jake began to think that he might just be able to pull this off when he slipped in a pool of blood and tripped over a body. When he looked up, the rapist was gone.

He studied the young man at his feet. “Who’s that?”

Evie stepped out from the center of the room and handed him the end of a string of razor wire. He had no idea what for, but what did he understand since he walked into this ice factory from hell?

She nodded to the body. “That was Andrew. Too bad—he was a pretty nice kid, for a serial killer.”

How many did that make now? Starvin’ Marvin, who supposedly was dead somewhere. A Darion who Jake didn’t know yet, and hoped to never know. The rapist, and now Andrew. That was four so far. What the hell was going on?

Before he could asked, the rapist grabbed Evie by the neck and put a knife to her throat.

* * *

Evie gulped hard, scraping her skin against Back’s blade. How could she have let him get behind her?

“
You
won’t be so quick,” Back whispered into her ear. “Maybe I’ll combine all of our techniques?”

Evie watched as the cop groped around for a weapon. He was brave and loyal, that one, she had to give him that. But what could he do against Back? The guy was like the Energizer Bunny of serial killers. It was like the dungeon had hardened him into a diamond. A very violent diamond.

Back licked up her cheek as he continued. “Starve you a little. Beat you a little. Eat you a little, then—”

The cop finally picked the pike and grabbed it, ramming it toward Back. The rapist was startled enough to loosen his grip.

“No!” Evie warned the cop. “The wire! Get the wire!”

With a kick to the knee, Evie was able to get away from Back and grab her own end of the barbed wire. Instead of running for it, Evie ran
around
Back. The dungeon had forged her a little, too.

She had a plan. A plan that one-eyed Back just didn’t see coming.

She braced the handle of the wire, then screamed, “Up and pull!”

Putting her back into it, Evie yanked on that wire and jerked up as hard as she could. The sound of the wire cutting into Back’s flesh was wet and slurpy.

* * *

Jake didn’t realize what he was doing until the wire had cut all the way through the rapist. Back’s good eye was wide with horror, yet he didn’t even cry out as the top half of his body fell off the bottom half. It took a full second for his legs to realize they weren’t connected to his brain anymore. His guts, though, sloshed to the floor immediately, and then his legs crumpled to the ground. The rapist’s top half rolled a few times, landing face up. The guy didn’t look dead, he looked surprised.

Dear God, he’d just helped cut a man in half. Not exactly how he expected his day to go when he woke up in Evie’s apartment.

Panting from exertion, Jake looked to Evie, who was doubled over.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. She, too, was panting, and just shook her head.

“Let me take a look.”

There was a lot of blood on her, and Jake wanted to make sure that none of it was hers. She urged him away.

“I’m okay,” she insisted.

“Oh, you are more than okay,” Jake said, surprised that his feelings slipped out so easily, but under the rush of surviving he could barely contain himself. Evie tilted her head away, but she did blush. “However, I do need to make sure that you’re not injured.”

She allowed him to course his hands over her. He had to remind himself that he was looking for injuries.

Then a chime sounded. Evie stiffened, her eyes darting side to side. “Oh no,” she groaned. Evie tugged on his sleeve. “We’ve got to go.”

A male voice came over the speakers. “Poor Back. He’s half the man he used to be.”

They charged to the door, but a man stepped into the doorway. He was tall, dark, and handsome, but with a cruel look in his eyes. Evie squeezed Jake’s hand.

“Who the hell are you?” Jake asked.

“
Your
killer,” the man announced.

“Watch out!” Evie screamed, but Jake wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to be watching out for.

That became abundantly clear in just a few seconds, as the weapons suddenly began spinning around the room. They were on some kind of mechanism. Evie and he scrambled to the edge of the room to stay out of range of all those sharp edges.

Darion had disappeared through the door, which was now locked. There was another door on the other side of the room, but there was a whole room full of flying knives between them and the room.

“And who was that, again?” Jake asked.

* * *

“Darion kidnapped a bunch of serial killers, then threw them together for fun and he’s got this whole place rigged with remote controls and hair-triggers,” Evie explained.

The cop frowned. “Okay, information overload.”

Evie watched the blades go ‘round and ‘round. There had to be a way out. Really, had to be, as the carousel began spinning faster and faster, causing the occasional weapon to fly off and embed in the wall. Pretty soon, there wouldn’t be anywhere to hide.

“Do you have any C-4?”

“No,” the cop answered. “Um, why would you think that I did?”

She didn’t think he had any, she just
hoped
that he did. Then Evie realized that if this was the weapon’s room, there was another way out. She dropped to her knees and started searching the floor. The cop picked her up by the waist and moved her just as a large broadsword sailed past.

“Watch out!”

But she spotted it. A trap door. They must be directly over the dungeon. The cop tried to pull her toward the edge of the room, but she squirmed out of his grip. “No,” she explained. “There!” she shouted as she started kicking at the trap door, all the while trying to stay out of the weapons’ way.

“Kick it!”

She had to give the cop credit. He had absolutely no idea what was happening, yet he risked his life to kick at the floor for no apparent reason. But it was for a reason. Finally, with one final kick, the trap door cracked, revealing the passageway to the dungeon.

“Get down there!” Jake urged, trying to get her down into the passage. The weapons overhead were practically a blur, but she grabbed his arm.

“Do you trust me?”

* * *

Jake almost got clocked by a scimitar as he looked into her eyes. They were pools of perfect agate. “Yes,” he answered without hesitation.

“Then get me that scythe,” Evie answered, pointing to a weapon flying overhead.

He had no good idea why the hell Evie would need the scythe in particular, but there wasn’t a whole lot of time for twenty questions. So he waited until it came around again, then reached out to grab it. Unfortunately, he got nicked by an ice pick. The next time around he timed it better, jerked the scythe from its hook, and handed it to Evie.

She turned it around and, instead of using the sharp end like he would expect, she shoved the handle down into the hole they had created.

A loud whirring, louder than even the motor above them, sounded, and blades sliced through the passage. They hit the scythe handle, grinding into the wood. The mechanism complained loudly, grinding its gears. Finally, the motor blew, and the blades stayed buried in the scythe.

“Okay, now we go down,” Evie said as she crawled down and between the blades. She kicked at another trap door, then disappeared through the opening. Jake, not quite as lean of hip, had to shimmy his way down, and therefore was not prepared when he fell through the air and landed hard on the ground. Actually, on debris. This lower level had been blown out. Bent bars were littered everywhere, along with serious carnage.

Jake’s hand was wet and warm. Not a good combination. “Ugh, I think that’s lung,” he said to Evie, who didn’t seem fazed at all about what lay around them. He tried to move his hand, but found only more slime. “Oh, and that’s pancreas.”

Evie, however, pulled on his elbow. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here before he seals the exit.”

Jake somehow got to his feet, but nearly ran into a man’s body on the ground. He had a huge hole in his chest. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, just Door, the copycat Back Door Rapist.”

Jake shook his head. He couldn’t have heard that correctly. “There was a copycat?’

Evie didn’t answer as she picked her way through the debris. They came across another body. This one had his belly splayed open. “And that?”

“Um…” Evie said, looking down. “That’s Buck the Fuck.” Her hand waved to the other side of the room. “And Esau the Sin Eater is in there somewhere.”

“And the guy on my hand?”

“Igor,” Evie answered flatly.

“I
really
need to get a hold of the station.”

* * *

Evie watched as stew fell out of the pipes and gas leaked into the dungeon. “Hurry!” She encouraged the cop through the doorway and to the stairs. When they reached the top, she raced down the hallway, only stopping to get around the food cart with Papa attached to it.