HELLz BELLz (25 page)

And saw that someone
was
humping her. Joseph? No. He never smelled this foul. And his cock wasn’t this big. My God, she thought, who is this man? She looked up at the cloudy night sky and remembered—or thought she did—that she had passed out in this vacant lot by the side of the road. So some bastard had found her unconscious and decided to tear off a quick piece of ass.

“Get off me!” she said, pushing against the man’s chest.

But he kept on humping, working his sizeable penis in and out, in and out.

His breath was rotten and his clothes were sweat-soured and he smelled of cheap wine.

She thought: A wino! I’m being raped by a dirty wino, probably diseased.

She pummeled his head with her fists and screamed in his stubble-rough face.

Still he plundered her. He was so big it hurt, and she feared he was going to rip the walls of her vagina to bloody shreds.

The gun. Where’s my gun?

In the car. On the seat, right where she’d left it when she got out to puke. Shit.

Fight him. Fingernails. Rip his eyes.

And she did. She raked her nails across his face and gouged his eyeballs until he withdrew, screaming and falling backward. It was a great relief when his cock slid out of her, but she remained on the attack, kicking him with both feet. Then she was up and running to the car, and he was on the ground cursing and moaning. She grabbed the .38, ran back and shot him. Three times in the chest. She stopped shooting only because the hammer fell on spent shells.

Sara found her muddy jeans on the ground, slipped them on and jumped in the car and sped away. She no longer wanted to know what was behind the veil of ordinary reality. Whatever it was, she knew it had to be bad. That was just the way the world truly was. This one and the next.

* * *

Harry Loveless stopped for a breather beneath the sheltering limbs of a big oak tree on Church Street. A light rain was falling, but the night was still so hot that being wet with rain didn’t cool him off—it just made him sticky with blood and rain. He leaned his forehead against the tree trunk and shut his eyes. He began to doubt that he could make it home. He’d never been a hardy physical specimen, what with his hump and his generally weak constitution, but now that he’d been shot twice and wounded with a sling blade, he was more fatigued than he’d ever been in his life. He wanted to sit down, but he didn’t because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get up again. He
had
to make it home. Had to free his novel from its prison beneath the boards. Nothing else mattered. If he died of his wounds after rescuing his masterpiece, so be it. He only needed enough time to box it up, and leave money for postage and a note with instructions to mail the package in case he succumbed before the post office opened again. And with the night’s rampant chaos, it could be quite a while before things returned enough to normal for the post office to be open and operating.

He pushed off from the oak and resumed his homeward trek.

* * *

The big CAT sat behind the Murdoch building, its crane folded like the leg of a giant insect. The huge wrecking ball was still attached to the end of the crane. The CAT had treads like a tank, and Joe suddenly doubted that they would be able to operate the hulking hunk of heavy equipment—even if they could get it started up.

“Damn, it’s big,” said Suzie, coming to stand beside Joe.

“You really know how to hot-wire that thing?” he asked.

“Let’s have a look.” She climbed up into the operator’s seat and looked around. “Hah! Look!” She held up a key and dangled it, then stuck it in the ignition and started the engine.

“Only in a small town,” Joe said to himself.

Woolrich and the two boys hooted and cheered.

“I’ll drive it,” Joe said. He handed Woolrich his car keys. “Follow me.”

Woolrich smiled and sang an off-key chorus of “Get Me To The Church On Time.” Joe climbed into the CAT’s driver’s seat and Suzie scrunched against him, insisting that she ride with him. “I figured you’d like the CAT-bird seat,” he said with a chuckle as he started the big engine.

Lightning flashed across the sky. The roar of the CAT muffled the rumble of thunder. The rain fell harder. Suzie’s wet halter-top clung to her breasts, but Joe was too intent on maneuvering the heavy equipment to appreciate her well-endowed charms.

Built in the forties, the Murdoch building had been a thriving three-story department store until the city’s shopping malls had put it out of business. Now it was a dinosaur of an eyesore in the downtown area, scheduled to be demolished and eventually replaced by a small park.

Suzie put her lips to Joe’s ear and said, “There’s a light in one of those windows.”

“Probably squatters,” he said.

“Hope there’s no sniper up there.”

Joe glanced up at the Murdoch building, then put it behind them and drove into the street. It didn’t take long to get the hang of driving the CAT, and it was a welcome relief not to be able to hear the bell over the engine’s roar. For the first time since Sara had put him out on the street, he began to believe that the night might not end in disaster. He wondered if Sara had made it out of town. If Woolrich’s theory was correct, she was still here—somewhere in Druid Hills—but as to whether she was still alive, Joe couldn’t think about that right now. This was no time for personal distractions.

* * *

Sara pulled into the driveway, hopped out of the car and ran through the rain to the front door. She unlocked it and stepped inside, relieved to be home. She stripped off her clothes on the way to the upstairs bathroom, ran a hot shower and scrubbed herself raw with a soapy washcloth.

She scrubbed until she could no longer smell the foul scent of the wino rapist on her. Then she douched twice, and scrubbed some more. After washing her hair with a flowery-scented shampoo, she toweled dry, put on fresh clothes, and then found Joe’s box of ammo for the .38 and loaded six shells into the cylinder. Joe had taught her to always leave one chamber empty to decrease the danger of accidentally shooting yourself or someone else, but she wanted a full load before heading back into the savage night. She had killed and she was prepared to kill again, rather than allow herself to be victimized by other crazies. The law of the jungle was in effect.

She could hear the church bell in the background, but she no longer worried about its effect on her. She was empowered now. She had gunned down two men and she was still armed and ready to kill again. She was done with being a victim. She had found the core of her strength, and she trusted that it would ensure her survival. The madness had nearly claimed her, but she’d evaded its grip and found her inner strength.

She was ready to fight for what was rightfully hers. She was going back out into the wicked world to reclaim her man. If it meant killing that bitch who was trying to steal him away, she would not hesitate.

And if Joseph refused to come with her, she could easily kill him as well. He would pay in full for breaking marital vows.

* * *

Loveless was crossing the street in front of his house when two motorcyclists flew around the corner and swooped down on him like birds of prey. Harry froze, unable to believe that the bikers were flying above the pavement. But they were. No rubber meeting the road here. It reminded him of that stupid
Star Wars
episode with hovercraft zooming through the air, but that had been done with computer graphics, and these two flying bikers were real. Weren’t they?

And one of them—a skinhead wearing sunglasses—was armed with a fiery sword.

Harry threw up his hands to protect his head. He caught a glimpse of the flaming blade just before it struck off his right arm at the elbow. Both cyclists zoomed past, and Harry looked down at his severed forearm lying on the wet asphalt, its fingers twitching as though trying to grab something out of the air. Odd, but there was no pain. Plenty of blood, though, pouring from the stump where his elbow used to bend. But no bloody pain. Perhaps, he thought, I’m hallucinating. But these flying bikers aren’t worthy of a Lovecraftian hallucination. Too common. Too
human.

He looked up to see them turning for another pass, the one with the flaming sword leading the way. The other biker, a fat man who looked like a pink pig, raised a hand in the air and a flaming sword magically appeared in his fat fist. Harry looked longingly at the front door of his house.

“I just want to go home,” he said. “Why won’t you leave me
alone?
”

* * *

The CAT’s treads were grinding over the asphalt as Joe drove up Holy Cross Hill. Its vibrations were somehow sexual, and he felt an erection growing against his zipper. He glanced back to see John Woolrich and the two boys following close behind in his Chevy. Under the steady rainfall, a steamy mist rose from the street and sidewalks. Suzie’s hand rested on Joe’s thigh, inches from his thickening cock.

They had just gone past the Jiffy-Quick Mini-Mart, where Suzie pointed out the driverless ambulance that had crashed through the front of the store. The same two police cars were still there, lights still flashing. Joe avoided imagining what might’ve happened inside there, where his night had first turned nightmarish. It seemed like days ago rather than mere hours.

The CAT grumbled up the hill, the wrecking ball swaying like a giant pendulum in front of the tank-like vehicle. Suzie’s hand found Joe’s erection and massaged it through the thin material of his trousers, making it hard for him to concentrate on his driving. He knew he should push her hand away, but he couldn’t do it. It felt too good. Moments later, he was guiding the heavy vehicle across the church lawn and stopped suddenly before the stone church, though he hardly remembered how he’d gotten this far. Suzie’s fingers kneaded his cock roughly, and he was very close to exploding. He seized her wrist and moved her hand away. “Not now,” he said. “I have to figure out how to work this crane.”

She gave him a childlike pout, then flashed the lascivious smile of a wicked temptress.

Woolrich parked at the curb, and he and the two boys piled out of the Malibu with their stolen weapons and came to stand beside the CAT. Joe worked the levers on the control panel, and with a jolt, the crane unlimbered, rose into the air, the wrecking ball depending from a thick cable. After several minutes of practice, Joe thought he had the hang of it, and drove closer to the church so that the ball was even with the wooden bell tower on top of the stone building.

“Here goes nothing,” he shouted.

Woolrich gave him a thumbs-up.

Suzie moved to the edge of the seat, nakedly thrilled at the prospect of witnessing the destruction of the demon bell.

Joe manipulated the levers. The crane’s arm swung the big iron ball at the tower.

And missed.

* * *

Sara at last found her way back onto familiar streets and drove back to where she had forced her husband and the young slut out of the car. She sat for a moment with the motor idling, trying to fathom which way they would’ve gone. Their goal was to get out of town, and by her reckoning, the shortest route was due west, but she hadn’t seen them on her way back to this spot, so she decided to try Hemlock Avenue, one block over. She drove slowly, half expecting to see their dead bodies sprawled on the side of the road. The rain was slacking off a little, so she turned the wipers to the intermittent setting. She continued to hear gunshots in the distance, but fewer than before. She figured the shooters had already done a pretty goddamn good job of killing each other off. She wondered how many citizens had had the good sense to remain in the relative safety of their homes.

She considered leaving town without Joseph, but quickly nixed the idea because she was determined to take him away from that white-trash little bitch who’d taken up with him. Joseph was
her
man, and she’d be damned if she would give him up without one hell of a fight. Sara was a fierce competitor and she didn’t like to lose. And if she couldn’t win him back, she would see to it that nobody could have him.

She had to slow down to squeeze the car past a wreck involving a Ford pickup and one of those retro-style PT Cruisers with its front end smashed accordion-style. The two girls in the front seat had fused with the vehicle, or so it appeared. No way could they be alive.

A naked woman with a towel wrapped turban-style around her head darted into the street. By the time Sara applied the brakes it was too late. “Stupid bitch!” Sara shouted at the crazy woman she’d just knocked over with the front of her car. The woman got up in a fury and began to heap curses on Sara, gesturing wildly with flabby arms. Sara let down her window and shot the bitch right between the boobs.
Pow.
“Don’t fuck with me,” she said, then shot her two more times.
Pow-pow!
Then she stomped the gas and ran over the stupid cunt for good measure. “Fucking towel-head,” she said as she motored on down the street.

* * *

Harry Loveless crawled toward the front door of his home. The stump of his right arm dragged across the pavement, the blood trail already disappearing in the rain. He forced himself forward. Inch by inch. He wanted badly to stop and rest, but he knew he couldn’t. He mustn’t lose consciousness now. He was too close to his goal to give up. Just on the other side of that door his manuscript waited to be rescued. Keep going, keep moving
,
he ordered himself. Before blood loss leads to loss of consciousness. Ignore the pain. Crawl on.

But then a voice arose from the ringing of the unrelenting church bell and snaked into his ears and burrowed deep inside his head:
Crawl, inchworm. Crawl on your belly, lowlife slug, leaving your trail of human slime. Crawl home, stumpy…

He recognized the voice immediately. Just as he’d imagined it, it was the voice of a Lurker at the Edge of Time—one of the otherworldly beings from his novel.

“Not real,” he whispered. None of this was real. He’d imagined the flying bikers, imagined that they had cut off his arm. Hadn’t he? He looked at his stump, touched it with his fingers, felt wet, searing pain.