How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers (14 page)

Sergio had no words.

“Where are the rest?”

“What . . .”

“Ah, well.” He lunged at Sergio before he could figure out what was going on, driving the knife into his throat and making his world wet and hot.

30. TWACK

Sergio collapsed to
the floor and Lewis kept stabbing him. It dawned on Eliza that he was trying to saw off his head, but he was having a hell of a time, considering his tool of choice was a shitty steak knife.

She almost vomited, but managed to keep her ill down. Vomiting with your mouth sealed was a sure way to choke to death. And she wasn’t about to die today. Instead she started bobbing herself back and forth until she built up enough momentum to roll herself over, then she continued rolling until she made it into the kitchen, out of sight of the vicious bastard in the living room. The duct tape had loosened a bit. She kept moving around until it loosened enough and she was finally able to break free.

She scrambled to her feet and scanned the kitchen in a hurry. Lewis would notice her absence any second now, if he hadn’t already. She picked up a frying pan from the sink and ran back into the living room. The sick sonofabitch was still on top of Sergio, cutting at him. She spotted the dildo crucifix on the floor next to them and her eyes widened. She lowered the frying pan and picked up the crucifix, preferring its weight. She raised the new weapon and smashed it against the back of his head, expecting him to go unconscious like they did on TV. Instead he just cursed and stood up, giving Eliza a mean stare.

“That stung,” he said, and stabbed the knife at her. He missed completely, leaving himself open for another twack from the dildo crucifix. This time a tooth flew out of his mouth. He stood in place, temporarily dazed. Eliza took advantage and started smashing the dildo crucifix into his face over and over until he stopped moving.

She picked up his knife and threw it across the living room, disgusted. She grabbed the duct tape and bound his hands behind his back, using up the rest of the roll. How the fuck did he even get himself untied last time? She looked around, saw his belt on the floor. It’d been ripped in half, like he’d been picking at it all afternoon until the fabric finally gave.

The front door was still wide open. If anybody walked by, they’d discover a scene that’d make Eli Roth come in his pants. Eliza grabbed Sergio’s feet and dragged him inside, crying and wishing none of this was real. She closed the door and locked it. She found a blanket and threw it over Sergio’s face. The sight was awful. Everything was so goddamn awful.

She needed out of this apartment. Surely somebody had heard them and called the police. There was no way in hell all of that had gone unnoticed.

Eliza called Louise on her cell, told her to get their asses back here and pick her up. Shit had hit the fan and they had to figure out a new game plan pronto.

Five minutes later, there was a knock at the front door. She unlocked it, expecting to find Nick and the rest of the group.

“Hey, sis,” Billy said.

31. PAPERBACK GRAVEYARD

Joseph could not
believe a high school teacher had actually assigned
The Cumming of Christ
as required reading to a class of teenagers. He was all about expanding what children and teenagers were allowed to read in school, but holy shit,
The Cumming of Christ
was a fucked-up book. He had never read anything quite like it before. It was intriguing. It was filthy. It was perverted. It was gross. It was beautiful.

The fact that this book was published seemed completely ridiculous and, at the same time, kind of inspiring. It showed that no matter how weird you really were, there would always be freaks just like you to back up your ideas.

Joseph looked the author up on his smart phone while sitting at his speed trap. Sergio Placid had over sixty books in print, and he was supposedly only twenty-seven years ago. How was that even possible? Joseph was almost forty and he hadn’t accomplished shit.

What Joseph really found interesting, though, was that Placid actually lived in the same town as he did. In fact, the majority of the publishing company that produced Placid’s books lived here, too. He wondered if he ever arrested any of them before. They could be anyone, really. Joseph had no idea. He wanted to believe the company consisted of upstanding citizens, but seriously, anyone who approved of something like
The Cumming of Christ
was one depraved animal.

He wondered what that said about himself.

A new call came on his radio. A noise disturbance at a nearby apartment. Of course he was called to the scene. Everybody else was busy. Joseph wanted to say he was busy, too. This book was really grabbing him.

He set it down and drove to the apartment, knowing if he hadn’t answered the call he would be in even deeper shit than he already was with his captain. A door on the ground level of the apartment was wide open. He stood in the entrance and shouted his presence. Nobody answered. He peered inside and lost his breath at the sight of a man sprawled out on the carpet floor. There was a blanket over his face, but the blanket was drenched in what looked like blood. The carpet below him was also soaked in the same red liquid.

“Oh shit,” Joseph said, and radioed for backup. Then he stepped into the apartment, gun drawn. He was going to have to shoot somebody. He couldn’t do it. It wasn’t in his genes. He wasn’t a killer. Fuck. Why did he take the call? He should have just stayed at his speed trap and continued reading
The Cumming of Christ
in peace.

But it was just him and the corpse. He discovered dozens of paperbacks scattered on the floor. Some had blood soaked into their pages. He recognized many of the covers. They belonged to titles the Books I’d Like to Fuck company had published. They all did.

That was a little too much of a coincidence for Joseph to handle, so he walked outside and puked into some bushes and thought about the meaning of life. He could be home right now with his dachshund and everything would be okay. Instead he had chosen to get dressed and go to work, and this was his punishment. Maybe it was God playing an evil trick. Or maybe it was just destiny, going on as scheduled.

Later, once Joseph discovered the identity of the corpse in the apartment, he decided he would put his two weeks’ in at the police department.

32. A WARM WELCOME

“You motherfucker.”

Billy tried to look innocent, but the bullshit was in such abundance it was practically seeping from his eyeballs. “What?”

Eliza didn’t answer. She punched him in the face. Hard. His face exploded with blood as he covered himself with his hands, crying.

“Shit, sis, I think you broke my nose.”

“Well, now you and I match.”

He removed his hands and looked at her and seemed to realize for the first time how gory she was. “Holy shit, who did that to you?”

Eliza thought about punching her brother again, but her hand was still stinging from the last one, so instead she stepped aside and gestured to the tied-up hostages on the ground. Specifically, Lewis.

“You went ahead and kidnapped a deranged psycho.”

Billy nodded. “Yeah, I already figured that out. Sorry about that.”

Eliza eyed him strangely. “How?”

He laughed. “There’s a bunch of severed heads in the trunk.”

“How is that funny?”

“It’s not.”

“Then why are you laughing?”

“Because otherwise I will kill myself.”

Eliza stared at Lewis on the ground, still unconscious. Or, at least, he looked like he was unconscious. Maybe he was playing possum. She looked back to her brother, only now realizing the gravity of his words.

“Did you say there are
heads
in the trunk?”

“Yeah.”

“
Whose
heads?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Just a bunch of heads.”

“Are you high?”

“Yeah.”

She was still having a difficult time comprehending the situation. “Heads. In the trunk.”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Quite a few.”

“Who the fuck drives around with heads in their trunk?”

Billy nodded to Lewis. “That dude, apparently.” Then he noticed Sergio on the ground. “What happened to Sergio?”

She pointed at Lewis. “He fucking killed him.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, dude. Shit indeed.”

“What are we gonna do?” Billy asked.

“I thought maybe you’d know, considering you’re the one who got us all into this situation.”

“Maybe we should call the police.”

“I don’t really want to go to prison, Billy.”

“True.”

“Nick’s on the way. We can figure out what to do when they get here. Unless the police are coming because of all the noise we just made before you showed up, in which case we are fucked.”

Billy sighed. “Maybe we should just leave, tell Nick to meet us someplace else.”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t Sergio’s uncle still have that cabin in the woods? That might be good.”

Eliza smiled, her face dripping blood. “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

“Should we take Harlan?” he asked, gesturing to the squirming hostage on the floor.

“Yeah, might as well. But we’ll leave the psychopath here for the cops to collect.”

“Wait,” he said. “Is he awake right now?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if he heard us?”

“So fucking what if he heard us?” Eliza asked.

“Well, he could tell the cops we’re going to Sergio’s uncle’s cabin.”

“Like the cops know where that’s at.”

“I’m sure they could find out.”

“I don’t want to drive with that guy in the car with me.”

“We can put him in the trunk.” Billy paused, then pulled out the gun he’d taken from the glove compartment. “Or I could kill him, I guess.”

Eliza gasped and backed away. “Where the fuck did you get that?”

“His car.”

“Of course you did.”

“So, what do you think?”

She threw her hands up in the air, defeated. “All right, fine. Throw him in the trunk. I don’t give a shit.”

“And we’ll keep Harlan in the backseat?”

“As long as you keep the duct tape over his mouth.”

“Deal.”

Billy bent down and started dragging Lewis out of the apartment. Before he left, he told Eliza to steal some clothes from Louise’s room.

“I already planned on changing,” Eliza said. “I’m all covered in blood and shit.”

“They’re not for you.”

“Uh, okay.” She stared at him, afraid to ask who they were for. Unfortunately, he answered the question anyway.

“The clothes are for Samantha.”

“Who the fuck is Samantha?”

“The girl in my trunk.”

“One of the . . . heads?”

“Well, she has a complete body. A naked one.”

“She’s alive?”

“Yeah.”

“How the fuck did she get in the trunk?”

“I had to kidnap her.”

33. WHAT WILL OUR MOTHERS THINK

Louise hung up
her cell and told Nick there had been a change of plans, they were all meeting up at Sergio’s uncle’s cabin.

“I thought Serg was dead.”

“I’m just saying what they told me, okay?”

“That cabin’s like a half hour away, at least.”

Louise sighed. “Well, you better drive faster then.”

“How the hell can Serg be dead? What the fuck is going on?” Nick said, more to himself than anyone else. The world was melting around them and there was nothing they could do about it.

Stephen tapped his shoulder from the backseat. “Um, what are we going to do with Jared?”

Nick cursed. “At this point, we’re way past the hospital. We’ll just kick him out of the car at the next stop sign.”

“You can’t do that!” Stephen said. “What if he dies? We can’t leave him out on the street by himself.”

“Oh, fuck him.”

“Nick . . . ”

“Fuck, all right. We’ll take him to the cabin and he can die there and then you can bury him in the woods. Happy?”

“I don’t think I’m ever gonna be happy again.”

“I can’t believe Sergio’s dead,” Louise said, quiet.

“So the one guy, the one that isn’t Harlan, just snapped?” Nick asked. “What did you say about heads in a trunk?”

“The car, the one Billy stole. He found heads in the trunk. The guy’s a serial killer or something.”

“Jesus motherfucking Christ.”

“Don’t mention Jesus,” Louise said. “It makes me think of Sergio.”

“I think we’re way over our heads, guys,” Stephen said.

“Shut the fuck up, Stephen,” Nick said. “That kind of talk doesn’t do anything to help us.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Yeah?” Nick looked behind him, taking his eyes off the road. “And what do you suppose we do with that bit of wisdom? No fucking shit we’re in over our heads. That doesn’t mean we can just press a RESET button and start the day over. We’re in this shit whether we want to be or not, and now we’re gonna deal with it the best we can.”

“And how are we gonna deal with it?” Louise asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t want to go to prison,” Stephen said. “My mom’s gonna be so angry.”

“Nobody’s going to prison,” Nick said.

Louise whimpered. “Sergio . . . ”

Nick sighed, squeezing his fists around the steering wheel until his knuckles whitened. “Fuckin’ Billy.”

34. IMPROV

They tried bringing
Samantha to the backseat and getting her dressed so she didn’t have to ride in the trunk with the psycho, but she wouldn’t listen to reason and kept screaming no matter what they tried to do to calm her, so eventually they had to surrender and stuff her back in the trunk with Lewis and his heads.

Harlan sat in the backseat. His hands remained duct taped, but they removed the tape from his mouth. They figured it’d be kind of suspicious looking if any passing cars happened to glance inside.

It took a while to calm Harlan down. He kept staring at Sergio’s body and screaming. Eliza didn’t blame him. She kept crying, too. Shit was fucked-up.

“We have to go to the police,” Harlan said. “This is really serious.”

Billy turned around from the passenger seat and told him to shut his mouth. “If we started listening to your opinions, then we’d never write again and all go jump off bridges. Isn’t that what you said in your blog?”