I Kill in Peace (7 page)

Chapter Fifteen

I took a trip the next afternoon to the library to do some job hunting after lying to Candy that I couldn't find the iPad. She packed a legal pad, two pens, highlighter, and a bag lunch. “Good luck, honey,” she said, the look in her eyes filled with hope that my finding a job would ease my issues…down there.

Like the streets and shops, the library was empty save a young librarian with hair dyed pink at the tips. There was a growing tension not just in Bridgton, but it seemed everywhere. When you're a fledgling killer with impotency issues, you tend not to pay attention to very much outside your crumbling self, but it was getting impossible to avoid.

“Do I need to reserve time on the computer?” I asked.

The librarian looked around the room with an arched eyebrow. “It's all yours. You're the first person that's come in here all week. I don't even know why
I'm
here. Things are getting kinda scary, you know? I just keep telling myself that nothing bad ever happens in a library.”

I wondered if she'd ever read Stephen King's
It
. Of course, that was fiction.

I snagged copies of
The Bridgton News
, the town's weekly, and
The Portland Press Herald
before settling behind the library's computer. The monitor was big and boxy and out of date by about a century. While I waited for the desktop to boot up, I scanned
The Bridgton News
.

The normally idyllic town had become a nest of crime. Between the main articles and the police blotter, I counted four homicides, three suicides, and seventeen assaults. This from a place where the biggest crime was usually people speeding off from the gas station without paying. The paper said the State Police were going to assign several cops to the town to assist the locals.

The
Herald
was much the same thing, though it encompassed a wider swath of towns.

“Jesus H. Christ,” I muttered, fumbling through the pages.

There, on page three, was my handiwork.

MANHUNT STILL ON FOR ACCOMPLICE IN POTENTIAL SCHOOL SHOOTING

It appeared that the Saco police had come to the conclusion that the crazy ass kid I'd killed must have had a partner in crime. Said partner either had second thoughts about laying waste to the school, or wanted all the glory for himself. Police were busy interrogating every student in the high school, which was leading to some serious unrest with the kids and their parents. Who the hell were the cops to come barging in, assuming their kids were stone cold killers?

To my utter shock and surprise, I felt a world-class hard-on tenting my jeans. My groin area was stoked so hot, I could have fried an egg on the tip of my dick.

What the hell was wrong with me?

In fact, the more stories of murder and mayhem I read—and they were everywhere—the hotter and harder I got. Mixed in with police reports were more stories about a potential Ebola outbreak in Nebraska. Also, some kind of flu epidemic was sweeping through San Francisco at a time when no one should have the flu. I plopped my briefcase over my lap just in case the cute librarian walked by. The last thing I needed her to see was my erection while I was surrounded by open pages filled with nightmares.

The fever heat worked its way outward until I thought I was going to spontaneously combust. Oddly enough, I wasn't sweating. I kept wiping my forehead, expecting my hand to come away dripping.

Setting the newspapers aside, I opened up my Facebook account without thinking why I'd check something so nonsensical when all of this insane shit was going down.

The little Facebook message box that blinked on the bottom right of the screen gave me my answer.

Even though I had no friends with the initials AO, there was his message, waiting. I enlarged the message box. The text bubble sprouted from AO's image, which was a picture of a roaring flame.

AO: I see you're starting to come around.

I typed:
What the hell are you?

I pushed my chair back from the computer. My briefcase slipped off my lap. The sound was like a thunderclap in the silent library.

I had asked AO
what
it was instead of
who
. Why had I done that? Did a part of me know better? A what could be a tumor, the perfect alibi. A who, now that would be trouble. The tried and true mother's lament,
would you jump off a bridge if Jimmy told you to?
, could not excuse me from what I'd done.

AO: Do you want to tamp out the fire?

I typed:
You know I do, so why ask?

It felt as if my flesh was going to melt from my bones. In another minute, I'd start stripping and the cops would be called to haul me away. Not that they had time to waste with a nude man in a library. What other horrors were being committed behind closed doors right now?

What horror could
I
be doing, right now? Just thinking about it dialed up the heat. I thought I smelled roasting pork and wondered if it was me.

AO
:
This is bigger than the others. You have to want it
.

I typed:
Just tell me what it is. I'll do it.

AO: There's no return from this point on.

I typed:
How the hell can I go back from what I've already done?

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. I wiped some saliva from my mouth with the back of my hand. It stung like acid.

AO: The Mustang is parked behind the library. There are two cases in the backseat. You need to use what's inside each case.

I read on as AO dictated my marching orders.

It was awful. Unthinkable. For a moment, I thought I was going to pass out.

As the sun peeked through the windows behind me, I caught my reflection in the monitor's glare.

Despite everything I was feeling, I was smiling.

Smiling like the devil on a feast day.

* * * * *

I didn't go back home to Candy or try to call her at the town's last remaining pay phone. The Mustang ate the road like a man whose hunger strike had just ended. My hands should have been shaking, but they were steady on the wheel.

I had two destinations today. The first was in Portland. The second would be in New Hampshire. I figured the round trip would take me four to five hours. I could be home just in time for dinner.

If I had an appetite.

The agonizing heat had subsided the moment I sat in the car, but it was still there, a humming undercurrent like the thrum of a nuclear reactor.

At a light in Raymond, I leaned back and opened the two cases. The first one had my trusty scimitar. It should have been stained with crusty blood, but the blade shone like it was newly minted.

The other case contained an Uzi along with a half dozen magazines.

If I were a real man, I would take that Uzi, press it to the side of my head, and pull the trigger.

If I were a real man
. I wasn't even sure what I was anymore. After this day, I wouldn't qualify as the worst speck of humanity's garbage.

So why was I so willing to go ahead with it?

It had to be more than just a Pavlovian aversion to the pain AO could inflict on me, right?

I made it to Portland, lost in my thoughts. I drove down narrow side streets that were totally unfamiliar to me. I kept expecting AO to speak to me through the car's speakers again.

Maybe even AO wanted to distance himself, or itself, from me on this one. Generals rarely rode into battle side by side with their troops.

I stopped outside the parking lot of a blue-domed building. Just like Bridgton, the state's largest city was a ghost town. A few people walked the streets, but with wary faces.

The sun was unencumbered by clouds and the caw of seagulls echoed down tight alleys.

Staring at the building through the windshield, I thought it was probably empty, just like everyplace else. If it was, I was going to turn around and head home. Screw New Hampshire. The silence of this place would be a sign. A sign to stop this madness. Maybe I would introduce my head to the Uzi.

There was a smattering of cars in the lot and I saw a light in one of the windows of the mosque.

I took a deep breath, removing the scimitar and Uzi from their cases.

Practically running to the front door, I offered a silent prayer for my soul, expecting zero mercy.

Unthinkable

Chapter Sixteen

There were only a dozen or so people in the mosque. All were men who appeared to be middle-aged and older. I shot nine with the Uzi, beheaded two with the scimitar, and let one run from the building, shrieking as if his mind had come unhinged.

My nerves were steady during the slaughter, which only added to my disgust. But the part of me screaming to stop was tamped deeper and deeper into the bowels of my soul. It was as if I were working on some kind of sadistic autopilot, only I knew exactly who the pilot was in this case.

AO.

When I was done, I casually walked back to the car, packed my weapons in their cases, and drove for New Hampshire, obeying the speed limit, in no particular rush. I didn't need the navigation system or AO instructing me where to go now. I was operating on pure instinct.

What I had done was unconscionable. Murdering people while they worshipped in what was supposed to be the sanctity of their faith. I had easily slipped past being a monster. I was a demon. I was the goddamn devil!

Driving down I-95, I saw tiny tendrils of smoke rising from the steering wheel. My first thought was to pull over and find out what was wrong with the car.

It wasn't the car.

The heat emanating from my palms was burning so hot, they were melting the wheel.

I cast a glance in the rearview mirror. The whites of my eyes had been replaced by black-veined rubies.

“What the fuck is happening to me?”

I also realized I was harder than a fire hydrant. It felt as if I were becoming something else, transforming into the unearthly creature I had doomed myself to become by my actions.

The moment I thought of taking an exit and turning back, my brain mushroomed. The Mustang swerved back onto the road. My head keranged off the side window.

I couldn't go home. First, because there was more to be done. Second, I couldn't let Candy and Katie see me like this. I wasn't their husband and father anymore. How could I be? My cock pulsated when I thought about mowing down innocent people in prayer. My hands could melt glass.

All I wanted to do was cry, but the tears wouldn't come—couldn't come.

The radio clicked on by itself. A newsman reported on the multiple quarantines being enforced in major cities around the country. What they thought was Ebola was actually some new virus that mimicked the disease but in turn was twice as deadly. It was spreading at an alarming rate. Worse still, it was now confirmed to be an airborne disease. The mortality rate was just under ninety percent. The CDC's resources were stretched thinner than the finest thread.

At the current rate of infection, it would jump from metropolitan centers to outlying areas in days, if not hours.

Was I driving into an infected zone?

That wouldn't have been a bad thing. Fate would have to be the one to stop me in my tracks, sending a microscopic bug into my system, killing me quickly, painfully. I was the dreaded Martians in
The War of the Worlds
, weaving a path of destruction, a Goliath waltzing right into the tiniest David.

Another story caught my distracted attention just as I was crossing the border into New Hampshire. A freak storm had hammered the Midwest overnight, demolishing countless vital crops. Hurricanes had also popped up in Florida, wiping out orange groves as easily as a kid holding a magnifying glass over an ant farm.

Everything was coming unglued.

The car stopped of its own accord in Portsmouth.

“No,” I said, staring at the high-spired church. “Not again. Please, not again.”

AO's voice blared from the speakers, rattling my ribs, threatening to shred my eardrums.

“YES. AGAIN. WITHOUT IT, ALL WAS FOR NOTHING. DO IT NOW!”

My head ached; my flesh sizzled. And no matter how much I didn't want to do it, I found myself exiting the car, weapons in hand.

Please, someone see the madman with the gun and Arabic sword and call the police! Make sure you get a cop with an anxious trigger finger. Shoot me! Kill me now before I ruin the lives of everyone in the church!

The big double doors squealed on hinges in desperate need of oil. An organ played, singing to the heavens with massive pipes bursting with fervent air. Walking down the aisle, I looked up to see the adult choir practicing. Men and women holding songbooks before them sang their hearts out.

“
Be not afraid, I go before you always…
”

I used to sing that very same song when I was a kid in the choir, two years before I was eligible to be an altar boy. When I was a kid, I loved just being in a church. It was so peaceful, so comforting. In church, I felt safe, cared for.

Now I was here to desecrate it.

I smelled something sharp and metallic.

My hand was cooking the handle of the Uzi!

The choir didn't even know I was in the church. How could they? The organ was playing loud enough to be heard in space.

Turning the gun on myself proved impossible. Not only wouldn't my hand cooperate, but my spirit, if I even had one anymore, was anxious to make the singing stop—forever.

I stepped farther down the center aisle to better see everyone in the choir. A man saw me, looked right at me as if to say
just one more chorus and I'll be right with you.

The first barrage of bullets wiped the flesh from his face, spraying fragments of bone into the stained-glass window behind him. My arm swept from left to right, sparing no one. The organist slammed into the keys, bouncing off the organ and flipping over the rail. He landed at my feet, badly wounded, but alive.

“Allahu Akbar,” I said, knowing I had a shit-eating grin on my face.

I pulled away from the church just as I heard the first sirens wailing.

One more stop.

There was a synagogue a few miles down the road. I'd never been to Portsmouth, but somehow I knew damn well about the synagogue. I just needed to spread my charm there and I could punch out for the day.

My clothes smoldered. Even my hair smelled the way it did when it got caught in a blow dryer.

Some people burned in hell for their sins.

It looked like I was getting an early start.