

# Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories

edited by David T. Wilbanks and Craig Clarke

Published by Acid Grave Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 David T. Wilbanks and Craig Clarke

Cover illustration and design copyright 2010 Carrie Gowran

Introduction copyright 2010 David T. Wilbanks

"Spooky Tooth" copyright 2010 Randy Chandler

"Iron Maiden" copyright 2010 Matthew Fryer

"Black Sabbath" copyright 2010 Steven L. Shrewsbury

"Judas Priest" copyright 2010 David T. Wilbanks

"Motorhead" copyright 2010 Kent Gowran

"Slayer" copyright 2010 L.L. Soares

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please sally forth to your local ebook seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors.

# Table of Contents

Introduction by David T. Wilbanks

"Spooky Tooth" by Randy Chandler

"Iron Maiden" by Matthew Fryer

"Black Sabbath" by Steven L. Shrewsbury

"Judas Priest" by David T. Wilbanks

"Motorhead" by Kent Gowran

"Slayer" by L.L. Soares

Contributors

Bonus Excerpts

# "...Rockin' Till the Dawn"

A Short Introduction by David T. Wilbanks

One day not long ago, I asked several of my best friends, who all happen to be published horror fiction writers, if they'd like to write a story using the name of one of their favorite hard rock or metal bands as the title and that band's musical vibe as the wild and loose inspiration. Not surprisingly—since all these guys are major music fans, just like me—they said yes. And the result is what you're now gripping in your paws: a kick-ass (in my biased opinion) anthology of six stories: some short, some longer, with content ranging from dark fantasy to extreme horror. A little something for everyone.

It was interesting and fun to see what the guys came up with, and I daresay you'll enjoy yourself even if the artist that inspired a certain story isn't your personal favorite—after all, the mighty, musical muse has been filtered through some of the most twisted and talented minds in the horror fiction biz, with the result being some sort of mutant metal hybrid concocted to please horror and heavy rock fans alike; we all know that horror and rock go together like beer and pretzels. Just ask Stephen King.

Kudos to my co-editor and good buddy Craig Clarke for helping the whole operation run like a well-oiled machine. We couldn't have done it without his keen eye and perseverance.

So, without further ado, it's time to strap yourself in, crank it up, and have yourself a rockin' good read.

\m/

David T. Wilbanks

Somewhere in the Northlands

June 14, 2010

# Spooky Tooth

by

Randy Chandler

How you gonna roll if you can't bleed the rock?

—Cutthroat Quartz's liner-notes quote on Dead Devils album

Get this straight. I am not a faggy fanger. I'm the fucking wolfman. Dig?

—Caleb Dogberry, interviewed in _Ripping Rock Magazine_

Me on the Greatest Metal Songslinger-slash-Mystery Man of all time? How could it miss?

—Dakota Joe Cadillac, _Antibiography of the Cock 'Em Sock 'Em Rogue of Rock Journalism_

****

I AM SHORN.

The bald-headed nymph shaves my head while her long-haired twin trains her dainty pistol on my balls. I would've thought such a circumstance might focus the mind.

No dice.

My mind wanders like a homeless stumble-bum gimp while the straight-razor babe scrapes my pate.

Wanders away from these bizarre Wraith sisters, tramps my life-till-now's dismal landscapes of drudgery and dissipation and finally slips down into a cesspit of seething rage and murderous intent—or, to make a rambling sentence short:

It is at this precise moment I decide to kill Caleb Dogberry.

You want that Sacrifice For Your Art crapola, you've got the wrong guy. That ain't me, dude. If a sacrifice is required, then Dogberry's pseudo-mysterious life and bullshit legend are forfeit.

Not mine. And if giving up my Samson-like locks is what it costs me, so what?

My hair will grow back, but Dogberry won't be coming back from the dead. Not in this fucking life.

Why would I want to kill a man I've never met? A man about which very little is known? A man whose face has never been fully revealed in public? (Moreover, how would I know I was killing the right dude when his hour came round?) Above all, why would I wish to murder The Twenty-first Century's Answer to Bob Dylan?

Well, first of all, Dylan never needed answering. Any questions Dylan's songs raised have already been answered by his shot-to-shit voice (which got mellower the more shot-to-shit it got) and his angelically screeching mouth-harp toots. Besides, Dogberry doesn't sing unless you count the hauntingly off-key background vocal he laid down on Rick Shakespeare's definitive version of the quintessential Dogberry masterpiece "My Backspace" or his devilish duet with Cutty Quartz on "Penis Uranus" from the _Cutty Does Dogberry_ bootleg debacle.

Secondly, I must admit that it is maddeningly erotic having your head shaved by a bald nymph with big breasts inches from your snout, and that those stirred passions, when mixed with anger caused by Dogberry's unreasonable demand that my head in fact be shaved before I am to be allowed an audience with him, blows up a dangerous and unpredictable thunderhead of impulses. What's it to be? Bestial blue balls or go berserker on somebody's unsuspecting ass? That somebody being Dogberry, natch.

My lawyer, were he here and not pickling his liver on the Riviera, would advise me to say I want to murder Dogberry only on paper. Only. And it's true: I burn mightily to do journalistic violence to the stealthy son of a bitch. But if I kill him for real, anything else would be overkill.

The wraith with the razor speaks. "That your real name, Dakota Joe Cadillac?"

"Realer than your tits, I'm guessing," I answer with a toothy leer.

"They're real, all right. All natural, Mother Nature's bounty. But your family can't be named after a car."

"It's French, _ma chère fille_. The car was named for a Frenchman. I come from a long line of Frog Cadillacs. Certainly _not_ an assembly line, I might add."

She wrinkles her nose and does a funny version of a Frenchman's laugh: "Honw, honw, honw..."

Her pistol-packing twin doesn't appear amused. Stone-faced, she sits with one long leg draped over the other and keeps the gun on me while fingering rosary beads with her unarmed hand.

"Tell me about yourself," I say to the razor lady. "I need a bit of backstory. How did you hook your little wagon to the illustrious Dogberry star?"

She pauses. Holds the razor in front of my eyes as if she's deciding whether she should go ahead and cut my throat to spare the literary world another Cock 'Em Sock 'Em assault. Then: "You really wanna know?"

"Ab-fucking-solutely."

Narrowing her eyes, she nods.

I hit my little handheld's Record button.

****

THE BALD WRAITH'S TESTIMONY.

The night I met him, all my dolls sat up and opened their eyes. All hundred of them. I mean I wasn't much into Metal but I knew who he was, heard the same stories everybody did. How he went down to the crossroads to do his deal with the devil and how the devil never showed but a stealthy shapeshifter did.

Say what you want about the guy, he put the wolf at Metal's door and then proceeded to blow it down, you know? That's why I shave my head. Because our dyed-in-the-wool wolf dude sometimes likes bald chicks. Why he wants you bald, I have no clue.

Collie there, she doesn't care much for Caleb, but she respects his genius. She's deathly afraid of dogs, so the _wolfman_? You can imagine. And after what he did to her? I gotta respect that. She's the oldest. She came out three minutes before me. That's why she gets to hold the gun and I get stuck with the blade. Ha ha! No, she's not named for the dog breed. Collie is short for Columbine, the flower, not that high school. We're both flowers. I'm Zinnia but you can call me Z. Or Zin. Didn't they tear down that whole school after what happened?

The thing to ask Caleb Dogberry is what happens when a werewolf loses his religion and finds God. That's where you'll find the real meat. Like he said, "The truth and the light or the tooth and the night: it's gotta be one or the other, brother." That says it all, ya know?

But you asked about little old me. Well, Collie and I are a couple of wayward Cat-licks, and maybe it's true what they say about Catholic girls and blow jobs cuz we were really, really good at it. Being twins, we liked to do things together, so it was probably written in the stars that we were destined to become Heavy Metal Cocksuckers of The First Order. In other words, _groupies._ Why get your cock sucked by one chick when you can have two slobbering over your rod?

Metal cuz we dug the hair, the leather skin-tights, the hard-rock, hard-cock vibe and the danger those Bad Boys oozed like the clear tears of joy a cock cries just before it shoots creamy wads of spunk. We started out blowing the opening acts for the big-name bands. Unknown groups like Hard Rock Toffee. Dude, that was an all-night toffee pull! Talk about your pulled pork! Word got around fast and soon we were doing hard-rock royalty.

There's not enough time to tell you how we put the hooks in Wolfie or how he put his in us, but I will tell you this: you don't become a werewolf—or a shapeshifter of any stripe—by being bitten by the beast or by any sort of silly ritual, like stripping naked in a graveyard under a full moon and pissing a ring round your clothes, or by wearing wolf skins or slathering magical unguents or ointments on yourself. It's something that's done by sheer force of spiritual will. If you don't have it, you never will, and you'll never howl at the moon.

What you need—okay?—is someone to show you the secret. First you have to have the desire. You have to want it. And that's not always enough. Just ask Collie. She wanted it so bad...show him, sibling. Show him what Dogberry did to you. After he did that to her, I didn't want in Wolfie's secret club. Decided then and there to be his cocksucking disciple and nothing more. Go on, take it off and show him.

****

THE WOLF AND THE LAMB

Columbine sets the pistol and rosary down, hikes up the skirt of her long dress and removes the prosthetic limb from the stump of her left thigh. She stands the false leg up on the floor and then lifts her pale stump, giving me a glimpse of either pitch-black panties or pubic hair. She quotes a Bible verse:

"'The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid.' But the lamb loses a leg. That's what they don't tell you. It's always the unspoken kicker that gets you."

I stare at the stand-alone leg and realize I've seen it before—or one a lot like it. It reminds me of that lamp shaped like a hootchie–cootchie chick's leg in the Christmas flick, the one where Ralphie's fricking-fracking dad gives him a BB gun despite his mom's fear that he'll shoot his eye out.

"No, he didn't bite it off, rip it off, wrench it off, or claw it off," Collie says. "It was a spiritual accident. He was trying to teach me how to be a shapeshifter, but I was not a good student, and I lost my leg in that place where great songs come from. It was as much my fault as his, I guess. But still..."

"Don't let her fool you," Z warns. "She's no lamb. You could say that it was her own inner violence that mutilated her leg."

"Ow, hey!" I say.

"Sorry," says Z as a drop of blood slides down my forehead and crosses the bridge of my nose. She shrugs and says, "Shave a prick, nick a prick." She wipes the blood away with a fingertip, then sticks the finger in her mouth and smacks her lips like she's just had some tasty pudding.

"But still," Collie goes on, then stops and shrugs slim shoulders and scratches her stump with the gun's muzzle.

"Careful you don't plug yourself," I tell her.

With a lascivious laugh, she cocks her knee and strokes her muff with the muzzle. "I get off on danger, don't you?"

"Guess I wouldn't be here if it didn't hold some attraction for me," I allow.

"Goddamn flea!" Columbine suddenly shouts. "I swear, I'm gonna make the son of a bitch wear a flea collar."

Z wipes my hairless head with a damp towel, then adds wood to the potbellied stove, making the mountain cabin a little cozier. I lean my head close to the stove to take the chill off.

****

A DARK STUDY

Forsaking her prosthesis, Columbine hops to the window and parts the curtain. "Snowing hard now," she says. "He'll be coming soon with the snow covering his tracks."

"Still plenty of time to get your cock sucked," Z advises. "So when you write about us you'll get it right and know whereof you speak."

"With all _due_ respect," I say, "I think not. I have a pretty clear picture of where your mouths have been and I don't want to hobnob, so to speak, with those blowhard chappies and glamour-shot halfwits."

"For a famous writer, you're not very curious. Or, you know, adventurous."

I have to laugh. "Please. A double-barrel blow job is not my idea of an adventure."

"I don't mean just that," Z says with turned-down lips. "You haven't even asked why Caleb said you had to have your head shaved if you wanted to meet him."

"Oh, I know why he came up with that inane requirement. He wants to humble me in advance, in case he can't do it during the actual interview. What he doesn't know about me is that I won't _be_ humbled. Not by anyone, other than myself, of course, which is very bloody unlikely ever to happen. What do I care if I'm bald? I mean, how could I look bad? What say you, do I have a Hunter S. Thompson gonzo vibe going on? Perhaps I should take up smoking with one of his trademark cigarette-holders. You think?"

I lightly smack my head with my palm, just hard enough to make a sound like lovers' bellies slapping. "I rather like it," I add.

"Need some sun on it," opines Collie as she straps on her prosthetic leg, "so you lose that _Night of the Living Dead_ look."

"Yes, well, you see, I already know a lot about your, uh, blow job messiah, Caleb Dogberry. I know, for example, that your self-professed wolfman is barking mad. And I know this because—as has been said of me and to me—I myself am a _dark study_. And it takes one to know another. The man has a genius for labyrinthine lyrics, but he is mad as a fucking hatter in a room of ass-hats."

A sudden sound chills my blood and erects hairs in places I didn't know I had hairs. It comes from outside in the blowing snowstorm, an eerie howling that may be human or animal or something else entirely.

"He's here, Mister Dark Study," Z tells me. "But you're looking lily-white to me."

"Spooky Tooth returns," Columbine says with a smile.

A laugh slips out of me—the laugh girlish and me giddy with fear—at the mention of the rock band from the '60s and '70s, a band remembered in this century by only a handful of geezers and navel-gazing music historians with a touch of senile dementia or an aching nostalgia for that old peace and love delusion. The realization that, yes, I am afraid of Caleb Dogberry hits me like a spike full of smack even as the band's soulful "Tobacco Road" rumbles through my head like a 1930 jalopy careening through a tobacco field, steel chords banging with crashing bass-bombs and drum-shots: BAHM-BAHM! Da-dit-da. BAHM-BAHM! And if you can't see the cheesy paperback cover of Erskine Caldwell's novel with the half-naked ingénue at the feet of the redneck farmer (unless I'm mixing up covers with GOD'S LITTLE ACRE), you're too young to know shit from Shinola anyway or to appreciate the band's hard-redneck-rock nuance, but for me that cover comes alive with dreadful animation, and the only thing that saves me from seeing what the dirty son of a bitch is about to do to the innocent clueless girl is the cabin door banging open and Dogberry bursting in amid swirling snow and frigid wind, his long black cowboy duster flecked with snowflakes and his slouch hat cocked up in front by the wooden mask on his face.

****

WOLVES FOR THE BLUE SOLDIERS

The mask is a whiskered cat's face, apparently an authentic artifact of tribal art, carved long ago by some noble savage with a good eye and a steady hand. It looks like it might've come off an ancient totem pole.

"Leave us," Caleb Dogberry growls at the women.

They leave the room, Collie's parting shot: "Whistle when you want us."

Dogberry doffs his hat. "So you're the Fuck 'Em Suck 'Em Stud of Rock Journalism."

"Actually, it's the _Cock 'Em Sock 'Em Rogue of Rock Journalism_ ," I say, somewhat foolishly.

" _Actually_ , is it? Well, la-de-da, Mr. Dakota Joe Cadillac. Whatever the case, welcome to my growlery."

"How Dickensian of you," I shoot back, letting him know I, too, am familiar with _Bleak House_.

"So you _are_ literate. But if you only saw the PBS version, that makes you a half-lit." He chuckles behind the mask.

"So what's with the masquerade? Why's a big bad wolf wearing a cat mask?"

"My totem animal. Mountain lion."

"Shouldn't that make you a werecat? Or werelion?"

He sheds his duster and tosses it over the back of a ladder-back chair. "My great-great-great-great granddaddy was one of the Wolves for the Blue Soldiers. He was an Indian scout for General Crook's soldiers, whose job it was to put the Indians in their place, on the res, or kill them where they stood. That's what they called them. Wolves. Not altogether flattering but I always thought it was pretty damn cool, given my mix of Apache and Irish blood. So when I transform, I usually choose the form of the wolf. I could become a cat, but that's just not my personality, you know? I'm not the finicky type."

My fear begins to subside, supplanted by heartwarming murderous rage.

Dogberry babbles on: "You know why I agreed to this interview? Because you're half-crazy with a half-ass talent for putting words together in a way that appeals to offbeat brains addled by too much hip-hop, refried rebop and mindless metal mayhem. In short, because I knew from the jump that I could dominate you, bend you to my will, and bugger you up the arse if I wanted—which by the way, I don't—and because you can be relied upon to find the diamond of hard truth in a stinking heap of dogshit. Don't take that as too much of a compliment. It just means you have a nose for nuzzling through shit. What jewels or nuggets you find depends on where you stick your nose and how much shit you suck up, right?"

I snort and show him teeth in my best vicious grin.

****

STEPPENWOLF, BOTTLE TREE

"The secret of my songwriting is that you can enter the song anywhere and move forward or backward, up or down, and it won't matter. Spin the dial, tune in, zap out, you'll still get the go-for-broke gist of the thing. You can't help it. It slides right in and takes over for the few seconds it needs, and then I own your stupid ass. It's a merciless mugging. You wanna know the greatest rock 'n' roll song ever recorded? "Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf. It's got it all. John Kay's take-no-prisoners world-weary voice, the hard-driving beat, the chrome-and-steel guitar/organ riffs, and the blow-it-out-your-ass devil-may-care blowing-down-the-highway attitude. That line about heavy metal thunder? It presaged heavy metal music in a thin thin thin top-40 nutshell. Talk about silly millimeters! Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" is a great song, but "Born to Be Wild" beats it by a country mile. Country blues eight miles high. Up there with the Byrds, tweet tweet?"

I click on my mini-recorder, better late than fucking never, and signal him to continue his rambling manic rap.

"Did you see the bottle tree on your way in? Ghost trappers. Can't have wayward souls dropping in uninvited. No fucking way. Nine times out of ten, they've already ejaculated their ectoplasm or spent themselves wrestling with angels or getting sodomized by ambitious demons, and so they aren't much of a threat to the harmony of us breathers and breeders. All the same, I won't go near a house unless there's a bottle tree nearby. But you didn't come here to hear about that. You came to ask me what all you scribblers want to ask me. So go ahead. Ask already."

"Coupla things," I say. "First off, why are you wearing that fucking mask?"

****

BAGHEAD TOON

He laughs. "Would you believe because it adds to my mystique? Like that Pynchon guy, the reclusive writer who was on _The Simpsons_ with a paper bag over his head?"

"Um, that was a cartoon," I observe.

"Toons are real, dude. A different reality but _real_ just the same. If nobody's seen Pynchon except as he's portrayed in that cartoon, then he is that toon, dig? I'm talking about in the cultural consciousness, which is where we live and breathe, where songs snake out of the crackling airways and into your sniveling brain, where my lyrics resonate before they reach down into your soul and give you a holy little reach-around. O God! O God! There it is and don't look back. But to answer your question, I don't want to make my face a target. If they don't know me, they can't assassinate me. What else you want to know?"

I pop it easy: "In a musical genre whose lyrical themes are sex, violence, and the occult, what made you choose heavy metal as the vehicle for your poetic—some would say esoterically sensitive—lyrics?"

****

ROGUE'S GALLERY

"That's exactly the reason, don't you see? I did it to fill a lack, plug a hole, play hide the sausage. In a rogue's gallery of such acts as Priest, Ratt, Crüe, Vitus, Crowbar, Slipknot, Killswitch, yada-yada-yada, an injection of poetic intellect was needed to balance all that big-balled machismo. Not that my balls are small. I can get in there and bang with the best of the long-haired bastards, all night long, till the rooster crows for the break of clucking day. The void was there, and I spewed my spunky poetry into those empty places. And if you ask me where I get my ideas for songs, I might have to kill you."

I have to grin at that. "If I don't kill you first."

Dogberry laughs behind his mask. It sounds like wind howling up a hollow tree. Having warmed up from the blizzard outside, he sheds his denim jacket and tosses it over a chair-back with the duster, turning sideways to me as he does so, and I glimpse what is either a bushy beard or werewolf's fur on his face. He's still wearing black leather gloves so I can't scope out his hands.

"I think you might be serious," he says with the first note of uncertainty I've heard in his gruff voice. Then he waves me off as if I couldn't possibly be a physical threat to him. "I'll tell you this. Something I've never publicly admitted. I hate the lot of them. The gallery of strutting adolescence-regressive rogues, some of them pushing middle-age and wearing girdles to cinch in their potbellies. Insufferable louts, the lot of them. The requisite sock stuffed in the crotch to make up for their shortcomings. Dickless wonders all."

****

SECRET DECK, HIDDEN STORY

"I'm going to tell you anyway," he says with melodramatic overtones, as if he's just decided to impart something momentous. "Yeah, I think it's time to let the cat out of the bag." He crimps his hand into a cat's paw and makes a little leonine roar that gives me goosebumps.

Dogberry walks toward me, looks down at me and says, "Where I get my ideas. Where the lyrics come from. You ready for this?"

"Yeah, sure." Straining my neck to look up.

"Vinyls. Album covers of those old 33-⅓ RPMs. There's a whole hidden history in those record album covers. You've heard of the Bible Code? Well, I'm talking an album-cover code. Put any three of them together and you get an artful little story, or a good line of lyric. Put a whole string of them together, like forty or fifty, and you get an epic piece of cultural commentary. Put an entire roomful of them together and then, my friend, you get something like the Torah of rock 'n' roll. Or more like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Then you get into deep metaphysics of music, and the spiritual universe begins to open up for you. You just have to know how to read them. And I have the key." He taps a black-leather finger against his temple. "And I have it right here."

"You're serious."

"Hell, yes. You can't put, say, the Beatles' banned butchered babies cover next to Pink Floyd's marching Commie hammers cover art and ELP's _Brain Salad Surgery_ cover together and not get a heavy message out of it. That was H. R. Giger, by the way, that did the Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The dude who designed the alien? Great shit, that. Or try Black Sabbath's _Sabbath Bloody Sabbath_ with any one of those great Savoy Brown cartoony covers and Styx's _Douchewads Were Here_ , then throw in Miles's _Bitches Brew_ and Led Zep's _Physical Graffiti_ and then, no, no, wait, then stick the Beatles' _The White Album_ right in the middle. Bim! Bam! Boo! Dig that shit?" That would get you going all night long, baby. Set your feet on the right road, you little white toad. Granted, not all covers have something to say. Once you get the knack, you can recognize the ones that fit the canon. See, it's all about synchronicity. The zeitgeist. The _real_ covers—those babies pregnant with meaning—captured the times, came out of the times, as surely as if the hand of God were designing those album covers. You know them when you see them."

I cringe every time this asshole says "dig" or any fucking form of "dig it _._ " Anybody peppers his conversation with that shit needs to die, dig?

"Here's the thing, Mister Fuck 'em Suck 'em. I'm gonna leave you alone with a big box of choice album covers and you're going to ask the oracle your _burning question_ , as they used to say on those pathetic IQ-lowering entertainment TV shows. You will meditate on the covers until they speak to you. You can arrange them any way you like; it won't matter. The message, when it comes, will jump out loud and clear, so there can be no doubt what the take-away is. You have one hour. Then we'll know how our little drama may play out, eh?"

I jump up, catch a glimpse of my reflection in a small mirror on the wall by the bookcase. With my head shaved I resemble a Holocaust survivor, living out a twisted legacy of having been herded like livestock into a stinking cattle car and miraculously granted a last-minute reprieve in front of the shower doors. How long have I been so gaunt, with these sickly sunken eyes and horribly wrinkled lips? God! And now this insufferable prick is giving me one hour.

"Whoa," I protest. "I didn't come here to play your idiot games."

"Didn't you?" His eyes flash red from the eyeholes of his mask. "Didn't you come here to unmask me? To pin me down with your acute powers of observation and skewer me with your trademark style? Possibly to murder me, figuratively if not literally? Sure you did."

"Now that you mention it," I mutter with a half-smile. "And the more you mention it, the greater the chances that I'll kill you." I can't help myself.

Dogberry rubs his gloved hands together with exaggerated glee. "Hot damn! A death match. I knew you wouldn't disappoint me." He slips into a redneck accent for this irritating outburst.

He opens a closet door and pulls out two big topless boxes of vinyl record albums in their cardboard slipcases. (This cabin seems roomier than it was when I first got here. Is it growing? Surreptitiously spreading inward into impossible dimensions? Nah, it's my mind that's doing that. Hoo-boy.)

"Have at it, dude. And remember, there could be a lot riding on your ability to read the covers. Think of them as cards in a Tarot deck, each full of hidden symbolism and iconic images. The context for any query can be found in the interplay of the album art. Every picture tells a story. Put the right ones together and they give you a novel, an epic poem. Or a finely crafted song. The whole being a hell of a lot greater than the sum of the parts. The art parts, dig?"

And I think: _I'll dig your grave, you fuck_. But what I say is: "And this is how you write all your songs?"

"You got it, iota." Smirk, smirk. "Or more accurately, it's how I _divine_ my songs. I'm the medium with the message. Ahh? Ahh? If I'd had any kind of singing voice I coulda been king of the whole fucking world."

"The king of schlock, for sure. With a voice, the right funky moves and a crotch suitable for grabbing and aggrandizing, you coulda buried Jacko and danced on his grave."

"You know what? I'm almost beginning to like you, Herr Fuck 'em Suck 'em. Who would've thunk that shit? Monkey-wrench, works...Bam! Clang! Banged-up bum!"

No doubt about it: Dogberry has to die.

"A note of caution. And I mean this in all seriousness. In the course of your apocryphal divination, you may begin to believe that you've found God. You haven't. But you'd better hope God doesn't find _you_ spanking your spiritual monkey because he tends to frown on this kind of shit. You don't wanna piss the Big Guy off. He insists on being the Big Cheese with all the rabbits in his hat. Bring your own magic hat to the party and who knows what He might do? A word to the wise, dig?"

"Like a bone, wolfman."

"If I—God forbid—were you, I'd start off with a prayer. You know, to grease the holy palm. Whether you believe or not. There really are no atheists in foxholes, and make no mistake, you are about to jump into one with both fucking feet. And believe me when I tell you, you'll need a road map to find your way around in this big hulking hole. And that's precisely what the album art is. A road map. Not exactly Jesus' journey to the cross, but close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, if you catch my continental drift. Keep to the illuminated path, avoid the fault lines, and pray the Big One doesn't hit while you're down in the hole, where you gotta keep the Devil."

"Please," I snarl, "you're just riffing now. Throwing in all the used blues and the lame thrift-shop discards you didn't use in your last masterpiece. Just beat it, _dig_? Let me get this shit over with. I've got a deadline, and I won't have that gay little pissant editor at _Ripping Rock_ up my ass. Not on your fucking dime, capiche?"

He touches his mask, and for just a second I think he is about to take it off, but he only shrugs and says, "That moron Cutthroat Quartz said one smart thing before he wrapped his car around that tree. He said, 'Three kinds of people write about rock. Assholes who wanna be rock stars, scribbling idol-worshipers, and heathens who wanna find God in the music. Good luck being a rock star.' Meditate on that bit of Cutty wisdom, grasshopper. I'll see you in an hour."

Who in the business has not heard the Quartz quote? The morbidly obese rocker produced one half-decent album with _Dead Devils_ , and he made one thought-provoking argument-inducing remark that I had discussed over more than one bottle of booze and bowl of dope. That he died with a groupie's lips wrapped around his cock and his Lamborghini wrapped around a tree doesn't detract from his one immortal quotation.

But before I can tell Dogberry that I'm not about to play grasshopper to his wolfish highness and psychic arts guru, he is out of the room, much to the squealing delight of the Wraith sisters.

So I click off the recorder and get on with my insane assignment. I randomly spread album covers over the floor like illuminating tiles.

Then I stare into the psychotic array of album-cover art and wait for some sort of enlightenment to hammer my soul. Or failing that, to gently tap me on the shoulder. To be honest, I already know where any path through the art will lead. To the same place all paths lead: to death. But don't get the idea I'm sentimental about it, or that I live in abject fear of the Reaper. I'm ready at any moment to meet my unmaker, if that's what's in the cards. Or in this case the covers.

****

THE TRUTH AND THE LIGHT

From the jump I hit a wall. Pink Floyd's _The Wall_ , the white cover with faint outlines of colorless bricks (which I have always thought was a copycat of _The White Album_ —homage or rip-off: who can say for sure?), a wall welcoming you to break on through to any other side, smash your strawberry alarm clock, suck on a Moby grape, sign on the line with Big Brother and his holding company, lick your twisted sister's psychedelic lollipop, because no matter which way you cut it, the dead ain't grateful and you can't Blue Cheer your sins away unless you've felt the wrath of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby, you fucking know what I mean, and then from there my eyes drift on over to the Stones' _Sticky Fingers_ , and I feel the sudden urge to unzip and whack off all over the wolf man's outsized Tarot deck, but instead I mentally unzip the album-cover jeans (That's right, kids, it's an _actual working zipper_ attached to the cardboard! Mick's prick not included) when I realize it might be a secret portal to the next bend in the path or brick in the wall, who the fuck knows? cuz this trip is going over like a led zep and I can hear a Wraith sister in the next room suck like an Electrolux, a noise not exactly conducive to penetrating meditation, but with the snowstorm howling at the window and murder in my heart for the judge, I tune out extraneous sounds and go looking for some ersatz tambourine man to lead me through this madman's labyrinth of rock landmarks, each one a stepping-stone a half-step removed from music, each one an angry blister ready to pop and spew shadow songs and steel-string echoes so faint the wind can't carry them, hidden messages my ass, but who's to say there aren't epistles secreted on my ass? How could I know without a mirror and a magic decoder? You gotta be shitting me. That's how it hits me. So I just say, WHAT THE FUCK? Dogberry might be calling the tune, but I don't dance for any asshole-hat. Not where I'm at. Ratchet that sprocket in your pocket and see what comes out!

I throw open the window and sail the encased vinyl artifacts one at a time into the snow-blowing night until they're all gone. Casting my fate to the wind? Think again.

Dogberry be damned.

Dogberry be dead.

Soon enough. Soon enough.

Oracle my ass.

Hear me Dingleberry? Don't worry, you will.

You ain't playing with a full deck cuz your cards are in the wind.

Get your ass back here, and we'll play this out to the end.

Peel back the skin, and read your sin.

What you need is a bit of truth and light.

Word of God or the Devil to show you what's right for this night.

I slam the window shut behind the last record album, and I shiver so hard I almost piss my pants. Last time I shivered this hard I was delirious with fever in Juarez, and the whores were trying to cut out my eyes, and armed revolutionaries were offering a blindfold and a smoke.

(What have they done to me now? Slipped me a Mick Finn?)

If Islam hides in _I slam the window_ , what else might I have hidden from myself?

Oracle my ass, _please_.

You were right, Caleb old pal. That is, just maybe.

So get your hairy ass back here, baby.

We've got to nail down this deal before we bleed.

****

THE TOOTH AND THE NIGHT

Verily I say unto you: Dogberry spelled backward is **yrrebgod**. Ye minor gods take note and weepeth. You know: I buried Paul? No? Fuck ye then. I've a tale to tell and it goes like this:

Three things happened all at once.

1) A Wraith screamed in either ecstasy or agony

2) Dogberry, unmasked and butt-naked, hairy loins and limbs glistening in the dim light, leapt through the doorway, came down howling on his haunches.

3) I pissed myself.

(If you need to supply your own death metal background dirge, this would be the place to cue the music.)

It was true, by the balls of bearded Odin, the son of a bitch was a werewolf! How else to explain his fine brown fur covering his entire body, except for his cock and balls. His ball sack was blue, his penis purple and dangling just above the floor like a rotten plantain.

(Dear Reader, you've no doubt noticed that I have abandoned the presumptuously prissy present tense and have reverted to the hellfire-and-brimstone past-is-prologue tense. Indeed, this part of the tale is prologue to all the ungodly shit that is bound to follow. And I mean it will follow you, too, Dear Reader. You can't escape your guilty fate. You've come this far with me and for that you must pay the Devil his due. Too late to get out of paying the freight. You're already damned.)

Dogberry loped toward me, but I stood my ground. He sniffed my armpits, my hair, my pissy crotch, and then he moved behind me and began to whisper into my right ear in a language unknown to me, but I was almost certain that it was the secret language of a long dead race, a language used in secret sacred ceremonies. At the same time he whispered in my left ear in a guttural Native American tongue full of clicks and grunts. How he could simultaneously speak two languages as if with two mouths inches from my two ears, I could not fathom.

It occurred to me then that this was the way the Wraith sister lost her leg: that Dogberry was trying to turn me into a shapeshifter too. After all, a wolf likes the company of a pack. What good is an alpha wolf with no weaker wolves to bully or hump?

I had no intention of letting the hairy fucker accidentally mutilate me with a shapeshifter clusterfuck. I would strangle him where he stood or die trying.

Trouble was, I could not move. Not a fucking muscle. The split-mind whispering had somehow divorced my mind from my body and paralyzed me. I was in Dogberry's thrall. Couldn't act on my will.

Collie and Zin slinked into the room and fell at my feet. My pants dropped to my ankles, and they went at me with their mouths like a couple of mewling kittens hungry for milk. Dogberry kept up his two-channel chants, finest hi-fi stereo, me droogs, while the sexy couple of clockwork tomatoes worked me over, all tongues lips and teeth. Dogberry nipped my earlobe and drew blood.

Then he started reciting lyrics to one of his biggest hits, the angry ditty called "Lickspittle Prick and the Defrocked Priest." The one with the line about "the tooth and the night," made famous by Rick Shakespeare and the Royal Queensmen, the reigning fags of Brit-bitch metal and as funky a bunch of pretty little queens as you'd ever want to see or hear. Sure, it was a great song, but not what I'd choose as my death song—which was what I thought it was going to be.

Then the singing and chanting suddenly stopped, and Caleb Dogberry said, "You have to die before you can change. It only hurts a moment or two. You have to die like Jesus, and then come back changed. The Gospel says Jesus came back from the dead in a physical body that could pass through walls. Remember? Not as a ghost or spiritual entity. A solid body able to do miraculous things. That's what you have to do here. Make your physical body pass through a spiritual hoop or two and change as you will it to. Only then will you be like me."

I found my voice, hoarse and weak though it was. "I don't wanna be like you."

"You do."

I shook my head, relieved that some control of my body had returned.

"Now when the girls make you come, I want you to leap out of your old body and into your true animal form. At the exact same time as you ejaculate. Picture your human body dying as you assume the shape of a wolf. That's key. See yourself making that leap. Leap for your life. Because your life will depend on making it. No turning back now. Do or die, dig? Do or fucking die like the piece of sorry shit you are. Make the leap, and be redeemed. Your choice, Mister Fuck 'em Suck 'em. Run with the wolves, or die with the dogs."

He gave me a manly slap on the ass and said, "Okay, girls, take him out."

They did. They did me hard and fast, gave me the world's greatest double-barrel blow job, and fearing for my life, I did as Dogberry had instructed. At the moment of wrenching climax I took the leap.

It was a powerful leap across the void and into deepest darkness. A spinning leap that put me back at the jump-off, and I latched onto Dogberry's throat with my teeth and dug in with my expensive dental-work. His blood had the wild taste of medium-rare venison, yet coppery and sweet at the same time. He tried to fight back, but I had him by the throat and wouldn't let go. After a chaotic moment of struggle, we both went to the floor, and I worked my jaws and teeth until Dogberry was no longer moving. When I finally pulled back, his throat was a shredded ruin, and I could see his spine through the blood, sinew and meat.

The Wraith sisters were shrieking in horror. They drew away from me, cringing so intently I thought they might actually disappear into nothingness.

"It was him or me," I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. "I killed the fucking wolfman, that's all. I did the world a favor. So shut up that noise, how about?"

"He's not a wolfman, you idiot," Columbine said, sobbing breathlessly. "It's a medical condition. Hypertrichosis. That hair growth is genetic. He was just punking you."

I glanced at my reflection in the mirror by the bookcase and saw that I had none of a werewolf's features. My bloody aspect didn't bother me in the least. I said, "Well, it looks like he was the one got punked."

"Bastard," snarled Zinnia.

"Hey, whatever he was, he needed to die. You heard him. It was fate. And from that there is no escape."

"Besides," I added, "he's not really dead. He lives on in his songs. As long as metal survives, Dogberry will too. And metal is too mean to roll over and fucking die. You can quote me on that, me lovely droogs. Metal is me, and I'm all about the tooth and the night."

# Iron Maiden

by

Matthew Fryer

Wapping docks, London.

_Friday, 8_ th _February, 1980._

09.50 p.m.

Dom pulled open the weathered oak door of the Crooked Capstan, and a grin immediately spread across his face.

The fog had thickened while he'd been inside, immersing the street lamps and badly parked motorbikes outside with dense swathes of ashen grey. He inhaled deeply, the cold vapour filling his throat like milk fresh from the fridge. It tasted clean, unlike the usual mouldering smell that drifted up from the river, and although the Thames ran just the other side of the cobbled street, visibility was little more than a few feet.

Dom zipped his black leather jacket up tight around his neck. He loved the brooding atmosphere of fog and hadn't seen one as heavy as this for years.

" _Dom..."_

He stepped outside and saw the Scott brothers standing just to his left. The two bikers leaned against the wall of the pub, smoking Marlboros and clutching pints of dark ale against their beer bellies. They spoke quietly—no doubt up to something, skulking out here in the gloom—and they certainly hadn't called him over. Maybe he'd imagined it.

Dom decided to get out of sight before lighting his joint. Those two would only make him share it.

"Hey, Dom-boy," one of them said as Dom attempted to slink away to the right. He paused, trying not to bristle, then turned back to face them. That nickname made him sound like one of the Waltons, and he knew they only used it to wind him up.

"Evening, lads. Here for the gig?"

"Depends," the larger of the two brothers said. "You gonna play 'The Hanging Judge' tonight? Good song, that."

Both men were tattooed and unshaven, dressed in oil-stained denim and scuffed leathers. One was huge, the other enormous, the latter's forbidding appearance accentuated by an ugly scar that bisected his face diagonally from forehead to jaw. Dom didn't know their first names; the Scotts functioned as a single, aggressive unit and only ever referred to each other as _bruv_.

"Buy me a pint, and I'll think about it," Dom said.

"I've got a better idea." Scarface ground his cigarette beneath his boot, the action managing to convey as much threat as if he'd slammed a fist into his palm. "You play it, and we won't bottle you off during the encore. Whadda you reckon, bruv?" The two men sniggered, a low and nasty sound, and Dom saw relish in their amphetamine-pooled eyes at the mere suggestion of violence.

"I'll mention it to the others."

"You do that, kid."

_Kid?_ Dom felt the weight of his flick knife in his jeans pocket and fought the urge to whip it out. He had a gig to play and didn't have time for this crap.

He turned and walked away and fortunately, the Scotts left it at that. They thought the song they loved was some anarchic anthem about turning the tables on the law, but the hanging judge of the title wasn't the victim of the piece. It actually referred to George Jeffries, a powerful baron in seventeenth-century London who'd sentenced hundreds of men to their deaths along this very stretch of the river. He would've strung up that pair of dickheads in a blink.

Dom shivered, listening to the quiet slap of his Reebok high-tops on the cracked pavement. Normally this riverside road offered a fantastic view: Tower Bridge to the west and beyond, Big Ben standing proud on the curve of the river. Across the water, the skyline of Southwark and Lewisham sprawled, an urban miasma of Victorian stone and modern glass. But tonight, rather than a toothy horizon of smokestacks, steeples and cranes, all Dom could see was the sodium lamps of the street and the vehicles clustered near the pub, rising monolithic from the rolling fog.

"Homo," one of the bikers muttered, deliberately loud enough for Dom to hear. Anger reared in his chest, but he bit down and kept walking. His position in the band was precarious enough: a couple of their recent gigs had been abandoned because he'd started throwing punches.

The biting cold nuzzled through his jeans as he walked along Wapping high street. Despite its name, there were no shops or restaurants along this road. Other than the Crooked Capstan and the occasional derelict warehouse, it was home to nothing but abandoned wharves and weed-choked plots walled by corrugated iron, patterned with graffiti and rust.

Dom stopped, took the limp joint from his pocket, and lit up. He inhaled deeply and expelled a plume of herbal smoke, sighing as the calm flowed through his veins.

The Plague Mandrills were due on in ten minutes, and this was his pre-gig ritual. It settled his brain, focused him towards the intricacies of the music, and also calmed him down; with several pints down his neck, he was prone to picking fights with less than appreciative members of the audience.

He could hear the muted noise of the pub behind him and out on the Thames, the horn of some passing vessel thundered across the abyss.

" _Dom..."_

He glanced towards the invisible wharf, not sure if he'd actually heard anything at all. It was little more than a whisper, maybe just something in the water brushing against the side of a dock, or even a trace of the pot that massaged his brain; this stuff was imported from Thailand and much stronger than the shitty sawdust he usually managed to score.

" _Dom."_

No, there it was again, real as the chipped flagstones beneath his feet.

"Hello?" he called.

"Helloooo?" one of the Scott brothers mocked from the fog behind him. "What's up Dom-boy, your smoke given you the fear? Get over here, and we'll finish it off for you!"

Dom sighed as the hilarious Scott double-act began.

"Maybe he's looking for a prossie?"

"Nah, he's down the docks doing dirty favours for sailors. Hey, Dom-boy! How much do you charge?"

"He don't charge nothing, he gives his arse away for free."

"Like your mom!" Dom shouted.

There was a loaded pause, then: "You're gonna regret that."

Dom chuckled. He had no fear of violence, and his low brow, thick mop of hair, and wide jaw gave him a dangerous, simian appearance that was often enough to stop fights before they even started. That wouldn't deter the Scotts, however, and while he wouldn't stand a chance against them two-on-one, he should be able to skulk in the fog until Olaf, their big Norwegian drummer, came outside looking for him.

Dom took a deep hit on his joint and leaned against a street lamp, enjoying the view, or indeed the lack of one.

Wapping had a history rich with seafaring and international trade. This area would've once been crammed with bustling crewmen, traders and ships heavy with freight: all the machinations of maritime industry. But like much of London, Wapping had been heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz and never recovered, a final death blow coming from the closure of the London docks in 1969. Many of the remaining warehouses had since been torn down, and those that remained were littered with broken glass and infested with rats, wharves sinking slowly into the water, loading cranes frozen with rust.

The Crooked Capstan had closed in the early 1970s as the deluge of river traffic and money dwindled to nothing, but was saved from demolition a couple of years ago when an old rocker called Vince Black bought the dusty building and made it a sanctuary for those who liked their beer strong and their music loud. In this rough part of town, the Metropolitan Police took little interest in the occasional brawl and soft drug use, and there were no neighbours to complain about the noise.

" _Dom!"_

This time, the voice was crystal clear and sharp. It sounded female, perfused with a lyrical quality that danced through Dom's chest like birdsong. He walked across the cobbles to the other side of the narrow street. Maybe it was one of the girls from the pub or a prostitute who'd wandered down from Brewhouse Lane, knowing it would be a busy night in the Crooked Capstan and hoping to snare a few beered-up punters. Several of them knew Dom by name. He sometimes visited them after gigs when too wasted or lazy to hit on a girl and get his end away for free.

He stepped onto the damp boards of the wharf and immediately gasped, almost dropping his joint as something vast materialised through the fog.

The galleon loomed above him, idling on the languid current of the Thames. Mist curled around the quadruple masts and complex webs of rigging that towered into the night, salt-crusted timber creaking against the dock. Two tiers of snub-nosed cannons jutted from the ship's gunwales, and towards the bow where he stood, he could see the ship's name lettered in jagged crimson.

Iron Maiden.

What the hell was this? The ship didn't seem like some kind of tourist-trap reconstruction; the _Iron Maiden_ was clearly hundreds of years old. Dom could smell her above the musty putrefaction of the wharf, the tang of brine and old wood cut thickly for war. She conjured images of pirates and explorers, the kind of ship that hunted myths, hoarded treasure and plundered new countries.

" _Dom..."_

He walked alongside the gently swaying ship in the direction of the voice. It had definitely come from somewhere on board, possibly the elaborate cabins at the stern, leaning out over the water like a miniature castle. Weak light drifted from the windows, and he thought he glimpsed a spindly figure watching from the clouded glass of the Captain's cabin, but it vanished before he could be sure.

Dom realised he was almost tiptoeing along the wharf and sneered at himself, taking a defiant tug on his joint. It was just an old galleon, for God's sake. Maybe they were going to use the docks for some kind of maritime festival? If so, this forbidding ship had an aura that perfectly suited Wapping's gruesome past. Dom liked his history with a sense of the lurid macabre and enjoyed the campfire tales of smugglers and cut-throats that had blighted this borough hundreds of years ago. Execution Dock was only a few hundred yards from here, the place where pirates had been hung to die from slow asphyxiation, the corpses consumed and regurgitated by the filthy tide. Swaddled in iron gibbets, they were left to decay as though the law was anxious to prove it could match the brutality of its enemies.

Dom reckoned the _Iron Maiden_ would have some stories to tell. He saw movement up on the deck, traces of ghostly figures that appeared briefly through the fog. His gaze was drawn high to the crow's nest, and although he couldn't actually see anybody up in the milky darkness, he felt eyes upon him.

" _Dom... please..."_

The voice definitely belonged to a woman, soft as eiderdown. This had to be a joke, somebody trying to freak him out; both the band and half the pub's regulars knew he smoked pot before taking the stage. Maybe it was Lily, their guitarist. She was a prankster, but being such a perfectionist, she'd most likely be busy tuning her Strat for the sixteenth time tonight. All Dom had to do was plug in his bass, crank it up to eleven, and he was ready to rumble. Sound-checks were for pussies.

"Hello?" Dom paused, peering towards the dimly lit windows at the stern. "Quit screwing around!"

He jumped as something struck the wharf just behind him. Whirling round, he saw that a gangway had been lowered from the deck.

Dom tossed the spit-damp remnants of his joint. Alone in the enveloping fog, this was the creepiest thing he'd ever seen in his life, but despite a tickling paranoia, curiosity had him by the throat.

The gangway groaned beneath his weight as he stepped upon it and carefully ascended, holding his breath as he passed over the jet-black void between the dock and the ship. The weed had softened his balance, and he wobbled above the icy water, finally exhaling as he reached the top, stepped through the ornate bulwark and onto the deck. There was no sign of the figures he'd glimpsed, just rusting capstans, barrels, and fat coils of rope. Salt prickled Dom's sinuses; the whole ship seemed soaked with the essence of the ocean as though it was a wreck that had been raised from the seabed.

A cool finger of fear traced down his nape. This was an unfamiliar sensation, and Dom clenched his fists, confused by the lack of a specific target for his unease. He reached into his pocket and took out his flick knife as he began towards the stern.

A door opened beneath the castellated poop deck. A man stood there, silhouetted by the glow of an oil lamp, long grey hair straggling his fiercely wizened face and reddish-black eyes. Torn clothes hung from his scrawny frame like rags flung over a twisted tree, and his fingernails were long and splintered. Dom stared, heart knocking against his sternum, clutching his knife tight. He would rather take on both the Scott brothers at once than this freak; his poise bled the aura of an asylum lunatic.

"Hey man, you made me jump. Is this your ship?"

"I am the Captain," he said in a scratchy, detached voice. "Welcome aboard." The man smiled, reminding Dom of the creature from _Alien_.

" _Dom... come to me..."_

It sounded as though she was below deck, the voice stroking through Dom's abdomen and down into his groin.

"She calls your name," the Captain said. "Go to her."

"What the fuck is going on?"

" _Please..."_

The desperately whispered word made Dom's chest pound, his head spin with lust. Suddenly he envisaged the speaker—a gorgeous Asian woman with big brown eyes and fishnets taut across her dusky thighs—as clear as though she were actual memory. Dom had slept with countless women. Drunken rock chicks, prostitutes from the corners of Hackney where he rented a flat: even the Plague Mandrills had a handful of groupies willing to give it up for the band's big bruiser of a bassist. But up here on the deck of the _Iron Maiden_ , something held him back.

"Who is she?" Dom said.

"Everything you want her to be. And so much more."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

The Captain didn't reply. Dom suddenly glimpsed a figure to his right, but when he looked, it had already dissipated into the fog. Another shimmied in his peripheral vision to the left only to do the same. He was suddenly surrounded by them, phantom flickers that frustrated in their avoidance of direct scrutiny. Perhaps it was a combination of the briny stench, the Thai smoke, and his fertile imagination, but Dom's brain suddenly conjured thoughts of long dead mariners, of terrible wraiths rising up from the depths of the sea. He hoped a bad trip wasn't raising its ugly head; he'd demolished that joint pretty quick. But if so, why was he still so horny?

Dom closed his eyes as the woman began to sing a tune that sighed like silk across hot skin, settling over his brain. Although he didn't understand the foreign words, her voice evoked images of naked women dancing in the desert, of dark skin gleaming in the light of a campfire.

He turned and walked towards the doorway that led below deck, the elusive ghosts drifting out of his way.

As he disappeared down the wooden steps, the Captain grinned wide, a hideous snapshot of long, yellow teeth that, if he'd seen it, would've sent Dom bolting for the gangway and back to the safety of the pub like a cat with a wolf on its tail.

****

"Sorted," Lily said. With her gear checked and a third sound-check in the bag, she leaned her Strat against a Marshall amp and sat down. "Where's Dom? We're due on in a few minutes."

Olaf, the Plague Mandrills' drummer, was tinkering with his kit, tightening the cymbals and wiping the battle-scarred skin of his snare. "He is probably still getting stoned."

Lily glanced around the smoke-layered interior of the Crooked Capstan. The bar was three deep, bullet-belts grinding against stone-washed denim as the punters hustled for the bar staff's attention. Music thundered from the DJ in the corner, sawing through an atmospheric broth of stale sweat and beer.

"I hope he's not fighting again," she said.

"We should perhaps have him muzzled."

"He'd only gnaw his way through it."

"He has been gone fifteen minutes. If he is getting laid by Execution Dock again, I will kick his arse." Olaf's Norwegian accent and unclipped pronunciation made his British slang sound rather comical, but only a fool would ignore the big Viking.

Lily shrugged. "He usually manages to wait until after the gig."

" _Usually_ is not good enough. No more. I am getting quite bored of his trouble. He gets another gig cancelled, he is out of the band."

"Fair enough."

Olaf had long blond hair, a handlebar moustache, and was built like a wrestler. He was the only member of the band hard enough to actually stand up to their troublesome bassist, and Lily was glad of it. She liked Dom and his rock-star swagger, the way he didn't let a lack of fame, good looks, or money prevent him from living the dream, but he could be a liability and was barred from more pubs than she could remember. They'd had a monthly slot in the Ruskin Arms until last week when Dom had got drunk and head-butted the glass collector.

Olaf nodded towards the door. "Maybe your girly boyfriend knows where he is."

Aaron's appearance always made Lily smile, and this time was no exception. He strolled nonchalantly towards the stage, microphone case in one hand. By far the most handsome member of the band, their vocalist looked like an English version of James Dean, but that didn't stop Olaf from taking the piss out of the much smaller man.

"Have you been to fetch your lipstick?"

"I borrowed some off your sister," Aaron said. "She's working the corner of Brewhouse Lane tonight."

Olaf frowned. "My sister lives in Oslo."

Aaron caught Lily's eye, and they shared a smirk. Olaf did his best to engage in the banter, often starting it, but the jokes tended to sail above his head.

"Is Dom outside?" Lily asked.

"I didn't see him when I went back to the van, but the fog's thick as a whale's cock. I suppose he could've been around." Aaron helped himself to a swig of her lager. "Have you been out there?"

"No, why?"

"Doesn't matter. I thought I heard someone shouting me."

"My sister is not a prostitute," Olaf said, finally catching on to Aaron's earlier insult. "Ingeborg is a tough girl. You say such a thing to her face, she would cut off your little-boy balls."

"Is that what happened to yours?" Aaron retorted.

"Mine are intact, which is an achievement for a man who lived with her for so many years." Olaf picked up his pint of London Pride bitter and downed a third of the glass in one impressive gulp. "She is much stronger than me."

Lily tried to envisage this sister, a woman even more powerful than the muscular Norseman himself, but all her imagination could come up with was Olaf in a dress. "Sorry to change the subject, boys, but we need to find Dom."

Aaron frowned. "Come to think of it, I saw the Scott brothers hanging about outside. They looked like they were up to something."

"Jøss _!"_ Olaf cursed.

"I'm sure he's fine," Lily said.

"I am not so sure. Last Friday they threw a man in the river." The Viking smacked his pint down on the table and began shouldering through the crowd. He suddenly stopped and looked back at Lily.

She waited a few seconds as he stared at her, his bushy, yellow eyebrows raised in question.

"What?" she demanded.

Olaf blinked. "You just shouted my name."

"No I didn't."

Olaf glanced accusatorily at the people standing nearby, shrugged, and disappeared into the throng.

"Do you really think there's trouble?" Lily said, turning to Aaron.

"Nah. I just knew mentioning the Scotts would stop Olaf fondling his precious bloody drums and go and do something useful."

"Heh. Good move."

"Dom's probably just dawdling on purpose, hoping one of us mugs will set up his bass for him." Aaron opened Dom's case and carefully lifted out the Fender Precision as though handling somebody else's baby.

Despite his fond complaint, Lily knew Aaron looked up to Dom, almost like an older brother. Dom caused fights, his ear for music was mediocre, and the insults relentless, but he was infuriatingly charismatic and had saved Aaron's bacon in more than a couple of pub brawls.

"I think there's a boat just down the wharf," Aaron said. "Haven't seen one docked here before."

"It's not plod is it? Dom's having a spliff. If he's gone and got himself arrested again, Olaf'll kill him."

"No. It sounded big and old, a proper ship. I couldn't see a thing, but I could hear it creaking."

"Maybe it's Olaf's longboat."

Aaron chuckled, busying himself with Dom's amp.

Lily noticed Vince waving to her from behind the bar. A tall, thin man with a silver ponytail, he was likeable enough but a stickler for punctuality and ran the Crooked Capstan with an iron fist.

"Five minutes," he shouted, and Lily nodded in reply. She sipped her lager, twirling her ink-black hair. Something gnawed at her, a malcontent she couldn't quite nail. Dom being AWOL wasn't unusual, and if there _was_ an old ship at the dock he'd be checking it out for sure; for a tough guy, he liked his history books. But there was something wrong about tonight, an edge of lurking threat.

"We're on in five," she said to Aaron, suddenly desperate to use the toilet. She always had slight pre-gig nerves, but her bladder hadn't shrunk like this since the first time they played. "Back in a minute."

Aaron nodded, then blinked and glanced inquisitively towards the outside door.

****

" _Dom... hurry... please..."_

Flick knife in hand, Dom staggered along a dank passageway that stretched the length of the _Iron Maiden_ 's hull from bow to stern like a hollow, wooden spine. On either side was a row of dungeons with heavy doors and small barred windows. They were pitch dark inside, and Dom heard faint whispers and girlish giggles as he passed them by, but they scarcely interested him.

" _Dom... I need you..."_

His dungeon was the last one on the right. The door yawned wide, and red light glowed inside, that familiar colour he'd seen so many times before in the bedrooms of girls back in Hackney, the brothels of Amsterdam. He _loved_ that colour. It was anger, heat and lust. It was a base, lurid colour, hypnotising him like a devilish will o' the wisp and promising nothing but pure, uncomplicated pleasure. Dom almost tripped as he hurried along the narrow passageway. The smell of the sea was cloying down here, the glutinous rot of bilge and cold-blooded marine life in his sinuses—a smell he'd always despised—but right now he barely noticed it.

He reached the end and stopped in the doorway.

The light that bathed the dungeon seemed to come from nowhere, trickling through the air as though the scene were a sepia photograph stained with blood. Against the wall was a straw mattress, and upon it, a woman writhed, blinking up at Dom with dark, feline eyes. She had black hair, pointed breasts, and an exotic, coffee-coloured complexion. He couldn't have created a more perfect woman in his head. She was even dressed in his favourite lingerie: a sluttish basque, stockings, and stilettos with heels as long as a carving knife.

Dom knew something was deeply wrong about this. His rational mind tried to tell him it was some kind of trap. It _had_ to be; this kind of thing simply didn't happen outside wet dreams and porno films. He also noticed that the bitter scent of the ocean was even stronger in here, apparently coming from the woman on the mattress. She smelled like a fishmonger's sink, a cold and slithery stink.

" _Abuse me,"_ she breathed, rolling over onto her front and presenting the most perfect ass he'd ever seen. The warnings were drowned in an instant beneath the roar of his desire, so loud that it felt like Dom's eyes were rolling in his skull.

Folding away his knife, he strode inside.

****

When Lily returned to the makeshift stage, Olaf and Dom were still nowhere to be seen.

She noticed the pub was much emptier, and the atmosphere had pulled taut. A group of women—rockers with peroxide hair and neon lipstick—had begun to heckle, their voices raised with vodka and confidence.

"Oi!"

Lily turned to see Vince glaring at her from behind the bar. He scowled and tapped his watch.

"Sorry, Vince, I'll round 'em up now!" she called above the pounding music and spotted Aaron talking to a couple of teenage girls by the fire exit. Smoothing down her short, black dress, Lily made her way across. The girls watched her boyfriend intently, and she couldn't help but smile. The Plague Mandrills' vocalist was a natural, and with his smouldering looks, these two kids were lambs to the slaughter.

Lily caught him in the middle of a brazenly false anecdote involving himself, a bottle of Jack, and a police chase in a stolen limousine.

She interrupted his yarn with glee. "Don't believe a word, girls. It wasn't a limousine; it was his little brother's bicycle. And it wasn't the police chasing him; it was his mum."

The two girls laughed politely, but the hope in their faces deflated as she kissed Aaron on the lips and lingered, staking her territory.

"Thanks for that," he said as she broke contact.

"You're welcome. Any sign of the others?"

"No."

"Christ. I think they might be in trouble."

Aaron shrugged. "They can handle themselves."

"Maybe, but Vince is getting pissed off."

On cue, the grizzled landlord appeared over Aaron's shoulder. "What the hell are you waiting for? A red carpet?"

"Olaf and Dom have wandered off," Lily said. "We're just gonna go check out front."

"Well get your arses in gear. Everybody seems to have got bored and fucked off outside, too. I want 'em back in here and spending money. This isn't the only rock pub in London..." Vince's voice trailed off, and he looked over his shoulder.

"We're on it. Sorry, Vince."

"Good," Vince mumbled, peering quizzically towards the front door of the pub.

"See you soon, ladies," Aaron said to the teenagers as Lily dragged him away. He winked at her. "I'm well in there. If you play your cards right, I might let you join in."

She elbowed him hard in the ribs. "When did you get bored of living?"

Aaron smiled, the expression of a man more than content with his lot. Lily relaxed, reassured. She'd fallen hopelessly in love with Aaron, but while things were going so well, she didn't want to risk scaring him off by admitting it.

"Vince is right," he said. "It was twice as busy as this five minutes ago."

"Maybe they're watching a fight. Look, it's mostly women left inside."

Aaron glanced around the depleted crowd, the abandoned girlfriends standing awkwardly on their own. "Shit. Let's go."

Brawls at the Crooked Capstan often went on unchecked until someone really got hurt, especially if they kicked off on the street. The pub regulars had an unwritten rule of watching in silence to ensure a good show; if they cheered and yelled, Vince was outside with his slugger in a flash to split it up.

Aaron yanked open the door, and Lily followed him outside into the cold. They stopped, gaping stupidly at the scene.

The street was empty, just silent vehicles beneath the dull glow of the lamps, thickly shrouded in fog. The windowsills of the pub and the pavement beneath were scattered with half-full bottles and pint glasses as though everyone had left in a hurry or in some determined, joint purpose.

"What the hell?" Lily murmured. An icy breeze rose for a moment, causing the fog to bulge and roll, and the metal sign hanging above the door of the Crooked Capstan swung with a coffin-lid groan.

"Maybe everyone's gone down to Execution Dock for a smoke?" Aaron said. "Dom's not the only stoner."

"No, they can't _all_ be—" she began but Aaron interrupted.

"Shh, hear that?"

"No. What?"

"Somebody just called me."

Lily hadn't heard a thing, and a sickly dread was uncoiling in her stomach.

The door behind them opened, and Vince stepped through. He had a distracted, slightly wild look in his eyes, but Lily felt reassured by the arrival of a figure of authority.

"Vince! Where's everyone gone?"

Vince blinked down at her as though she'd just appeared in a puff of smoke.

"What? Oh, I..." He peered towards the unseen expanse of the Thames. "I have to go."

Before Lily could respond, the tall man bolted down the street, rapidly fading into the fog.

Lily and Aaron glanced at each other for a second, then sprinted after him.

****

In the hull of the _Iron Maiden_ , the Captain walked along the passageway, locking the dungeon doors. There were just two more empty cells to fill, their occupants crooning softly to themselves, a mournful and hungry sound.

He peered through one of the barred windows and saw a heavily built man with long blond hair and a moustache, a true Scandinavian warrior. He lay on the mattress, the siren beside him stroking his head. She had a shock of coral-yellow hair and the body of a _Hustler_ centrefold, but the sensuality of her curves was skewed by the rest of her startling, inhuman anatomy. Her eyes were as cold and amoral as those of a bird of prey, her skin the colour of deep bruising. Her wings were folded neatly against her back, the griffin talons of her feet and hands resting gently against the flesh of her victim. She was stunning, a bleak goddess.

The layer of reality flickered and the scene morphed into what the victim could see, the fantasy woven to entice him. The siren became a blond girl dressed smartly in black. She had a strong nose and pronounced jaw that bore a striking resemblance to the Viking beside her. It was presumably his sister. The man sucked his thumb as she read him a story from a thick tome of Icelandic sagas. The Captain raised his eyebrows. That kind of childhood nostalgia was an unusually innocent fantasy, especially for one who looked so swarthy.

He moved to the next dungeon.

It contained a fat, tattooed man with a scar streaking his face as though somebody had once attempted to cleave his head with a cutlass. He was locked in a much more familiar embrace; half undressed and kneeling on the damp planks of the floor. The siren was on all fours before him, her body undulating softly like tendrils of seaweed in a current, the turquoise globes of her buttocks against his groin, the tips of her briny wings tickling his belly.

As the reality faded seamlessly into the vision, the siren became a young man, handsome and clean-limbed. The Captain raised his eyebrows and wondered if this hirsute brute had even dared acknowledge his forbidden desire until the siren had opened him up like an autopsy and grasped what his heart truly wanted.

Urgent footfalls became audible from the docks outside. The final two victims were on their way. The song of their sirens rose in volume, an unearthly duet ringing along the passageway, a hybrid of seductive whispers and harmonies. The Captain couldn't discern their words or appreciate the true beauty of the sound—it was a music that only the intended could fully perceive—but still it made him shiver with pleasure.

He sank into the oily shadows, heading back towards the helm of the ship. It was time to haul anchor and set sail for home.

****

Lily was quickly left behind as Aaron and Vince ran into the fog. While her heeled boots were great stage-wear, they weren't designed for sprinting over uneven cobbles, and she was scared of breaking an ankle.

"Aaron!" she yelled, alarmed at how pathetic and afraid her voice sounded. Aaron didn't reply, just the sound of his and Vince's footfalls fading into the cold, thumping on the wood of the narrow wharf. "Be careful!"

She hurried across the cobbles and up onto the dockside, the sluggish black water bubbling around the grimy supports beneath her. She followed the wharf along, careful not to get too close to the edge.

"Jesus!" Lily froze as the mist parted and the galleon appeared. Aaron had said there was a ship, but she wasn't expecting anything like this.

Stunned, she stood staring in awe at the ancient vessel and its protruding cannons, the thick masts disappearing up into the night. The sails were rolled up against the booms, their ropes tapping a hypnotic rhythm, and Lily's gaze was drawn to the ship's blood-red designation. _Iron Maiden._ A few seconds passed, her jaw hanging low, before she managed to gather herself and break the reverie.

Aaron and Vince were nowhere to be seen. She opened her mouth to call them again but hesitated, suddenly loath to draw attention to herself. She could just hear the hum of the city drifting in from beyond, the tranquil lapping of water and creak of wood, but nothing seemed real, like the sound of a television in another room.

Shivering, Lily looked further along the ship and saw that a gangway was down. That must be where Aaron and Vince had gone, along with all the others. They'd been _lured_ to the ship; it was so obvious in hindsight. The men had all mentioned being called, or at least behaved as if they had.

Lily didn't know what to do. Go and get help? She wondered if there'd only be women left in the pub. This was just too weird, too absurd to be believable.

Maybe it was some kind of large-scale practical joke, one of those cruel television programmes where people nominate their friends for some elaborate setup. As she was fond of pranks herself, it followed that the rest of the band might plot a spectacular revenge. It wasn't Olaf's style, but she wouldn't be surprised if Aaron and Dom were behind such a scam. Maybe the fog was all special effects, too. While this still seemed unlikely, it was actually less ridiculous than the alternative: that something sinister aboard this ship had summoned the male of the species like children to the tune of the Pied Piper.

Lily stumbled along the dock towards the dim lights at the stern. The tiered cabins were decorated and ornate, but the once-rich colours of red and gilded gold were long faded by the bludgeoning of ocean storms.

"Aaron?" she yelled, too afraid to keep silent any longer, and her voice rolled off the gunwales and dissipated into the quiet. "Dom? Olaf? This isn't funny lads...."

She spun around as an electric whirr sounded behind her, rapidly rising in pitch. One of the mooring ropes that held the _Iron Maiden_ against the wharf was unravelling from its bollard. The others towards the stern and the bow followed suit, uncoiling in synchronisation, then whipped up into the air with a razor-sharp buzz and disappeared.

"Aaron? You up there?" she yelled. There seemed to be people on the deck, but there was translucent quality to them that spooked her to the core. She looked away, holding her breath for a second. Lily didn't believe in ghosts and was more than happy to keep it that way.

She jumped as the sails suddenly unrolled from the booms, reverberating through the ship as they dropped open with a weighty thud, billowing vast and heavy, and Lily could see where rips and huge tears had been crudely mended with twine. From the bow came the clank of chains, the agonised squeak of rust. It was the sound of an anchor being raised. The _Iron Maiden_ was preparing to sail.

"Aaron!" Gripped by panic and a sudden, desperate need to see her boyfriend again, Lily ran for the gangway but with a couple of feet to spare, it lifted off the dock and slid quickly up onto the deck with a supernatural lack of effort. "No!"

The _Iron Maiden_ began to drift away, the gap beside the ship revealing a chasm of icy water.

Lily hopped from foot to foot, helpless on the wharf.

" _Aaron!"_ she screamed.

"Lily?" came a muffled response from somewhere beyond the hull. He sounded confused and heartbreakingly afraid.

Gripped by impulsive terror, Lily backed up, prayed that her impractical shoes wouldn't send her cartwheeling down into the drink, then sprinted forward and leapt from the edge of the wharf.

She just cleared the void and crashed against the ridged wood of the ship between two of the cannons, gasping at the impact. Scrabbling, she managed to cling to a tangle of wet rigging that dangled from the bulwark and hung there for a few seconds, waiting for the nausea and pain to subside. She glanced behind her and saw the docks and street lamps sinking slowly into the mist as the ship picked up momentum, cutting its wake out into the river.

Lily's arms shook with the cold, strength ebbing from her rigor-mortis grip. Grasping handfuls of rigging, she clambered up. Just below the deck, she planted one foot on the rusty curve of a cannon and paused for breath. Behind her, Wapping and the rest of London had completely disappeared. There was just the silent fog, the black water churning hungrily beneath.

She took a deep breath and heaved herself up level with the bulwark. Peering through, she saw those haunting figures again, toiling in the shadows of the deck, and gut instinct told her to stay the hell out of sight. But she couldn't just cling to the side of the ship; her aching hands were already chilled to the bone and starting to shake. If she fell, she wouldn't last two minutes. Swallowing hard, she dragged her body up the damp bulwark, her dress snagging on wet splinters.

As she slithered over the top, she lost her balance and flailed, tumbling forward. Her head smacked hard against a barrel, and she collapsed in a heap. Barely conscious, she closed her eyes and let the splashing water and list of the galleon lull her away.

****

"Lily?" Aaron yelled again, floundering in the dungeon-lined passageway, unsure of which way to turn. Lily had got left behind as he chased Vince towards the ship. A voice had called him, _urged_ him onboard, and only hearing Lily scream his name out in the night had broken the spell. He'd shaken off the dreamy malaise to find himself down here below deck. Why had he charged off like that; why hadn't he waited to make sure she was okay?

" _Aaron... I'm here..."_

"Where are you?"

" _Just ahead... you're almost there..."_

Aaron frowned. One of the doors was open, and he trod cautiously towards it.

" _Yes..."_

How the hell had she got down here ahead of him? Lily's voice sounded different, almost as though it was inside his head; it was like listening to a recording through headphones, the sound projected directly into his brain.

" _Quickly..."_

He reached the open doorway. Lily was there, standing in the middle of a small dungeon, her radiant smile catching the cool, white light that enveloped her. Aaron's relief was confused, and he blinked, hesitating. Her black dress had been replaced by a white wedding gown, her previously flowing hair styled up into an elaborate coiffure that gleamed like ebony. An expensive necklace glittered around her slender neck, a bridal veil drifting down across her shoulders.

" _I love you, Aaron."_

Despite the unreality of the scene, he swallowed a lump in his throat. She'd never told him that before.

He stepped towards her and noticed a seductive glint in her eyes he hadn't noticed before. Lily was pretty, but in a natural kind of way; her beauty usually came from the honesty of her character, not just her flesh and deep, twinkling eyes. But now she looked confident, almost with a glimmer of danger, as though she'd snorted cocaine. But in that moment, it didn't matter. Nothing else did.

"I love you, too," he said, stepped forward, and wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her hard and long, so happy in that moment that his head spun with vertigo and he barely noticed the clamminess of her lips and the fishy, salt-stink that coated the inside of his lungs.

****

Despite a lack of wind, the silent ship reached a dogged velocity, slicing through the water of the Thames Estuary as though powered by engines. A ghost in the night, it sped past Canvey Island and the sprawling borough of Southwark until eventually the river opened up into the North Sea and the flow of the river relented to a tidal swell.

Slowly the fog began to clear and revealed a pure sky, scattered with stars and a cold moon that sparkled on the black ocean. A few seagulls shrieked and circled above, but none attempted to land, deterred by the formless figures that tended the capstans and scrubbed the decks, glowing cobalt blue in the darkness. Within minutes, they left for less intimidating pickings.

At the helm, the Captain stared at his ancient, water-damaged map, tracing the route with a long finger. His nail scraped towards their destination, the trio of craggy islands that several myths had reported but few men had survived. The cartographer had marked it with an image of a naked woman lounging in a skull-clogged rock pool. Beneath it, two words were written in elegant script:

Sirenum Scopuli.

Many had suggested its location—the Italian island of Capri, Cape Pelorum—but all were wide of the mark. Only the _Iron Maiden_ and its loyal Captain knew the truth.

The wake of the ship glowed white beneath the moon as it sailed out to sea and the lights of London slowly faded to black.

****

Sirenum Scopuli.

_Saturday, 9_ th _February, 1980._

10.00 a.m.

Lily opened her eyes to charcoal daylight and hissed at the ache in her skull. Her mouth was dry, the splash of water taunting her thirst. Her skin was damp with spray, and feeling the cold, wet boards beneath her, she remembered where she was.

The _Iron Maiden_ 's deck was deserted, the ship rising and dipping on a choppy sea, sails buffeted by the wind.

Aaron...

The sky was a blanket of featureless grey and a few birds wheeled and squawked above; they had to be near land. Maybe she would have a chance to get help, even find Aaron and the rest of the men from the Crooked Capstan. Surely the police would be searching for them by now; the disappearance of so many people couldn't be ignored for long.

Clinging to the bulwark for support, Lily rose slowly to her feet.

She gasped, any hope of rescue gone. The ship was approaching a narrow strait that led between two rocky islands, dark and spiky like monstrous heaps of shattered glass, another one rising from the murky ocean in the distance. There was no sign of human habitation. The islands were made up of lethal crags with brief snatches of grey beach beneath looming cliffs. The beaches were lined with bones: skulls, femurs and ribcages forming a sea-bleached carpet of death. Waves broke over them, slamming against the rocks in explosions of foaming white.

As the ship battled the currents, Lily glimpsed people on the shores. She squinted through the haze of sea-spray as figures began to emerge, peering from nooks in the crags like curious sea birds. She moaned and her bladder flushed cold.

They were women, naked in their hundreds, their skin the lifeless colour of heart-attack victims, their eyes avian-black. They seemed to have wings and gripped the wet rocks with unnaturally long fingers that tapered to vicious points. Their chilling gaze never left the approaching ship.

As Lily stared in horror, somebody touched her shoulder. She screamed and whirled around, stumbling back.

A man stood on the deck. He resembled a reanimated corpse, dressed in sodden rags with wild, dirty hair and deeply rutted skin like he'd been mummified for centuries. His brimstone eyes had no pupils.

"Welcome aboard," he said calmly, voice rattling above the rumble of the sea and crashing waves. "I see the ladies have your attention."

"Who are you?" Lily managed to squeak.

"The Captain."

"Where..." she began, but too many questions assaulted her at once, derailed by the nightmarish figure that stood before her.

"Come with me," he said. "I have a ship to dock."

With that, he turned and clambered the steep steps to the poop deck above the cabins and took his place at the helm. Helpless with dread, Lily followed.

****

Aaron awoke with a start, the echo of a scream fading in the cold air.

Lily was curled up on the damp mattress beside him. Dawn was upon them, threads of watery light creeping through cracks in the wood and a tiny porthole up by the ceiling.

"Lily? Are you okay?"

She was naked, and for a moment, her skin looked a deathly shade of blue. As she opened her eyes, he glimpsed something large and dark behind her back, almost like folded wings, but when he blinked, the fragmented image was gone.

" _Aaron_ ," she breathed, her voice so theatrically seductive that it filled him with hesitation. It was more like a creepy but convincing impersonation.

They had made love last night, and it had been amazing but nothing like before. Aaron squirmed. In the cold light of day, the memory was rather disturbing. Her touch had been cold as a corpse, and now his sinuses burned as though he'd swallowed seawater.

What the hell was going on here? Aaron remembered boarding the _Iron Maiden_ at Wapping, but they were clearly now at sea, lurching through waves that rumbled beyond the shrinking boards of the galleon. He sat up, looking for his clothes. They were scattered on the floor, discarded in the heat of passion. Lily's wedding gown— _wedding gown?_ —was nowhere to be seen.

" _No...don't go,"_ she whispered beside him, raising an icy hand and tickling his cheek. _"I love you, Aaron."_

A delirious happiness washed over him, and he sank back down into her arms.

****

Lily stood at the helm with the Captain as they entered the narrow strait. Water banged against the cliffs, spuming across sharp-edged slabs of rock before spilling over the sides in sheets. They would break the galleon open like a matchstick model, although Lily suspected the Captain had made this journey many times before. Above, the bird-women watched their homecoming with silent anticipation. Lily noticed that the rocks at the water's edge were littered with broken wood and the flotsam of shipwrecks. She had so many questions, she scarcely knew where to begin.

"Where are we?"

"Sirenum Scopuli," the Captain said, gripping the helm tight. "The home of the sirens."

"Sirens?" Lily said, but the intended bitter sarcasm melted from her voice. She couldn't deny the scene that presented itself before her. She swallowed, trembling as the wind chilled her skin. Her thin black dress was soaked and the sky above a grim wash of watercolour. Everything seemed so cold, so bleak.

"The Greeks described them as escorts of Persephone and daughters of Achelous, the storm god. The Romans wrote that they were fathered by Phorcyx, a deity of the sea, and siblings of the gorgons. There are two dozen below deck."

"They brought all the men aboard?"

"Of course."

"Where's Aaron?"

"Down in the hold, along with all the others."

"Is he okay?"

"He's having a perfect day, for now at least. I will release him when we dock."

"And then what happens?"

The Captain just smiled, a grin of long teeth splitting his ghastly face and making Lily's heart stutter with fresh terror. He nodded towards a nearby beach and its dunes of gnawed bones. "Trapped in their fantasies, they have no will to resist or escape. They die slowly from cold and hunger. Only then do the sirens feed."

Lily shook her head, resisting the urge to cry. She staggered as a wave slammed against the port side of the ship, breaking across the main deck below and spilling through the bulwarks in a hundred tiny waterfalls. The ship swayed dangerously, edged closer to the rocks.

Lily vaguely remembered reading about sirens at school, tales of sea-nymphs that lured sailors onto the rocks with their irresistible song. But that wasn't supposed to be actual history; it was just the imagination of Ovid and Homer, the tales of Odysseus and the Argonauts. It wasn't _real_. And these women were silent. How had they lured the men? Despite their curvaceous bodies, full breasts, and an undeniable otherworldly allure, they looked more like harpies than nymphs: all talons, demonic wings, and winter-blue skin.

"So what happens to me? Will they kill me?"

"No. You are immune to their charms, and it has been centuries since these shores saw a female who was not one of their own."

"I want to see Aaron," Lily said, wiping spray from her stinging eyes. "You can't just let them kill him. Please."

The Captain shrugged, and his indifference stoked a helpless anger in Lily's heart. He was delivering men to their deaths, and God alone knew how many hundreds or even thousands had suffered this fate before, but there was no way she could challenge him. While he looked as though he should've died centuries ago, the Captain moved with the agility of youth, taut muscles knotted beneath his papyrus skin. His spidery hands looked as though they could twist off her head on a whim.

Further along the strait, Lily noticed a cave mouth of pure black between two overhanging cliffs. The _Iron Maiden_ was heading towards it.

Aaron...

Taking advantage of the fact that the Captain had his hands full, Lily hurried away down the steps, ready to tell him to fuck off if he tried to stop her, but he just spoke a careful warning without even turning his head.

"They defend their prey with terrible fury."

Lily paused and shuddered hard before descending into the hold.

****

Down in his dungeon, Dom stared suspiciously at the sleeping Asian woman as he pulled on his clothes. At least he _thought_ she was asleep. He'd just roused from dreams of talons and death and wasn't too happy about the reality either.

The room was no longer lit with red, just grey daylight that oozed through a porthole up on the outer wall of the cell. The galleon dipped over a wave, sending Dom reeling into the wall as he made for the door. Cursing quietly and regaining his balance, he turned the handle. Locked. Clenching his jaw, he pulled the flick knife from his jeans pocket. He had no idea where he was or why he was here, but he knew this bitch had something to do with it.

" _Going somewhere?"_

She spoke before opening her eyes.

"Stay away from me."

" _What's wrong?"_

"Let me out of here."

She sat up on the mattress. _"No... Come back to bed..."_

He allowed his gaze to wander to the woman's curves, and she winked, parting her thighs. She was still wearing her stockings, and Dom felt the familiar lust try and bubble up through his agitation, but it wasn't strong enough this time. "No. I have to go."

She rose to her feet and glided towards him. Dom tensed and raised his knife, but before he'd even seen her move, she grasped his wrist. Her slender hand felt like a manacle that had been taken out of the freezer.

" _There's nowhere_ to _go."_ The lilting seduction had fallen away, and a smug evil burned in her gaze, pupils expanding to fill the sockets like oil spreading in water. Her red lips twitched with hunger and for a split second turned a deep shade of purple. Dom tried to pull away, but her pincer grip was iron.

" _You're mine."_

He noticed dark shadows rising up behind her that resembled unfurling wings. Maybe she'd spiked him with some kind of hallucinogen?

"What have you done to me?"

" _It's too late to fight,"_ she whispered. The grip around his wrist suddenly felt sharp, and he looked down to see that her elegant fingernails had turned black and tripled in length. His arterial pulse throbbed against them.

" _You can either die now or give in to the ecstasy."_ She darkened to livid blue, and Dom glimpsed an armour-like pattern rutting her previously soft skin. She bore no resemblance to the girl he had slept with last night, although her buxom curves still bled a murderous sensuality.

"Get your fucking hand off me."

The woman threw back her head and laughed, an abrasive sound that jangled Dom's eardrums like a hacksaw cutting steel. Distracted, her grip weakened, and Dom tore his hand away, staggered back and bumped against the door of the dungeon.

She seemed to swell in size, spiny black wings spreading out through the air and whispering along the narrow walls. Her laugh faded, mouth contorting into a fanged snarl.

"Jesus!" somebody gasped, echoing his thoughts.

Dom whirled around to see Lily gaping through the bars of the dungeon. He was about to bellow at her to get him the hell outta there, but she was already on it. The lock clunked, and she wrenched the door wide.

He rushed out into the passageway, and they both slammed the door shut as the creature sprung, arms outstretched, face ugly with rage. Lily cranked the lock just in time as it crashed into the other side, shaking the door on its hinges.

"Are you okay?" Lily gasped.

"I'll live. What in the name of Jesus H. Christ is _that?_ Medusa?"

"Close. She's a siren."

"A _what?_ "

"A _sea-nymph_. Part woman, part bird, part bloody sea monster, I don't know!"

"You're kidding," Dom said, but couldn't argue with what he saw. The siren writhed and bit at the bars, all vestiges of seduction gone as her wings beat the air, thudding and scraping against the low wooden ceiling. Her eyes were blast-furnaces of pure violence.

"They lured you and every other bloke from the Crooked Capstan on board last night."

"So how come you're here?"

"I followed Aaron. We were looking for you."

"Did you say _every_ bloke from the pub?"

"Yeah. Look!"

Lily dragged Dom to the next dungeon. The bigger of the Scott brothers lay on the mattress, tangled in a sleeping embrace with another siren. The creature saw him staring and narrowed her eyes in warning. Despite the situation, Dom was still tempted to wake the fat bastard up and taunt him.

"What about Olaf and Aaron?"

"Olaf's there," Lily said, pointing to a dungeon a few feet down the passageway. They stumbled towards it. "I haven't seen Aaron yet. I need to find him, help me find him."

"Where _are_ we?"

"Sirenum Scopuli."

"Where the hell is that?"

"Nobody knows; in fact it doesn't even bloody well exist. It's slap bang in the middle of Greek and Roman mythology. But we're here anyway."

Dom looked through the bars. Olaf was still fully dressed, snoring with his head in the siren's lap. She had one talon resting across his chest and seemed to be asleep too, unless it was a ruse.

"Olaf!" Dom whispered harshly. The Viking stopped snoring, and the siren's huge wings rustled like dry leather. "Shit. Shall I go in and get him?"

"You're gonna have to; we need to get out of here. Although God knows where to."

"What if the siren wakes up?"

"Probably won't make much difference. There's hundreds of them out there."

"So what the fuck are we gonna do?"

"We'll have to steal the ship before the Captain manages to dock."

Dom nodded, liking the sound of that. He remembered the Captain up on deck last night with his hellfire eyes and spindly claws, and was glad of a plan. Especially one that involved giving someone who'd scared him a good old-fashioned kicking.

"I reckon if we get Olaf out, the pair of us could take that grinning scarecrow."

"Good plan. I'm gonna go and find Aaron. Be careful." With that, Lily hurried down the passageway, zig-zagging drunkenly with the wild movement of the ship as she glanced into the other dungeons, calling Aaron's name.

Dom leaned closed to the bars. _"Olaf!"_ he whispered as loud as he dare.

The Viking opened his eyes and blinked in Dom's direction.

"We've got to get out of here. Right now."

"Dom?" Olaf said, too loud.

The siren stirred. Dom couldn't take his eyes off her talons, the black shiny hooks digging into Olaf's chest and holding him close.

" _Shhhhh!"_ Dom hissed in desperation. "Keep your voice down!"

"Where am I? Where did my sister come from?"

The siren spoke without opening her eyes. _"Ignore them my dear, it is just a strange dream. Do not be afraid. Ingeborg is here."_

"It's not Ingeborg, it's..." Dom began, but the words faded on his lips as he realised how ridiculous any attempt at explanation would sound. He barely believed it himself. "Ah, sod it. Enough of this bullshit!"

At last allowed a focus for his rage, Dom unlocked the door, yanked it open, and rushed inside, raising the flick knife. The siren leapt up, dumping a startled Olaf onto the mattress like a sack of laundry.

Dom lunged, going for her neck, but the siren backhanded him across the face, and white cymbals exploded in his skull as he clattered to the floor.

Dom's cheek blazed, blood welling on his lips. The siren strode around him and stood in front of the door, blocking their escape, her barbed wings spreading wide to fill the entire wall of the dungeon. The Viking was still sprawled on the mattress, staring at the siren in horror, the illusion broken.

"But..." Olaf began.

"It was all a trick," Dom said, lurching back to his feet. "She'll kill us both, man. Snap out of it, Viking, it's _on!_ "

Olaf stood up, and Dom was relieved to see that Norse-warrior fire ignite behind his eyes. He clearly had no idea what was going on, but the threat was hardly subtle. The siren puffed up like some kind of grisly peacock, veins shimmering beneath her ocean-dark skin. She leered at the two men, displaying needle-thin fangs.

Dom adjusted the flick knife in his sweaty grip, not even daring to blink. "You armed, big fella?"

"I do not carry, you know that," Olaf whispered, raising his fists. "But it is two upon one. We rush her, _now_."

The two of them attacked. Dom thrust, and his blade sliced along the siren's arm, drawing blood. A deafening shriek split the air as she grasped him by the throat, lifting him off his feet. Olaf landed a couple of jackhammer punches on her face, splitting her lip, but she floored the Viking with a blow to the solar plexus that seemed almost playful.

Dom's vision turned grey as the siren's talon squeezed tighter. Suffocation panic slammed through him as the cartilage in his neck crunched. He somehow managed to stripe her again, cutting a furrow through her shoulder, her jugular infuriatingly out of reach.

She reached up and tore the knife from his grip, flung it into the corner, and screeched in his face, the sound shredding through his eardrums and blasting his face with a frozen, carnivorous stench. He kicked at her stomach with everything he had, but his high-tops were too soft to cause any damage. If only he'd worn his combat boots.

Olaf rose to his feet. " _Herrengud!_ " the Viking roared. "You _die_ for this!"

Mercifully, the siren let go, and Dom dropped to the ground, falling to one knee and hacking for breath. He spotted his flick knife and dove for the corner, scooped up the blade and turned.

For a moment it looked as though Olaf had gained the upper hand in the fight, his fists pounding the siren's face like a boxer attacking a punch-bag, but in a blink, she reached up and grasped his wrists, stopping his assault dead. She spat a mouthful of purple blood, then with extraordinary strength, spun around on the spot, lifting the Viking off his feet like a parent swinging a young child, his boots sweeping up and narrowly missing Dom's face.

She flung him hard at the wall, and he crashed straight through the rotten planks of the hull, cold daylight filling the dungeon. Olaf tumbled down and was swallowed by the foaming sea.

The siren reared back in horror and shrieked again. The sound made Dom's teeth ring, and he almost dropped the knife to cover his ears as she launched herself forward. Her wings folded as she dived through the jagged hole, plunging into the ocean after her victim.

Her frustrated din had awoken several other men, and the passageway filled with confused male voices, soon hushed by the cooing of the women.

"What the hell?" Lily appeared in the doorway, tottering to one side as a wave struck the ship and seawater exploded through the ruined hole in the dungeon wall, spreading around their feet.

"Olaf's gone." Dom clung to the edge of the door and nodded towards the hole.

"Dead?"

"Probably." Dom daren't go near enough to check. He glimpsed rocks in the grey outside, and winged silhouettes lurking. If he fell out he'd drown within seconds, and that was only if the sirens didn't kill him first.

Lily slumped against the door jamb. "No..."

"At least the Viking got a burial at sea. Have you found Aaron?"

"Yeah." Her gaze was wild, almost shell-shocked.

"What's wrong?"

"It's... it's just too fucking weird."

"What?"

"I've..."

Dom grasped her by the shoulders. "Lily! What's wrong?"

"I've never met myself before!"

****

Aaron snuggled close to Lily as waves battered the ship. The storm had roused him from pleasant almost-psychedelic dreams, and he had no idea why they were aboard this haunted old ship. He would've been worried, but every time he tried to ponder the surreal situation, Lily whispered into his ear and made everything okay again.

"There he is!"

He looked across to the door and saw Dom staring through the bars. Beside him was a girl who looked like Lily. _Exactly_ like Lily. This pale doppelganger's eyes were puffy, her face smeared with tears.

"Aaron, you have to get out of there! That's not me; it's a trap!"

" _Everything's okay. Ignore them."_

Aaron looked from one to the other, lost for words. They were identical, yet so different. One dripping with confidence, the other heartbreakingly fragile, both qualities he cherished in the Lily he loved. Were they twins or something? She'd never told him she had a sister.

Dom unlocked the door and pulled it wide, flick knife in his hand. The Lily on the mattress sat up, a graceful, fluid movement, and glowered at the two intruders. Her face was dark as sin and something demon-black seethed like insects behind her eyes.

"Get the fuck away from him," Dom said.

" _Don't let them hurt me,"_ the dark Lily whispered, clinging to Aaron's arm, and he shivered at her freezer-cold touch.

"No, Aaron. _This_ is me!" the pale Lily pleaded. "Don't listen to her; you must know I'm the real one! She looks like a fucking gorgon!"

Aaron tried to sit up, but the dark Lily placed a hand on his chest. It felt sharp and unnaturally strong.

" _Please don't leave me."_

"What...?" he began, but his question was cut off by the brittle sound of splintering wood.

Dom and the pale Lily both jumped and looked down the passageway to their left. Something growled, a sound like razor blades scraping granite.

"Shit, it's breaking out!" Dom said. "Run!"

"But what about Aaron?"

"We'll come back for him. Go!" Dom dragged the pale Lily away, and she cried out, a desperately forlorn sound, as they disappeared down the passageway. Aaron again tried to rise, but the hand on his chest was as recalcitrant as stone.

A few seconds later, something huge and dark swept past the open doorway in pursuit of the others.

" _Stay here with me,"_ Lily whispered, frosted breath tickling his ear. _"It's not safe out there. I'm scared. Please."_

Aaron's confusion evaporated, replaced by guilt at even thinking about abandoning her. "Sorry," he said, "I won't ever leave you."

Lily smiled. _"I know."_

****

With Dom right behind her, Lily scrambled up the stairs at the end of the passageway. Leaving Aaron behind wrenched her heart, but the sight of Dom's siren filling the passageway had got her moving. She'd be of no use to Aaron torn limb from limb.

The siren had abandoned any consideration of allure. Its face twisted with hunger and boiling hatred as it scampered along the passageway, fortunately slowed by its great wings that gouged along the narrow walls.

Lily burst out onto the deck just as the galleon was crawling into the cave mouth. Dom followed, his high-tops squeaking on the wet boards, and the two of them shouldered the heavy door shut.

"Does it lock?" she gasped.

"No!" The world darkened around them as Dom grabbed a plank of driftwood that was swilling around on the semi-flooded deck at their feet and hoisted it with a grunt. He slammed it diagonally across the door, managing to wedge either end behind the ornate woodwork that surrounded the frame. The siren slammed into the other side, talons flaying the wood.

"Is that gonna hold her?" Lily asked.

Dom peered behind her into the shadows of the cave. "I don't think it's really gonna matter either way," he mumbled.

Lily's heart sank at the grim resignation in his tone and forced herself to turn around.

Grey rocks swept up to a huge vaulted ceiling that resembled a natural stone cathedral. Sirens were everywhere, peering from lofty nooks in the walls, perched on the sharp boulders down by the level of the water. Several of them swooped majestically above the ship like falcons, the sounds of their powerful wings echoing around the cavern; others just watched from their eyries. One of them tossed a human skull, stripped clean, that bounced down the craggy wall before plopping into the black water.

"But why aren't they attacking us?" Dom said. He looked back at the door, his siren savaging the wood with rabid ferocity. "She's gone completely mental. Why not the others?"

"Maybe it's because you belong to her."

"So they don't steal each other's food? Hey, so even sirens have table manners."

The sea was less rough inside but still rocked the ship as it nosed forward into the murk. They were heading towards a pier that protruded from the cave wall, built from chunks of driftwood and broken masts lashed together with rope, the boulders around it predictably strewn with bones. Beyond it, the back of the cave was pitch-black.

"So what do we do?" Lily asked. The phantom figures had reappeared, flickering around the deck, tending to the sails and heaving ropes. They dissipated like smoke if she stared at them, reforming in her peripheral vision, bearded and scarred faces that refused to meet her gaze. At least they seemed to be ignoring Dom and herself, duty bound in death. A manic laugh burst from Lily's lips. A ghost crew of dead mariners? After this, absolutely nothing would surprise her ever again.

"Okay. Let's take him down," Dom said, nodding up towards the poop-deck. The Captain was at the helm, his eyes of hell-flame the only colour against the backdrop of monochrome shadows.

"What's the point?" Lily sighed.

"I thought you wanted to steal his ship?"

Lily laughed again. The very idea was preposterous. "What do we know about sailing a galleon, especially through _that._ " She jabbed a finger back towards the tumultuous strait through which the Captain had expertly navigated. "And I'm not sure the ghost crew or the sirens will let us take..."

"Fuck the poxy ghost crew and all these fairytale monsters! But most of all, fuck that smug freakshow up there! Yeah, so we'll probably die, but I'm gonna do it with my hands around his throat." With that, Dom bounded up the steps.

As Lily ran after him, she glanced down over the edge of the ship and saw sirens swimming effortlessly in the sea despite the swirling currents. One arced from the water with the elegance of a dolphin and unfolded its wings mid-jump. It rose up beside the mainsail and hovered there, water raining down from its beating wings as it watched Lily with an intense malevolence.

She wondered if Aaron would still be okay down in his cell. The fact that his perfect fantasy consisted of Lily herself only made the hopelessness of their situation more tragic. She wished she'd told Aaron she loved him, if only once. She'd never dared, afraid he might run for cover, but the siren had revealed his feelings as mutual. Now she might never get the chance.

Lily stumbled up onto the poop deck and almost crashed into Dom. He hesitated at the top of the stairs, and Lily immediately saw why.

The Captain was at the wheel, flanked by two sirens. She could tell by their mulberry, dragon skin that they were centuries old, but they still had the curvaceous figures of classical sculptures. Their wings were arched in aggression, talons tapping the deck in anticipation.

"I thought you wanted to die with your hands around my throat," the Captain sneered. "Take them."

The sirens leapt for Dom, and without thinking, Lily jumped into the fray. Blood splashed her face as Dom's flick knife struck home, and the siren he'd wounded gave vent to a pterodactyl cry that could have shattered glass. She managed to grasp the other creature by its slimy hair, pulling it away from Dom. As they wrestled to the side, she tried to slam the creature's head against the masthead, but it tore free, leaving Lily with a fistful of hair like bladder wrack. The siren slapped her hard across the face, knocking her to the deck. Stars spun before her eyes. Blinking, she could just see that Dom had managed to floor the other siren and was stomping on it like a football hooligan as it writhed and tried to rise.

"Get the Captain!" he yelled at her.

Before Lily could act, her siren grasped her by the scruff of the neck and dragged her up.

"It seems you will have to learn the hard way," the Captain said.

Dom stopped his assault on the siren at his feet and turned towards the helm. The heavy sound of wings pounded the air, and several more women descended from the gloom and landed in a protective phalanx around the Captain, hunched low and poised to strike.

Lily ducked low and shoulder-charged the siren holding her, wrapping her arms around the creature's thighs and driving forward until the siren slammed back against the bulwark. Using the momentum, she managed to lift it up and topple the creature over the side. It plummeted past the cabins but spread its wings and flew, dipping close to the water before flapping back up towards where she stood.

"Get away from me!" she yelled, but the siren just laughed from where it hovered, a gravelly, pneumatic sound.

Whirling back, she saw Dom clambering up the rear mast, hacking at the creatures that flapped around him and bit and snatched at his clothes. With nowhere to go and no hope, the sirens were just playing with them. Lily decided the only thing to do was try and take the galleon down with them.

They were drawing close to the dock, and the Captain's attention was on steering the ship. She ran at him, ducking as a siren dive-bombed her, claws raking through her hair and slashing the back of her neck. She tackled the Captain, catching him off guard. She reached out and managed to spin the wheel as they tumbled to the deck in a heap, the ship listing hard.

She clawed at the Captain's eyes, hoping to keep him busy long enough for the _Iron Maiden_ to be smashed to pieces on the rocks. The thick shadow of a siren fell across her, brutal gusts from its wings whipping her hair. She cried out as razor talons grasped her shoulders, puncturing her skin, sliding deep and hot beneath her collarbones. She was so crippled by the agony, she couldn't even draw breath to scream, suddenly airborne and clutching at the claws buried in her body.

The siren carried her up through the sails and swathes of rigging and soared out into the cavern. The _Iron Maiden_ twisted out of control as though caught in a whirlpool, heading towards the rocks beside the dock.

Yes... sink you bastard...

Lily glimpsed Dom fall from the mast and crash onto the deck, beset by a furious flock of sirens as he covered his face, flailing blindly with the knife. They were transformed into vicious banshees, not playing any more now that the captain and the ship were in danger.

Helplessly dangling, Lily tried to scream for Aaron, hoping he might hear her down in the hull and break the hypnosis, but she was drowned out by the roaring sea and hateful, aviary-like shrieking that filled the cave. Her voice was weak anyway, strength ebbing with the blood that trickled down her body.

She managed to focus her streaming eyes on the Captain and saw he was back at the wheel. He just managed to steer the ship from destruction by a whisker, the starboard gunwale scraping along a sharp outcrop of rock, spilling several cannons down into the sea.

Dom rose to his feet and limped towards the Captain, injured and still fighting the relentless assault in a desperate bid to die as he had promised. Before he even got close, a siren with a wingspan the length of a bus swept down and scooped him up like an owl catching a rabbit, powering up into the gloom.

The _Iron Maiden_ slammed against the dock, rocking violently. The crow's nest smashed against an overhanging ridge of stone and splintered to firewood, breaking off the top half of the main mast. It tumbled down, snagging on rigging that popped from its moorings. The ghost crew clouded starboard as ropes were flung down to the dock and secured.

The _Iron Maiden_ was damaged but safe.

"No..." Lily moaned. Then she passed out.

****

When Lily awoke, the first thing she noticed was that everything hurt. She felt as though she'd been kicked down a flight of stairs and her shoulders were knots of fire.

She was lashed to a thick post on the end of the dock. Sirens were everywhere, watching her from the rocks, peering down from the nearby deck of the ship. The cavern was quiet now, just the rumble of the sea and the occasional ripple of wings.

The Captain stood before her. "You led us quite a merry chase."

Lily coughed, yelping as the action shot electric shards of agony through her body. "Where's Dom?" she croaked.

The Captain pointed up at the cavern wall beside them. Lily looked, wincing at the movement, and saw a nest fashioned from bones and oily seaweed jutting from a natural cradle in the rock face. Dom was in it, his naked skin dark with dried blood. He was busy with two sirens at once that writhed and smirked in ecstasy.

"Don't worry. He's having the time of his life."

"Until he dies," Lily said bitterly.

"At least he'll die with a smile on his face, unlike your Scandinavian friend."

"Olaf?"

"He drowned. I'm surprised at how many have managed to break the siren's enchantment today. There have been several other attempts to flee or fight. Perhaps your presence has affected their powers."

"Where's Aaron?"

"Enjoying his wedding night."

"What?"

"His fantasy is your marriage. It's very sweet and a shame you can't be there to enjoy it with him."

Lily sank miserably against the post, the thick ropes digging into her skin. "Why do you do this? Why help these _things_?"

"They were on the brink of extinction."

"Good!"

"I initially thought the same when they murdered my crew and sucked the marrow from their bones. For many years, piracy and smuggling was my game, and I accidentally discovered Sirenum Scopuli trying to escape the law. The sirens were ravaged by malnutrition and brutally hungry."

"How come they didn't kill you?"

"I managed to shatter the spell and bartered for my life, promising to bring more men if they let me live. The shipping in this area is no longer sufficient to sustain them. It used to be a busy naval route, but now everybody avoids these waters."

Lily wondered if they were in the Bermuda triangle.

"But why do you still help them? Why don't you just leave and not come back?"

"The extinction of such a species would be nothing short of a tragedy." The Captain gestured around the cavern. " _Look_ at them. The most beautiful and terrible creatures on the planet."

Lily peered at the watching hordes. Muscled bodies gleamed in the shadows, their dark-feathered wings shimmering, voluptuous and grotesque in equal measure. The scene resembled a piece of fantasy art, mythology brought to life. She couldn't argue with the Captain's description.

"Haven't you told anyone about them?"

He shook his head. "They would be taken away and become the toys of zookeepers and scientists. Without male souls to devour, they would die. The _Iron Maiden_ is their only hope."

Lily sighed, fighting an ambivalent feeling of respect for the Captain's cause, and had to remind herself of the countless slain victims that had gone before.

She saw somebody descending the gangway of the ship and carefully craned her throbbing neck to see. It was Vince Black, a siren slung rudely over his shoulder, bouncing in his grip as he strode down onto the dock. It didn't seem to mind its crude passage, despite the indignity. Lily almost called out, but even if she managed to jolt him from his trance, it wouldn't achieve anything but more violence.

Vince crossed the dock and clambered confidently up a steep pile of boulders as though they were nothing but the staircase to his flat above the Crooked Capstan. Perhaps in his head, they were. He arrived at an empty nest and flung the siren down at his feet, towering above it in a blaze of testosterone. That was exactly what Lily would've expected from Olaf, and she immediately fought a sob. The Viking was already dead, and it looked like the others wouldn't be far behind him.

"So what happens to me?" she asked, not really wanting to know.

"You and Aaron will be reunited."

There was a sinister undertone to the Captain's words, a glimmer of mischief, and Lily was convinced it was a trick and daren't let the hope blossom despite wanting to believe him. She'd do anything for Aaron's touch, the opportunity to tell him of her love, to kiss him one more time.

"Really?" she whispered, almost embarrassed by the frailty of her voice.

"I always put my sirens first, but I'm not an unnecessarily cruel man."

Lily accepted that. The Captain was indirectly responsible for countless deaths, but these human harvests were a means to an end, a necessity to save his beloved race. He was the self-appointed keeper of the species and would protect them at any cost.

"Thank you."

One of the sirens stepped forward, and Lily shivered at the frozen aura as it drew close. It grasped her injured shoulders, and she cried out as the frigid talons penetrated her wounds, screwing up her eyes, not wanting to see it or what it was doing to her, trying to wish away the pain. Cold prickled through her flesh like an infusion of crushed ice, and she was engulfed by the thick smell of the sea, a strange stinging buzz spreading down into her heart as though her veins and arteries were caking with salt.

She choked on a sob. "No... please..."

"Shh," the Captain soothed, running his cracked nails through her damp hair. "Don't fight, embrace it."

Her pulse quickened, and the agony immediately faded. Lily suddenly felt giddy and strong, even magically healed; perhaps this was the supernatural power that had allowed the Captain to live for hundreds of years, the force that had resurrected his murdered crew. No, she wasn't just healing but _changing_. It felt as though her tendons and sinews were melting from the bone then re-knitting, meshing into a new, alien physiology. Her teeth ached, her insides entwining like eels. Dread fought through the exquisite euphoria as she realised her fate, understanding the meaning of the Captain's promise to let her be with Aaron.

"I don't want to..." she began, but the words faded on her cracking lips. Her voice had changed, adopting a metallic yet musical quality. And it felt so _good_ , the burn of brine in her body no longer something from which to recoil.

"Yes," the Captain said, reading her pleasure. "Succumb to us."

She wanted to laugh. The Captain had been right to save these wonderful creatures from extinction.

She opened her eyes as the siren released her painless wounds and began to untie the ropes that bound her. Her skin was darkening as though she'd been injected with octopus ink, and her fingernails crackled, the dress she wore suddenly tight and unnatural around her body. Flexing her hardening limbs, Lily kicked off her boots, tore off her clothes, and flung them down into the ocean.

"Good girl," the Captain said. "Go to him, my beauty."

Her fellow sirens parted as she walked along the crooked dock towards the _Iron Maiden_ , so light on her feet that it felt as though she would be able to fly. An image of Aaron appeared in her brain, and without even thinking about it, she opened her mouth and sang.

****

Night had fallen upon Sirenum Scopuli.

The Captain stood on the deck of the _Iron Maiden_ , dim light from oil lanterns along the dock flickering through the blue-black shadows of the cavern.

With the help of his tireless crew, he had spent three days preparing the ship, and now she was seaworthy at last. The damaged gunwales and ancient sails were repaired, the broken mast splinted and strong.

His human cargo from the voyage to London were dotted around the walls in various eyries, tended by their sirens. Some were still alive, deep beneath the illusion, but most had died, falling to the ravages of dehydration and hypothermia. They were being consumed at leisure, shreds of discarded denim and black leather rolling on the surface of the sea below.

The Captain looked down at Lily. She had built a nest in a narrow crevice down by the side of the dock. Her transformation was almost complete, a fine specimen of the species. Her wings were not yet fully formed, the spines and feathers still gluey with youth, but her ice-blue skin and talons gleamed with strength.

The siren that originally snared Aaron had fortunately relinquished her prize without a fight, understanding how important it was for a child such as Lily to feed her growing body.

The Captain had watched her with Aaron, curled up together as lovers in the nest, and was deeply impressed. Although Aaron's love was already established, thus making the seduction much easier, Lily was clearly a natural. He was keen to see how she would fare when snaring a stranger and didn't anticipate any problems; there wasn't a man alive able to resist that infinite, consuming gaze.

Aaron had died yesterday morning and was now nothing more than bones littering the bottom of her nest.

"Lily," he whispered. She looked up, quick and predatory. Aaron's skull rested in her lap where she stroked it with what seemed to be a lingering nostalgia. Her wings, as yet untested, flickered in the shadows.

"Fly, my girl. _Fly._ "

Lily tossed the skull down into the sea and spread her infant wings, flapping them tentatively. She rose to her feet and stepped up to the edge of the rocks. The Captain watched unblinking, savouring the sight of her full breasts and powerful thighs. The tempo of her beating wings suddenly trebled, and she rose, airborne for the first time. She flew up past the gunwale of the ship and hovered above him, growing in confidence by the second. Once her wings reached adult span, she would be a genuinely breathtaking creature.

"Bravo!" the Captain said, applauding with a grin.

Lily's cyanotic lips twitched into a smile, her needle fangs catching the light from the lanterns as she landed gently on the deck beside him. She folded her wings and proudly puffed out her chest, frostbite nipples pointing up towards the ceiling.

The Captain only wished he could hear her sing; what beautiful music she would surely make. It would almost be worth dying for.

He turned to his map.

The peasant markets and docks of Rio de Janeiro were their next destination. The _Iron Maiden_ sailed to a different continent every time and never the same place twice. The ideal hunting grounds were the poorer countries and shanties of the world where life was cheap and people were not readily missed. London had been a risk, modern technology making such hunting grounds more difficult. The western hemisphere was more vigorously policed, and those disappearances would be investigated for some time, but the fog had sheltered their passage to the Crooked Capstan like a gift from the devil. Regardless, the Captain sometimes enjoyed the thrill of a challenge—an instinct from his days of high seas piracy—and as the centuries rolled by, he and the crew of the _Iron Maiden_ were expert kidnappers.

The dungeons below deck were all staffed except one. Although Lily had only just fed, she was a growing girl, and besides, he couldn't wait to see her perform with a nameless victim.

"I almost envy him," the Captain said wistfully to himself, signalling to the crew. They began to release the mooring ropes, unfolding the sails.

He took Lily by the hand and led her down into the hull, her excited grip grinding the bones in his hand. She cooed happily all the way, watching him with that piercing black gaze. Maybe she would become a regular companion on his voyages.

Once she was safely locked in her dungeon, the Captain returned to the helm just as the ship was drifting away from the dock, the swell of the sea taking hold.

He took the wheel and carefully steered the _Iron Maiden_ through the midnight-black cave mouth and out into the strait. A full moon bathed the crashing rocks in eerie white, lighting his way.

" _My Captain..."_

He sucked in breath as Lily's voice breathed through him on a warm breeze of musk, his skin tingling with electric pleasure.

"Naughty girl," he whispered. The mature sirens never tried to bewitch him, knowing that without the ship, their extinction was assured. But Lily was new and eager to exercise her charms, perhaps unaware of the folly that would be seducing the _Iron Maiden_ 's captain.

"Be patient," he said, and she giggled, a coquettish and irresistible sound that jingled down his spine and spread warmly through his groin like a thousand velvet tongues.

Then she began to sing.

# Black Sabbath

by

Steven L. Shrewsbury

" **For the roots of love are set in hate and fury."**

—Robert E. Howard

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, yeah, they taught me that in catechism class. I doubt substituting homemade beer and stale crackers for wafers and wine would pass for dinner manners at the Archbishop's house, but so what? It's all the body and blood of Jesus if one believes, right? Funny to ponder eating the Son of God in a world torn apart by zombie cannibalism.

Life courses up through the fields outside my farm, even though the world is dead. As storm clouds roll overhead, my right hand rests on the stock of a sawed-off double-barreled twelve gauge. My left hand holds a decoration, dangling it over the empty communion service tray. The photographs fixed on the wire mesh collage belong to the previous owner of this house. I never read their personal papers, so I don't know their names, thus allowing them some dignity in death. A nice family by the looks of them, and they probably still are, someplace. My mom owned something similar with all her kids displayed in order on a glass tree, all pictures taken after church.

I still remembered Sundays and the Sabbath, even through all the death and mayhem of The End. Whenever I'd screwed up back in the day, Mom would remind me of being a sinner and that family really mattered. Her words would turn gentle in time, and she often said, "God will understand, though."

I sure hope he understands. If he forgives the truckloads of sins I've committed before the uprising of the dead, and the blasphemous way I do communion, I hope he forgives my last actions here on the Sabbath day.

There's much about the world I'll never understand. I've read writing is cathartic. Am I penning this to exorcise demons or just take them for a walk? I've always liked to tell stories. Here's the last one I know.

While I don't pretend to be an official chronicler of the zombie apocalypse or whatever it's called, here's one more story of it for anyone who passes by.

See, the world descended fast after the unrest of the dead. Logic never took hold. Oh, everyone soon figured out a head shot served as the only cure to the illness, but a proper diagnosis proved impossible.

Every time I look at the circle of faces on the decoration in my hand and then out at the open field, I think back to another time so many years ago. I think of Mari. Her voice in my head on this day is clear.

"God, Jack, tell me it'll all go away in time."

Back then, I held onto Mari, again. She clung to me and stared past my shoulder, through the wire mesh and into vacant lands. While I followed her gaze and saw nothing in the overgrown plains, I guessed Mari beheld more. Why? She told me all about it, again. However, her vision wasn't of a dull, unoccupied meadow outside the research facility near St. Louis. And, again, I lied and told her the vision would stop returning.

How many horror stories can one hear before the terrors of the zombie disaster become stale?

"I can feel their mouths," Mari whimpered, her voice choked in tears. "I can see the face of the juju man before he put me in the pit."

I looked across the room at Tim Brill, the man who'd saved Mari from the situation she mentioned. That guy, he always played the part of the sensitive fellow, but even in a world marred by bizarre death and complete collapse, one would think he could act a bit better. Though he appeared concerned, Tim's eyes betrayed him as tired of hearing her story. What a sport to keep filling big boxes with papers and canned goods as she talked....

Mari said, "The juju man dressed like something out of a bad movie or a _Gilligan's Island_ rerun. That isn't important, but it's all so savage, so feral..." (There she went again, talking like a teacher. Heck, I never knew what that word meant before I met Mari.) "...grass skirt, necklace of teeth and the wooden mask, all so scary that night on the bayou, but not as frightening as the ring of souls in his hand."

"Hush, hon," I told her, squeezed her tight and looked down as she curled against me. "They're all gone now, every last one." Gooseflesh covered her skin, down to the roses with barbed wire tattooed around her ankle. "Think on something else, and let it turn to something else."

I wasn't sure why Tim shook his chubby head. Was it his lack of approval at my words or the fact that Mari found solace in my arms instead of his, her one-time savior? He'd been a real douche bag to me since she'd decided I'd be better suited to protect her in this world. A good-natured douche, but a douche all the same.

Mari kept on with her story, never dropping her serious tone, ever staring outside like she witnessed it anew.

"The juju man...he called it a wreath of souls, and I'll never forget it. Oh, God, Jack, they were the heads of babies, maybe a dozen on that cord. From his bonfire and the moonlight, I could see their gray skin, but they were alive again."

I patted her hair and tried to get that image out of my head. No luck, of course, but over the past years, I'd heard terrible tales about other reanimated infants. The one about the stillborn babe eating its way free of its mother in Canton, Ohio, almost topped Mari's tale. Almost. The grim story of hers brought back the darkness I suppressed in my mind. I knew that while one could paint a rosy world on the imagination, darkness always lurked.

"When the conjure man threw me in that pit, I hoped that'd be the end for me, that I'd never be aware of horrible things I'd do once arisen. But I survived the fall into the hole and stayed awake. It was a grave, Jack; he flung me into a grave."

"I know, Mari. It's all over."

Tim rolled his eyes and folded the box of items closed. Why I didn't read his true nature then amazes me. He motioned for a few of the younger men with us to carry the boxes out. Business as usual with that guy, I thought, and that guy could carry on no matter what happened around him.

"It was like a tunnel reaching up from death unto life, but still, doom loomed over me." Her flair for the melodramatic never ceased, as Mari wiped away tears and said, "The juju man, in all of his clichéd glory, stood up there, framed in the moonlight like a scene from a terrible movie." Her voice turned snide, angry, still seething with hatred for the man holding a ring of moving dead-baby heads. "For too much of my life in academics I tried to understand primitive cultures, low religions, and the reasoning behind their clinging to their gods and magic. Maybe he wanted to gain control over the undead in the world like he used to manage the zombies he animated himself. Whatever his reasoning, I was just as doomed."

Tim walked in a semi-circle, saying, "That's about the time I arrived there with the survivors. Their military trucks really made headway back in the bottoms." He then motioned for the young men of our community to get going faster carrying his boxes. They winced, complaining about the weight of the big packages, but Tim's face remained emotionless.

Mari didn't notice his attempt to move the story along. "The juju man dropped the wreath of souls on me. I never stopped screaming. Jack, they didn't have any teeth, but their little mouths glommed all over me." Her hands let me go and became fists. I felt her body tremble as the memories flooded back. "They wanted me, so bad, sucking and mewling at me all over my naked body."

"They're all history," I said, more insistent, trying the tougher approach and turning her to face the window. "They all rotted away and died, just like we figured they would in time."

Mari still shook as she fought down the sensations brought on by memories. "All over me..." she rasped. Her body stilled. Mari stared at Tim. "They pulled me out after they shot the juju man. The man in the grass skirt almost killed the leader of the survivor team after he rose up again."

A sheepish look expanded on Tim's face as he pointed his right index finger at his forehead. "Head shot, the only cure, even for an undead master of voodoo."

That and time, we all found out, but I digress.

Mari nodded. "I'm so sorry. I can't get it out of my head. I don't understand why." She took several breaths and looked through the mesh. "After all, they're all gone, right?"

"Yeah," I assured her yet again. "Maybe it's coming back here to the original facility for more stuff that brought it all back again. The new digs at the prison will help distance you from it."

We separated, and after a moment, she walked away from us. Tim offered her a hug, and she waved him off, needing to be alone. Ironic that...

No one wants to be alone. In a world of the undead, though, loneliness is a primo condition.

Hands to his hips, indignant, Tim said, "It all could be the opposite. Just coming back here to where we waited out the undead may not be the answer, Jack. Perhaps it's the new _digs_ , as you call them, in the prison, making her unstable."

I shrugged and gazed out of the research facility. "Could be. I'm a farmer, not a head doctor. Maybe it's the new pills from the infirmary there. They could be outta date and not making the bad stuff stay away."

"Indeed," Tim replied, his turn now to adopt a snide tone.

While the temptation to ask him how he kept flabby in a world of rations mounted, I found the strength to shut up. Like my ol' pa said, one has to pick battles carefully.

Back in the day, Tim Brill was correct, though, once we found ourselves safe inside the facility close to St. Louis.

"Even if the entire world is dead, if all six billion people are zombies, how long can it last?" he'd said back then. "What happens to dead bodies in the regular world anyway? Roadkill rots, and so does human flesh if not properly embalmed. I say we wait them out in here. There's plenty of food, and in time, entropy will be our ally."

Though a social misfit and probably over educated, Tim had a point. Near to a hundred survivors from the central part of the United States found us in the locale. With lots of food and time on our side, we waited the undead masses out. At the end of the day, the oddball who'd never seen naked women outside the Internet was proven correct.

Just outside the research center's reinforced gates, we watched the zombies' bodies break down a little at a time. The once fearsome, shuffling undead soon became rotten, pathetic husks, trying to crawl for sustenance. Yes, the stray dogs and gray-eyed horses that wandered up gave us much pause for revulsion, but that was life: dark, evil and over for the most part.

My life? Not much to tell more than this: farm kid, factory worker whose wife and family died in uprising, without me around to stop it. I try not to focus on the ebony doom that closed around them. I didn't have to see it—that's a plus, I guess—but they are dead just the same, and I really don't want to talk about that any more. I'm glad my mother and father passed on long ago and never lived to see this world fall apart. Heck, the woman I took up with after The End came around, died of a bite by one of the undead things. I'm tired of seeing the ones I love die. I'm tired of killing the ones I love.

But God let me live on through it all. Though all around me ran sadness and shadow, I kept going. I didn't understand it beyond maybe if I did it, it'd help. I kept honoring God, once a week, and trying to recall the litany from church.

Remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy...

Sure, we about went stir crazy in the research center back then. The dead vanished, and when we (my buddy Jason and I, for the most part, at first) did go out to investigate the areas around, we found nothing and no one. No survivors, no walking dead, not a dead rat, nothing.

Tim wanted to stay behind the placid walls forever, but so many others yearned for a touch of normalcy. Like the majority, Mari wanted out of the plastic world and to touch the grass again. Sure, she'd come north from Louisiana with Tim, a bundle of nerves and an emotional mess. I figured their attachment in the new era relatively natural, though uneven. Mass murder makes for strange bedfellows. An outcast in the old world, like Tim, overweight and lacking in social skills unless he talked science and community mores, wouldn't really seem a match for a common, albeit pretty, schoolteacher like Mari. Over time, though, as she grew accustomed to the crazy world around us, Mari stabilized, and her emotional need for the stout savior lessened. It didn't get any more complex than that.

By the time Jason and the group found the prison, Mari dropped into my arms. I won't disgrace her memory by passing on intimate details, but we fell into each other so fast it felt syrupy, like teen stuff. I'm a much different man than Tim. He knew it, and I could feel his resentment burn, but I never felt threatened by the little guy. Stupidly, I thought my only nemesis in the world walked around with no heartbeat.

When we walked down the halls of the old spot in Granite City, Illinois, Tim said, "She should've stayed at the prison. While we all lived safely here for the time of the undead, this locale harbors too many memories."

I gazed at the rooms once home to kids, old folks, and all of the others that survived. One-time boardrooms, labs, and mess halls became the habitation for those who could escape the undead.

"Mari wasn't going to stay behind at the prison, no matter how safe it is," I explained as we went down to one of the main labs.

"Without you?" Tim pondered as he unslung a bag from his shoulder and started to fill it with papers.

"I don't know what you want me to say," I told him with frankness. "Who can figure out women?" I tried to use the _guy_ angle on him. I failed.

"I wouldn't know," Tim snapped with a curt voice. "She once adored and relied on me for everything. They all did, in time, filthy rabble, barely able to wipe their asses without my guidance."

The little fuck, he really used the word _rabble_.

"But as the undead rotted outside, they grew complacent and like their old selves. She no longer wanted me." He wouldn't look at me as the obvious elephant trotted out into the room. "I can figure out women. My mind and intellectual prowess proved fine enough when they all wanted to survive another day. But once the threat is gone, mankind just is like the undead. It wants to be fed again." He glared at me in disgust, the color draining from his lips. "Apparently, tall peckerwoods with an ability to endure are sumptuous."

With great force, I turned him around and fought down the desire to smash his face to a bloody pulp. "Look, you little asshole, I lost everything in this shit, understand? Just like everyone else, I lost my family, my wife, kids, all of it...even Lilly, who loved me after we got here." I waved my arms around the room. "Do ya think it's easy for me to haul my big ass back into this place? It ain't all about you."

Tim's manner softened. "It was terrible to see Lilly die of stomach cancer. I couldn't do anything to help her."

I shrugged, my dander dying. "Ya tried, Tim. This place wasn't made for cancer treatment."

Tim walked over to the glass oval in the inner door. He pointed and said, "It's a pity, for in those vaults may lie the future of the human race, if this madness ever truly leaves us. I don't know if the pet theories are correct, the passing tail of the comet, the meteor storm, or the wrath of God, but in those tanks abide a thousand frozen embryos. Again, I have no knowledge how to implant them and start a new race of people. Just like the fools in the back who had their heads frozen in hopes of a revival someday down the line, it isn't my line of science."

I remembered what he referred to, the day we toured the research facility, the dozen heads frozen in back. We couldn't see them, of course, but the nuclear generator still ran back there. It supported the rich fools who wanted to be preserved in such a peculiar way.

"What a waste of resources and money, to freeze your head in hopes of a possibility at life. What a long shot game of chance, huh?" I muttered. "At least we had lots of meds to treat the depression and whatever ailed folks from all of this."

Tim returned to his papers. "But it was time to move on, aye? All the dead walking the earth seemed to have rotten out, just as I theorized they would."

I gave some mocking applause. "You win the award. Wear it proudly. Maybe in time, birds will crap on concrete images of ya."

"It's only logical," said Tim with a flare of his nostrils. "All of those silly movies in the olden days about the undead. Well, goodness, what would happen to them in time? Their bodies would decompose in the open, and the nutrients would expend themselves after a fashion. Like when we entered the prison and found all of those poor souls still entrapped in their cells, dead a few times over."

The guard's body in the tower stuck with me the most. He ate his own left arm off to the bicep. "But we had to move on from here, safe as it was, nuclear power notwithstanding," I told him. "Everyone got tired of living like moles, and the prison grounds allowed for greater freedom."

"Silliness," declared Tim, pudgy fingers flexing. "We could've gathered supplies and returned here. Why the desire for the great outdoors and to live like trailer trash is beyond me, Jack."

Elitist bastard. He had a point about the habitations on the grounds of the prison. It did resemble a bad trailer park as many such homes were found and easily brought behind the prison walls by our big trucks. I understood it allowed folks to live like people again, not lab rats. Tim liked the indoors and stasis existence of the collective, I guess.

He then said, "Still, it is a shame about Mari. Not all wounds are bloody, my good man. The prison has a wide pharmacy, and not all of the pills are out of date yet. With a little luck, I can distill more meds for her."

I hated the idea of Mari living as a doped up...zombie.

****

The Montrose, Illinois, prison where we'd set up our new home bore a telephone-pole design. A very linear style for facilities used extensively between the 1920s and 1970s. Inmates and staff could travel along a main corridor down the center or the pole section. The cellblocks and program buildings extended off from this main access strip. The popularity of that design came because of the ease in erecting barred grills across the "pole," and closing them to isolate smaller groups of offenders in case of a riot or disturbance. Built like a fortress, the huge building provided functional living space as these telephone-pole-designed prisons were made specifically to control penitentiary violence. The makeshift trailer park sprung up in the immense outer yard area.

Nothing would get in. The inner walls of heavy wire fencing sported barbed rolls on top and insured no one could reach the huge brick wall that lived before the second barbed wire obstruction.

We never saw one zombie there by the walls or out on the plains. All of that silence breeds fear, mainly because after watching so much destruction, one doesn't think peace will ever exist again. In time, though, even we jaded survivors grew used to the idea of the war being over.

Although the prison cleanup became long and arduous, the environment provided the safety everyone wanted with access to the open air most of them craved. We were a vast cross-section of people, about equal in men and women, with several little ones orphaned and a few teens. A majority of these folks, numbered near to a hundred, came from the Midwest and the South.

Tim hailed from New England somewhere but worked in Memphis for his software company. He loathed the South and couldn't suppress his thoughts on the humidity nor the lower classes of people living there. Mari hailed from Ohio but resided in northern Louisiana at the time of The End, teaching there after a bad divorce brought on by Hurricane Katrina and adultery. Her meeting Tim was akin to most acquaintances now, slipshod and accidental. Time and getting to know a more centered guy, like myself, took care of that fragile relationship.

While most put a good face on the new time that dawned, I always felt dread and gloom. Sure, we appeared to be living safe lives, but the clocks had all turned back. We still refused to spread out and take on a true new life of reinventing the world. For a time, we became moles, scared of the grim reality of what dwelt at the moment of death.

I set up shop on the prison chapel and had my own little communion service of homemade wine and crackers. I did my best to do nothing on Sundays. The other days kept me busy enough in ways to stave off boredom or clean up objects. No one objected to a Sabbath, but most celebrated it alone. In the chapel, it came down to usually the Lord and me. That was fine. Like Mom said, I reckon He understood.

The nightmares came still, like before in the facility. For a time, many thought the ghosts of dead prisoners had returned and started tormenting us. A few of the teens even slept in the execution chambers on double-dares (kids, gotta luv 'em), but I never saw a single ghost. I never dreamt, though, not really, and certainly not of zombies. I dreamt of my kids a few times. That was torture enough. I'm very sad to admit that they weren't as vivid as I recall them or how they appear in my faded pictures.

Overall, things progressed as well as possible for a fledgling American community post–the end of the world. A few even flew Old Glory at the trailer park area. Most everything set about to a boring new life behind the walls until we received the signal.

****

Jason Farris, my best friend since The End, rode shotgun in my big truck that day we set out. A good guy for a Hoosier, we shared much in life. The gravel roads we traveled on that day brought back memories experienced two states apart: of late night cruising as teens, beer runs, dirt road sexual adventures, and all around fun. The broad daylight and the smoky dust that gritted on the truck provided pleasant reminiscences, hopefully ones that would frame up the purpose for our trip.

"How could folks survive out here for so long, alone?" Jason asked me as he scanned the weedy fields.

I shrugged, reflecting on the message Tim received via the shortwave in the watchtower. Tim liked to go up there in seclusion, mostly to read and listen to old CDs, but I knew he monitored the shortwave bands. We'd never seen much evidence that we weren't the last ones alive on planet Earth. Tim was either an optimist or an idiot, maybe a mixture of both.

"Leave it to some farmer to stick it out all this time. If that message is correct, well," I replied, "God bless his tired ass." I remembered the printout and the record Tim showed us of the note. I didn't comprehend any of that shortwave stuff, nor did any of the rest of the group. Still, if one more person survived, we couldn't leave him out there. At daybreak, Jason and I said we'd scope out the area in question that lay only a few dozen miles from the prison. As desolate as the lands looked, it may as well have been the freaking moon.

We'd set out on a Sunday morning, and, well, so much for honoring the Sabbath day and all that. That struck me as a warning, first of all. After the world came to a halt, I vowed to really not do dick on a Sunday, after all the overtime I pulled on such a day in the past. I promised myself I'd lounge later and maybe even read the Bible again. I'd even joked about the Sabbath thing with Jason, and ol' Tim piped up as we loaded our guns.

"The Sabbath day? Wasn't that supposed to be Saturday?"

Yes, I fought down the urge to quip, No kidding, assface? "How come it's always the atheists that seem to want to tell me about my faith?"

After Tim let out a weary sigh, he said, "You see, your faith is based on a false premise of man as an evil or flawed creature, for humans are basically good."

I explained to him, "I'm not going to debate religion or humanism with you. Get your rocks off on someone else."

Mari covered her mouth, trying not to laugh at my words to him.

Hands to his hips, Tim asked, "How can you still believe there's a God after all you've seen in the past years?"

Hand on the truck door, I replied, "In all you've seen in the past years, how can ya say there isn't one?"

Rural land spread out far and wide there, overgrown from lack of regular harvests. How could anyone not believe in God looking across an open piece of land? No wonder the pagans worshiped the ground. It's fucking beautiful....

"Amazing that Tim could pinpoint the locale," Jason muttered, thumb patting his pistol.

"Good directions. Ain't technology wonderful? This must be the place."

We both laughed as we saw the two-story farmhouse replete with an elaborate system of fencing erected after The End. How could I tell? The house and buildings sat on a few acres, surrounded by fields. However, someone with brains made extra fencing out of thick wire, chicken mesh and barbed rolls. We stopped by the gate, probably copped from a horse corral or cow pen. The long gate hung open.

Jason's fingers drummed on the dash, and then he observed, "No bodies about the place."

That in itself chilled me, the emptiness of it all as we edged in the drive and pulled up near to the house. I took a breath, and we climbed out.

"Did you see the signs and buggy warnings on the road?"

Jason nodded, eyes wary and gun at the ready when he took a step. "Must be Amish around here somewhere."

"Don't make me think about Amish zombies right now."

Jason shrugged. "I reckon that pacifist stuff would go right out the fucking window, huh?"

After a few hours of searching, we found nothing. Not a body, not a person in hiding, zilch. Someone had lived there, but nothing existed to show a sign of violence or bloodshed.

"Maybe it's the wrong spot?" Jason offered, relaxing some at last.

I looked across the fields in the direction of Montrose prison, and said, "No, I get the feeling this is the place we were sent to. I gotta terrible idea that something's badass wrong."

****

When we returned to the prison, many of my fears went away. Jason radioed on ahead on the old C.B. radio in the truck (all cell phones stopped working after The End; no one knows why) and spoke with Tim. The little guy sounded flummoxed but said to come on back in and we'd puzzle it out. He also said some dried beef had been liberated from the storehouse. I relaxed as we drove into the wide gates of the prison. Behind us, the doors and gates soon shut like welcoming arms.

Jason yawned, relieved, and then wondered, "Where's everyone? It isn't dinner time yet."

No one weeded their gardens, tended their yards, or even walked in the sunshine of the afternoon. Not a kid rode a rusty bike or screamed for his mother as others deployed squirt guns in a rather twisted game of humans versus zombies.

Over the loudspeaker in the yard, I heard Tim's voice say, "Welcome back. I've been waiting for you."

I turned the truck toward the prison, away from the system of trailers, and stopped. There wasn't a dramatic thunderclap, an echo in the air, or even a Bronx cheer. Yet, the feeling of doom dropped onto my shoulders and sprinted across my mind.

Jason said, "He has been waiting for us? What in the hell for? What the heck is going on?"

We just sat there in the truck for a bit. I glanced at Jason and then up at the main entrance to the west wing of the prison. I could see Tim's outline up there. The little prick probably smiled, I thought.

"Welcome," said Tim over the loudspeakers.

Jason glanced over his shoulder. "The gates locked automatically behind us."

"I know, that's why they are there," I said with irritation. "We spent a lot of time finding a place where nothing could get in. Guess we forgot prisons were meant to keep folks from getting out."

I backed the truck up and faced the line of trailers. Frozen in place, no words came to me.

Jason gestured at the rows of trailers. "Where is everyone?"

My stomach flipped, and I felt the cool air waft over my arm on the open window. "We aren't armed for dick, either."

"Huh? We have our guns, Jack. Why do we need them?"

I looked around at the exercise yard nearby and the open garden areas that once served as projects for the inmates. We chose this land because of the open grassy lands inside the walls. A paved road bisected the grounds. This natural avenue made our new home eerily like an old-fashioned trailer park, so I'll hand Tim that analogy.

The voice over the loudspeaker said, "Yes Jack, I'm up here, and she's with me, safe for now, but how long will that last? Goodness knows I could never protect her as well as you."

"That asshead," I grunted and set my eyes on a small shed not twenty yards away. "He's gonna destroy the world again because of his little ego."

Jason wore a dumbfounded look but nodded when I pointed out the window. "Now, I'm gonna plow through that damned gate by the shed."

He squinted at the small shed, imprisoned by a chain link fence. "Why?"

"Trust me, we are going to need what's inside. We're armed but don't have enough bullets."

The truck roared to life, and we backed up. I stomped the accelerator, and we darted forward. I slackened our speed as the truck destroyed the small fence around the shed and crashed into the plywood walls. In a moment, I leapt out and pulled pieces of the crushed wall away.

"Keep your eyes on the trailers."

A look of confusion covering his face, Jason said, "I am, but you are gettin' nuts, man. There's still no one around. What's the big deal? Let's go up to the main door and..."

"We'll never make it," I told him and grabbed out a few bean hooks and corn knives and then laughed as I grabbed the rusty scythe. "I haven't used one of these since I was a teenager."

Over the loudspeaker boomed the voice of Tim. "Good, farm boy. I'm impressed. You may as well die as you lived, a man of the earth, using what he knows to survive." He paused and then said in a low voice, "How pathetic."

I threw the implements in the bed of the truck. Jason slid over and backed us up. In a moment, he stopped at the mouth of the long avenue again. We both swallowed loud and exchanged a look.

"I can't believe how damned bad I played this out, but no use cryin' over it," I stated with scant emotion. The doom that waited inside the trailers made me feel as if I had gained a hundred pounds. "You drive when I say."

"This doesn't make any sense, Jack. Where is everyone?"

"Listen, Jason. I'm betting they're all dead and that little fuckhead up there killed them. You know what that means and understand what's in those trailers. We'll never reach the prison."

A few moments passed before his already pale face moved. He added it all up and couldn't speak at first. "Christ, he murdered them all, started this all over again? Why? How do you know for sure?"

"Me. If I wasn't around to challenge his dick-fear, then..."

Jason disagreed. "Jack, you think Mari would really have hooked up with that fat jerk? Gimme a break, bud. Brain-child up there would've found an excuse no matter what."

"You have to do this for me, the driving. I'll tell you when to hit it."

He shook his head. "I don't get it all, but I'm with ya, man."

"C'mon, big man," Tim called out with a loud voice, mocking a Southern drawl. The tones echoed off the corroded trailers and concrete courtyards. The silence reigned, cryptic and breathed with the wind. "Come and get me."

I said nothing. Truly, I wanted Tim dead.

Tim shouted over the speaker, "I have no place for you amongst us anymore. You understand me? You dead isn't even worth manure in the garden to me anymore."

I looked in the bed of the truck for a weapon.

"No requests?" Tim asked, disappointment and humor heavy in his words. "No big promises or threats? You worthless bastard, white trash on two legs."

My teeth chattered until I bit down. I didn't like the sound of that—"white trash"—but still, I remained silent.

Again, Tim taunted me. "You are no better than the drunken fools who murdered their way across Missouri in the olden days in the Civil War. It takes the good blood to beat down the bad, no matter what the era. Even all this time later, we are still teaching you to mind your betters."

I said to Jason, "Get the truck in gear."

"It's a damn trap, Jack," Jason warned.

"I know," I replied and climbed into the back of the truck. "I can feel it." Boots flat, I stretched, then squatted to look at Jason in the back window.

"We're surrounded, can ya feel that?" asked Jason, eyes darting, sweat beading on his forehead.

I reached down, took up the scythe, and conceded that. "That never stopped us before. Battle isn't normal behavior."

I tapped on the top of the truck, and the doors of the trailers opened in unison. The surreal mass of activity startled me. The truck started to move forward as the figures exited the trailers. Though there were many, I didn't think all of the hundred in the community fell out. All of them moved slow, sporting bluish-gray skin and hollow eyes. It'd been so long since I'd seen undead folks, I felt a bolt of fear in my gut. It passed.

I guessed that three dozen scrawny women, some clothed, others in their panties and nothing else, posed a threat in numbers, aside from what they armed themselves with. I wondered where the men and kids were....

When I leveled my gun and fired at the nearest target, the gun bucked. Nothing happened to the undead target. I fired a few more times before I became convinced that our bullets were worthless.

I shouted for Jason to floor it as soon as he heard the first shot from the trailers sound off.

The weapons wielded by the undead proved varied. The guns worried me the most, even if the hands that aimed them trembled. It did shock me that these gaunt-eyed zombie fucks sported pistols. Everyone in our community was armed, of course, but I'd never seen the undead use guns before. Many of these women held very small pistols, and when they fired, the reports sounded trivial. This also lent credence to why the bullets missed from a great distance, as these weapons only held effectiveness up close.

I went to one knee as the truck lurched on down the makeshift street. Jason slackened his speed when he saw the accumulation of zombies in the tiny yards. It only took a moment more for the windshield to shatter. Many fired, but no bullets struck Jason.

One of the zombies drew close to the truck. This red-haired girl, Lori, I think, of maybe nineteen years, held up a small automatic pistol and fired twice. The bullets whizzed past my right cheek, and I swung the scythe as if to fend off irritating bugs. Terror struck my heart when the blade stopped halfway through her head. The scythe buried in her skull up through the left side of her jawbone to the point where the metal emerged from just under Lori's nose.

Her eyes peered at the blade as more of her sisters closed in. After a moment, Lori raised the small gun again.

When I pulled, the top half of her head ripped off. My body weight made the action fast. Her body stumbled backwards into another; brain slop splashed over the denim jumper of the oncoming undead woman. That was Louise, a raven-haired woman some would call a MILF. She used to make great pudding and could sew an afghan perfectly.

I tried to right myself as the truck bustled. My boots shuffled as Jason swerved. More shots rang out, and I burned with the primal urge to survive. Jason fired several times but no bodies fell in the second death.

The truck reeled to an abrupt stop as the driver's side window disintegrated. Jason shouted, but not in distress. He threw the door open and slammed into a brunette in pigtails. The blow knocked her backwards. That used to be Peggy. If her looks matched her personality, she'd be Miss America.

I swung the scythe like a nine-iron and took one blond woman's head clean off at the neck. The head of Elsie Conner flew and squelched as it bounced off the hatchback of a rusted car parked alongside the nearest trailer. Another brown-haired woman with rubber bands in her hair made it up onto the lip of the truck bed, but I struck her fast. As Rena Davis climbed in the back of the truck, the woman soon lost a third of her skull, from under her ear to the top of her head sliced free under my blow. However, though torn apart, Rena wasn't done in yet.

"Fuck it, Jason, plow them over," I shouted as Jason shut the door and crushed several invading fingers in the process. The street cluttered with attackers, and the walls of the dead closed in.

The truck roared as the body of Florence Adams flew from my slashing her. I blocked another from entering the bed with the butt of the scythe and kicked a different zombie square in the face. I cannot recall all their names. Tiffany Wagner seemed to defy gravity and hop on the side with both feet; I backhanded her and Tiffany doubled over, falling into the crush of bodies still at the ready. Again, I dealt wicked cuts to my new enemies and old friends as the scythe twirled. Several more charged into the meat grinder I'd created.

Jason spun the truck hard, pitching me over the side of the bed. I kept ahold of the scythe. Jason ran over a half-dozen of the attackers and went fifty yards before he realized I'd fallen out. I rolled on the pavement and came up into a defensive position. Brakes jammed hard, rubber squealed, and the truck bounced on its shocks.

While I rose up, I saw the street held many shambling figures, but daylight lurked between their numbers. Unlike any force I'd fought in the invasion of Iraq, they moved undrilled, unorganized, and easy targets.

I bolted forward into the fray and planted a boot in the midsection of a thick, auburn-haired woman. The scythe swiped again and sliced off a tattooed forearm. That hand flew into the air, and I turned to slam the butt end of the tool into the abdomen of a greasy-haired redhead, doubling her over. Their names escape me, probably for the best.

I drew back with the scythe, and two more charged. The tool rose, dropped, and split the skull of one down to the vertebrae. The other one grappled with me, biting at my arm, but striking me on the left side of my head. Woozy from the awkward blow, I stood and shoved her off me with the handle.

Several hands fell on me, and I drowned in their clutches. Fingers ran all over me, and I stared into numerous sets of marble-like eyes. I tried to fight, but I could barely move. A set of long fingernails dug into my face. Pain can be a real motivator. When I pulled back fast, I felt the nails snap off. Teeth raked on my knuckles but never broke skin. I could've sworn they had braces on them. I tried not to think of the poor girl in the group outgrowing her braces and the quandary we discussed on how to remove them.

That's when I heard Jason grind gears, reverse the truck, and crash through many of those on the assault. When I threw my arms out and cast many away, I saw the truck split the staggering forces on their way to finish me for good. I twisted in a small circle and leveled the gory blade, clearing a path for myself, cutting loose many arms and limbs.

With no athleticism, I loped toward the truck and attempted to jump in the back. As big as I am, I had a tough time getting over the side. I felt the burn of a bullet as it grazed my left shoulder. The pain washed over me for a moment, and I shook at the stabbing sensation. My boots soon kicked grabby hands away as I made it back into the truck. After the initial flurry of shots, the bullets ceased for the most part. Someone got lucky.

Tim wouldn't be fortunate for much longer. His grinning face painted across my mind like a mushroom cloud. I couldn't get sloppy. That's what he wanted, to make me mad, clumsy, and to triumph over myself.

I flipped over in the bed and felt the gears shift under me. The truck pitched forward as Jason plowed into more bodies. The truck hopped into the air and crushed more flesh under its wheels. The truck roared and pounced like a beast on crippled prey. Body parts squirted out the back and left a grim trail of ejecta down the street. Fingers, rent skin, intestines, and soiled lingerie plopped onto the street from under the big tires. When I rolled in the box of the truck, the slop of the undeads ground under the fender wells, sounding like mud and rock in a spring field.

Tires spun on and Jason fishtailed. Suddenly, the truck hit dry pavement. I flew back against the tailgate and almost cut myself open on the scythe. One woman with festering cold sores on her mouth leapt to the side of the truck, one leg over and into the bed. I flailed for a weapon, found the handle of a machete, and buried it in the top of her skull. I didn't know if this provided the second death or not, but I grabbed her by the crotch and the elbow to heave her back over the side.

A sudden jerk forward again and a loud, explosive sound echoed. The front tires blew, either under gunfire or by other means, but the truck died and tilted forward. Jason got out of the cab fast, waving his useless revolver. He climbed into the bed, hand out for any weapon he could find. Jason giggled like a fool when he grabbed a machete.

Back to back in the box of the truck, we made our stand. I swung the scythe and kicked as a dozen of them came after us. Jason fired into the face of two of them before he was convinced that the gun wasn't worth much anymore. These attackers dropped back at the flashes of the gun, but rose fast. Jason angled off my frame, kicked and swung back with the machete. He used me as a wall, just as I used him for support in this time of war.

Jason stomped one away and swiped the skull cap off another fast. He then reached down, grabbed up a sledgehammer, and brained one of the zombies. I blinked as a contact lens flew from the eye of this victim. The deep pop sound hung in the air for a few seconds, or maybe I imagined it. The sledgehammer soon got lost in the skirmish. Jason fought on, and his hat went crooked as many hands reached and clawed.

The memory of that battle is blurry in places. I know I swung the scythe like some primal barbarian, shouting and raging, splattering brains all over the truck. Never once did the aggressors slacken their pace. No matter how many we killed or maimed, it never stopped their advance. The dozen who attacked brought a dozen more along for a counterattack.

A quick glance down the way showed many crippled forms quivering. One body fired a revolver until it ran empty. The bullets went along the ground, into the buttocks and thighs of another undead crawler, mutilated by the truck's actions.

With the last wave ready to attack, I said to Jason, "Let's get outta here!" At the tailgate we kicked off two of them trying to climb in. I sliced off an arm at the joint and a couple heads off the next group, and then we were out of the truck bed. I looked up at the main doors to the prison and saw that they stood ajar.

I ran up the steps and stopped between the double doors. My hands, wet with sweat and gore, still clung to the scythe. When I glanced back at Jason, who seemed fixated on the carnage we wrought on all of the others in our little community, I saw that I'd lost the metal blade of my weapon.

"Damn," I recall saying, knowing I headed into a trap.

Something inside me pushed me forward, and it wasn't only Tim's smart-ass voice on the intercom taunting me. I'd let myself care about Mari. Whatever lurked in my gene pool, in my blood, wouldn't just let her lose hope. I had to do this for her sake, and that would spell my doom. Maybe this was a sign of weakness, not to just care about the safety of my own ass. I had to try and save her. Yeah, I talked to God then. I oft did. It was never very deep. I asked him to help me, to find a way. I never asked for forgiveness in slaughtering all of those folks I used to break bread with. Like Ma said, I hoped he'd understand.

Jason slipped inside but never followed me. He secured the doors and caught his breath as a few zombies approached the entrance.

When I followed the clear path to the guard quarters, I saw the open double doors to the first gallery on the main floor. Just inside the hallway, I spotted the short figure of Tim Brill at the end of the gallery. I stopped and looked to my left. I don't know if God or an astute planner from OSHA could be to blame, but a fire emergency station protruded from the wall. The glass was broken, for the axe beside the wound-up fire hose had been removed.

Down at the end of the gallery, Tim grinned like the proverbial possum. My pulse thudded in my temples like a droning song, and I tried to take a few breaths to level out my heart.

Tim said, "Do you still labor under the delusion that I'd be as stupid as you? Please. Give yourself a rest, farm boy. You'll never be my intellectual equal."

I squared my shoulders to the gallery, and he squeezed something in his hand. A wall of bars slid closed in front of him. Safe, his smug smile beamed. No longer did he look like a grinning animal but like Satan himself, only shorter.

"I have her, back here," he goaded me, oozing arrogance. "The wrong meds I fed her insured madness. Oh, you didn't know it was me behind Mari's dark dreams? All me, drawing her back into the abyss with pills, not words or grand actions."

"You fuck..." I gasped.

"Can you even imagine how she went? It's too late now, farm boy. You failed. She's gone and one of them."

If that happened to be true, I thought at the time, killing him would be amusing.

We weren't alone in the gallery. I could smell the scent of the undead...the feces and urine that clung to them in the final act of life remained after death, usually with putrefying firmness.

"Do you want to know how she died?" Tim asked, face alight. "I'd hate to send you to your eternal reward without telling."

I stepped forward, and a glimmer of panic appeared on his face. Tim squeezed his hand again. A buzzer sounded, and all of the cell doors on the gallery slid open. He wore a slight look of disappointment, his wish unfulfilled as I reckoned he had more to say. Out of the cells stepped the male remains of our community sporting the gray skin and the empty look of the undead.

"Not a mark on any of them," I shouted out. "Did ya poison them all, ya big pussy?"

He frowned only for a moment, the transparent puke. "You experienced a pleasant run, but in the end, intellect wins out over guts or gall. You see, it's not my fault they are all dead, Jack. If you would've not been there, if you would've just died like the pathetic, cornball hero you try to be, Mari and I would be together. It's your fault all of them here are dead, not mine."

I took a step back from the slow-moving men, and Tim made some comment about there being nowhere to run. I'd never run from him, even from his personal army, not now.

When my hands grabbed the end of the fire hose, I thanked God we'd powered up all parts of the prison...and that I had a few more guts left.

The look on Tim's face could only be described as hilarity. Hell, he even started laughing as I unreeled the hose from the wall. This only lasted a moment, as his face quickly turned to shock as I primed the hose. Oh, the dead guys started toward me in earnest by then, but I had enough time to activate an unlikely weapon.

It took me a few seconds to get the stream right, but after that, it proved no trouble to nail each enemy with the torrent of supercharged water. Oh, I wasn't killing any of them, but I snapped a few of them in half like dolls. Yeah, a few of the kids' heads got stuck in the bars, but I try not to concentrate on all of that. With ease, I shot each one of the undead, sweeping them from my path. A few stumbled back into the cells, others twirled around, confused.

Tim moved away from the center of the hallway, shaking his head. He grinned at my act of desperation, never giving me any credit for actually thinking on my feet.

Halfway up the gallery, I turned the hose from the zombies and nailed Tim through the bars. He slammed back against the wall, smashing his head into the concrete blocks. For a moment, I thought the blast knocked the runt cold. After he smashed into the wall, he collapsed to the floor, coughing. While my original plan was to retreat and go to the lockdown controls elsewhere in the prison, that took a dive as the device in Tim's hand clattered across the floor. The control bounced off the obstruction between us. I hit the floor on my knees, arm through the bars, still wrestling the pressure of the hose, and snatched up the control. I aimed the water back at my attackers, praying to God it would never slacken in pressure. The Lord or good workmanship held up, and the water flow kept the zombies away from me. Over and over, I hit buttons on the device until I felt the barrier at my back start to move.

I rolled over on my back and strafed the zombies with the stream. When I hit the controls anew, the wall began to close. As it did, I had to surrender the hose and threw it back in. The bars banged shut, and I was alone with Tim in the hallway.

All I could see was death. It never looked large, dark, dire, or wearing bad togs from the Middle Ages. Nope, death appeared familiar. It looked just like me.

"Where is she?" I raged at him, kicking Tim in the solar plexus. I felt my boot enter his body a little, as something snapped.

Still struggling with consciousness, Tim seized his hurt chest and gut, then rolled over. Head bobbing, he extended his right hand and pointed down the hall. Another gallery opened up before us, and he used his thumb to indicate. "Around the corner, then an open cell..."

When I saw his extended arm, something in me couldn't resist. I kicked at his forearm. Well, _stomped_ would be a better word; I felt the bone in his limb give. Tim recoiled, his broken arm like a snake on the move. Tears sprang to his eyes, and Tim spun back the other way. The handle of a small gun stuck out of the band of his pants. I grabbed this weapon, noted a full complement of bullets, and then resisted smashing the gun into his head.

"You hesitate to kill me, big man," he croaked in a voice heavy with tears and pain.

"If you're lying about where Mari is, I may have to break your other arm."

Turns out, Mari wasn't in the room, but she had been. This was one of the guards' quarters, where many of us slept. I'd have found my way there eventually, as it was Mari's room. Not only did the walls nearly fall down around me, but everything came together at once. Suddenly, I understood why Tim needed materials hauled in from the other facility. They weren't work supplies or computer equipment in the cardboard boxes. The overhead light revealed the definition of a fulfilled nightmare.

On her bed sat five heads, all colored chalk-white with splotches of blue bleeding through. Their eyes flickered in the light, as all the heads possessed undead life. Their mouths jawed, tongues darted, and nostrils seethed, but they weren't going anywhere fast. Even though their eyes flitted around, I wondered if the pale portals could see anything.

My heart thudded as it occurred to me where Tim got his courage—science, like always. He found the means to return the zombies, not by the barrel of a gun but from the guts of the cryogenic lab by St. Louis. These rich fucks, frozen at death to be thawed and cloned in another age, sat on Mari's bed, undead to the world. I remembered Tim telling me ages ago who a few of them were, but have no idea if they sat in attendance. It didn't matter if an oil man, a spoiled Hollywood mogul, a wealthy sports star, the regulator of diamonds in South Africa, and one of the last lines of a famed American politician gene pool resided on that bunk. Sure, he didn't properly free them from their dry ice or whatever form of living death they once carried on, but cleanliness wasn't important. Death is dirty business. Undeath is like sucking on a septic hose, for there'll be no end to the shit in due course.

Nearby sat the boxes from the old facility, and I have to hand it to the little jerk-off, he was smart...smart enough to have us haul his heads for him, and bright enough to replace our bullets with blanks he'd created.

While their freezer-burned faces and listless expressions didn't incite much fear in me, what lay near to their severed necks did inspire revulsion. I nearly didn't notice the grisly bits under their necks, what they excreted from an attempt at sustenance. What made it all real was a piece of mangled skin, folded back out once it passed through the head's gullet. I swallowed hard, keeping the bile down as my eyes traced every last corner of the rose on the hunk of skin, every last piece of the barbed wire on that ruined tattoo. The tears refused to come.

What horror that poor girl must've experienced, I thought, if she ever woke up to life. Did she awake in the fulfillment of her worst nightmare, a half-dozen mouths on her, eating her for real this time, like the wreath of souls in Louisiana? Then it occurred to me that if she wasn't here, what passed for Mari stalked around the prison. I didn't want to kill Mari but I was going to have to....

Damn Tim. Something else trickled into my brain just then. Tim had lied to me. She wasn't here. That little prick lied with one of his last breaths.

Gun in hand, I left the quarters with caution. I vowed to stomp the heads to oblivion later. The heads weren't going anywhere.

To see Tim again was to see red. So much for keeping the Sabbath day holy...

Tim proved lighter than he looked. Fists full of his shirt, I picked him up to face me and pinned him to the wall. Though near to unconscious and still mewling like a sick cat, he made no attempt to escape the gallery, but then again, the obvious ways out were through the undeads I'd hosed down behind the barred barrier and the guards' quarters, where I had just gone.

"Where is she, you little puke?" I raged, ignoring the zombies nearby behind the bars, opening and closing their mouths.

I expected him to fawn over his victory, in his superior intellect and talent to slay Mari using the undead heads. However, too many action novels and superhero escapades geared my mind. The bleeding man in agony gestured with his unbroken hand and muttered, "Wood shop. I locked her in."

I let his feet hit the ground and smashed my forehead into his, glaring eye to eye. "You are coming with me this time." In the heat of the moment, I came near to making a grand threat on his existence. It never came out, as he knew his fate by then.

Though we'd not lived there long, I understood the layout of the prison and headed to the wood shop. I kept ahold of his left arm and pointed the gun out with my other hand. My heart sounded in my ears for, at any moment, I awaited Mari. Soon, she'd jump out, gray and ghastly, to take my life. I pulled him along, thinking of her, so basic and simple, so Ivory soap and water...not perfumed and scented fancy like my late wife.

We reached the double doors of the wood shop, and Tim started to dig in his pockets for the keys. I let him for half a minute, then got angry and wrestled them free myself. Again, we looked at each other, but a few feet separated us. I balled up my fist around the keys and struck him in the left temple with a heavy haymaker any fool could've avoided. Tim stood there and took it as if he couldn't believe I remained angry at his actions. He crumpled to the floor and fell on his injured arm. Tim cried out in pain and pushed himself away from the doors I tried to unlock. He floundered like an upended turtle, trying to avoid his injured limb.

It took me a few tries, but I found the correct key. When I threw open the double doors and scanned the dark shop, the bad scents rushed into my head again. This time, though, it was very different. Sawdust, oils, cleansers, but the faint aroma of the dead—feces and urine—tickled my senses. I squinted but could perceive little in the vast shop. A few fluorescent bulbs cast grim shadows, but nothing moved.

"Turn on the lights, Brainiac," said Tim with a cough.

I looked both ways, still holding the gun out. With great care, I felt along the inner walls of the shop, ears ever-seeking any sound. When I found the switch, I took a breath and snapped it up.

The moment the switch snapped into position, I realized I'd made an error. First, I couldn't believe that such a hard switch would control the lights. Second, I heard the sound of machinery come to life the instant my hand left the switch. All of the overhead lights blazed, and I took a step back, taking in the surprise of hearing the grinding machines. Once more, fatalism sank into my being, registered by my stomach's turning at the drudge of the saw. The high-pitched whine of the blade soon muffled, but it wasn't the tone of wood splitting. Gun at the ready, I took a few steps into the shop.

In a few moments, the saw stopped its grind and came to rest. The automatic function of the table saw ceased. The horror of what I'd done played out before me, framed by Tim's hysterical laughter from the hallway. Mari's blue-skinned corpse reclined on the steel table with the huge spinning radial saw. The bonds that kept her in place fell away as I took a step closer. At first, I couldn't see any harm to her, save for being undead. Like an answer to my curiosity, the left side of her body fell over on the table. I stopped cold, expecting that half of her body to tumble to the floor, but it never did. There she was, the last woman I ever loved, bisected down the middle from her cranium to her crotch.

I turned and faced Tim and watched him giggling like a kid watching cartoons. Oh, he said a great many things, some really finely worded platitudes about my being stupid, falling for his immense diagram, and all. He asked me so many things, like what it felt like to kill her and lots of tripe about morality. I really cannot remember them all. Not a word of it nor any of his begging and pleading stopped me from dragging his ass to the electric chair and strapping him in.

Yes, I wish I could write to whoever is reading this that I fried his fat ass and it became a satisfying experience. I want to say I tortured him for hours with the currents, and his eyeballs flew out, all that kinda crap. That never happened, though. Frankly, the damn chair didn't work anymore, and I understood that when I tied him in.

However, I did leave him in the chair. It was an easy enough place to leave him until the roaming dead ones found him and ate part of him. The final bullets I put into their heads and Tim's forehead didn't stop the ache in my gut. That was cured by time.

All in all, I'd had better Sundays.

****

Through all of this I learned a fact: My mother taught me correctly. Man is not good. The idea that man is basically a good creature is scientific bushwah. Man is an evil, petty being that, when pushed to the brink, is capable of heroic acts but usually finds himself content to rut like a pig.

Does it make me evil that I kept Tim's head animated for a week and pissed in his face every chance I got? No. Well, maybe. I was evil a long time before that. I couldn't kill Tim enough times for what he'd done to Mari and the rest of the community. After a while, though, it all gets pointless to go through the motions.

With no desire to clean up the prison, and only Jason to bounce ideas off, we decided to settle on the farms. I'm rural. It was a natural choice. After we discovered the gated Amish community beyond that empty farm, we made a few friends, even if they didn't trust us much. I spoke a little German, so it helped.

But that was years ago....

****

So, I sit here on the porch of that very farm Jason and I checked out. The fences are still up and in much better shape nowadays, although decades have passed me by. Jason lives on the next farm over with his family. Not one zombie ever came to the fences around either of our spreads. Not one undead rat, mouse, or animal of any sort made for a rather sterile farming environment.

I can't say I've never seen a member of the undead since we left the prison. Twelve years ago Jason's third daughter, Iris, died of what we think was scarlet fever. Sure enough, she rose up and had to be put back down. Whatever cursed the earth hadn't been shaken off quite yet, so that made my ultimate choice here rather simple.

When I started to write all this down, I thought it would make me feel better to get it out or leave a simple record. After the fact, well, that isn't the case. I told it for another time, among other papers I leave here behind. The end is coming for me, from the fever, the blood from my backside, and the throb in my head. Well, I resolved long ago not to come back as the undead. I made sure that this sawed-off shotgun on my lap would guarantee that.

Does the human race carry on in a dead world? Well, in this sector of Illinois it will. Abroad, I dunno and don't care much. Jason's huge brood is set to intermingle with the Amish folks from up the way. I'll spare the story of Jason's second daughter and her fascination with the old farmer next door. If she wants to write that tale up herself, that girl is welcome to the experience. I hope the son or daughter I'll never see this side of eternity appreciates it, or understands.

What waits beyond this life, and will God be angry at me for breaking his suicide rule? Mom always said if one kills themselves, one goes to Hell. I've done my best with what got dealt my way.

God will understand.

# Judas Priest

by

David T. Wilbanks

The blood seeped from the knife wounds in Billy Knott's right arm and side, the pain dull except for occasional pangs that doubled him over when they struck. He clutched his arm in an attempt to staunch the flow and numb the pain, but it didn't help much. He looked over his shoulder, down the alley; no dark figures moved there, and he heard no sound of running feet. He stopped his staggered jog and leaned back against the grimy wall, panting. He reached into his leather jacket, pulled out his cell phone and punched a speed-dial number.

"Doc, I hope you're awake because I need help. I'll be over in a few."

****

Doc Clinton clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he looked at the stab and slash wounds. "You have more scars than a soldier, Billy. How come you're always in so much trouble?"

"Will you just patch me up and skip the questions for once?"

Doc nodded absently as he continued his examination.

The younger man hissed between his teeth. "Take it easy there."

"I'm sorry." The doctor stopped probing with his stubby fingers. "These are pretty bad, but I think I can do something for you."

Doc's "office" was his West Side apartment. It looked like any other old man's apartment, only the kitchen drawers and cupboards held the tools of his trade in addition to the standard necessities.

"Here," Doc said, handing Billy an unlabeled bottle of golden-brown liquid. "Drink this while I stitch you up."

Billy smelled the booze inside the bottle, probably whiskey. He took a long pull and then nodded to the doctor. Tensing himself for the needle's inevitable poke, he clutched the edge of the kitchen table.

The doctor began working with a sterilized needle and thread. He had surprisingly steady hands for an old guy who liked to drink. "You are the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth, Billy-boy. You've been shot and stabbed hundreds of times yet you remain alive. But you had better be careful or that luck of yours will run out one of these days."

Billy winced as the needle continued to pierce his skin. He took another pull from the whiskey. "It's funny you said that. This time out, I got a real scare."

The doctor stopped sewing. "What kind of scare?"

"I don't know. I guess instead of feeling invulnerable, like I usually do, I felt like Death was nearby, breathing down my neck—sizing me up for a dirt nap."

The old man continued his work. "It's none of my business, I know, but I'm wondering if you couldn't find a safer occupation. This patchwork body of yours is not going to hold out forever."

Billy tipped his head back and drained the bottle. He was feeling a buzz now, so the pain didn't bother him as much. Yet the fear of death kept swinging through his muzzy thoughts like a condemned man swinging at the end of a rope. "But I've never worked for anyone else except my current employer. What do you think? Am I supposed to become an accountant now? Raise a nice family?" He laughed.

The doctor shrugged. "An accountant isn't such a bad thing. You could go back to school and learn any trade you like. I know you have money, with all those new clothes and jewelry you're wearing all the time. Just allot some of that money for tuition instead."

Billy snorted. "Doc, I never even finished eighth grade."

Doc sighed and patted the young man on the shoulder. "I guess I'm done here. You better stay off your feet for a few days, not that you'll listen to me."

Billy pulled on his T-shirt. There was an image on it: the word "Metallica" over a spooky graveyard filled with crosses. The young man shrugged into his leather jacket, its hide scratched and pierced. "Don't worry, Doc. I'm not feeling my usual self right now, so I'll take your medical advice this time. And you never know: maybe I'll even look into that school idea."

"Sure you will, Billy."

****

"This thing is dead," Billy Knott said, flinging down the silver medallion. He had never removed it before—not in the past five or six years, anyway.

It landed at his sister Maria's feet. She stooped down to retrieve it, staring at it as she picked it up by its fine chain. "It seems okay to me."

"How long is that thing good for? I don't know if you ever told me."

Maria shrugged. "It has no limits, as far as I know. It's supposed to bring good luck to the wearer, just like I told you when I gave it to you. Right after you started running for that bastard Big Mike."

"Hey, don't call the boss names. He's a decent enough guy. He even helps out with all kinds of charities and good stuff like that."

"Nice," Maria said, rolling her dark eyes. She placed the medallion on the shelf behind her, its chain folding into a small pile of tiny links.

"I need you to whip up something new," Billy said, "something with more and better luck."

"I'm not going to help you get yourself killed, Billy. Anyway, there isn't anything I could come up with that would stop a bullet. Maybe you should just quit the life. Get yourself a real job for once."

Billy shrugged. "Yeah, yeah. That's what Doc Clinton said. That's what you guys _always_ say. And maybe I _will_ change occupations in the future. But right now, what I need is some of that old black magic, Sis."

"It's not black magic, Billy. I don't mess with any dark forces."

Billy plopped himself into an old reclining chair, the most comfortable piece of furniture in his sister's living room. "Aw, c'mon! Do your bro a favor and point me in the right direction. I need help here; I have the Grim Reaper after me, swear to God." He touched his ribs; they were still tender and sore. The whiskey was wearing off.

"I really think you should just use the medallion. There's nothing wrong with it, and there's nothing else I can do for you. Really."

As Maria said this, Billy's keen eye noticed his sister glancing at the refrigerator, which stood beyond the small breakfast bar. He rose from his chair and went to the bulletin board that hung on the side of the fridge. He scanned the jumble of notes and business cards tacked there. Nothing seemed of interest until his attention crossed a certain business card that had a black background and gold lettering. He snatched it off the board. The tack that had held it fell to the carpeted floor.

"What do we have here?"

He read the card's shiny gold print:

Frank Leiss

Wizard

Below the name and strange occupation was an address and phone number.

"Maybe this is the guy I should see," Billy said, holding up the card for his sister to see.

Maria grabbed for the card, but Billy pulled it away.

"Aha! This must be real good stuff if you don't want me to have it." He tucked it inside his jacket, then he turned toward the door. "I'll be seeing you around, Sis."

Maria ran over and grabbed his arm, halting his progress. "Billy, don't! You don't want to mess with that guy. He's bad news."

"So then why is his card pinned to your corkboard?"

"My friend Simon brought that card over a few weeks ago. He said he'd found it on the floor in the Gleaming Eye—that's an alternative health shop downtown. I asked him why he kept it, and he said that he heard Frank Leiss is into some heavy and dark magic, and he didn't want anyone else seeing the card and calling the number on it. I asked him if I could have it—professional curiosity—and he gave it to me, reminding me again not to mess with Leiss."

"Why did you keep the card?"

"Like I said, I was curious. But it wasn't long before I had forgotten about the whole thing. I didn't even remember it was tacked there until just now. Please, Billy, let _me_ help you—not that guy. He'll just get you into more trouble than you already are."

Billy shrugged off Maria's grip. "We'll see about that."

****

Outside his sister's apartment building, Billy hopped on his black Kawasaki motorcycle and flipped open his cell phone. He punched in the number from the black card.

"Hello?" said a gentle male voice on the other end of the line. The dude sounded old.

"Hi. My name's Billy Knott. Are you open for business? I'll cut to the chase: I need assistance of the magical sort. Money is no object."

"Of course I'm open for business. Come right over. I'll be expecting you."

Billy flipped shut the phone, revved his cycle, and sped off toward the address listed on the card. It wasn't far; just across town, fifteen minutes away.

****

Billy knew the city as well as he knew anything, but rarely had he been to this section. There was nothing here but dive bars, pawn shops, check-cashing places, and run-down houses and buildings. Trash filled the gutters, and some seedy-looking children played a crude form of street baseball with a rock and a two-by-four. The children shouted and screamed at Billy as he passed. One of them flung a rock at him, but it hit an abandoned car instead. Their taunting voices died behind him as he continued on, intent on his destination.

With my current streak of luck, I'm lucky that rock didn't hit me in the head and kill me.

In a short time, he pulled in front of an old brownstone and parked his motorcycle at the curb. There were no other vehicles around except the rusted shell of another abandoned car far down the street in front of a collapsing building with boarded windows.

A chill wind passed, rattling and flinging yellow sheets of newspaper about in the cracked and potholed street. Billy squinted as the red glow of the sun shone from the west, where it was sinking behind the city's skyline.

He looked around again nervously, but there was still no one sharing the street with him—not even the Grim Reaper. He slid off his bike and walked up three dirty cement steps. Looking for a doorbell, he saw only the hole where one had once existed; so he banged his fist against the front door, which was covered in layers of graffiti probably there since the Seventies.

As he waited, Billy tucked his hands into his jacket pockets and looked back toward the street where his motorcycle sat alone at the curb. The wind picked up again and flipped his hair over into his face.

He heard a click.

The door had opened a crack, accompanied by a creak of its rusted hinges.

"Are you Billy?" said a gentle voice, which he recognized from the phone call. He couldn't see the voice's owner. There was just a pitch black crack where the door had parted from its frame.

"That's me. How about you let me in and we get down to business? I'm suddenly not feeling too good and should probably get home to bed. But not until I get what I came for."

"And what did you come for?" said the voice with a mild hint of amusement.

"Protection. The point is, I feel like Death is snapping at my heels, and I need something to keep it at bay, preferably for a very long time. Is this something you can help me with?"

"Why don't you enter, and we can discuss it. I may be able to do something for you."

The door swung all the way open, and Billy got his first good look at Frank Leiss, wizard. Billy paused, unprepared for what he saw framed in the doorway.

Leiss looked old. Very old. Impossibly old. His face was a mass of wrinkles from bald head to sunken chin; it was difficult to see his mouth and eyes because they were hidden in a dreadful mass of aged flesh. The man's fingers were like twigs and as white as larvae, each moving about independently like an insect's antennae. A foul odor emanated from him, as if he hadn't bathed in months or even years. A holey wool sweater hung limply off his gaunt frame, and ragged pants covered his emaciated legs. On his feet, Leiss wore red slippers patterned with golden dragons which looked like they had been manufactured sometime in the late 1800s.

"Won't you come in?" Frank Leiss said, swinging out his scrawny arm invitingly. When the wizard spoke, Billy could finally see his mouth, a wider slit among the thousands of wrinkles.

Billy glanced one last time down the deserted street, its length growing darker as the sun made its slow escape to other parts of the earth. Then he entered the home of Frank Leiss.

The light fell dimly through dirty windows, and it took a few moments for Billy's eyes to adjust to the gloom. The surrounding rooms—the foyer, the living room, and some kind of sitting area—were furnished sparingly but were surprisingly clean. Especially considering the state of the apparently unhygienic Mr. Leiss.

"Won't you come into my parlor?" Leiss said, indicating that Billy should enter the small room off to Billy's right.

The room held two chairs, both of them ancient, with faded upholstery and high backs. The three walls of the room were floor to ceiling bookshelves, drawers, and cupboards. The small wooden table between the two chairs had a pattern on its surface that resembled a Ouija board. Billy had seen his sister using one before, once or twice.

"Please sit," Leiss said.

Billy sat, and Frank Leiss sat in the chair across from him. The younger man looked around the room, telling himself he only did this because he was curious about his new surroundings and not because, deep down, he found it unpleasant to look into the visage of Frank Leiss.

"Can I offer you something to drink?" said Leiss. "I have water from the tap or perhaps you'd like something a little stronger."

For some reason, Billy found the idea of taking food or drink from this man particularly nauseating, so he declined the offer.

"Very well. Right down to business, then, that's fine. What may I do for you, Mr. Knott?"

Billy stared at a broken clock, sitting on a low shelf across the room, as if fascinated by its inactivity. He cleared his throat and scratched his head, his mind momentarily blank, feeling a bit claustrophobic—something he'd never felt before in his life. He massaged his knees, wiping the sweat from his palms. "Well, basically what I'm looking for is something that will protect me, because I'm in a ... dangerous line of work, and my good luck seems about to come to an end. So, if there's, like, a medallion or something you have that can protect me—"

"Ah! You seek protection from bodily harm. Is that it?"

Billy nodded and swallowed loudly. His mouth felt dry, but he still wasn't about to ask this guy for a glass of water. "Yeah, that's exactly what I need."

Leiss made an odd sound at the back of his throat, then the odd sound became a whining—or a hum—and suddenly his slit of a mouth burst open, and laughter like that of a lunatic bellowed forth from that black hole in the lower part of the grotesque face.

Billy fidgeted in his chair because he felt like Leiss was laughing at _him_ but he wasn't really sure what he had done wrong. He looked down at himself but didn't see anything out of order clothing-wise: no pizza-sauce stains on his shirt, no zipper undone. Crossing his arms in frustration, he waited for the old guy to end his giggle-fest.

After Leiss stopped laughing, he wiped his eyes and said, "I think I have just the thing. And since you're such a fine fellow, I won't charge a penny for it."

Leiss slowly rose from his chair and went to one of the many bookshelves surrounding them. Mumbling to himself, he ran a skinny finger along the books' spines. Finally finding what he was looking for, the wizard pulled down a large, battered tome that appeared to weigh nearly as much as he did. Leiss carried it over to the Ouija table and slammed it down, billowing a cloud of dust. The old man sat in his chair again, turned the book to face him, and began ruffling through its pages, still talking to himself. After a few minutes, he stopped and stabbed his finger down onto a page. "There it is. I think this is just the thing."

"What is it?" Billy said, looking at the book, but unable to decipher the strangely lettered text. Upside-down, the words seemed foreign. And he doubted they'd make any more sense if he were able to read the book properly.

"I guarantee you, once I perform this ritual, you will no longer have to worry about any harm to your person. No earthly harm, anyway," the old wizard said, then let loose a hideous cackle.

Billy stood up. "What's so funny, man? Are you trying to pull a fast one or something? Because if you are, I know people who can make life extremely difficult for you...." Billy stopped. Immediately after threatening the old man, Billy regretted it. This was no time to lose his cool.

Frank Leiss abruptly stopped laughing, and his wrinkled face fell into a more serious demeanor. He stood and slowly unfolded a stick-like finger until it pointed at Billy's chest. "Life more difficult for me? Is that what you said? You think that I fear _anything_? Especially after I've experienced a long lifetime of the darkest and most dire conjurations which you couldn't even begin to imagine? My boy, I have seen unholy creatures that, were you to gaze upon one, would instantly freeze the blood in your heart. I have _voluntarily_ suffered the torments of the damned only to satiate my cursed curiosity. And I barely survived to tell the tale. So! Don't you dare think, for one second, that one of your thuggish friends could even begin to worry me. I could turn them to dust with a snap of my fingers." And with those words, he held thumb to middle finger, as if he were about to immediately demonstrate this heart-stopping ability.

Billy held up his hands. "I'm sorry I got angry, Mr. Leiss. I just don't want to get ripped off because I need this protection so badly."

Leiss shook his head. "I told you I could protect you from earthly harm, and I meant it." He suddenly clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "Now, are we going to do this, or would you like to leave and go back to your life of crime with nothing to protect you but your own meager wits?"

"Hey. I never said anything about a life of—"

"It's not as if I have to be a genius to figure that out. Now let's stop prancing around and finish this thing. I suggest you sit back down while I prepare everything."

Billy sat and rubbed his face with his shaking hands while the old man rifled through the surrounding drawers and cabinets, every so often pulling out an item. A short while later, Leiss gathered the accumulated items into a pile on the floor and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Now, Billy, would you do me a favor and move your chair into the foyer? Then come back here and roll this rug back, just up to the table here."

Billy did as he was told. As he rolled the dusty and faded Persian rug towards the Ouija table, he found that he was revealing a large circular diagram etched into the aged hardwood beneath.

"What's this?" Billy said, indicating the strange markings.

"You are to step into the center of that circle while I perform the service that you requested."

Billy moved to the center of the diagram and waited for the old man to get his act together.

Soon, the stage was set. Leiss had placed the items in various positions in and around the circle. And now, the wizard was seated back in his chair, chanting the mystical words from out of his ancient tome.

Billy felt kind of silly at first, standing there while the weird old guy chanted his mumbo jumbo. But embarrassment turned to shock as his hairs began to stand on end as if he were surrounded by electrical currents and the floor began to vibrate against his feet.

He sure hoped this worked.

****

At the curb, Maria parked her lime-green economy car behind Billy's motorcycle. She leaned over and looked up through the passenger-side window at the old brownstone building, its face dimly illuminated by the only functioning street light in the area.

The second she got out of the car, she felt the disturbance charging the air. Having spent the majority of her life around magic, she recognized the phenomenon instantly: someone was working a conjuration, and it was a strong one. On top of that, she sensed it was coming from the building directly in front of her: Frank Leiss's home.

She stepped onto the cracked sidewalk and watched the bright lights and sickly purple flickers emanating from behind the drapes in one of the large front windows. She ran to the door and banged on it.

A moaning and groaning, as if emitted by a giant factory machine, filled her ears, hurting her with sheer volume. She put her hands to the sides of her head and squatted down against the bottom of the door. Soon, she lost touch with her surroundings, and the only thing she could feel was the great pain wracking her flesh and bones, stabbing to the center of her being, trying to rip her soul from its source.

Then it stopped.

She removed her hands from her ears and cautiously rose to her feet. She felt a dampness on her upper lip and wiped at it with her hand.

Blood.

Turning to the door, she banged on it some more.

Soon, it opened a crack. "Yes?"

Then the door swung wider.

"Sis. What's up?" Billy said. He looked pale and a little scared. Jittery. His voice was shaky.

Next to Billy stood a terribly wrinkled old man who could only be Frank Leiss. His face was repulsive and looked like stiffened pancake batter.

"Billy, what in God's name is going on? Are you all right?" She took hold of his arm and attempted to drag him out through the doorway.

"Mr. Leiss just worked a spell on me, and now he says I'm protected. Even better than that old medallion of yours."

She pulled Billy down the stairs and then looked up at the old man, who was still standing in the doorway, gazing at them. "That was no protection spell that I've ever seen."

"I'm sure there are a great many thing you've never seen, my dear," said Leiss. "Why don't you leave the magic to the experts and stick to the small-time stuff yourself?"

" _What did you just say to me?_ " Maria said, scowling at the old man. "I've been practicing magic since I was a teenager, so don't lecture me on who's an expert and who isn't. You were performing a conjuration spell, not a protection spell. Am I right? Tell me the truth, Mr. Leiss!"

Leiss drew himself erect. "I think that will be all out of you. I have provided a service, free of charge, and you in turn have treated me very poorly. So now, I wish Billy good luck, and will wish you both a good evening." Then he slammed the door.

"Jeez, I've never seen you so pissed off," Billy said. "Just relax, Maria. The old guy worked some hocus pocus, is all. I'm not sure it's going to work. I mean, I don't feel any different. But at least I don't have to pay."

Maria gathered the front of Billy's leather jacket in both of her fists. "Did you see anything strange appear in there?"

"Appear? Like what?" Billy said, gently removing her hands and smoothing down his jacket.

"Like a big fucking demon or something. I swear to all the powers that it was a conjuration spell he did in there—the biggest I've ever felt. And the thing about conjuration spells is that they call forth something from another plane of existence—another dimension. Are you sure you didn't see anything? Not even a big shadow that looked out of place?"

"Nah," he said, swinging a leg over his motorcycle seat. "I just stood there while he did his thing. Some scary lights flashed around the room, and then he said he was done and that I was protected from all 'earthly harm' from this day forward, forever and ever, amen. That's it. Give the guy a break, Maria. Why are you always busting everyone's balls?"

"I don't know. There's something dark and evil about that man, and I trust him as far as I can throw him."

"Well, he doesn't look like he weighs too much, if that's any help when you decide to throw him."

"Ha ha," Maria said, glaring.

Billy revved up his 'cycle and winked at Maria as she walked to her car.

"You tell me if anything abnormal happens to you. Promise me that, Billy."

He held up a hand. "Scout's honor. If anything weird happens to me, you're the first person I'll call. So stop worrying already."

"Fat chance," she said.

After glancing at Leiss's building one last time—its windows gone dark now—she got into her car and headed home.

She doubted she'd get much sleep that night.

****

For two weeks, Billy had been recuperating from his stab wounds. He just now was beginning to feel like his same old self again. Maybe he would have bounced back sooner had he not been the subject of the wizard's magic; somehow it had drained the last reserves of Billy's strength. Billy had stayed on the couch during the whole two weeks, watching stupid television shows that he hadn't even known existed.

Maria came over every other day, worrying over him, but there really wasn't much she could do except fluff his pillows, clean up his messes, and chew him out for seeing Frank Leiss when she had begged him not to; she still didn't trust the guy and figured he had somehow ruined Billy's life, though she wasn't sure just how yet. Her eyes had dark circles under them these days because of all the worrying. Billy figured she probably needed to stay in bed for a few days herself.

But today, he was back out on the street again, in the environment where he was most comfortable, among other people going about their personal business, with cars swooshing and crawling past, the tall buildings towering above and the dim alleys stretching between it all, the bars, the clubs, and the concert halls. Billy sucked deeply of the city air—felt it cycling within his lungs—and let it out heavily. He was back in business....

And business right now was delivering a package for Big Mike. The Federal Express box (a disguise) was strapped down to the back of Billy's motorcycle with two bungee cords. He revved the engine and moved along with the traffic, wearing his usual uniform: cool shades, a scarred and patched leather jacket, jeans, biker boots, and a heavy metal band T-shirt (today it was Grand Magus). He was in his element now, like a fish in a stream.

But that didn't mean he shouldn't keep his eyes open. Big Mike had enemies everywhere, and that wasn't including all the cops who wanted his head on a stick. There were punks all over this city who had a grudge against Mike, like the ones who had cut up Billy in that alley two weeks before. There were even rumors about a big-shot assassin, supposedly hired by a rival "business," that was out to get the chief. But Big Mike had his own special forces on the payroll: guys who would slit your throat then go out for dinner with their families without thinking twice. Billy had to admit that those guys creeped him out; he could never do something like that. Billy was happy enough being Mike's jack-of-all-trades, and the chief seemed to like him—as much as the chief liked _anyone_ ; the guy didn't smile too often.

The sun was out, and it felt good. All Billy had to do now was head uptown and give the package to Marty at Sicily Pizza. Then Billy had the rest of the day to himself to spend the fat wad of cash in his pocket on whatever he wanted. Maybe he'd head over to Buck's Music and take a look again at that Gibson guitar he'd been eyeballing. Billy knew he didn't need another electric guitar—he hardly played the one he had at home—but the one at Buck's was so slick and cherry, for some reason he just couldn't stop thinking about it. And, anyway, Buck was always fun to hang out with.

Or maybe he'd go to Jack's Place and down a couple of beers. The bartender there always had good jokes, and the jukebox played hard rock and heavy metal—all day and all of the night.

After a while, Billy pulled up in front of Sicily Pizza. There was one parking space left, and it was motorcycle-sized, so he figured it was another good omen and a sign of his changed luck. He slid off the bike, freed the package from its cords, and carried it through the glass door into the pizza joint.

He had forgotten the name of the fat guy behind the counter, but he knew the guy was trustworthy and could accept the package for Marty. Billy handed it to Chubby, and then they exchanged pleasantries for a while: talking about pizza sales, the weather, and baseball. Billy didn't usually hang out with Mike's contacts, but he was feeling especially cheerful today.

The bell on the front door buzzed, indicating a new arrival, and two punks walked into the shop.

Billy recognized them right away. They were the same fuckers who had sliced him up in that alley two weeks before. Their faces were still greasy and mean, just like he remembered. And they both had their hands in the pockets of their long army coats, no doubt cradling deadly weapons.

"Hey, fuckwad," said the taller of the two—the one with the shaved and scarred head. "Hand over that package you just gave to Fat Boy, or we'll have to slice you again, just like we did last time, only now we'll finish the job."

Billy had no weapons; he never carried any. So he looked over at the pizza guy, hoping the scared-stiff clerk would suddenly lift a shotgun from behind the counter, just like they did in all the crime movies. But Billy could tell that wasn't going to happen: the man was shaking like a leaf, and his face was as white as pizza dough. No help there.

But just because Billy didn't carry a weapon didn't mean he didn't know how to fight. He had learned how to use his feet and fists during a childhood in the streets. These days, he also lifted weights and worked out in Riley's Gymnasium. The two punks at the door looked like they spent all their time indoors, playing video games. But he knew looks could be deceiving. After all, they had been clever enough to get the jump on Billy and slash him up the last time they had met.

From the look in their eyes now, they were probably hopped up on drugs. Just a couple of wasted losers who knew Billy carried valuable packages for Big Mike. Well, Billy was going to make sure they stayed away from Mike's affairs from now on. He turned sideways to them and raised loose fists.

The short one laughed and yanked out a thick chain. The tall one, a large hunting knife.

Billy was ready for them. But just as the two thugs began their approach, Billy's world slipped away....

****

Maria was picking at a bowl of reheated pasta when the news came on the television. She had been staring absently at the screen, not really paying much attention, zoning out, until...

She saw it.

Billy's black motorcycle parked in front of some pizza parlor. She wasn't sure how she knew it was his; she just did. Call it her sixth sense, but Maria _k_ _new_ , good and well, that _that_ was her brother's motorcycle parked in front of the restaurant's blood-smeared storefront.

She gagged. The partially masticated food dropped from her mouth and plopped back into the bowl.

Pressing a button on the remote, she cranked the TV volume.

Police are investigating this violent double murder and are questioning multiple witnesses who claim the act was carried out by a strange...

Murder!

She didn't hear the rest of the news report; she was too busy calling her brother's cell phone. Nothing in the world existed now except for the ringing at the other end of the line.

A connection was made.

" _Hello?"_

The voice sounded odd, but it was her brother all right, it was _Billy._

Maria couldn't help it; she began to sob. "Oh, Billy. I saw the report on TV and thought you were dead."

" _Report?"_

"Were you at some restaurant today? Somewhere uptown? I can't think of the name right now. I'm too upset. But were you there?"

" _Depends what you mean by 'today'."_

"Oh, God! Please tell me you didn't have anything to do with that horrible massacre! Please tell me that, Billy."

He didn't reply.

"Billy? Say something. You're scaring me."

" _It wasn't me who killed those people, Maria."_

"I saw your motorcycle on the television and thought something terrible had happened to you. I'm so glad you're okay."

" _But something terrible_ did _happen to me."_

His voice was so monotone and detached, it frightened her. Something was definitely wrong with her little brother, something beyond the lead six o'clock news story.

"What do you mean, 'something happened'?"

" _I'm not sure. I've been through a lot."_

"Come over, and I'll heat up some pasta. You always liked my pasta."

" _I'm not hungry, Maria. I just want to be left alone."_

Then, without another word, he hung up.

She set down the phone, looked at the TV again, and saw a weatherman pointing at some cartoon clouds that drifted across the screen behind him.

Grabbing her car keys, she ran out the door.

****

"Judas Priest," said Frank Leiss.

"Excuse me?" said Maria. She sat across from the strange old man in the same chair her brother had occupied a couple of weeks before.

"I wasn't going to tell you this; I thought you wouldn't understand. But then I started thinking about it and decided that maybe you are one of the few people in this city who _would_ understand. That, and it just doesn't matter anymore."

"So far, you're making absolutely no sense at all, Mr. Leiss. I came here to find out, once and for all, what you did to my brother. And all you're doing is talking in circles."

The wizard crossed his skinny legs. "Your brother asked me to provide him protection. You know that much."

"Yes."

"Splendid. Anyway, to continue, he asked me to protect him from earthly harm, which is really an interesting request. Most people just want their fortune read or want to know where their husband disappears to every night. But 'protection' is a very interesting request indeed."

Maria sighed. "Billy's job is risky, so I guess he worries about getting hurt. He had been worked over by some thugs recently, and he was just scared. He returned a medallion I had given him because he thought it didn't work anymore."

The wrinkled man tsked. "Yes, well, that's why I never leave my house. Too many ruffians about in this part of town. And I can't afford to live anywhere else, so I'm stuck here."

Maria slammed her fist against her leg. "Just tell me what you did to my brother. There were some murders uptown, and he said he wasn't hurt, but I just know this has something to do with you."

"Judas Priest."

Maria rolled her eyes. _This again._ "You conjured up someone named 'Judas Priest'? So, what does that have to do with protecting my brother? And these awful murders? What have you done, Mr. Leiss?"

"Would you like something to drink? Some tea?"

Maris sprang from her chair. "Mr. Leiss! Answer the question! Please!"

He flapped his hands at her. "Okay, okay. Just trying to be sociable." As he cleared his throat—a disgustingly wet sound—the meager sunlight leaking into the room was dimmed by a passing cloud. "It's a simple matter of exchanging one being for another. The trigger part of the incantation was the tricky part—having Billy trade places with Judas Priest when the young man is about to be harmed, and then having him switch back after the danger has passed. But it didn't take me too long to formulate a solution." He turned and pointed to the wall-to-wall library surrounding them. "After all, I have all these magic texts I've collected over the...years. Nowadays, there's not much I can't do, really. Although now that I'm at an age where I could keel over at any moment, it won't do me much good. Not unless I get desperate and decide to inhabit some poor soul's young, firm body." He leered at Maria. Then he winked.

Maria sat back down and rubbed her hands over her face.

All this was just too much to absorb. If what this shriveled old man said was true, then he was much more dangerous than she had anticipated, and her little brother—she couldn't even fathom what kind of trouble he was in.

"Do you know what that...Judas Priest...did? It murdered some people. It's all over the news."

Leiss clucked his tongue. "That's interesting. I wish I had been there to witness the transference. You know, I really don't know much about this alien entity. It was my curiosity which led me to choose it as the placeholder for your brother."

"You unleash some god-awful beast upon the earth just to satisfy your curiosity? Who does that?"

Leiss chuckled. "It's called killing two birds with one stone. Your brother is safe from harm, and I get to study Judas Priest's behavior. Oh, I think this is going to be fascinating. Don't you?"

"But that thing is a killer."

Leiss shrugged. "Maybe it was just protecting itself. Or maybe it's linked to Billy now and could sense the boy's attackers. Now there's a concept. Maybe it's protecting him. It certainly will bear some research."

"I think you should remove the transference spell, Mr. Leiss. What you have done is dangerous and irresponsible. You're endangering the whole city this way."

"Only if your brother gets in any trouble."

There was a pounding at the front door, causing them both to flinch.

"Please wait here, my dear. I will see who that is, then we will continue our fascinating discussion."

It wasn't long before Maria saw Leiss again, stepping back into the parlor with his scrawny hands held up.

Following him into the room was her brother Billy, holding a revolver, which was odd because her brother hated guns. At least that's what he had always claimed on the numerous occasions when they had discussed his questionable lifestyle.

"What are you doing here?" Billy said to Maria, the gun still pointed at Leiss.

Billy's eyes looked strange. The gaze above the dark circles was empty, and no emotion showed on his face. It was as if he were looking right through her.

"I'm here to talk about what Mr. Leiss has done to you. Oh, it's terrible, Billy. Ask him to remove the spell. The consequences aren't worth it."

"That's exactly why I'm here," Billy said, raising the gun so it pointed at Leiss's gnarled face. "I'd like the protection spell removed, Mr. Leiss. And I'd like that done right away, please. You can do it and be thankful I don't put a bullet in that prune of a head in return."

The old man's hands wavered at the ends of his thin wrists. "But, Billy, I'm afraid that spell is permanent. There's nothing I can do to remove it."

Billy's gaze moved to his sister. "Is that true, Maria? He can't remove this curse?"

"I-I don't know. This is way beyond me."

"I don't see what the problem is," Leiss said. "The spell worked, and the people who were attacking you were dealt with as they should have been."

Billy took a step toward Leiss. "The problem is that when I disappeared from here, I arrived somewhere else. A dark place of horrible nightmares that I cannot even begin to describe. The problem _is_ that for every minute that passed here on Earth, a much longer amount of time passed in that other place. The problem is, if you don't take this curse off me right now, I will shoot all six of the bullets from this gun into your face. _That's_ what the problem is. Now, fix all this, Mr. Leiss."

"No!"

The wizened wizard flung both his arms down and everything went black.

Before Maria could begin to figure out what had occurred, the daylight returned.

And Frank Leiss was now holding the revolver.

Billy looked down at his empty hand and then back at Leiss.

"Okay, you two," Leiss said, his voice no longer quiet nor polite. "Pull that carpet back, just like you did last time, Billy. Or I just may have to do some shooting of my own."

Billy was shaking his head. And Maria couldn't believe it, but tears began streaming down her brother's face. He swung his head from side to side and emitted a fearful moan.

"Do it now!" Leiss said. "Or maybe you'd like to see me shoot your sister."

Billy's head swung up, fear replaced by anger. "Leave her out of this, you rotten motherfucker."

"Then shut up and get moving. Move that carpet back. Both of you."

Maria assisted Billy as he removed the chairs and table and rolled the carpet back to reveal the magic circle etched into the floor.

"That's it," said the old man. "Now I want you to stand in the circle, Billy. And your sister should probably stand back."

Maria grabbed her brother's arm. "I'm not leaving him."

"Do as he says, Maria," Billy said. "There's nothing you can do but get into more trouble." He looked at Leiss. "Hey, why don't you just let her go. I'm the guy you want."

"She was always free to leave. I'm not holding her here."

"I'm not leaving you," Maria said. She still clutched tightly to Billy. "Who knows what he has planned?"

"Just maybe, little lady," Leiss said, "I'm going to attempt to remove the spell after all."

"But you said you couldn't," said Billy.

"You had a gun pointed at my face. Did you think I was going to tell you the truth? I was angry. Big deal. What are a few lies between friends? I told your sister one or two as well."

Hope shone for a moment in Billy's dead eyes. He said softly, "You better leave, Maria. Wait for me outside, why don't you?"

Maria shook her head. She was crying.

"Please?"

Reluctantly, she let go of his arm and backed out of the room. "Please remove the spell, Mr. Leiss. Please do it."

A long smile stretched his cheeks upward, but the wizard said nothing as Maria continued to the front door.

"I'll be right outside," she called out. And then she left the house.

****

"Let's do this," Billy said, from within the circle.

"Yes, let's," Leiss said. He still held the gun, which he now raised and fired at Billy's chest.

****

Maria stood outside Leiss's front door, her back against it, waiting for her brother to come outside and tell her that the spell had been removed and everything was going to be back to normal.

But instead, she heard a single gunshot. And when she tried to open the door, the knob would not budge. She slapped at the solid wood of the thick door with the palms of her hands and screamed out her brother's name.

From inside came an unearthly shrieking. Maria's skin went cold, as if she'd been dipped in icy water. She beat against the door again, but it was no use. She looked over toward the windows of the parlor where she had left her brother with Mr. Leiss. They were too far over to reach from the steps and too high to climb to from the ground. But she had to try.

She ran down the steps and squeezed between some thick, dead bushes and the brick wall of Leiss's home. The twisted branch tips of the bushes plucked at her clothes like little fingers.

The shrieking came again, and she almost lost her nerve as the sound rattled the windows above her head—the very same windows that she was attempting to reach so that she could do something to save her brother from this house of horrors. As she looked up at them, flickering purple light flashed and skittered between the drapes inside.

Maria reached out and put the fingertips of her right hand between two crumbling bricks. Then she reached up with her other hand and did the same. With a grunt, she pulled herself off the ground. But a second later, the bricks gave way, and she lost her grip and fell back down against the rattling bushes.

She was down, but she would not give up; Billy was inside there with a madman having god-knows-what done to him. She tried again and again to climb the wall as that hideous, almost pitiful, shrieking pierced her ears. At times, she thought she heard the crazed laughter of Frank Leiss floating above the other sounds. Yet she put it all out of her mind somehow and, with considerable effort, finally made it to the bottom ledge of the window, which was more solid than the bricks had been.

The ledge felt gritty and was probably covered with bird shit, but there was no time to think about that. Grimacing, she gripped the ledge with one hand, braced her feet against the wall, and reached for a loose brick with her free hand. Lucky for her, there was one within reach. She pulled the brick free and threw it as hard as she could against the window.

The glass shattered, and the shrieking and laughter instantly grew louder and surrounded her. She nearly fell back off the wall but managed to hold firm.

Muscles straining, Maria hauled herself up—somewhere in the back of her mind thanking herself for working out every day—unmindful of the deadly sharpness of the shards of glass in the base of the window frame. Rapidly, she punched the jagged shards inward and finally pulled herself up and through.

She flopped onto the hardwood floor.

And she screamed.

Towering above her was a creature made of murky shadows and steely claws. It was facing away from her and writhing about, confined by an invisible cage. It shrieked again, and Maria nearly lost her mind from the insanity of it all.

Despite her strong flight instinct, she gritted her teeth and got to her feet, attempting to remain unseen as the creature continued emitting its terrible cry, purple light flickering all about it as it pushed against the invisible energy wall that held it captive.

Then she realized—this was Judas Priest. Leiss had summoned it forth from its netherworld.

But for what purpose? And what did this mean for her brother? Was he lost in that limbo again while this creature stood here in his place, screaming its rage?

The towering creature with the razor tail was not paying attention to her, and she could not see Leiss for all of its bulk. She looked over and saw, sitting between two rows of books on a shelf, a ceremonial dagger displayed on a small brick of marble—the kind witches used to perform their rites.

She snaked her way across the floor and grabbed the dagger, pulling it free from its display stand. At least now she wasn't completely weaponless.

She stood up, her eyes never straying from the creature as she made her way around the magic circle in which it was trapped.

"Ah," shouted a familiar voice, "there you are again."

Leiss stood just a few feet away from where Judas Priest sought to free itself. When Leiss spoke to her, the creature whipped its head around and turned its black gaze upon Maria.

She froze in her tracks, the dagger nearly falling from her fingers.

But then it turned away again as if she were of no importance. It howled at Leiss and clawed futilely as purple sparks flickered across the force field.

There was something stranger than usual about Leiss. Now, instead of frailty, the mad wizard projected strength. He even looked more robust; he stood straighter and taller with a wide smile set on his face. And his face itself seemed to be writhing now, every wrinkle slithering like a snake, changing, transforming...

And Leiss grew taller still. And wider.

And stranger.

With a booming voice that didn't sound like the old man at all, the creature that Frank Leiss was becoming bellowed, "You, mortal, shall bear witness as I, Dangor Ra, finally take my vengeance upon my sworn nemesis, Judas Priest! I've been waiting a very long time for this, ever since the foul creature you see standing before you banished me here to this putrid planet, all those centuries ago!"

The creature formerly known as Frank Leiss now stood ten feet tall and fully muscled, like a weightlifter on steroids. Reptilian features—claw, tooth, scale, and tail—sprung forth as the transformation reached completion. His hide was yellow, and his eyes were bright red and almost glowed. He laughed and laughed as Judas Priest shrieked in frustration, the confined demon from another dimension now realizing he had become easy pickings for this cackling monstrosity, his eternal archenemy.

Maria stood between the hideous monsters, feeling disjointed, out of sync with reality. As if she were the one who did not belong here on Earth. Dangor Ra laughed as if elated by his return to form, and Judas Priest bellowed futilely as it awaited the torments Dangor Ra had dreamed up over the span of hundreds of centuries.

Maria had to choose a side.

If Dangor Ra killed Judas Priest, would her brother appear again? Or would he be confined in that hell-dimension till death did him a favor? She didn't trust Leiss, and she sure as hell didn't trust the maniacal monster he'd become.

So she made her decision.

As Dangor Ra gloated and taunted Judas Priest, Maria edged toward the magic circle etched into the floorboards. Neither monster paid her any mind, most likely because she was small and insignificant and hardly worth their attention. When she was near the circle that confined Priest, she knelt down and forcefully dragged the dagger crosswise through the etched line—the line that described the circle of confinement.

Thus short-circuiting the magic...

And freeing Judas Priest.

Ra bellowed his rage when he saw what Maria had done.

But it was too late to stop her. She shuffled back across the floor as the newly freed Priest leapt upon Ra. As she scooted backward, away from the brutal battle that was taking place, her hand brushed against something hard. She looked down and saw Billy's revolver, forgotten now like some unwanted toy, the human weapon not figuring into Ra's plans for Priest. Maria picked it up. Now she had the dagger in one hand and the gun in the other. Yet she still felt helpless compared to the two alien beings that were now hurling each other against the walls of the library, causing hundreds of books, centuries of mysterious knowledge, to rain down around them in clouds of dust.

Maria moved toward the window through which she had entered. Pocketing her weapons, she gripped the ledge and dropped outside, tripping as she landed and falling into the desiccated claws of the bushes. As she rolled onto her back, the bushes working as a prickly cushion, she looked up in time to see the brownstone's brick wall explode outward above her.

She screamed as a large chunk of the wall fell onto her legs, breaking apart into dusty fragments on contact. Pain shot through her system, and she was sure she had heard a sharp crack as the heavy bricks hit. But there was little time to concentrate on broken bones just now because the demons—clutched in each other's claws and teeth—landed a mere yard away from her, their smell alien and disturbing.

They continued to roll across the bushes, flattening them. Then they bounced across the sidewalk and slammed into Maria's parked car. Maria heard the crunch of metal and shatter of glass as they plowed into it.

Maria sat up quickly and immediately regretted it. Pain stabbed up her spine, and she barked out a cry. She pushed the heavier pieces of brick wall off her legs, then attempted to rise. Again, pain wracked her body as she struggled to her feet. But finally, she was up. She turned, her features a mask of fear and anger, pain and disgust. She touched her pockets to make sure her weapons were still there; the gun and ceremonial dagger were not lost and seemed undamaged.

It was darker outside than when she had climbed through the window just a few minutes before. She touched her watch and looked at the lighted display: 5:34 p.m.. It shouldn't be this dark at this time of day, not even if there was a bad storm. She looked at the sky and saw nothing but dull blackness, as if someone had placed a low roof over the world. She knew it was real, but her mind could not accept it. It had to be something to do with the demons. Magic? Or worse yet, maybe their home dimension was leaking into our own. She wished she had an hour to search through the toppled books in Leiss's library and find a way to stop all this, but there wasn't any time.

Down the street in a vacant, junk-filled lot, the two demons circled one another. Golden lightning shot forth from Ra's extended arm, and the bolt hit Priest with enough force to knock him on his back, the momentum causing him to slide several yards across the trash-strewn ground. But Priest rose again, snapping to his feet like a gymnast.

Maria heard sirens approaching in the distance. Normally, this would have heartened her, but under the circumstances, she feared for the lives of the approaching police.

She staggered toward her damaged car, limping badly. Every time she stepped down with her left leg, shards of electric pain danced through her nervous system. Finally reaching the small vehicle, she clung to it for support as she made her way around the hood to the driver-side door. There, Maria unlocked the door and slumped down into the seat, slamming the door behind her. Inside the car, it was a bit quieter; the shrieks and howls of the fighting demons fainter. Glancing out the windshield, she saw her brother's motorcycle leaning toward the curb, waiting for its owner to return.

Maria twisted around in the seat to make sure the demons were still in the vacant lot.

Judas Priest was throwing Dangor Ra through the wall of an abandoned pawnshop. Priest looked up and howled at the blackening sky, rejoicing in his superiority. But before long, a golden bolt of power blasted Priest, and the dark demon shrieked in agony.

Maria started the car, thankful that it still functioned after being damaged by the demon battle. She pulled out into the street and made a U-turn so she was facing the vacant lot where Priest was shaking his shadowy head, attempting to clear the blast's effects.

Ra crawled from the hole in the wall, looking larger and fiercer than ever. The demon that was once Frank Leiss was out for vengeance and would do anything to become the victor of this long-anticipated conflict.

Revving her engine, kissing the medallion that she wore around her neck for protection—a twin to the one Billy had worn—she pressed the accelerator down and aimed her car at the demons, who were now dealing ferocious blows to one another, slashing with claws, spewing arcs of black blood to discolor the ground beneath them.

As she moved nearer, she hoped the demons wouldn't notice her. But perhaps there was little chance of that; they were intent only on killing each other and probably didn't think there was anything else on this world that could stand against them, so why would they pay attention to a mere mortal female?

When the car jumped the curb, the jolt to her leg caused Maria to scream. She grew faint, yet gripped the steering wheel tighter as the car bore down on its targets. She didn't care which one she hit. Now she wasn't so sure if there was an advantage to favoring either side. She just knew she had to stop them somehow.

The sirens screamed louder, filling the street behind her as she drove her car straight toward Dangor Ra and Judas Priest.

At the last second and too late, she realized she had forgotten to put on her safety belt. The car hit the demons at high speed, crashing directly into them, sending them flying back.

At the same time, Maria threw up her hands to cover her face, and braced her legs against the floor of the car. The car tumbled and swerved sickeningly. Glass shattered. Pain shot through her wounded leg, and something slammed into the top of her head, nearly causing her to black out. Angry cries filled her ears, unearthly cries, sounds she never wanted to hear, ever again. Her present existence seemed like an endless nightmare.

But after a while, the world stopped spinning, and Maria was surprised to find that she was alive. Sore and bruised—maybe with a concussion—but still breathing. She lay on the ceiling of the car because it had flipped over after the collision. The driver-side window glass was gone—probably shattered and flung away. She squeezed through the resultant opening and into the lot.

A puff of dust flew up from the ground in front of her, and with it came the sound of a gunshot.

Several police cars were scattered in the street, their lights flashing. The police had taken cover behind their cars and were shooting into the lot at Dangor Ra, who was swiping at the bullets as if they were irritating mosquitoes. Ra stood lopsided, as if injured. At the golden demon's feet, Judas Priest lay virtually motionless, with black blood oozing from gaping wounds. The darker demon appeared to have taken the brunt of the collision with Maria's car.

Not wanting to get hit by a stray bullet, Maria backed away into the relative safety of the car. There, she pulled the revolver from her pocket and joined the police firing squad in trying to bring Dangor Ra down. She lay on her belly, flat against the car's ceiling, and took careful aim, squeezing the trigger slowly time after time, placing shot after shot into Ra's thick hide.

Ra hurled an energy bolt at one of the police cars, and it exploded into a cloud of shrapnel, black smoke, and flame. The policemen in the car screamed hideously as the conflagration consumed them, their bodies twisted and blackened as they crawled onto the bubbling asphalt of the street to die.

Maria shot her last bullet at Ra, but none of them seemed to have affected the demon in the least.

The beast howled in triumph as it readied itself to hurl another bolt at any policemen who were still brave enough to hang around and attempt to keep him at bay.

Judas Priest had stopped moving, and just as Maria noticed this fact, the demon's body shimmered strangely and the familiar purple flashes of light surrounded it, glaring up and momentarily blinding Dangor Ra, who threw a long-nailed hand over his eyes.

Then, with a final glaring burst of light, Judas Priest had vanished.

And in his place now stood Billy, looking hollow-eyed and gaunt.

Dangor Ra looked down at Billy and laughed hideously. Then he spoke in his heavy, gravelly voice. "At last! My eons-old enemy is vanquished, and I have you to thank, Billy Knott."

Billy looked up at the unnatural sky. "What's happening here? Where am I now?"

Overhead, the blackness was total, like a smothering blanket of evil.

"I am preparing to return home. The place you just left, in fact. You were the key that showed me the way. I had grown stupid, wearing that human body for centuries and nearly forgetting who I had been and where I truly belonged. But now that's all changed. I have returned to full power."

"So, go," Billy said. "And make it quick."

Maria crawled from the car, forgetting her fear, not wanting to lose Billy another time.

"But first..." Dangor Ra said. His arm shot out, and immediately he had Billy's throat in his grip and was lifting him off the ground. "I have a little cleaning up to do." He drew his other arm back, preparing to strike Billy dead.

"No!" Maria screamed, racing toward them, dagger in hand.

Billy, at eye level with the demon now, slapped his palm down on Ra's head and began to speak in a strangled voice, strange words that Maria did not recognize.

"What?" Ra shrieked. "What are you doing?" The demon was rapidly growing smaller and weaker as Billy croaked the same phrase over and over again.

Ra loosened his grip on the man.

Billy fell, landing on both feet, yet his hand remained firm upon Ra's forehead as if affixed with glue.

"Nooo!!" the demon shrieked, his voice growing fainter and fainter still until, with a sudden popping sound and a burst of light, the demon vanished.

Maria ran to Billy and threw her arms around him.

The remaining police slowly emerged from their vehicles, looking confused and scared.

"What did you do, Billy? Where did the demon go?"

Billy shrugged. Even though the demon had been banished, he did not look any happier. "Away from here, anyway. Away from Earth, I think. Hopefully for all time."

"But how—?"

"When I was back...in that other place—oh, Maria, it was for such a long time—a voice spoke to me that hadn't been there during my last visit. It was a hissing, whispering voice, but I could eventually make out the words after a while. The voice kept repeating itself—instructions—saying it was the recorded voice of Judas Priest, making me memorize the same chanted line over and over, for what felt like months and months. Until I almost went mad because he kept repeating it over and over, and now I think it will never leave my head and will always remind me of that evil place."

Maria held Billy tighter. "Is that what you repeated to Dangor Ra, The alien phrase?"

Billy nodded against her shoulder. "It was like I was programmed to do it. I knew exactly what to do to rid this world of the demon."

They hugged a while longer until finally letting go and standing back to look at each other.

In the sky, the blackness was gone. Now it was just a normal sky, the sun going down far to the west behind the buildings there.

"Will I ever forget that place, Maria?"

She looked into her brother's sad eyes, and said, "Yes. I'll help you."

# Motorhead

by

Kent Gowran

It took Hank Ballinger the better part of a minute to realize the face he stared at was his own. Admittedly, it didn't look much like the face he saw in the bathroom mirror every morning. Not anymore.

His hands opened, and the rifle he'd been holding fell away as he bent to pick his face up off the ground. He touched it gingerly, as if it were a delicate flower.

"Oh, shit..."

The thunderclap of a shotgun going off filled the air, and Ballinger felt himself lifted off his feet. He hit the ground on his back, and the sky above him began to swirl.

He looked to one side and saw his face.

It seemed to be smiling at him.

"Fuckin' asshole," he said through the blood that gurgled up and out of his throat. "Always smiling... at the wrong... fuckin' time...."

****

"Did you see that?"

"I saw it," Eddie Zimmerman said as he dropped the car into reverse and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. He swung the gold and black Torino around the side of the gas station. The big man who'd shotgunned Ballinger stood just outside the front door of the station. The breech of the double-barrel shotgun was open, and he had two fresh shells in one hand, about to reload, when he stopped and turned toward the sound of the Torino. His eyes were hidden by a pair of black sunglasses, his face further concealed by the shadow from the straw cowboy hat he wore. He wore jeans, engineer boots, no shirt, and a worn denim vest. A huge black snake was tattooed on his chest and gut, a creature that, from a distance, seemed to be a cross between an anaconda and some mythical serpent from Hell.

"Goddamn..."

The man dropped one shell into place and grinned in such a way that Eddie swore he felt his heart stutter and skip a beat. He looked at Ivan Grutzmacher sitting in the passenger seat and said, "The fuck you waiting for? Shoot him!"

Ivan turned his head toward Eddie, a dumbfounded look cemented on his face. "I'm all out of bullets."

Sweat rolled down Eddie's face. How the fuck had everything gone so incredibly wrong so goddamn fast?

"Just run him down, man," Ivan said.

"Yeah..." He floored it. The Torino's engine roared, and it shot forward. Eddie's knuckles went white as he gripped the wheel tighter and tighter.

The sonofabitch just stood there.

Grinning his wicked grin.

He closed up the breech and raised the shotgun.

"Fuck!" Eddie cut the wheel hard to the left as both barrels of the shotgun erupted. The passenger-side windows shattered, and Ivan's screams filled the car. Eddie straightened out and shot onto the highway, head-on into the path of an eighteen-wheeler.

Ivan screamed a little louder.

Eddie cranked the wheel, and the Torino escaped unscathed, with the exception of the rear bumper, which went spiraling off into the air. The trucker let out several long angry blasts from the air horn but kept on going.

Eddie realized he'd been holding his breath and let it out. "Fuck me..."

Ivan's screams had stopped. The interior of the car, splattered with his blood, looked like a murder scene in a particularly gruesome reality TV re-enactment.

"Can you hear me?"

Ivan didn't reply.

"Ivan?"

Still nothing.

Eddie reached over and gave the other man's shoulder a shake. "Hey, you still with me?"

No words, but a long, rattling moan shook loose from him.

Eddie could hear Ivan's teeth chattering.

He wondered if Ivan was going into shock.

Probably, he told himself. The kid had been shot, after all.

"Hang in there," Eddie said. He looked out at the highway ahead. Nothing but desert and more desert as far as he could see. "I'll get you to a hospital, all right? Just hang on."

****

Vernon Hawley stood over Ballinger's corpse and took a piss. As he did, he rubbed the snake tattoo, as if it were a living thing and he was caressing it in order to coax the creature into doing his bidding.

"They never learn," he said as he scratched the serpent's head. "No one fucks with us." He finished urinating, shook off, and zipped up. He turned to walk away, then stopped and looked down at Ballinger's excised face. He picked it up using the barrels of the shotgun and held it aloft.

"Come on now," he said.

The midday sun on Hawley's skin warmed the snake tattoo, and it began to melt away into an oily black ooze on the ground. Hawley's body shook and trembled, and he mumbled gibberish that probably wouldn't sound out of place in some houses of worship.

"That's it, darlin'," he said. "That's it."

The black ooze spread out in a thick line all the way to the highway, sluicing over the dead man as it went. Slowly, it began to take form. Hawley watched as it grew round, scales defining themselves, the sunshine glinting off the massive coils as the thing grew like some demonic take on Jack's beanstalk.

At the far end, the big black serpent's head lifted into the air and looked back at Hawley as he collapsed to his knees, spent and panting. It opened its great mouth and purple venom dripped from its fangs. Its tongue flicked out and brought with it a putrid stench.

Hawley lifted his head and smiled. "Good to see you again," he said.

The snake's tongue flicked in and out, and the thing winked at him. Hawley got to his feet and walked along the massive coils, his hand gently gliding over the midnight-black scales. As he approached the head, he again raised Ballinger's dead face into the air. The snake's tongue snatched it away.

"They got a head start on us, darlin'," he said. "We got to move."

The snake gazed into his eyes for a long moment, then stretched itself out along the highway, its head pointing in the direction of the Torino's escape. Hawley blinked once and the snake had flattened out, becoming one with the highway, a road to Hell paved with glistening scales.

From his back pocket, Hawley pulled out a flask of whiskey. He unscrewed the cap, took a drink, then another, and put it back.

"Be right with you," he said. He walked around the back of the gas station and leaned the shotgun against the wall. He then hung his cowboy hat on the shotgun and wrapped a gray bandanna around his head. From under a canvas tarp, he rolled out a vintage-looking fatboy chopper. The bike was painted the same midnight color as the serpent's scales. Hawley got on the cycle and fired it up.

The sky above the gas station began to turn the color of a bruise. The highway rippled and moved as Hawley rode onto it and roared off, humming an old gospel tune as he went.

****

Eddie Zimmerman ground his teeth together as he drove.

It'll be just like the smash-and-grabs we used to do on the West Side.

That's what Hank had told him.

This guy, he runs a little gas station out in the middle of nowhere. He's the middleman in some sort of drug-running operation. Always has a lot of cash on hand. But it's just him. Three of us, we go in there, it's the easiest money we'll ever make, Eddie.

Eddie shook his head. Ballinger was dead, and he had a notion Ivan would soon be joining him.

In the rearview mirror, he saw the sky going dark.

Ivan sat upright in the passenger seat and screamed.

Eddie, startled, jerked the wheel and had to fight it to straighten out the Torino as the tires screamed against the highway.

Ivan went right on screaming. Hysterical, high-pitched, and absolutely terrified.

"Ivan!" Eddie cracked him across the face. "Shut the fuck up!"

Ivan's mouth hung open, and the screaming subsided. He pointed out the windshield at the highway.

"What are you pointing at?"

Ivan jabbed at the glass with his finger.

"What?"

"The road... It's not..." Ivan went back to screaming.

And Eddie saw it.

He saw the highway stretching out in front of him.

He tried to blink it away, rubbed his eyes with his fist.

"What the hell?"

The highway was pulsing and moving. He could see he was driving on a living thing. Impossible, his brain told him, but his eyes knew what they were seeing.

It's a snake.

He remembered the snake tattooed on the man at the gas station, and a groan escaped his lips. It wasn't possible. Yet...

"Sonofabitch..."

He looked at Ivan. The kid wouldn't, probably couldn't, stop screaming. It was a nightmare. They were driving on a nightmare.

Eddie thought maybe Ballinger, face shot off and everything, had gotten the better deal out of the botched robbery.

He checked the rearview and saw the serpentine road had another rider. A man on a chopper. Gaining fast.

"Is that the guy from the gas station?"

Ivan stared straight ahead and kept up the screaming.

Eddie squinted at the image in the rearview.

It might be him.

Who else could it be on this damned highway?

The rider was still too far away, but Eddie felt certain the biker had that grin plastered on his mug. At the rate he was gaining, it wouldn't be too long before he could confirm that suspicion.

****

Hawley felt alive again.

He looked down at the scales racing by beneath the chopper and felt himself growing strong again. Unleashing the snake always left him feeling weak. But that weakness faded fast. And when his strength returned, it always did so with a vengeance.

He could feel the snake's venom in his own veins. He thought of the old woman, her broken-down shack in a Louisiana swamp...

It had been a lifetime ago. He'd come back from the war broken, his soul torn and frayed. He went to the swamp to die and was indeed very nearly dead when she found him. She took him into her home. She sang songs with words he didn't know but somehow understood what they meant. Her eyes would roll back into her head, her eyelids fluttering, and she'd chant the names of dead men and heretics. He drank his fill of the purple venom from her breast, and when he was done she brought out her inks and needles and marked him with the image of the snake.

She said the old gods demanded a sacrifice for the gift of the snake.

Hawley, drunk on venom and bewildered by the new presence within him, began to cry and pissed himself like a frightened little girl.

The old woman slapped him hard.

You are the snake.

Show no mercy.

No weakness.

Never again.

The old woman gave herself to the snake as a sacrifice. He watched, at first in terror and revulsion, which turned to fascination and, finally, awareness of the new power he held.

He burned the old woman's shack and left the swamp.

He wandered until he came to the desert. When he saw the gas station, the sign in the window stating it was for sale, he knew he'd found a home.

The drug runners made for natural business partners. Once, when another outfit thought to move in on his operation, Hawley had shown them what the snake could do. His cut of the profits rose dramatically, and his life settled into a groove he could embrace.

"Fucking assholes," Hawley said.

He'd known their game as soon as the Torino came off the highway.

It had happened before. Not often, but a handful of times over the years. Always with the same results.

No survivors.

Nothing left behind to even hint that the bastards had been there in the first place.

The passenger-side door of the Torino opened.

"What's that now?"

****

Ivan didn't put up a fight when Eddie reached across him and pulled the door handle. It opened wide, and he didn't even seem to notice.

He just screamed on and on and on.

Eddie knew how he felt.

He half-expected to sit up in bed at any moment, drenched in sweat, heart pounding, praising sweet Jesus in Heaven that it had all been a bad dream.

Bad dream?

Shit.

More like a real balls-out motherfucker of a nightmare.

He looked at Ivan.

"Sorry, kid."

He shoved him as hard as he could. Ivan's head turned toward him as he fell toward the open door. There was no look of surprise on his face. His lips moved, but no sound came out as he flopped out of the car like a rag doll.

Eddie swerved the Torino, and the open door swung back in and closed. He swallowed hard and looked at the place Ivan had been sitting. Nothing but blood and broken glass there now.

Eddie felt sick.

He'd never killed anyone before.

But maybe Ivan wasn't dead.

He made a quick check of the mirror, and in the right-side mirror he saw the rear wheel roll over Ivan's head. It issued a loud crack and a pop, and that, Eddie knew, was a merciful death for Ivan Grutzmacher.

****

The body of the youngest of the three would-be robbers hit the snake's scales, and the Torino drove over his head on the second bounce. Brains, bone, and blood splattered across the rear license plate of the car and the scales.

Hawley threw back his head and roared with laughter.

The body still had some bounce left in it, and it came up again from the highway and flopped toward the chopper. Hawley leaned the bike almost past the point of no return and narrowly missed being clocked by the booted foot of the corpse.

"Gotta do better than that, motherfucker!"

The chopper raced up alongside the Torino. Hawley knocked on the driver-side glass.

The driver looked out his window. A stupid look worked its way across his face.

"How you like the ride?"

The driver slammed his upraised middle finger against the glass.

Hawley laughed and kicked out at the window. It shattered and blew into the car. Glass cut into the driver's face and peppered his hair.

"You wanna ride the snake," Hawley said above the noise of the roaring engines, "you gotta pay the price, hoss!"

The driver's mouth twisted into a smile that mirrored his own. Then the grin broke and he began to laugh.

"What's so fucking funny?"

****

Eddie gripped the wheel and yanked it to the left. The driver side of the Torino smacked into the chopper.

He heard the big man from the gas station let loose with a startled yelp. In the side-view mirror, he saw the man fighting to get the cycle back under control.

The chopper was still coming back at the Torino.

Too fast.

Out of control and moving way to fast.

The guy on the bike didn't seem to be paying attention to him at all. Too busy trying to not go spinning off into the strange darkness that surrounded them.

"It's worth a shot," he said, trying to convince himself of his own plan. "What have you got to lose?"

He didn't like the idea of answering that one out loud for himself.

Eddie slammed both feet down on the brake and braced himself.

The chopper smacked into the rear of the Torino.

The rider came off the seat and launched into the air.

Eddie watched the man sail over the front of the car and hit the scales. He watched as he slid for a good hundred yards and came to a halt.

Faster than should've been possible, the man got back on his feet.

"All right," Eddie said as he slammed his foot down on the gas and the muscle car charged forward again, "I'll just have to run the bastard down."

****

Vernon Hawley shook off the impact. "Gonna pay for that one..."

The car was coming on fast.

Hawley stood his ground.

"Come on, you sonofabitch."

The scales beneath him began to tense.

The highway started to writhe.

"You don't fuck with me," he said. His voice was almost a whisper.

The snake began to coil.

The Torino kept coming.

The snake's giant head rose up behind Hawley.

Hawley looked over his shoulder and grinned at the snake. "This one here thinks he can whup us, darlin'," he said. "Some folks just don't have a clue."

The snake opened its mouth wide, each venom-dripping fang was longer than a man. Its yellow eyes narrowed to slits, and it reeled back, ready to strike.

"Just be patient now, darlin'," Hawley said. "I want to hear him scream."

****

Eddie Zimmerman, upon seeing the snake head rise up into the sky, longed for a melon baller with which he might scoop out his own two eyes.

"Fuck me sideways..."

He saw the giant body of the snake coiling up behind him. Could he hit the brakes, jam it into reverse, and take those coils like a crazy living corkscrew turn?

He knew it was impossible.

As impossible as a giant snake that was also somehow the highway and seemed to be connected to the guy from the gas station in some way.

The guy from the gas station.

He had a snake tattooed on him.

A big black snake with fangs that Eddie thought did bear some resemblance to the thing currently staring him down and showing off those fangs dripping purple gunk that he just knew had to be about the deadliest venom around.

If he could take out the man, the snake would stop its attack.

It would cease to exist, he thought. Maybe just disappear and everything would go back to normal.

The robbery would still be botched.

Ballinger and Ivan would still be dead.

He could live with all that.

And what if it didn't work?

What if killing the guy from the gas station left him stranded in this nightmare world?

Could he kill the snake?

What else might be out here waiting for him?

Eddie looked up into the bruised sky and wondered if God was out there. Was He seeing all this?

Too many questions.

Eddie's brain started to overheat.

****

The gold-and-black car kept coming.

"Gotta give the driver credit," Hawley said to the snake. "He's got some balls."

The snake only hissed in reply.

"Most men, they would've curled up and started sucking their thumbs by now."

He laughed, and a tremor went through the body of the serpent, as if it were laughing, too.

The Torino came closer and closer.

Hawley looked at the snake. "All right."

The snake's head shot out like a rocket. It came in low over its own massive coils, its yellow eyes locked on the headlights of the car.

Hawley had to crouch down and find a hold among the scales. The snake had never moved so fast before. He let out a whoop and a holler.

The dark sky began to swirl, and bolts of red lightning broke all around. Thunder boomed, and the snake's fangs gleamed bright in the darkness.

A piece of the sky ripped open, and Hawley could see the cosmos out there. He'd never had an eye for beauty, but the sight of the heavens was breathtaking.

The tear opened wider, and he saw mountains. A thin finger of lightning touched the peak of the tallest mountain, and the whole range burst open, spewing lava and giant bat-like creatures that soared through space with fiery wings.

This is it, he thought, the thing he'd been after all this time.

The big enchilada.

Total fucking destruction.

His arm shot out, and he pointed at the driver of the Torino.

"Hell awaits, motherfucker!"

A blizzard of ash fell all around them.

Like a child in the falling snow, he opened his mouth and caught black flakes on the tip of his tongue.

Vernon Hawley cried out in ecstasy.

****

The stench of brimstone filled the car.

Ash blew in through the shattered windows. It coated Eddie's skin and the interior of the car.

His eyes darted from the snake's dripping fangs rushing at him to the torn sky to the car's dashboard. He'd red-lined the engine, but the Torino kept giving him more.

He looked out through the still-expanding tear into space, and he saw the strange burning creatures flying out there. Seeing them, the panic and terror fell away as a beatific calm washed over him.

His head cleared.

A confident smile came to his face.

It would all be over soon.

The snake's mouth opened wider.

Purple venom dripped onto its body and smoldered there.

Eddie slipped on a pair of mirrored aviator shades and let go of the wheel.

****

The snake's fangs punctured the hood of the Torino. Metal screamed, and the serpent rose up into the air, the car locked in its jaws.

The giant body uncoiled, and it shot arrow straight into the cosmos. Hawley climbed up the snake and reached the top of its head.

"That's it, darlin'! You got him!"

He looked at the driver of the Torino.

The driver had a crazy calm smile on his face.

Hawley saw his own reflection in the driver's shades.

Vernon Hawley was on fire, and much of his skin had been eaten away by the snake's venom.

He felt as if he were seeing himself, his true self, for the very first time.

It was breathtaking.

Hawley stood up on the snake's head.

His eyes took it all in.

It was a divine damnation—

everything he had ever dared to hope for, and so much more.

If it was Hell, it looked a whole lot like Heaven to Vernon Hawley.

He jumped from the snake's head and landed on the roof of the car. He smashed down on the windshield with the heel of his boot again and again until it broke away.

He dropped flat on the roof and stuck his burning head into the car.

The driver still had that smile on his face.

"Digging the ride, hoss?"

****

Eddie didn't think the guy from the gas station looked much like a man anymore. Just some vile, grinning death's head, like a teenage boy's notion of a badass chopper-riding Grim Reaper.

But real.

A flesh-dripping hand shot into the car. "Vernon Hawley," the guy said. "Pleased to meet you."

The smile on Eddie's face didn't falter. "Go fuck yourself."

The car lurched hard, and Hawley's open hand withdrew.

"Now, is that any way to talk to your new pal?"

Eddie looked past him, saw the metal of the Torino melting away.

The roar of the engine died.

Something else landed on the roof of the car.

****

Hawley flipped onto his back and stared up into the glistening black eyes of a fiery winged creature. Long bone-like fingers reached out and took hold of him by the neck. He was lifted up, and his legs kicked out against the demon to no avail.

Over his shoulder, he could see more of the demons—hundreds it seemed—ripping apart the snake and eating its flesh.

"No!"

He looked again into the eyes of the demon gripping him.

"I'm your brother!" He was hysterical. Ecstasy had been replaced with terror. It wasn't supposed to be like this. They should have embraced him... accepted him as one of their own... "Please," he said, his voice barely a whimper. "Don't you know me?"

The demon laughed and tossed Hawley down onto the hood of the car.

****

Eddie opened the revolver's cylinder.

It was empty.

He'd never pulled a job with a loaded gun.

From the glove compartment he took a half-empty box of shells. The car lurched wildly, and the bullets went everywhere.

The burning man was just outside the shattered window, on his knees and screaming like a banshee.

Calm and cool, Eddie grabbed up a shell from the floorboard and dropped it into the revolver's open cylinder. He snapped it shut and thumbed back the hammer.

"Hey, asshole!"

Hawley looked at Eddie.

Eddie raised the gun.

"Please," Hawley said. "Do it! Fucking shoot me!"

Eddie Zimmerman laughed.

Another demon landed on Hawley's back and dug a hand into his guts. It yanked out a long rope of viscera and shoved it into Hawley's open mouth.

Hawley gagged. He reached out toward Eddie in the car. "Please!"

Eddie laughed until tears came to his eyes.

"Maybe next time, Vern," he said.

****

The crack of the pistol echoed through the cosmos, and Hawley watched in hopeless terror as the back of the driver's head erupted. His body slumped sideways across the front seat, and the mirrored shades slipped away.

"Stop smiling!" Hawley's arms were torn away, but he couldn't stop staring at the dead man in the car. At that smile on his face.

Like the dead man knew something Hawley didn't.

"Tell me! Please!"

Hawley's head ripped free of his body. The demon on his back took flight, holding his head so Hawley could see the snake, his own body, the car, and the dead man fall away into the yawning void below.

Why wasn't he dead?

How could this be happening?

That fucking smile.

The dead man knew. He knew.

Hawley howled. "Fucking tell me!"

But dead men tell no tales.

# Slayer

by

L. L. Soares

"Is this what you're looking for?" Emmy said, in aisle five of Walgreens.

Abercrombie slid up behind her and took the package from her hand. It read, in big red letters, _EMERGENCY RAIN PONCHO_ , and showed a picture of a man wearing one. It was made of clear plastic.

"Yeah, that's it," he said.

"Pretty weird thing to be looking for," she said. "It hasn't rained here in a while. Besides, why not just get an umbrella?"

"I told you it was something silly," he said. "You're the one who insisted on coming with me to do errands."

"Between this and the votive candles, you're a strange guy."

"Don't tell me you're having second thoughts?"

"No," she giggled, "I wouldn't do that."

_Of course not,_ he thought. No matter what they thought of his rituals beforehand, they were always intrigued enough to stick around. That was one thing he could count on.

At the counter, he grabbed a handful of candy bars and added them to his purchase. Emmy was looking stick-thin and could use a little meat on those bones.

He turned and looked at her, in that midriff-baring shirt, and her blond hair tied up in a pink ribbon. He imagined he could see her bones beneath her translucent flesh. And then he saw her skeleton rip apart in a sudden hot wind.

Abercrombie blinked his eyes and he was back in the Walgreens, and Emmy was giggling again. "Did you forget your wallet?"

"Huh?"

"The woman asked you three times. Do you need me to pay for it?"

"No," he said, and reached in his back pocket. He smiled at the woman behind the counter. "Sorry about that. It's been a weird day."

"No problem," the woman said, snapping her gum. She looked about thirty, and she clearly found him to be as attractive as Emmy did. His looks always made things easier.

He paid her, and they went out into the arid day.

"Not a cloud in the sky," Emmy said, looking up and shielding her eyes. She unhooked her sunglasses from her top and put them back on.

"I know," he said. "I just like to be prepared."

****

Back at the hotel room, she couldn't get out of her clothes fast enough. She was naked and rocking on the edge of the bed as he set up the candles on the coffee table.

"It looks like you're getting ready for church," she said with a giggle.

"It's my little offering to Saint Ranier of Admah."

"Who?"

"He's kind of like my patron saint," he told her. "I pledged myself to him when I was younger."

"Pledged yourself?" she asked, finding this getting weirder still. "You mean like you're some kind of monk or priest or something?"

"Kind of, I guess" he said, "but not really."

"Where's Admah?"

"I think it used to be in the Middle East somewhere. It was next to Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember that story from the Bible, where God destroyed those two cities because they were full of sinners? Well, he destroyed more than just those two cities. There were five in all. The other ones were Admah, Zoboim and Bela."

He lit the candles, which gleamed behind purpled glass.

"That's better," he said, standing up.

"I didn't realize you were so religious," she said. "When we first met, you couldn't get me in bed fast enough. Now it turns out you're some kind of holy man."

"I've never taken a vow of chastity," he told her. "And I've never believed in the concept of 'sins of the flesh.' So you've got absolutely nothing to worry about."

He went to his duffel bag and unzipped it. He pulled out a statue just over a foot tall. He put it on the table in the center of the candles.

"Who's that?"

"I told you," he said. "Saint Ranier."

She couldn't really see it in detail, but it looked like a man bound in ropes. Parts of him didn't seem right. He looked misshapen.

Abercrombie had a portable kneeling bench that he'd unpacked. He knelt down on it now and crossed himself.

"Come here, stupid. I'm all ready for you."

He crossed himself again, stood up, and turned off the lights so that the candles were the only illumination in the room. It was kind of romantic and spooky at the same time. Shadows danced on the statue.

He watched it for a few minutes and then turned to look at her face in the flickering glow.

"Time to fuck," he said.

****

He knew she was lying about her age. When he'd met her, she'd told him she was nineteen, but he suspected she was really sixteen or seventeen. In another time, in a different part of his life, he might have been concerned about that, but considering what was coming, it really didn't seem all that important now.

She was sleeping beneath the thin sheet, tangled up in it and snoring softly. The air conditioning provided a steady drone—a backup singer to her snore's lead.

He wondered if anyone was concerned where she was, or if she was really as carefree as she pretended to be.

He'd met her in a bar, of course. Once he came into a new town, it didn't take long to find someone to gravitate into his orbit. Despite her make-up, or rather because of it, he'd wondered if she belonged in such a place, but the bartender seemed to know her and kept refilling her bright blue drinks. In fact, everyone in the bar seemed to know her. She was clearly a regular there.

She'd seemed a little tipsy by the time she noticed him and started hanging around beside him. He just drank his shots of whiskey and glasses of beer and was silent for the most part. He didn't need pick-up lines or any of that crap. He just turned up the wattage a bit on his magnetic personality. That was one of the gifts Saint Ranier gave him in return for his devotion.

One of many gifts.

He thought about that as he went to the table he'd converted into an altar, knelt down before it again, and crossed himself.

He stared down at the porcelain statue between the burned-out candles.

There was a storm coming. He could hear it rumbling. He could feel it coming closer. But it was in his soul. And it would take another day to get here, so he might as well have some fun until then.

But first, he spent some time in prayer.

****

The second night he was in town, Emmy found that she couldn't move, and wondered if he had slipped her some kind of drug.

Abercrombie was over by the coffee table, praying to his saint again. The votive candles had been replaced with new ones.

She tried to talk to him, but it hurt to open her mouth.

He crossed himself and stood up. He had a knife in his hands.

"It's almost time," he told her.

Then he went over to her and pressed the knife hard against her belly, and sliced. He reached inside her and started to pull out organs. She could feel the pressure of them being ripped from her insides, but she didn't feel any pain. She wondered if she was going into shock, but she could still hear him. Still see him, even though he was a little blurred now.

He hummed a song as he pulled out her intestines and wrapped them around her, lifting her upper body to tie her arms with them. She knew she was bleeding profusely, because when he lifted her up, she saw that the sheets were stained red.

"Now you're like him," he said. And she stared at the statue on the table, which was also bound up by its innards, just like her.

It was the first time she realized that.

"Why am I still alive?" she wondered.

He put his mouth close to her ear.

"I can keep you alive as long as I want to," he whispered. "But don't worry, I won't make this last too long."

He propped pillows up behind her and pressed her back into them.

"Now watch," he told her.

He stood before her, naked and holding the knife still wet with her blood. He held it up, and then everything got very bright, and she saw him in other places, killing other people.

Hundreds, thousands of people.

Like Santa Claus, he went to all of their houses over the course of one night, defying any rules she knew about reality. But instead of presents, he brought only death:

An old woman who woke in her bed to find him hovering above her. He put his hand over her mouth and slit her throat.

A middle-aged man whose wife had recently left him, restless in his bed because he wasn't used to sleeping alone. Abercrombie appeared to him and stabbed him seven times in his chest.

Two young boys sharing a bed in a two-room apartment, hearing a noise and thinking that their mother had returned early from the late shift where she worked as a nurse, but it wasn't her. It was a strange man with long hair and a knife, come to put them back to sleep permanently.

He killed them all, one after another. And yet, in some way she could not understand, he was also here in the hotel room with her, saying, "Now watch this."

And then they were all dead, and he knelt before her, and she thought he would slit his own throat then, as some kind of violent coda to his crimes, but he didn't. Instead he got to his feet and went to her and slit away the intestines that bound her, before he forced her eyelids closed with his fingers and cut her deeply from ear to ear.

And then his work was done for the night. The storm had passed.

He took a shower and packed his things and went outside, and began to walk toward the town limits. A long-haired man in a windbreaker and a wearing a backpack. Many of the buildings he passed were on fire, and there was a strong stench of brimstone in the air, but he was used to it.

Once he reached the sign that read, "You are now leaving Crystal Hills," he put down his backpack, opened it, and put on the rain poncho he'd bought with Emmy.

There was a twister above the town now, swirling with screams and blood.

He could feel blood pelting down on him as he restrapped the backpack and continued to walk away from the town.

He did not look back.

****

Everyone in Crystal Hills was dead. And anyone who ever knew of the place, or had relatives or friends there, forgot that the place had even existed, no matter where they were, as if it had never been a real place at all.

And Saint Ranier smiled.

****

"Aren't you Leon Coles?" the female voice said from behind him as he was looking through the stack of old vinyl records.

He turned around. Always good to look them over first before he responded; he'd learned that much over the years. They were a twenty-something couple, a girl and her boyfriend, and the guy looked as excited as she did. The girl had a nice shape, but her face was kind of plain. The boy was actually a little prettier than her, despite some acne scars.

"Guilty as charged," Leon said, taking them in, the gears in his mind already in motion.

"I loved Honey Load," the girl said. "'Sexy Earth Mother' is one my favorite songs ever."

"I liked Cooze Patrol a lot, too," the boy said, trying to show off that he knew about Leon's previous band, the underground one that had the cult audience before he got big. "Imagine seeing a real rock star here!"

"Yeah, imagine that," Leon said, making sure his cowboy hat was on tight to hide his baldness. It wouldn't do to ruin the illusion. Back when Honey Load was at the top of the charts, he'd had a lion's mane of blond hair.

But his face hadn't aged much. He thanked skin creams and good genetics for that.

"What brings you here, to the middle of nowhere?" the girl asked, squeezing the boy's hand and looking at him with a big smile.

"Just passing through," Leon said. "I'm something of a wanderer these days. Trying to take this whole country in, one mile at a time."

"Where are you staying?" the girl blurted out, and the boy instantly went red. Leon could tell they both wanted to know, but only the girl had had the guts to say it.

He was going to repeat that he was just passing through, that he wasn't staying anywhere in this minor city in the bosom of the great Midwest, but the two of them intrigued him. Especially the part about Cooze Patrol. Nobody talked about them anymore.

"Well, I'm not sure yet," he said. "Just got into town."

"We live right near here," the boy said suddenly. "I've got some of your old albums. Can I go get them? Have you autograph them?"

Leon flashed that cocksman smile. "You live nearby? Why don't we just take a stroll over there. I've got nothing going on at the moment."

"Really?" the girl said. Then, "The place is a mess."

Which told him two things. The boy didn't live with his parents. And the two of them were living together. Two things that he was really glad to hear.

"Don't worry about the place," Leon said. "I've seen worse. Hell, I probably _caused_ worse. We trashed a lot of hotel rooms in our day."

The couple laughed on cue, and then the excitement level seems to ratchet up a bit.

"Sure," the boy said. "Let's go."

****

"God, you look good," the woman said, sitting two seats away from him at the singles bar. He knew that if she hadn't been drinking, she probably wouldn't have had the nerve to say something first, and as it was she seemed embarrassed as soon as the words left her mouth.

Abercrombie smiled, and that seemed to renew her confidence.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I guess I drank a little more than I'm used to."

"No problem," he told her. "You're kind of cute like this."

The puffiness around her eyes said she had been crying, and that put up a red flag. He was looking for someone he could connect with fast. Someone vulnerable. And she seemed to fit the bill.

"I never do this kind of thing," she explained. "It's been ages since I've been in a bar like this."

"You don't like to drink?"

"No," she said. "It's not that. I just don't normally hang out in places where people pick each other up. It's not my thing."

"And why is that?"

"Well, because up until recently, I was married."

He pegged her age to be around forty. She was still pretty, and must have been a real looker in earlier times, but there were lines around her eyes and creases in her neck. Not that that changed anything.

If anything, that made her more attractive to him.

The song playing on the jukebox, some old hit by the band Foreigner that he couldn't name, stopped, and they were able to talk at a more normal volume.

"My name is Abigail, by the way," she said.

"Abercrombie."

"What, like Abercrombie and Fitch?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"What kind of name is that? Is that your first name or your last name?"

He got the bartender's attention and signaled for another round of drinks.

"Tell me about your husband," he said.

"Do I have to?" She started to sound sad again. "I'm really trying to forget him."

"How long were you married?"

"Too long. Twelve years. It took me that long to realize I was living with a man I didn't even know."

"He cheated on you?"

"It's that obvious, huh?"

"So you're here, looking for a distraction from all the bullshit?"

"Well, I'm certainly not looking for another husband." She laughed after she said it.

"I'm staying up the block, at the Filbert," he told her. "You interested in taking a walk? It's a nice night for it."

She smiled. It made her face look younger. "Okay."

The new drinks came, and he told her to drink up. Not long afterward they were walking arm in arm down the street toward his hotel. The main reason he was holding her arm was because she could barely walk, the state she was in.

When they got back to his place, she asked if she could lie down for a minute. The room was starting to spin. He said sure.

A few minutes later, she was sleeping.

Abercrombie watched her for a while and then stripped down to his underwear and crawled into bed beside her. She was still in her clothes. He considered taking them off, but he preferred to look like a gentleman. It would do wonders to win her over.

****

"Yeah," Leon said as he squeezed her throat. He was just about to come, and he could see the eyes roll up in her head. It was a bad sign, and he wanted to let go, but it was a strong orgasm and he let it overwhelm him. When he was done, he was surprised he hadn't killed her. Somehow she was still breathing.

One of these days he was really going to fuck up and kill someone.

The guy was on the floor, naked and unconscious. Now there were two of them out cold.

He went and used the shower then got dressed. He left a few hundred-dollar bills on the bed. The girl was starting to stir a bit, looking groggy. The boy was sitting up and holding his head.

Leon didn't wait until they were ready to talk. He just let himself out, went down the block to his car, and drove as far away as he could get.

****

"So what brings you here, anyway?" Abigail asked as they stood out on the hotel room's balcony, watching the beach below.

"I've got business to take care of," Abercrombie told her. "Nothing too exciting."

"What do you do?"

He kissed the back of her neck. She giggled.

"So what do you see in an old lady like me, anyway?"

"I'm not as young as I look," he told her.

When she had woken fully dressed on the bed, with him beside her, she had quickly showered and woke him up with some of the best sex he'd had in a long time. Chivalry wasn't dead, and he'd been rewarded.

Now he lifted her and carried her back to bed.

"It's a beautiful day," she told him. "It really is."

"So, do you have to be somewhere soon?"

"No," she said. "I just lost my job. I worked in the office at a box factory. They closed down and had to let everyone go last week."

"Sorry to hear it," he told her.

"I know. I must sound like a real loser. No husband, no job. The only upside is that I don't have to go anywhere," she said. "I'm all yours."

With his fingers, he traced the curve of her arms, then he outlined the shape of her breasts. Every time he came to a new town, he liked to find someone to kill time with. Abigail was nicer than most. He could almost imagine himself staying here. Starting a new life. Leaving all the death behind.

****

"No way," Leon said into his cell phone. "There is absolutely no way I'd agree to that."

"It's good money," his agent, Barry, said.

"It's petty thievery," Leon said. "I won't put the band together for that. I won't even consider talking to him until he starts the negotiations off at one million."

"You're not fucking serious."

"Fucking A, I am. You're my agent, Barry. You're supposed to be looking out for me."

"I thought this was a good deal, man. The band has been out of the public eye for a long time."

"Listen, we still sell lots of CDs or MP3s or whatever the kids are listening to these days, and we're still a bankable name. We're still worth something, Barry. The other guys might be willing to play for peanuts, but I've got final veto power. And I say we pass on this."

"Okay, if you say so."

"I say so. If they're serious, they'll come around and offer us some real money."

"This '80s nostalgia thing will only last so long," Barry said. "You've got to jump aboard the train while it's still on the tracks."

"Bullshit," Leon said. "You know I don't need the gig. I'm set. If I'm gonna put the spandex back on, there better damn well be a decent paycheck in it for me."

"Okay, okay. I get it."

"Call me back when they make a real offer."

Leon closed his phone and threw it under the passenger seat. The amount they had offered was an insult. He was just shocked that Barry didn't see it that way.

Maybe it was time to change agents.

The big green highway sign up ahead read, _Kingston: Exit 18_.

"Finally," he said, and took the turnoff.

****

She'd dozed off, and when she woke up again, Abercrombie had taken his portable prayer bench out of his bag and had lit a bunch of candles. He was kneeling before an odd-looking statue that was standing on the couch cushion, obviously in prayer. She wanted to ask him about it but didn't want to disturb him.

So he's a religious man, she thought. Maybe that's not so bad. Maybe a little church-going stability is what I need in my life right now.

He crossed himself and stood up. He turned and noticed her watching him.

"You're awake."

"Yep. I didn't realize you were such a pious man."

"Not quite," Abercrombie said.

"Who's that?" she said, pointing to the statue. "A saint?"

"Saint Ranier," he said. "You probably haven't heard of him."

"What's he the saint of?" she asked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well, like Saint Jude is the saint of lost causes. I know that one. What's Saint Ranier the saint of?"

"I guess he's for lost causes, too," Abercrombie said. "I never really thought about it before."

"Tell me about him."

Abercrombie smiled. It wasn't often someone was really interested in his beliefs, and it was nice to have someone to talk to.

"Well, he was kind of a nomad. His people were originally from Admah."

"Admah?"

"Remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? The two cities that God destroyed back then. Admah was another one."

"I didn't know that."

"It's not generally known in secular circles, but Saint Ranier was descended from people who somehow escaped death when Admah was destroyed. They became nomadic and wandered around Europe for centuries, cursed to never find another home to replace the one that was taken from them. Ranier himself was famous for healing people along his travels, to make money. But he didn't want this gift and was persecuted as a witch for performing his miracles. He cursed God to take his abilities away but was disemboweled and mutilated for his troubles."

"Sounds awful."

"They removed his organs, one by one, and showed them to him. Because he had the gift of healing, he tried to heal himself, but they just kept mutilating him more and more. All his powers could do was keep him alive, in agony, as he was tortured. When his final organ was removed, he closed his eyes and died."

"Terrible."

"Yeah, it _was_ kind of terrible. But a lot of the saints were persecuted for their beliefs. A lot of them were martyrs for their cause. The difference with Ranier is that he never wanted his gifts. He never wanted to be a martyr."

"So what drew you to him?"

"He has a lot of wisdom to give to us," Abercrombie said.

She was starting to think that maybe this guy wasn't as stable as he appeared to be. Who prays to a saint like this? But he had been so nice so far, that she didn't want to offend him. She nodded her head.

"I don't expect you to understand," he told her. "You probably think I sound like one of those nuts who are shouting about Jesus in the street."

"No, of course not."

They were both getting uncomfortable.

"It's a nice day," he said. "Let's go for a walk on the beach. We've been inside so long. It would be nice to get out and clear our heads."

"Sure."

****

"You can scream all you want, Fella, but it won't change my mind," Leon was shouting into his cell phone. "You ought to know by now that you're not going to intimidate me into doing what you want."

There was a knock at hotel door. He walked over and opened it.

A young guy, maybe nineteen, wearing jeans and a _Cooze Patrol_ T-shirt, was standing in the doorway.

"How did you get up here? I don't have time for fans right now."

"Mr. Oswald sent me," the kid said.

"That's different; get inside."

The kid walked in, and Leon closed the door.

"I don't give a fuck what the rest of the band wants," Leon said, getting back to his conversation. "You know full well that I'm the deciding vote in this equation. So what you guys want means fuck-all to me."

The kid sat on the foot of the bed and swung his legs back and forth.

"I'm crazy? You really should choose your words better, asshole. That's not exactly how you get me on your side."

He shut his phone and stared at the kid with hate-filled eyes.

The boy gulped.

"It's not you," Leon said. "It's this goddamn band of mine."

"Cooze Patrol?"

"You should know better than that, unless you just wore that T-shirt to impress me. Three of those guys are dead from overdoses. No way I'm getting _that_ band back together. No, I'm talking about Honey Load. They wanna get the old gang back together and play for peanuts. Well, I stopped being an elephant a long time ago."

"Gee," the kid said, "that would be cool if you guys got back together."

"Yeah, sure."

"They won't pay you what you're worth, huh?"

"You can say that again," Leon said. "But don't worry your pretty little head about shit that doesn't matter. Enough business talk."

The kid smiled. "You know, when Mr. Oswald told me what was up, I told him I'd come here for free. I've been a fan of yours forever."

"Sure you have," Leon said. This fanboy shit was starting to get on his nerves. "There's a wig in the bathroom. Put it on. And get out of those clothes."

"Sure thing."

Leon watched him go inside the bathroom and close the door.

He threw his phone across the room.

"Fucking peanuts," he said, and started doing jumping jacks. He hadn't gotten down to the gym earlier in the day, like he'd wanted to. And that pissed him off, too. He hated it when he got off his routine. That's what sucked about being on the road. Reuniting the band—going on tour—would be a hundred times worse.

The kid came out of the bathroom, naked and wearing a long blond wig. It looked just like the way Leon's hair used to look, back in the day. When he was the biggest fucking stud on the planet.

Now he kept his cowboy hat on all the time to hide the receding hairline.

"Looking good," Leon said, finally able to get his mind off the bullshit. "You know, on second thought, go put the T-shirt back on."

"Really?"

"Yeah, sure. Might as well play the fan up to the hilt. It might be fun."

"I'm really a fan, you know."

"All the better."

The kid went into the bathroom, then came out fitting the shirt over his head.

"Now get on the bed," Leon said. "On all fours. I'm gonna buck you like a bronco."

****

For some reason, they held hands as they walked along the shoreline.

It had happened so organically, without thought, that when Abercrombie noticed it, it made him feel butterflies in his stomach. This kind of thing never happened, and he wasn't sure what it meant.

She pretended not to notice, but he could see her smile from the corner of his eye when she turned her head.

The comforting sound of the waves coming in provided a relaxing soundtrack to the moment.

"So what are you going to do now?" she asked him. "You said you had some business, and then you're leaving?"

"Something like that," he said. "My job demands I travel all the time."

"I'm not sure I'd like that," she said. "Unless I had someone to travel with."

He took her hint. "Yeah, it does get lonely sometimes, I guess. But I deal with it."

"I know there's nothing keeping me here," she said, being more blatant about it.

"That's too bad."

"Seriously, these past couple of days have been wonderful. Can't we make it last awhile longer?"

"You're asking me to take you with me?"

"I guess so," she said, suddenly not sure of herself. "But I don't want to presume."

"I'd be lying if I didn't say I was thinking about that myself," he said. "I mean, we do seem to have good chemistry together."

"And we're certainly compatible in bed," she told him.

"I'd agree with that."

"So what about it?" she said. "You want a traveling companion?"

"Let me think about it. This is something new for me. I usually enjoy flying solo."

"No reason why that can't change," she said.

"I guess not."

They were both smiling.

"Let's go in," she said. "The water's nice and warm today."

"Yeah," he said, "let's."

They walked into the surf and wallowed up to their waists.

"Not too many people around today," he said.

"I wish there weren't any," she said. "I can think of some things I'd like to do on the beach."

"There won't be as many people after sundown. So you might get your wish."

"Cool."

****

Leon was looking for his cell phone. It was somewhere over by the window, he thought. But then he found it under the bed. It must have ricocheted.

The kid was in the bathroom, taking a shower.

He flipped it open and saw he had five messages already. He flipped it closed and put it on the nightstand. There was a thick sheen of sweat covering him like a second skin and he couldn't wait to use the shower himself.

Finally, the kid came out and grinned sheepishly.

"I thought you'd never get out of there," Leon said.

The boy was dressed now and stood there in front of him.

"Well," Leon said, "what are you supposed to be? A fucking statue?"

The kid just stood there, not knowing what to say.

"Oh, I get ya. I thought you said you'd do this for free."

The kid didn't say anything. Leon had noticed the bruises he'd left on the boy's abdomen and figured it was better to just get this over with.

He found his pants on the floor, picked them up, and got his wallet. He counted out what he owed and added a little extra.

The kid smiled and made his way for the door.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

The boy turned, momentarily confused.

"The fucking wig," Leon said. "Leave it here."

The kid took off the wig and put it on top of the desk by the door on his way out.

****

"So is that it?" Abercrombie asked.

They were sitting in the rental car outside of a dull gray house. Abercrombie always rented cars from locally owned outfits instead of the big national chains. It just seemed to make more sense.

"Yeah, that's his house."

Abercrombie had shut off the engine. They were across the street, in the shadow of a big oak tree.

"You going inside or something?"

"Naw."

"Then why have me take you here?"

"I was just curious," Abercrombie said.

"Curious where my ex-husband lived."

"Yeah," he said, "I wanted to see where someone stupid enough to dump you spent his days."

"I have to admit, I was a little leery about giving you directions," she said. "I had no idea what was on your mind. I definitely didn't want anything violent to happen."

"Violent?" Abercrombie said. "Why would it? I don't know him. And what you two had has nothing to do with me."

"Then, I have to ask again: why come here?"

"Curiosity," he said, "pure and simple."

The garage door opened and a middle-aged guy with a Bengals sweatshirt hauled a couple of trash cans down the driveway and left them near his mailbox.

He didn't even look up once. Didn't even notice them. Not that they would necessarily be easy to spot, hidden under the tree with the engine off.

The guy had a pot belly but had strong arms. Strong legs, too. He obviously worked out.

Not that it mattered much.

They could hear a woman's voice coming from the house now. There was the silhouette of someone in the lit living room window, behind the shade. They couldn't hear what she was saying.

"So that's the other woman, huh?"

"I guess so," Abigail said. "Unless he's moved on to someone else by now."

The guy went inside the garage and closed the door again. The woman moved away from the window.

Abercrombie waited a few minutes before he turned the key and started the car again.

"We going back now?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Like I said, I was just curious. Weren't you?"

"Not really," she said. "This all seems like a big waste of time to me."

"Yeah," Abercrombie said. "Just another way to kill time."

"I could think of a lot better ways to do that."

"Maybe we can stop on the way back, get something to eat. You got any preferences?"

"I could really go for a pizza," she said.

"Done. And then when we get back to the hotel, I'll take you up on that offer you made earlier."

"Which one is that?"

"Sex on the beach," he said. "That's a drink, too, isn't it? I never had one of those. Maybe we should hit the bar first."

****

"Why didn't you call first?" Gloria asked, when she saw Leon standing outside the front door. "You can't just pop up like this unannounced. I've got rights."

"You've got whatever rights I give you," he said. "You've got my son. Isn't that enough?"

He pushed past her. The television was on, some inane action movie, and his son Ricky was stretched out on the couch, wearing those baggy pants he always wore. He had an earring in one ear now. Something new.

"Hi, sport," Leon said, sitting beside him on the couch. "What you watchin'?"

The boy just stared glassy-eyed at the screen.

"I'm not going away until you talk to me," he said.

"Hi, Dad," the 14-year-old boy on the couch beside him said.

"Hello to you, too."

"We don't want you here," Gloria said, standing beside the television. "Neither of us."

"It's been a long time since I saw my son," Leon said. "I don't come out this way very often. And if you had your way, I'd never see him."

"Which is just the way we'd like it."

"The kid can speak for himself," Leon said. "He doesn't need his bitch of a mother to talk for him. Do you, sport?"

He saw his son's lower lip trembling a bit. He must be remembering things a long time ago, when Leon lived with them.

"Don't you ever want to come visit your dad anymore?" Leon said. "I'm a big fucking rock star. Most kids would be dying to come stay with their dad if they were in your shoes. I never understood you, sport."

"Exactly," Gloria said. Her hair was mousy brown now, but Leon remembered a time when she was a bottle blonde who gave one mean blow job. A groupie who was at almost every show, always trying to get backstage and get a piece of him. Well, she had a piece of him now. Ricky. And she wasn't really good at sharing.

"You never understood either of us, which is why we're glad you left."

He looked her up and down, remembering when she was young and hot and he actually looked forward to fucking her. She would do absolutely anything in bed, and it used to be fun. He wondered if she was still fun anymore. Did she swing from the chandeliers with her new husband? That semi-retarded grease monkey she lived with now.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I'm the fucking Ebola virus. You're glad to be rid of me."

"A perfect analogy," she said, and he was surprised she knew words that big.

"I just stopped by to see my son," he said. "And find out when he's coming for a visit."

"How about never?" Gloria said, wiping stray hairs out of her eyes. She still kept her hair nice and long, at least.

"I told you, I want the boy to speak for himself," Leon said. "He can speak, can't he? Or did you take his tongue, the same way you took his balls."

"I can speak," Ricky said, still staring at the television.

"Well, it's about time, sport. I was starting to think you'd gone mute on us."

"I don't want to visit you, Daddy," he said. The way he said "Daddy" made him sound like a little kid again. The five-year-old who used to cry whenever Leon hit his mother. The same wuss he always was. Time hadn't succeeded in making a man out of him yet.

"You don't want to visit me?" Leon said. "I find that hard to believe, sport. Don't I spoil the hell out of you?"

"Andy's coming home soon," Gloria said. "His shift is just about up."

"How is old Andy?" Leon asked. "I haven't seen him in forever. Maybe I'll stick around and say hi."

"Please, Leon, just go away."

"What kind of visit is this? You both aren't very hospitable."

"Please go, Daddy," Ricky said, never once taking his eye off of the television, even during the commercials.

"Yeah, I'll go. I certainly don't want to hang around someplace where I'm not wanted."

"You're not wanted," Gloria said. "You haven't been wanted around here for a long time."

"I hear ya," Leon said, and chuckled. "Look at the mouth on you. I remember when I used to like that mouth. When it knew its job. Sucking my dick."

"You're the Ebola virus," she told him, using his metaphor against him. "Everything you touch turns to shit around you. We don't want you here."

"You have a tendency to repeat yourself," Leon said. "It gets tiresome. It's a wonder Andy-Boy puts up with it. But then again, I bet he puts up with a lot of things I wouldn't."

Leon got up from the couch and started walking toward the door. He pushed past Gloria, just barely brushing her with his arm, but she jumped back as if she'd been burned by a cigarette.

He turned and looked at his son one more time.

"You into hip-hop now, with those baggy pants?"

The boy didn't answer.

Leon laughed and went to the front door. He didn't look back as he let himself out. He considered sticking around in his car and waiting for Andy. It might be fun to fuck with another member of this sweet little family, but he decided he just wanted to get away from this place. It wasn't worth his time or energy.

He started the Lexus and his tires screeched on his way down the street.

****

The tide washed up over them, and it was just like that scene in the old movie _From Here to Eternity_ , except it was dark, and they could barely see each other in the light of the moon.

"That was wonderful," Abigail said.

He stretched out on his back and let the water wash over him.

"Did I ever tell you how young you make me feel?" she said. "How you make everything shitty good again?"

He made a noncommittal noise.

"The water is so warm," she said.

"Shh," he told her, "just be quiet and enjoy the moment."

She would have taken offense, but he said it so softly, so gently, that she didn't consider it an insult.

She rested in the crook of his arm, staring up at the moon. The water was just high enough to wash over them but not cover them.

"The moon sure is beautiful tonight," she said.

"Yeah," Abercrombie said.

"So you never told me," she said, "what's your first name?"

"It doesn't matter," he said.

"Sure it does. If we're going to be traveling together. Why keep it a secret? Is it something embarrassing?"

He didn't say anything, and then he sighed. "Yeah, it's embarrassing.'

"Come on," she said, "confide in me. I'll tell you a secret if you tell me."

"Why is it so important to you?"

"It just is. Come on, let's trade secrets."

"Okay, okay. You first."

"When I was about 30, I had a brief affair with my sister-in-law. She was five years younger and really cute. I never did anything with a woman before. Not really. And it was kind of sad to let it go. But it was just too much trouble to keep it a secret."

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, so tell me. What's your real name? It can't just be Abercrombie. What's your first name?"

He looked at the moon and imagined it exploding in the sky.

"Abner," he said.

****

When he got back to the hotel, Leon found Fella Faze—the lead guitarist for Honey Load—waiting for him in the lobby. They'd talked a lot on the phone lately, but they hadn't seen each other in person in years. Fella sure was looking old, and his hairline was in worse shape than his.

"Hi, Leon," Fella said. He'd been pacing back and forth and looked relieved to stop. "They told me you were out. So I thought I'd wait for you."

"You came all the way here to see me?"

"I came all the way here to talk some sense into you."

"Then you wasted your time."

"Give me a chance," Fella said. "I came all this way, like you said."

"Yeah, yeah. I always have to give everyone else a chance. Nobody gives me a fucking chance."

"What was that?"

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing to do with you. I just tried to go see my son."

"Ricky? How is the kid these days?"

"I wouldn't know. The little fucker won't talk to me."

"Come on, man. You really look like you could use a drink, and the bar is just over there."

"Yeah, okay."

****

Abercrombie knelt before the candles and the statue of Ranier and he prayed, just like he did every night. She watched him from beneath the sheets. It was almost kind of fascinating, watching him pray to that ugly sculpture.

That's the one thing about him I'll never understand, she thought.

He crossed himself and got up. Then he reached for her on the bed.

She thought he was going to take her into his arms, but instead, he rolled her over and punched her in a special part of her back.

"What!"

He rolled her back over, so that she was looking up at him.

"I can't move," she said.

"It's time to get down to business," he said.

He looked sad as he stared into her eyes for a few minutes.

"Why?"

He went over to his backpack and pulled out a long knife in a sheath. He took it out with a great sense of ceremony and held it before her.

"You're going to kill me," she said, amazed that her head could still move, that she could speak. Even though the rest of her body was paralyzed.

He wouldn't answer. Instead, he knelt down and raised the long knife high over his head. She couldn't help but stare up at the shiny blade.

And then, it was like she was inside his head, and they left the hotel room.

****

"Why can't you see it from our point of view," Fella said, throwing back another shot of tequila. They had a row of shot glasses lined up in front of them. He then took a gulp from his beer.

"I just don't need the money enough to beg for it," Leon said. "Can't you see that what they're offering is an insult?"

"I don't see it that way," Fella said. "It's been rough since the band broke up. I thought we'd just all go on to other bands, keep playing, but it didn't happen that way. Everyone kept saying how great a guitarist I was, but once we split apart, nobody seemed to want anything to do with me."

"Those fucking Seattle bands," Leon said. "That shit ruined things for everybody."

"Yeah, well that's over, and we're getting a second chance here. I'm sick of taking jobs I hate. Do you know, I'm a plumber now? I unplug people's fucking toilets, man. It pays good, I'm not really knocking it, but it's nothing like being in a band again. I'm sick of practicing in my garage for nothing. I know you went on to do your solo stuff. I know that if you say the word, you could have people playing with you in a New York minute. But we don't all have those options."

"It ain't my fault, man."

"But don't you feel that you owe us anything?" Fella said. "I mean, Honey Load is what made you a star, man. A bona fide rock star."

"What about Cooze Patrol?" Leon said. "You'd be surprised how many fans that band still has. Hell, I'm surprised."

"They gave you underground cred," Fella said. "But they didn't make you a star. They didn't get you on MTV, back in the days when that channel actually played videos twenty-four hours a day. Cooze Patrol didn't turn you into a rock god. We did that."

"You didn't do shit for me," Leon said. "We did it together."

"Exactly, man. I didn't mean to imply otherwise."

"Let me think on it, Fella."

"So you're considering it? I'm telling you, if the reunion tour goes well, it could lead to bigger money. It could lead to bigger venues. All they need is a taste of us again and they'll be hooked, and we can start bringing in the long green again."

"Maybe you're right," Leon said. "I don't know anymore."

"All I ask is that you consider it, man. You can't just dismiss it without really giving it some real thought."

"Yeah," Leon said. "I'll think about it. Let me sleep on it, and I'll call you in the morning,"

"Do you mean that?"

"Yeah," Leon said. He didn't know if he was really having a change of mind or if he was just getting drunk, but at that moment he really meant it. "Yeah, I'm serious, man. I'll consider it."

"Terrific," Fella said. "You don't know how grateful I am, man."

"Don't celebrate yet," Leon said. "But I promise to give this a fair assessment before I decide once and for all."

"That's all I can ask," Fella said. "Well, I gotta go now."

"You don't have a room here?"

"You shitting me? I can't afford this place. I'm staying at a motel about twenty minutes from here."

"So, you sticking around until you get my decision?"

"What choice do I have? It'll be a ten-hour drive back to Michigan. I'll stay here as long as I can, but please don't take forever."

They shook hands. Like business partners. There was a time when they'd actually been friends. Leon remembered a time when they were both fucking groupies on the same bed. They were thick as thieves.

"Thanks, man. I'll look forward to your call.You've got my cell number, right?"

"Of course I do," Leon said.

"G'night."

Leon watched him go. He thought it was funny the guy hadn't even offered to pay for the drinks, hadn't even offered to pay for his share.

Leon drained the last shot glass and then threw a fifty down on the bar and took the elevator back up to his room.

****

She saw Abercrombie in front of her, raising the knife, but she also saw him in a thousand other places. Cutting throats, stabbing out people's eyes. Occasionally, someone she knew, mostly people she'd never known. They all went by in a jumble of images, but she knew somehow they were real. That he was killing all these people in blinks of an eye. And then it slowed down for a moment, and the blur of scenarios stopped and became just one.

It was her ex-husband Danny's house. He and his whore, his bitch, Melissa, were asleep in their bed, and Abercrombie turned on the light. They woke, disoriented, and he immediately stabbed Danny twice, leaving him on the floor, bloody but conscious. The man she used to love stared up as Abercrombie put his hand over Melissa's mouth and stabbed her hard between the breasts. Over and over again.

Then he moved toward Danny, who was cowering on the floor, raising an arm to protect himself, and Abercrombie stabbed the arm until it lowered, and then he stabbed Danny over and over in the head, until he stopped moving, too.

The images sped up again, then, as hundreds of other people met similar fates. Only he didn't linger over them like he had Danny. He did it all fast, and vicious. Like he had a time limit.

It all seemed so inconceivable to her. This had to be a dream. There was no way anyone could kill so many people so quickly. At the same time, she could still see the blade raised up by his hands, as he knelt before the bed.

She closed her eyes, but it didn't help. The flashes of people dying played on the inside of her eyelids, like a movie in fast-motion.

When they stopped, she opened her eyes, and he was standing above her.

He was crying.

"I'm sorry," he said, and he reached down. She couldn't move her head enough to see, but it looked like his hand went right down _inside_ her. But she couldn't feel anything. He held something up in front of her face. It was red and wet.

She turned her head and saw a whole row of wet, bloody things on the bed beside her, and she knew they were her innards. He yanked out a long rope of intestines and then leaned over. One hand reached forward and closed her eyes for her again.

And then he slit her throat, deeply, letting the final bits of life leak out of her.

He wrapped himself up in her intestines, still crying, and began shouting at the ceiling until he realized it was useless. He rose and went to take a shower. Then he got dressed and left the building. There were bloody bodies all over the lobby.

He walked through them and went outside, just in time to hear the tornado winds ripping through the town, swirling blood and flesh up into the sky.

Abercrombie had remembered to don his rain poncho, so that he didn't get too messy as he walked toward the town limits.

****

Leon woke with a hangover and went into the bathroom to soak his head under the shower. He stood there a long time, not moving, just letting the spray drench his hair, his temples. He let the heat temporarily stop the throbbing in his skull.

Then he went back out to the bed. His cell phone was still on the nightstand. And he noticed the bed was empty. He hadn't slept alone in a long time. But now that he thought about it, it felt weird. He'd obviously tossed and turned a lot. The blanket was on the floor. The sheets were tangled up.

But the air-conditioning felt good on his naked skin.

"I guess I better call Fella," he said, not really sure why he gave a fuck. Maybe it was something about seeing the guy in person. To see how age had deteriorated that once-handsome face, and Leon knew that it had done the same to him. He'd been so adamant against plastic surgery, but now he wondered if maybe it might not be a bad idea.

Age was the enemy.

That bastard knows me too well, Leon thought. He knew if he came here, spoke to me face to face, that it would bring back the memories.

We can't escape our pasts. Even if we wanted to.

He pushed the button for his address book and then scrolled down to Fella's name. He pushed the button again and the phone rang.

Fella picked it up on the second ring. Like he'd woken early and was waiting for the call all morning.

"Leon, is that you?"

"Yeah."

"Did you think things over? Did you consider what we talked about."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"So what's your decision?"

"I still think it's a bad deal," Leon said. "I still think they're fucking us."

"So your answer is no?"

"No," he said, "I've changed my mind."

"You have?" The happiness in Fella's voice was so alien to him. He hadn't heard that emotion directed at him in a long time. "You really have?"

"Yeah," Leon said, and as soon as he said the word he felt like a sucker. He knew he was selling himself short, selling them all short. But something about Fella's plea had made him realize how much he missed being up on a stage, singing. It had been a long time, even since his last solo project, and even though Fella thought he could get another band with a snap of his fingers, Leon wasn't so sure about that anymore. It had been too long since he felt relevant, just one in a long line of disappointments, and it was starting to make him mean. "I'll do it."

"I'll tell the guys," Fella said. "I'm going to head back right now."

"Okay," Leon said. "I'll call Barry and fill him in on the details."

"You're not fucking with me, are you?" Fella asked. "You're not going to wait 'til I get back to Detroit and then call me and tell me you changed your mind again, are you? You're not doing this just to fuck with my head?"

"No, Fella," Leon said, "I'm not fucking with you."

"You don't know how happy you've made me, man. It will be amazing to work with you again, to work with the band again. I really can't wait to start rehearsals."

"Me, too," Leon said, as it really started to filter in to his skull. It had been a long time since they had made music, and it was something he really did want to go back to. "I guess I just didn't realize it until now."

"That's terrific news, man. I just don't know what else to say. I'm ecstatic."

"Well, you better start heading back. At least I didn't make you wait too long, huh?"

"Thanks for that. I would have stayed by the phone all day if I had to."

"Rats," Leon said. "On second thought, I should have waited. Made you sweat a little."

Fella laughed and then they finished the call and Leon put his phone down.

What a strange turn of events, he thought. I guess I better call Barry and give him the update.

****

Abercrombie washed the blood off himself in a lake. The water was a little cool, but he had to make himself presentable if there was any chance he would be able to hitch a ride. At least the rain poncho had taken the brunt, and he just tossed that away. They were cheap enough to replace.

So, where to next?

He climbed out of the water and dried himself with one of the towels he'd stolen from the hotel room. Not that anyone there would be needing it now. He was going to need another backpack soon. This one was full to bulging, and he'd had a real hard time trying to get the bloodstains out. If anyone asked at this point, he'd just say it was paint.

As he got dressed, he could feel Saint Ranier hovering over him somewhere nearby, just out of sight. He knew that the saint was happy with him, and he suddenly felt a flash of euphoria wash over him.

He went back out onto the stretch of highway and watched for oncoming cars. Whenever one would approach, he'd stick his thumb out, but most of them just passed him by.

Finally one stopped, and he slid inside.

"Where you going, young man?" the old guy behind the wheel asked. "Not often you see someone out here all by themselves."

"My car broke down a ways back," Abercrombie said. "Thanks a lot for the ride."

"I didn't see no abandoned cars back there," the man said. "But I'm not one to ask questions. But you didn't answer my question."

"Wherever you're going is fine with me," Abercrombie said. "I'm happy to get as far away from here as I can."

"What about your car?"

Abercrombie laughed. "You got me. I got in a fight with my girlfriend—my ex-girlfriend—and she dropped me off in the middle of the highway."

"You don't need to be embarrassed around me," the man said. "I've had my share of ornery women. I know what it's like. My name is Bill. Bill Cody. Just like that son of a bitch Buffalo Bill Cody. Except he's dead and I'm alive. And I don't own any buffalo."

Abercrombie shook his hand, "Bob," he said. "Bob Abercrombie."

"Nice to meet you, Bob. I'm driving quite a ways. You sure you want to stick around for the whole ride?"

"Yes, sir," Abercrombie said, "I'm sure. I've got nothing else to do."

****

Leon ironed out the details with Barry and then shut off his phone. It had been a long day and he was talked out. What he really needed was a distraction from all this business bullshit.

I need to get the fuck out of here, Leon thought. I'm going stir crazy in this place.

He put on some clothes and took the elevator down to the lobby. The manager, Mr. Oswald, was in today and seemed very happy to see him.

"Mr. Coles, so nice to see you, I hope you're having a pleasant stay."

"Terrific, can't ask for more."

"Well, if there's anything else you need, don't hesitate to ask."

"You know me better than that," Leon said, and then headed toward the lobby.

As he approached the glass doors, another man came inside. He was tall, with long blond hair, and the only luggage he had was a backpack strapped behind him. Leon hadn't seen a guy this attractive in a long time, and he did a double-take. The guy didn't seem to notice.

I've got to figure out a way to meet him, Leon thought. But first, I'm going to go get a big, juicy steak.

****

When Abercrombie got into his hotel room, he didn't even bother to turn on the light. He just slipped off the backpack and crawled into bed. It had been an exhausting trip out here, and he just wanted to sleep the rest of the day away.

It was a good thing he remembered to take some money during his last killing spree. It wouldn't do to kill so many people without grabbing a little cash along the way. You never knew when it would come in handy, and it wasn't like anyone was going to miss it. He never got too greedy, but there was no reason why he couldn't live in at least a small level of luxury during his travels. He was doing a saint's work, after all.

I have to remember to get candles tomorrow, he thought.

He felt a rumble of hunger in his stomach and realized it had been a while since he last ate, but sleep was the more dominant force right now, and he lay back on the sheets and let it crash down on him like a tidal wave, not even bothering to take off his clothes.

****

"Hey, you mind if I sit here?" Leon asked, walking up to the bar.

"No, I don't mind," Abercrombie said, taking a long pull from his beer glass.

"So what brings you here? Business or pleasure?"

"Excuse me?"

Leon hated this small talk bullshit. He'd hoped the guy would just recognize him. It made things a lot easier. But no such luck. Maybe he wasn't a fan of rock music.

"People usually stay in a hotel because either they're on a business trip, or they're on vacation. Which are you?"

"Oh, business, I guess."

"So what kind of business you in?"

The guy stared straight ahead. It was clear he didn't want to talk about it. But Leon had asked, and the guy was thinking up an answer.

"Insurance," Abercrombie said, eventually. "Disaster insurance."

"Plane crashes, that kind of stuff?"

"Yeah."

"I don't remember hearing about a plane crash around here recently."

"I do a lot more than just cover plane crashes," Abercrombie said.

"Oh."

This was going to be a lot harder than he thought.

"So you got plans for tonight?"

Abercrombie looked at him, puzzled. "What?"

"I just thought, if you're new in town, you might have nothing to do. I was gonna go check out some music. Thought you'd like to come along."

"Oh."

"You're not going to ask?"

"Huh?"

Leon sighed. "You're not going ask me what I'm doing here?"

Abercrombie just wished this guy would leave him alone. "Okay, I'll bite. What are you doing here?"

"I'm in a rock band. Ever hear of Honey Load?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"We're getting back together."

"Is that so?" Abercrombie said, not sounding all that excited.

"Yeah," Leon said. "It's been a long time coming. I'm the singer. My name is Leon."

"Good to meet you. I'm Abercrombie."

"Like Abercrombie and Fitch?"

Abercrombie ignored the question.

"So what about it?"

"What about what?'

"You interested in seeing some live music, or would you rather just sit here and drink the night away?"

"Are those my only two choices?"

Leon smiled. "Yeah."

"What the fuck?" Abercrombie said. "Where's the music at?"

"Not very far from here. There's a band I want you to see."

"Me? Why me?"

"You ask a lot of questions," Leon said.

****

They were a cover band called Sweet Leg Action. A band that pretended to be Honey Load at their peak. The lead singer looked to be in his 20s and had long blond hair, much like Leon did back in the '80s. Here, he kept a baseball cap on.

Leon handed Abercrombie a beer. The kid didn't look all that different from the guy onstage. He was young, blond, and muscular-looking. He reminded Leon a lot of himself.

"You like the music?"

"It's okay, I guess. I was never really into hair bands. I was more of a punk, I guess."

"Punk, huh?"

"Yeah."

"All that anger. That doom and gloom. What you guys need is to get laid more often and you wouldn't be so pissed off all the time."

"You think so?"

"Yeah, listen to this stuff. It's music about happiness. About getting drunk and getting laid. None of that 'I hate the world' bullshit."

"So is that what it's all about? Getting drunk and getting laid?"

"Yeah, kinda."

"Thanks for clearing that up."

Leon laughed and pointed to the stage. "You see that guy up there. He's pretending to be me."

"Really? Where's his baseball cap?"

Leon smiled again. "You're a real ball-buster, huh?"

"Sometimes."

"That kid up there, he must be half my age, and he wishes he was me. What I wouldn't do to be him."

"Well, not really him, right. You'd want to be yourself at that age."

"Yeah, you're right."

They were shouting to hear each other over the music.

"Wanna go closer to the stage?" Leon asked. "It's no use trying to have a conversation in here."

"What?" Abercrombie said and then smiled.

Leon rolled his eyes, and the two walked closer to the stage.

After a couple of songs, Leon suddenly jumped up on the stage. Nobody tried to stop him. When the singer saw who he was, he looked dumbstruck and handed Leon the microphone.

Everyone in the audience seemed to catch on at once, and they all cheered.

"Y'know," Leon said into the mike, "I've heard a lot about you guys. You're supposed to be a really good cover band. And you are."

"Thanks," the singer said, slightly off-mike.

"But no matter how good you are, you're never going to be as good as the real thing."

Leon then broke out into song, singing "Sweet Leg Action."

The band instantly caught up with him and played along.

The singer just stepped aside and watched in awe.

Leon kept looking down into the audience, at Abercrombie in particular.

Abercrombie wanted so badly to just leave. He hated this kind of music, and this Leon guy was making him uncomfortable.

But for some reason he stayed put and watched Leon finish the song.

When he was done, Leon jumped off the stage. Everyone in the room was cheering and trying to touch him. He slapped a lot of hands and dodged a lot of girls trying to shove their tits in his face.

Leon grabbed Abercrombie by the arm. "Let's get out of here."

Abercrombie pulled his arm away. He felt like decking this guy but didn't.

"Okay," he said.

****

An hour later, they were back in Leon's hotel room, naked and grunting.

Sometimes, Leon pretended that the guy was the lead singer of Sweet Leg Action, but most of the time he focused on Abercrombie himself. He was young and handsome, and there was not much reason to fantasize about anyone else.

At one point, Leon had his hands tight around Abercrombie's throat. The other man did not resist, even though it was clear he'd have hand marks on his neck in the morning.

When they were done, Leon rolled over on his side, covered in sweat.

"You never did anything like this before, did you?"

Abercrombie didn't say a word.

"Talkative type, aren't you?"

"You seem like you're more than happy to do the talking for both of us."

"There's that sarcasm again. You love to be the smart-ass, huh?"

Abercrombie grunted.

"Well, I like it. And I like you, too. Even though you pretend to be such a hard-assed bastard."

Abercrombie stared down at the mattress.

"You can't tell me you didn't have a good time just now."

"It's late," Abercrombie said. "Can't you just roll over and go to sleep."

"Sleep? What the fuck are you talking about? The night's still young!"

Fifteen minutes later, they were both asleep.

****

Later, they'd moved to Abercrombie's room.

"So what's the statue all about? You some kind of priest?"

"It's just a saint," Abercrombie said.

"Which saint?"

"Saint Ranier. You probably never heard of him."

"No, I didn't. And I had no idea I was fucking a priest last night."

"I'm not a priest."

"Then why all the candles and prayer stuff?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"Look, I need some time alone. Can you just leave for a while."

"What, you want some time to pray?"

"Yeah."

"Gotta confess your sins from last night?"

"No."

"Why can't I watch?"

In the past, when he'd brought girls up to his room, Abercrombie had never had a problem praying in front of them. But for some reason, with Leon here, he felt weird.

"Come on. Can't you just give me some time to myself?"

"I don't want to go," Leon said. "I want to watch you pray. I bet it's cute."

Cute sounded like such a strange word coming out of Leon's mouth. Like he'd said it just to twist the knife a little more.

Hell, that's exactly what he was doing.

"Whatever," Abercrombie said.

He lit some candles, knelt down on his portable prayer bench, and prayed to Saint Ranier.

Leon sat on the edge of the bed and watched, not saying a word.

Abercrombie prayed in complete silence.

Leon stared at the strange statue. Some deformed-looking guy wrapped up in ropes. It sure looked like a strange saint to be praying to.

****

"So tell me more about Ranier," Leon said.

"I told you all about Admah, about Sodom and Gomorrah."

"You told me his people were from there, that he wandered around healing people. That they strangled him with his own intestines. But you left something out."

"What?"

"Why the hell do you pray to such a guy?"

"Because he's powerful," Abercrombie said. "Because he works through me."

"How?"

"In order to explain that," Abercrombie said. "I need to explain what happened after he died."

"Cool," Leon said. "That's the kind of stuff I'm interested in. So tell me already."

"Okay," Abercrombie said. "After they took out all of his insides, after he finally died of his wounds, Ranier went to the afterlife. But he cursed God for what had been done to him, and he refused to enter heaven. But he refused to enter hell either. He just hovered in limbo, whole and separate and able to survey what had happened to him. For some reason, he was stronger in death than he'd ever been in life.

"And he found something out in the afterlife: that he had a penchant for acquiring the powers of others. He began with the two angels who had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and his family's place of origin, Admah. He sought them out and stole the powers they had. He drained them and left empty husks. And then he went seeking other powers. Other divine gifts that never would have been given to him by God directly. So he simply took them, using angels like you or I would drain bottles of alcohol. Drinking every ounce of power they had. Until he was pretty damned powerful himself.

"Among his underground followers, he has a strange nickname, The Reversible Bondage Saint, because he was bound in his own intestines by his tormentors, and his organs were removed one by one and shown to him. Sometimes he appears to the living, either in his normal form, or in the form of his mutilated self. Reversible."

Leon stared at him. "So he appeared to you."

"Yes, he called upon me to serve him. And I accepted."

"So what do you do for this guy?"

"Whatever he demands."

"And you mentioned underground followers. Does this mean there are others like you?"

Abercrombie nodded. "But I've never met any of them. Not face to face. I've talked to a few of them on the Internet. The ones I know of, they live overseas. One's in South America. There aren't many of us"

"You do realize that you sound like a nut, right?"

"Yeah, I realize that."

"I like you, but I sure don't need a religious nut in my life right now."

"I didn't realize I was in your life."

Leon laughed. Then he leaned over and kissed Abercrombie for a long time.

****

When Abercrombie woke up the next morning, he found himself in bed alone. A whole day had disappeared in a blur. It wouldn't do to lose track of time like this.

This was easily the weirdest morning of his life. He'd never been so aggressively pursued by another guy before, and he'd never given in so completely before.

What the fuck was going on?

He got up from the bed, and rubbed his stomach. It was probably a good idea to go down to the gym and work out for most of the morning. He had been ignoring his exercise regimen lately.

He figured he would just have to shower again later anyway, so he threw on some clothes and headed downstairs.

As he got in the elevator, he could feel Saint Ranier hovering nearby, just outside of his field of vision. Moving in a strange, spidery way, demanding his attention. His awareness.

It would be time again for Ranier to feed.

Abercrombie did his best to ignore it. This thing he did, moving from town to town, had devoured his entire life without his even being aware of it. He hadn't stopped to think about that in a long time. He found himself thinking about it now.

Did he still want to be the avenging angel of Saint Ranier? Did he really want to live his life in service to a being who slew whole cities, reducing them to ashes?

Abercrombie felt a wave of guilt rush over him. It was the first time he had ever really felt an emotion about what he had been doing, and it almost brought him down to his knees.

_No_ , he heard the voice in his head. _Do not feel guilty. You did nothing wrong. You did it for me_.

The elevator seemed to move in slow-motion. It didn't stop at any of the other floors. Nobody else got on. Abercrombie expected it take him all the way down, into the bowels of the earth. Into the very heart of hell itself.

"I can't do this anymore," he said.

The elevator stopped. The doors opened.

Abercrombie didn't feel Ranier's presence anymore as he got out and walked to the gymnasium.

****

Leon got off the phone with his agent, Barry, and popped the champagne.

"Gimme your glass," he said. "We've got some celebrating to do."

Abercrombie's ribs were bruised and aching as he moved forward on the bed. He thrust his glass forward. Room service had delivered the cart minutes before: two glasses and champagne in an ice bucket.

"There's more where this came from," Leon said, filling both glasses.

"So I'm guessing the comeback tour is a done deal?"

"Yeah, and I guess I'm feeling better about it now," Leon said. "But do me a favor and don't call it a _comeback_ tour, okay? I don't need to come back from anything."

"Of course not."

"Oh, and thanks for putting that statue away," Leon said. "It was starting to give me the creeps."

Abercrombie nodded and drank from his glass.

"How long you been toting that thing around with you, anyway?"

"A long time."

"Why bother?" Leon asked. "What the hell has some dead saint ever done for you? Sounds silly to me, you know."

Abercrombie didn't say anything.

"You say he's got the power of angels. That he can destroy cities. You know that's all bullshit, right? You know it's just a story?"

"I guess so."

"We're good for each other," Leon said. "We ground each other."

He refilled their glasses.

"So are you coming with me tomorrow?"

"I've been thinking about it."

"Well, don't think anymore. Just do it. I got plane tickets for both of us, and I won't have time to debate it tomorrow. I've got to sign those contracts before someone changes their mind."

"I'm surprised you're not the one to change your mind."

"I didn't say I wasn't," Leon said. "I want to get it over with before I decide I don't want to do it."

Leon called down to room service and ordered another bottle of their best.

"So you're coming?"

"Yeah, I'll go with you."

"I like you," Leon said. "You're hot as hell, and you can take a punch."

They both started laughing at that.

****

Abercrombie woke up in the middle of the night. He was crouched on the floor, with a knife in his hand. He had no idea how he'd gotten there. A thin layer of light came in from outside the window, seeping through the outline of the blinds, and he could see the statue of Saint Ranier on the countertop in the kitchenette. Over near the mini-bar.

He put the knife down on the floor and stood up. He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face.

Abercrombie turned on the light and looked in the mirror. He was crying blood.

I've got to get out of here, he thought. Just for a little while. Until this moment passes. Maybe I can go downstairs and work out. Work this out of my system.

He shut off the water and went out to the bedroom. Leon was asleep on his stomach, snoring. The sheet barely covered his naked butt.

He thought about how those fists had pummeled him the night before. How those fingers had choked him almost into unconsciousness. And he knew there was no way he could kill Leon. No way he could do Ranier's bidding anymore.

This city would be spared.

Abercrombie put on some shorts and a T-shirt and grabbed a towel. He left the room and went down to the gym, which was open twenty-four hours a day.

He got into the elevator, and the doors closed.

I'm going to do this, he thought.

And then the elevator car suddenly dropped, as if its cables had been cut, and went plummeting down ten floors like a rocket, knocking Abercrombie to his knees. To his stomach. He screamed as he realized he was going to die when it finally hit bottom.

****

Once you pledged yourself to me, the bond was complete. Never to be broken.

The words formed in his brain without a voice. Abercrombie opened his eyes and looked up. The elevator doors were open. He was one level below the lobby, where the gym was located. He had no idea how long he had been there. How long the elevator doors had been open.

He didn't know what time it was, but as far as he could tell, nobody else was up and about. At least not on this floor.

He lifted himself up off the elevator floor and walked through the open doorway. And then he stopped in the middle of the hallway, as if suddenly frozen on the spot.

He couldn't move forward.

_It is a bond of blood_ , the words came again. _It is a bond of souls_.

Abercrombie lifted his hands. All he could think about was ripping his own eyes out. But he didn't go through with it.

****

"You destroyed it," Abercrombie said. He was back in his hotel room. Leon was sitting up on the bed.

"It had to be done. You were starting to obsesses over that thing. When I woke up it was sitting there, watching me. I saw you pack it away. What made you take it out again?"

"I didn't."

The statue was in pieces, scattered throughout the room.

"Listen to yourself. You trying to tell me you did this in your sleep?"

"I'm not sure."

"And your eyes. You're bleeding around your eyes. What did you do to yourself."

"I'm okay."

"Is it because I asked you to come with me?" Leon said. "Are you freaking out on me?"

"No," Abercrombie said, then thought about it. "I don't think so."

"Look, it's either me or that crazy religious shit you've been obsessed with. You can't have both. I'm offering you a hand up to reality again. Don't you see that?"

"Yeah."

"Then why won't you take my hand? Why won't you let me help you?"

"I'm just stubborn, I guess."

Leon jumped out of bed then and grabbed both sides of his head.

"Stop it," Leon said. "Just let go of it."

His fingers were tangled in Abercrombie's hair. Their faces were close, and they were staring in each other's eyes.

"You think I'm insane."

"I think you need help," Leon said. "And I can get it for you. I can get you anything you want."

"Thank you," Abercrombie said, and meant it.

"Now come back to bed," Leon said. "In a few hours the sun will be up and we'll have to get ready to leave. Let's sleep a while longer."

"Okay."

Leon pulled him by the head, by the hair, back over to the bed, and Abercrombie let him. He did not offer any resistance.

They were on the bed now, side by side. And Leon put an arm around Abercrombie's shoulders, pulling him close.

****

Leon woke up and saw something glowing in the room. It looked like a man who had been turned inside out. He moved quickly around the room, but his movements weren't normal. They seemed more like a spider than human.

The man didn't look like a spider; he just moved like one.

He kept moving from one end of the room to the other. Then he was standing right over Leon's head. There was a gaping wound in his skull, and his brain was exposed.

The man extended a bloody hand and touched Leon's forehead.

"I'm dreaming," Leon said and closed his eyes.

_Pledge yourself to me_ , words said without a voice, inside his head. _You are strong. I need you._

"No," Leon said.

Abercrombie is no good to me anymore. I must have you.

Leon mouthed the word "no" again, keeping his eyes closed.

He felt a burning sensation on his forehead. And then he drifted back to sleep.

****

He woke up again. The room was filled with burning candles.

"It's half an hour before daybreak."

"What?"

"There's still time," Abercrombie said. "Time to fix things."

Leon sat up and was racked with terrible pain. Someone had sliced him open, from just below his throat, down to his groin. He felt groggy. Why hadn't he woken up before this?

"What the hell did you do to me?"

"Don't worry," Abercrombie said. "You won't die. Not yet."

"The pain."

"It would be a lot worse," Abercrombie said, "but I'm trying to control it. You can still think. Still speak."

Leon leaned back against his pillow and looked around him on the bed. His organs surrounded him. He saw his liver. Two kidneys. Other organs that weren't so easily recognizable.

He saw his heart, still beating on the sheet.

Abercrombie raised the knife toward the ceiling and prayed.

"What did you do to me?"

"Don't worry," Abercrombie said. "I can keep you alive."

"Why would I want to be alive like this?" Leon tried to scream then, but his voice wouldn't cooperate.

And then the room began to spin, and Leon saw a series of images. Abercrombie was killing a whole series of people, one after another, all in the same moment.

An old woman who had an oxygen mask on her face, shedding tears as she was finally delivered from her pain.

A baby in its crib, not given the chance to grow. To live its life.

A gymnast who had just been informed she had been accepted for the next Olympics.

A woman dealing with insomnia and postpartum depression. Hating the images in her head, and now free of them forever.

And it went on and on. Everyone around them dying. The hotel was at the very center of the city, the beating heart, and death spread out in all directions.

Abercrombie killed every last person within the city's limits.

He was the hand of Saint Ranier. The slayer of cities.

Abercrombie was in all places at once, and then he was just in the hotel room. His work done, he lowered his hands, dropping the knife to the carpet.

"I can save you," he said to Leon and ran to the bed. He started putting back his severed organs one after another.

"I can keep you alive," he said. "And I can heal you. Like this never happened."

"How?"

"You and I will be the only survivors. I know how to do it now. I know how to save you."

Leon closed his eyes. The pain had been replaced with numbness, and he was sure that this was all a dream. That there wasn't a deep incision down the front of his body. That he wasn't wrapped up in his own intestines.

He opened his eyes again, just in time to feel life draining away.

His eyes turned glassy.

****

"You promised me," Abercrombie said, as he threw Leon's heart across the room. It splattered against the nearest wall. "You told me I could save him when it was done."

But he couldn't feel the saint's presence in the room anymore. No more spidery movements just outside of his field of vision.

He was the only one left alive. And it was time to clean up and get out of this place, before it all came crumbling down.

Time to move on to the next place. A bigger city this time. A bigger population of souls.

****

Fella Faze dialed Leon's cell number again. The other guys were starting to get antsy, and Leon's agent, Barry, was pacing the room.

"I couldn't reach him," Barry said. "What makes you think you can?"

"I don't know," Fella said. "It just keeps ringing."

"He's fucked us," Ricky the bassist said. "I knew it was too good to be true. I knew he wouldn't show up for the signing of the contract."

"No," Fella said, "he'll be here. His plane must have been delayed or something."

"He's three hours late," Barry said. "The chauffeur I hired said the flight came in, and Leon wasn't on it."

"He must have missed his flight," Fella said. "He'll be on the next one."

"He fucked us," Ricky said. "Why can't you just accept the truth?"

"He wouldn't do that," Fella said. Leon had seemed so genuine the last time he'd seen him. Fella believed he'd had a change of heart. He could usually tell these things. He was one of the few people on the planet who could read Leon's intentions. Not even Barry could do that, after decades of being his agent.

"You're deluding yourself," Ricky said. "Not only would he do it, he did it. He purposely got us all here, just so he could leave us hanging."

"Maybe he's still at the hotel," Barry said. "Why don't you call there instead? See if they can ring his room. Maybe he got drunk or sick or something."

"Yeah," Fella said, "that's possible. Let me call the front desk and ring his room."

Then there was a long silence.

"What's wrong?"

"What was the name of the place where he was staying?" Fella asked. "For the life of me, I can't remember."

"The name of the hotel or the city?"

"Either one."

"I can't remember either," Barry said. "But I'm sure I wrote it down somewhere."

"You were just there two days ago," Ricky said to Fella. "Don't you remember?"

"Shit," Fella said. "My mind's drawing a blank."

They all stood in the room, not saying anything, until more time went by and they each decided to go home.

# Contributors

**Randy Chandler** **is the author of** **Bad Juju, Hellz Bellz** **, Daemon of the Dark Wood,** **and** **Dime Detective,** **and the co-author of** **Duet for the Devil** **(with t. Winter-Damon). He's also the author of numerous short stories which have appeared in such books as** **Shivers IV, Damned Nation, Exit Laughing** **, and** **Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium** **. Most recently, his fiction has appeared in the horror anthologies** **Vile Things, The Death Panel,** **Sick Things,** **and** **Deadcore** **.**

**Craig Clarke** is a writer, editor, proofreader, and genre-fiction reviewer. His nonfiction has appeared in print and online in _Dead Reckonings, The Gardner News, The Green Man Review_ , _SF Site,_ and _Video Vista_. His fiction has appeared on coffee cans. Check out his latest opinions at his blog, Somebody Dies (http://somebodydies.blogspot.com) _._

**Matthew Fryer** was born and bred in Sheffield, England. He studied English at university but now works in the windowless basement of his local hospital. His stories have appeared in anthologies such as _The Horror Library_ and _Dark Jesters,_ and magazines including _Space and Time, Necrotic Tissue_ and _Andromeda Spaceways_. He lives with his wife, Allison, and spends too much of his time losing at poker, listening to loud music, and hoping it will rain so that he doesn't have to mow the lawn. They have a cat that looks like Hitler. Visit his website, The Hellforge (http://www.matthewfryer.com) _._

**Kent Gowran** was raised in the country and lives in the city. His stories have appeared in _Needle: A Magazine of Noir Fiction; Plots with Guns; Horror Garage; A Twist of Noir_ ; and other wild venues. He co-edited the crime-fiction online magazine _Shotgun Honey_ and its first anthology, _Both Barrels_. He can be hounded online at Boxing the Clown (http://kentgowran.tumblr.com/) _._

**Steven L. Shrewsbury** lives, works, and writes in Central Illinois. He enjoys football, books about history, guns, politics, mystery shows, and good fiction. 365 of his short stories have been published in print or digital media. His novels _Stronger than Death, Hawg, Tormentor,_ and _Godforsaken_ run from horror to historical fantasy. His collaboration with Nate Southard ( _Bad Magick_ ) is his first hardback release from Bloodletting's Morningstar line. _Thrall_ was released by Seventh Star in hardback, trade paperback, and Kindle versions. His collaborative novel with Peter Welmerink, _Bedlam Unleashed_ is available from Belfire Press. When not writing new tales or working on collaborations with Maurice Broaddus and Brian Keene, he searches for brightness wherever it may hide.

**L.L. Soares** 's fiction has appeared in such magazines as _Cemetery Dance, Horror Garage, Bare Bone, Gothic.Net_ , and _Lullaby Hearse_ , as well as the anthologies _The Best of Horrorfind 2, Right House on the Left_ , and _Raw: Brutality as Art_. His story "Second Chances" received an Honorable Mention in the sixteenth annual edition of _The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror_ , edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling. He is an active member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and a former chairman of the New England Horror Writers (NEHW). His books include the novel _Life Rage_ , the short story collection _In Sickness_ , and _Breaking Eggs,_ a novella co-written with Kurt Newton. He also co-writes (with Michael Arruda) the humorous horror movie review column Cinema Knife Fight (http://www.cinemaknifefight.com). You can learn more about him at his website (http://www.llsoares.com).

**David T. Wilbanks** is an author of speculative fiction, including the sword and sorcery novella _Hellfighter_. His latest book is _Dead Earth: Sanctuary_ , the third in his series written with Mark Justice that also includes _Dead Earth: The Green Dawn_ and _Dead Earth: The Vengeance Road_. His short stories and nonfiction articles have appeared both online and in print in such places as _Postscripts, The Book of Lists: Horror,_ and _Hellnotes_.

### we hope you've enjoyed

### LIVING AFTER MIDNIGHT: HARD AND HEAVY STORIES

### please leave a review at your favorite ebook retailer or

# book-discussion forum.

#

# READ ON FOR BONUS EXCERPTS FROM OTHER

# ACID GRAVE PRESS OFFERINGS.

# ALSO FROM ACID GRAVE PRESS

## Bad Juju by Randy Chandler

Dark forces are afoot in Vinewood, Georgia, a deceptively sleepy town where the dead don't stay dead and a sinkhole is as sinister as it is deadly. Violent events both natural and supernatural build to a chaotic crescendo of horrors that will threaten the entire town and everyone in it.

An odd handful of townsfolk put their lives on the line to save the town, but the darkness may swallow them up before they have a chance.

### Excerpt from _Bad Juju_

CHAPTER 1—RATS

They left Skeeter's truck parked just off the red-dirt woodland road and tromped onto the desolate landscape of rubbish and waste, woebegone junk evacuated from the bowels of town and left out here in the elements to rust and decay.

Skeeter carried his rifle across his shoulders and behind his neck like a weightless barbell, his wrists propped over the horizontal weapon and his bent arms hanging like misshapen V's.

Joe Rob toted his rifle in the crook of his arm, its muzzle angled toward the ground.

"You hold that thing like you're escorting it to the prom," said Skeeter. "A regular country gentleman."

Joe Rob shot him a cool glance, then said, "The way you got yours up on your shoulders, you look like you're wearing a yoke. Damn yokel."

Skeeter rolled his eyes beneath the bill of his ball cap, then stopped and looked up at the late-summer sky as if he were reading something there.

" _What?_ " said Joe Rob, stopping beside him.

"Storm's coming."

"Oh. So now you're the yokel weatherman." Joe Rob grinned at his own wordplay.

Skeeter shook his head, unsmiling. "I'm serious. See the way those clouds are piling up? Won't be long before they're thunderheads."

"Then I reckon we'll just have to nail some rats _before_ we get struck by lightning."

"I thought rats were night feeders," said Skeeter. " _Nocturnal_ sons-o'-bitches."

"Well, they are. But there's so damn many of 'em out here now, there's bound to be some early risers looking to get a jump on the competition. Chief Keller says he's never seen anything like it."

"'A plague of rats'," Skeeter said in booming imitation of Vinewood's new police chief.

"Damn, son, you sound like one of them radio preachers. I ain't shitting you. You could be pulling down some serious bucks with that act."

"Nope. I'm thinking it'd be cool to be a submariner aboard a nuclear submarine."

"What about your old man? I thought he wanted you to take over the family business."

"I tell you what, bud. No way am I ever gonna be a mortician. I don't care what he says."

"Make good money, though."

Skeeter barked a hollow laugh. "There ain't enough money in the world for me to make my living sucking the guts out of dead people. I'll just wait and inherit my share of the family fortune when the dad croaks."

"Man, that's cold. And anyway, I thought you wanted to be a relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves," Joe Rob needled his friend.

"That was last year. You gotta keep up, Joe Rob. That was high-school shit. We're all grown up now. Men of the world. This is the part where we put away childish things."

"I notice you're still wearing your senior ring." Joe Rob wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "And I still say it's cold, talking about your old man like that."

"Hey, everybody dies," Skeeter proclaimed. "Sooner or later we all end up in extremis."

"In what?"

" _In extremis._ It means deader than a fucking doornail, the way my old man uses it. He never uses the word 'dead.' He'll say, 'I got two _in extremis_. Don't wait dinner for me.' Like that. Undertakers don't ever say 'dead.' That's the first thing they teach 'em in mortician school."

Joe Rob shook his head, then swatted at a troublesome gnat in front of his face. Skeeter pulled his rifle off his shoulders, rested it against the side of his leg while he dug a tin of tobacco from his jeans pocket and stuck a healthy pinch of Skoal in his mouth.

They resumed their trek through the city dump, weaving their way through the clutter of old refrigerators, washing machines, deep freezers, ratty pieces of furniture, a baby carriage with a broken wheel, plastic trash bags stuffed with unseen debris, and various unidentifiable hunks of junk. A water-stained commode sat upright amid the other refuse.

"Somebody threw away a perfectly good shitter," Skeeter observed.

"Must be the throne for the king of the dump."

"Well, if you need to take a dump while you're here, there you go."

"Oh shit," said Joe Rob.

"Be my guest," Skeeter guffawed.

"No, I mean oh shit, there's Odell Porch." He nodded his head in the direction of the woods on the other side of the barren landfill. "What the hell's he doing here?"

"Seeing as how he's carrying a rifle, I'd say he's here to shoot rats. Or us."

"Scary dude," Joe Rob said, lowering his voice. "Crazy as hell."

"And mean as a pit bull. Let's get the hell outta here. Ain't no rats anyhow."

"Just that big one with the fucking deer rifle."

"Ten four."

"Shit, he's waving at us."

"Walk away. Pretend you don't see him." Skeeter's voice took on a raw edge, the way it always did when he was scared.

"Too late."

A sudden chill made Joe Rob shudder in spite of the afternoon's muggy heat. He knew then that they shouldn't be here in the middle of this scabbed-over wound in the earth. The junkyard artifacts were somehow endowed with bad mojo. And Odell Porch was the Mojo Man himself. The Mad Prince of the Realm, come to punish trespassers.

"What-chew pussies doing here?" Odell challenged. He strode toward them, holding his rifle at port-arms and building up a good head of steam.

"Nothing," Skeeter said at the same time Joe Rob said, "Hunting rats."

Decked out in faded cammies and combat boots, Odell Porch looked like a soldier in some rag-tag Third-world army. He wore a red bandanna as a headband. A dark stubble of beard shaded the lower half of his sunburned face. With a wolfish grin, he said, "Take more than them little .22 pop guns to nail these varmints. Check this shit."

He reached into the gunnysack slung over his left shoulder and pulled out a dead rat the size of a house cat. "Izzat a rat, or what?" he said as he dangled the rodent by its tail, giving them a good look at his blood-matted trophy.

"Jeez," said Skeeter, "that's the biggest rat I've ever seen."

Joe Rob wanted to ask Odell why he was collecting his kills in the gunnysack, but thought better of it and decided not to. He didn't want to know what the man was going to do with his dead rats. If only half of what he'd heard about the Porch clan was true, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine Odell's family sitting down to a Sunday dinner of fried rat and sweet potatoes.

"Damn right it is," Odell said, dropping the rat back into the sack. "You girls best high-tail it outta here and leave these varmints to a real shooter."

He slapped his rifle for emphasis.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Skeeter warily eyed the darkening western sky.

Joe Rob said, "Yeah, we were just leaving. Storm's coming."

"Right," said Skeeter.

"Hey," Odell said with an odd glint in his eyes, "you're the undertaker's son, ain't cha."

"Yeah?" Skeeter nervously adjusted his ball cap, then rubbed his nose and touched the bill of his cap again, reminding Joe Rob of the ritualistic behavior most pitchers go through before hurling the ball at home plate.

"Reckon you seen some sights at your old man's shop, huh?" Odell fingered his nostril, dug something out and flicked it into the air.

"Not really," Skeeter answered.

"Bullshit, you ain't. You mean to tell me you ain't never snuck no looks at dead pussy?"

Odell put his hand on Skeeter's shoulder and dug in his fingers until Skeeter winced in pain.

"Don't bullshit me, boy," Odell warned.

Joe Rob thought he smelled booze on Odell's breath. The Porch clan, it was said, came from a long line of moonshiners and horse thieves, and over the course of the last century Odell's forefathers had done their part in earning Graves County, Georgia, the nickname "Bloody Graves," according to local legend and lore. Seeing Odell Porch at close range, Joe Rob didn't doubt that the man was descended from ruthless outlaws.

"Tell me," commanded Odell, keeping Skeeter in his rough grasp.

"Ow! Okay, okay. I did sneak a look at Judy Moody after she was killed in that wreck," Skeeter confessed.

"How'd she look?" Odell's leer became a 'possum's grin.

"I don't know," Skeeter stammered, "she looked...dead. You know. But still pretty. She wasn't too messed up on the outside. She died of internal injuries."

"You saw her snatch?"

Skeeter hung his head and mumbled something.

"Speak up, boy."

"Yeah, I saw it."

Odell laughed and slapped Skeeter's shoulder. "I know you did, Mr. Undertaker's Son. And I bet you done a lot you ain't telling."

"We gotta go," Joe Rob said in an attempt to rescue his friend from the clutches of Odell Porch. "Before the storm catches us."

As if on cue, a burst of thunder shook the earth. When the thunder rumbled itself out, another sound came to the fore: a girlish scream, or more accurately, a _whoop_.

"Damn me," said Odell. "Looky there."

Joe Rob and Skeeter turned in unison and looked where Odell was pointing his rifle. A wraith-like figure in a long, white gown was sliding down the shallow embankment at the edge of the woods. She whooped again before coming to a stop at the bottom of the rocky incline. Then she started sobbing as she buried her face in her hands.

Odell jogged toward her, with Joe Rob and Skeeter at his heels.

Hearing their approach, she looked up. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gave them a wide-eyed appraisal.

"Are you all right?" asked Joe Rob.

Her eyes darted about wildly.

Realizing that the sight of three strangers with guns was probably not a reassuring sight to the young woman, Joe Rob said, "We're not going to hurt you."

She suddenly scrambled to her bare feet and made a dash for the woods, but Odell grabbed her wrist and held her in place. "Whoa there, honey," he said. "Take 'er easy now."

That's when Joe Rob saw the plastic wristband on her captive wrist, the kind they gave hospital patients. Odell saw it too, and said, "You ran away from the loony bin, didn't cha?"

The loony bin was the private psychiatric hospital located just outside the city limits of Vinewood, three miles south of the dump.

"Hell, I run away from there myself once," Odell boasted.

Joe Rob and Skeeter both had heard rumors that Odell had been committed to Browner Psychiatric Hospital after his early discharge from the Marine Corps, and here was Odell himself confirming it as the truth.

Still holding her arm, Odell asked, "So where you running to?" He bent her arm so he could read her wristband. "Jessica A. Lowell."

She shrugged, eyes downcast. Her auburn hair was a mass of Medusa-like tangles, and her milky complexion was flushed red with the day's heat.

"Why did you run?" Skeeter asked her. He scratched his ankle with the toe of his opposite boot.

She looked at Skeeter, then spoke for the first time. "It knew I was there."

" _What_ knew you were there?" Skeeter queried.

"The dark thing," she said softly. She glanced about, furtive and fearful.

Odell grinned, his eyes fixed on the bosom of her thin nightgown. "Well don't you worry, little lady. We won't tell it you're here. No ma'am. You jest let Odell take care of you."

Joe Rob knew at once what Odell had in mind for the girl. No way could he let that happen. "I'm Joe Rob Campbell," he said, "and this is Skeeter Partain. We can give you a ride to wherever you want to go. That's Skeeter's truck over there."

Odell scowled at Joe Rob. "You boys be on your way," he said. "She needs a grown-up to help her. Get on, now. Respect your fuckin' elders."

Skeeter started toward his truck. Joe Rob stood his ground; he was not prepared to leave the girl in Odell's dubious custody.

Maintaining his hold on Jessica Lowell's wrist, Odell raised his rifle in a one-handed grip and pointed it at Joe Rob's chest. "I ain't telling you again, boy," he said.

Joe Rob looked into Odell's eyes and saw the cold-blooded stare of a snake, poised and ready to strike. Reluctantly, he turned and trailed Skeeter to his truck.

"This is fucked," he said to Skeeter, who was already behind the wheel. "You know what he's gonna do to her."

"I know better than to go against that crazy sumbitch," said Skeeter, sticking the key in the ignition. "I ain't ready to die."

The sun made a brief appearance through a small break in the dark clouds. Joe Rob looked back across the dump and saw Odell leading the girl into the long shadows of the moss-hung trees. He cursed and slammed his fist on the hood of the truck. Then the storm clouds swallowed up the sun again.

"Come on, man," Skeeter pleaded. "Get in the truck. That chick's nuts anyway. She don't even know what's going on."

Joe Rob was about to explain to his friend how that was exactly the point— that the girl didn't know how to protect herself—when he heard the scream. Not a whoop this time, but an honest-to-God shriek of terror. "God damn it," he said quietly, then worked the bolt of his rifle, snapping a .22 long hollow-point cartridge into the rifle's firing chamber. "I'm going to get her."

"You're crazy!" Skeeter snatched the cap off his head and slapped it against the truck's dash.

"May be." Holding his rifle in a high port-arms, Joe Rob started jogging back toward the dump and the woods beyond. Odell be damned, he thought as he leapt over a crumpled cardboard box of decomposing paperbacks, I'm not letting him have her. No fucking way.

When he reached the edge of the woods, Joe Rob slowed to stealthy walk, his eyes searching the underbrush for Odell and the girl. A white blur caught his eye.

There she was, lying on her back at the foot of a tall pine, her white gown riding up above her knees as she tried to back-pedal away from Odell, who was standing over her, unfastening his camouflage pants. His gunnysack of dead rats was on the ground near his feet. Surging wind filled the moss-bearded trees.

"I got what you need, little honey," Odell cooed to her. "It'll settle you right down. Better'n any medicine they give you at that fuckin' loony bin."

Joe Rob pushed through a tangle of brush and raised his rifle. "No," he said.

Odell hunched his shoulders and turned around to face him. His lips twisted into a smile, but there was no mirth in his cold eyes. "Ain't no sloppy seconds today. You best git yer ass outta here."

"Leave her alone," Joe Rob said, his voice quivering as much with fear as with anger.

Odell seemed to notice for the first time that Joe Rob's rifle was pointing at him. Then he glanced at his own rifle propped against the trunk of a small birch, obviously calculating his chances of reaching it before catching a .22 slug with his flesh. "You stupid li'l peckerwood," he hissed like a viper. "You throw down on me, you hafta die. No two ways about it."

Jessica Lowell hugged her bare knees and began rocking herself, whispering some bizarre incantation.

"Just go, God damn you," Joe Rob said. "And leave your gun."

"Cain't do that." Odell casually hitched up his pants and buttoned them.

Joe Rob raised his aim from Odell's chest to his snake-eyed face. "I mean it," he warned.

The first drops of rain began to fall, pattering softly on the pine straw. Joe Rob shuddered with some unrecognized emotion.

Odell suddenly pointed his finger at the girl rocking on the ground. "Take a good look at her," he said. "See what yer about to die for and ast yerself if she's worth it."

Then Joe Rob made his mistake. He took his eyes off Odell Porch and glanced at Jessica Lowell. Later he would wonder if things might have turned out differently if he had not taken his eyes from Odell—though of course he would never really know.

In the brief instant he looked away, Odell drew the hunting knife from its sheath at the small of his back and sprang at him.

Joe Rob instinctively stepped back from his attacker, startled by the gunshot that rang out. A third eye opened in Odell's forehead and began weeping red tears as he staggered about like a bumbling drunk, determined to stay on his feet.

Then Odell's eyes rolled up in their sockets and he toppled to the ground.

The dark eye in his forehead remained open, leaking blood.

"Oh Lord," Joe Rob moaned. "I shot him."

Jessica A. Lowell began to giggle. Her giggling became cackling laughter.

The hollow laughter of the mad.

"It doesn't want _me_ ," she tittered. "It wants _him_."

She raised her arm and pointed her finger at Joe Rob Campbell.

***

Skeeter hated his best friend at that miserable moment. Didn't Joe Rob see the position he was putting him in? What the hell was he supposed to do? Sit here and wait while Joe Rob went and got himself killed? Drive off and leave him to go against Odell Porch? Yeah, just drive the fuck away.

He put his hand on the key, hesitated, then cranked the engine. The old green Chevy pickup roared to life, rumbling and shaking like a harnessed beast impatient to be given free rein.

Skeeter shouted a curse, then turned off the ignition. Fuming, he hopped out of the cab of the truck, grabbed his rifle and went after Joe Rob.

He heard the gunshot as he approached the woods. Fear spawned a metallic taste in his mouth. His heart thumped wildly in his thin chest. But he pushed on into the woods. He was pretty sure that the sharp report had come from Joe Rob's .22, rather than Odell's .30-.06. Joe Rob must've fired a warning shot to show Odell he meant business. He was like that, Joe Rob was; whenever he got his hackles up and his mind set on something, nothing could turn him away. He was one stubborn son of a bitch then.

Skeeter tripped over an unseen root and stumbled onto a scene he would never forget. The girl was pointing her finger at Joe Rob, and Joe Rob was standing over the sprawled body of Odell Porch. Just below Odell's headband a neat hole had been punched into the center of his forehead.

"It wants _him_ ," the girl repeated maniacally.

"Jesus Christ!" Skeeter blurted. "You _shot him_."

"I didn't mean to," Joe Rob said meekly. "He came at me with a knife. I...it just went off. Oh Lord. I think he's dead."

"Check his pulse."

"You do it. I can't touch him." Joe Rob dropped his rifle and sank to his knees. "I'm sick."

"Dead head," Jessica Lowell said, then lapsed into another fit of inappropriate laughter.

"Shut up, God damn you!" Skeeter shouted at her. "This is all your fault. Crazy ass bitch."

She covered her mouth and laughed into her hands like a misbehaving child.

Skeeter knelt down by Odell and touched his fingers to Odell's neck. "His heart ain't beating. He's dead, no shit."

Joe Rob retched, then spewed a foul gush of vomit onto the ground.

Skeeter backed away from the corpse, then moved away from Joe Rob when he caught a whiff of his puke. "What the fuck do we do now? Huh? I told you not to come back."

Joe Rob wiped his mouth and nose with the back of his hand, then turned his face skyward to catch the rain. He coughed, spat, then said, "We go to Chief Keller. Tell him what happened. It was self-defense. He had a fucking knife."

Skeeter shook his head. "Think about it, man. The law might let you off, but the Porch clan will kill you. You think they'll care what the law says? No fucking way. Old man Porch and his boys will come after you and keep on coming till you're dead. You _know_ what they'll do to you. They're _Porches_ , man. They ain't hardly human. Remember Monroe Shockley. Everybody knows they killed him, but nobody could ever prove it. Be the same with you."

Joe Rob nodded acknowledgment as he sat back on his haunches. "Then what do we do?"

"We bury him deep in the woods where nobody will find him. If anybody asks, we'll say we never saw him."

"What about her?" Joe Rob nodded at the girl who had thankfully gone silent.

"She's crazy as a loon. Who's gonna listen to her?"

"Yeah, but what if she comes out of it and tells what she saw?"

"Jesus, Joe Rob, _look_ at her. You think she's all of a sudden gonna go sane? It don't work that way. She probably won't remember any of this. She's probably on so much medication right now that this is nothing but a bad dream to her."

"It's a bad dream all right," Joe Rob said woefully. "Lord almighty."

"Well, whadaya say? It's your ass on the line. Do we bury him or go to the cops?"

Joe Rob rubbed his face with both hands. Then he looked at Odell's corpse. "We bury him."

"Damn right."

"What do we do with her?"

"Nothing. We leave her here, just like we never saw her. They'll find her eventually and take her back to the nuthouse."

"I don't know, man," Joe Rob said. "Something could happen to her. I mean, she's not safe out here. In her condition."

"Hey, we're not responsible for her. She ran away. That's got nothing to do with us."

"But..."

Skeeter squatted down beside his friend and put his hand on Joe Rob's shoulder. "Listen. If we bury the body, that makes me as guilty as you. An accessory to the fucking crime. That gives me a say in this. And I say we leave her. Think about it. If we take her back to the hospital, they'll want to know where we found her. Hell, she could say we tried to rape her. We don't want any connection to her, don't you get it?"

"But I told her our names," Joe Rob whispered.

Skeeter thought about this a moment, then turned to the girl and said, "Hey. Do you know my name?"

If she heard him, she gave no sign. She had resumed her rocking motion and seemed to have folded in on herself, withdrawing deeper into her madness.

"See? Nothing to worry about. Now let's get it in gear before somebody comes along and sees us."

***

Joe Rob looked at her, loathing her and wishing he'd never laid eyes on her. He got to his feet and wiped his mouth on the shoulder of his shirt. He tried his best to clear the fog of unreality from his head, but his thoughts remained jumbled. Logic failed him. He had to rely on his friend to guide him now. "Where can we bury him?"

"Out past the wolf's den. On the other side of that little creek. Nobody would have any reason to go digging there."

"Yeah. Okay."

"Wait here," Skeeter told him. "I'll pull my truck up as close as I can."

He watched Skeeter jog off through the rain, keeping his back to the man he had just killed, fancifully wishing the corpse would just disappear while he wasn't looking.

The cooling rainfall felt clean and good, but he knew there would be nothing to wash away his sin. He had taken a human life and nothing could change that fact. His finger had twitched and a man had died.

It was so easy—too easy—to kill a man.

I had to do it, he told himself. Odell would've gutted me with his knife if I hadn't shot him. Sure as hell he would've. I didn't even think about pulling the trigger. It was like it pulled itself, or maybe it was that part of me that wanted to survive that did it. Can that be a sin? No. I did nothing wrong.

His ruminations were interrupted by the approach of Skeeter's truck. As he neared the edge of the woods, Skeeter swung the truck around and backed right up to the outermost trees, then he hopped out of the cab and let down the gate of the truck bed. The gate dropped with a metallic bang.

Joe Rob glanced at the girl to see if she would react at all to Skeeter's return. Her long hair was plastered to her head by the rainfall, and her teeth were chattering, but the same vacant expression remained on her face. She was in the world, but obviously not _of_ it. Joe Rob's heart went out to her but slammed into the stone wall of her withdrawal. A terrible sadness settled in the center of his chest. He fought the urge to cry, to bawl like a baby.

"Let's get the sumbitch in the truck," said Skeeter.

"Maybe we should wait till dark," Joe Rob suggested.

"No, we need to get this done. Now."

Skeeter bent over Odell's corpse and pulled his headband down so that it covered the bullet hole in his forehead. "Maybe that will keep his brains and shit from leaking on my truck."

"Jesus, man."

"You get his feet. I got his head."

Joe Rob bent to the task and grabbed Odell's ankles. "Christ, I think he shit his pants."

"'Course he did. That's what happens when you die. Everything lets go. Dying's dirty business."

They carried the body through the underbrush and got it to the back of the truck.

"On three," said Skeeter as he began to swing his end of the suspended corpse like a lumpy bag of potatoes. "One...two...three!"

They let go and Odell was momentarily airborne, then he flopped onto the truck bed with a hollow thump. Skeeter covered the bed with a canvas tarp and secured it with multicolored bungee cords.

"All right," he said. "Let's get the hell outta here."

"Wait. We forgot his gun."

"Damn. Good thinking. His rat bag too."

They went back for the rifle and the gunnysack.

The girl was gone.

"Where the hell did she go?" Joe Rob looked around for some sign of her departure.

"Who cares? Forget her." Skeeter snatched up Odell's rifle. "Better this way. Now you don't have to feel bad about leaving her. She left us."

Joe Rob picked up the gunnysack. "Yeah. Good point."

The rain was slacking off when they got back to the truck and tossed Odell's rat bag and rifle under the tarp.

"Your shovel still in the back?" asked Joe Rob as they climbed into the pickup and simultaneously slammed their doors.

"Yeah. Pickaxe too." Skeeter cranked the engine. "Ground's pretty soft where we'll plant him. We can have him in the ground in no time. Then forget this whole fucking mess."

"I wish it was that easy. I'll never forget this shit, man. No fucking way."

Skeeter drove across the landfill, winding his way through an obstacle course of junk piles and broken appliances. The truck skidded over a slick patch of mud, then bumped over a shallow gully and emerged onto the red hardpack of Nebula Road.

"Shit, there's a car," Skeeter said as he turned on the headlights against the premature dusk.

Joe Rob leaned forward and peered ahead through the windshield.

A black Firebird with tinted windows was coming down the road toward them.

"Who is it?"

"How the fuck should I know?" Skeeter said. "Shit, shit, shit."

"I've never seen that car before. It's probably not somebody who'll know your truck."

The Firebird blew past them. It was an older model, flat black with a coat of primer.

Skeeter's eyes went to the rearview mirror and watched the black car slow, then turn into the mouth of the landfill. "It's turning at the dump. Ah fuck! That's not good."

"No shit."

"Maybe it's Odell's ride," Skeeter offered. "We didn't see his truck, ya know."

"Nah, don't say that."

"You think he hiked all the way from the Bottom to shoot rats?"

"He could've. It's only five or six miles."

"Not fucking likely. That's his ride. One of his brothers coming to pick him up. And he saw my fucking truck. God damn!"

"You don't know that," Joe Rob protested. "And if we don't recognize the car, the driver probably won't know your truck."

"All he's gotta do is ask around." Skeeter slipped into his imitation redneck voice: "'Old green Chevy with a confederate flag on the front bumper? Sounds like Skeeter Partain, the undertaker's son.'"

"Fuck it. Once we bury the body, nobody can prove anything. No point worrying about it now."

Skeeter floored the accelerator, wanting to put as much distance between them and the scene of the crime and the Firebird as possible.

Joe Rob turned in the seat to keep vigil through the rear window. He half expected the car to give chase. He exhaled a sigh of relief when they turned off Nebula Road and onto the smaller rutted road leading to the wolf's den. The woods thickened and the trail finally played out in a swampy thicket less than a mile from their destination.

They jumped out of the truck and removed the canvas tarp, then Skeeter said, "You're the weightlifter. You carry Odell and I'll get the rest of the shit."

Joe Rob gave no argument. It was his kill; he should be the one to carry the body. He pulled Odell to the edge of the truck bed, bent down and pulled the corpse onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Skeeter hooked the gunnysack of rats over his own shoulder, grabbed the shovel, the pickaxe and Odell's rifle, then followed Joe Rob up the path leading to the wolf's den.

Breathless with exertion, Joe Rob said, "I'm gonna have to bathe in the creek to get this shit smell off me."

"Good idea." Skeeter anxiously glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was following them.

They trudged past the small outcropping of rock that formed the little cave-like structure they called the wolf's den, waded across the narrow creek and stopped in the middle of a small clearing twenty or so yards deeper into the woods.

Joe Rob bent over and dumped the corpse off his shoulder. Skeeter was already testing the ground with the shovel. "Ground's pretty soft," he said. "Let's get her dug."

"You sure you wanna do this, man? It's not to late to go to the cops."

Skeeter thrust the pickaxe into Joe Rob's hands. "Shut up and dig. We go to the cops, we're both dead and you know it."

Joe Rob lost himself in the digging; his only thought was of making a hole in the earth. The rain ended, and all that was left of the summer storm was an occasional flash of distant lightning in the eastern sky. It was full dark by the time they had fashioned a shallow grave in the ground, and Skeeter went back to the truck to get his flashlight.

Standing there, alone in the dark woods, Joe Rob was suddenly afraid. He spooked himself with the idea that Odell Porch was going to get up and shamble toward him like one of those zombies in _Night of the Living Dead_.

"Skeeter?" he called. "Hurry up with that flashlight! I can't see shit."

What the hell could be taking him so long? The truck wasn't that far away.

He tightened his grip on the pickaxe, thinking irrationally that if Odell did get up and come after him, he would bury the sharp point of the axe in Odell's skull.

Then he saw the light bobbing toward him through the trees.

"Stop yelling," Skeeter called in a loud whisper.

Joe Rob could've hugged and kissed him just then. They had been best friends since the eighth grade, bled their wrists in a blood-brother ritual, graduated high school together, and now here they were playing out an incredible scene that was—as Joe Rob saw it—nothing less than an ultimate test of their friendship. And Skeeter was passing the test with colors flying, God bless him.

Skeeter held the light while Joe Rob rolled the corpse into the grave.

"Rest in peace, you crazy fuck," Skeeter said.

Joe Rob tossed in Odell's rifle, then picked up the gunnysack and dropped it on top of Odell's face. They took turns shoveling the sodden dirt into the shallow grave, and when they were done, they spread pine straw and dead leaves over the newly turned soil.

"Listen, man," Skeeter said. "None of this ever happened. We don't breathe a word of it to any-fucking-body. No matter what."

"No matter what," Joe Rob agreed.

"Blood brother's oath." Skeeter arched his brows.

"Damn straight. Blood oath."

Standing over the hidden grave, they touched their scarred wrists together, then shook hands to seal the vow.

Then Skeeter summed it up for them: "All we did was bury some rats."

Joe Rob nodded, wishing he could believe it.

Read the rest in BAD JUJU

## Hellfighter by David T. Wilbanks

Pleasure-seeking vagabond, Caddoc, falls madly in love with a saucy tavern wench. Then she disappears, carried off by the mysterious army of evil creatures known as drakuli, her town burnt to the ground. Now Caddoc, joined by a wise old monk and a cocky demon, must literally travel to Hell and back on his quest for true love.

Filled with horrifying creatures, dark magic, and intense battle scenes, Hellfighter is a fantasy novella any sword & sorcery fan will not want to miss.

Excerpt from Hellfighter

## PART I—GEM OF THE COLLECTOR

In the busiest tavern in Taryn, a man dressed in a ragged white tunic, leather vest and breeches, gulped a tankard of ale and allowed his eyes to rove his environs. He ogled the barmaid who was busy serving drinks to the lowlifes at the other tables. She had nice breasts, full, firm and visible through her sheer white dress. Heavenly waves of black hair cascaded down her back.

A thin waist and a round rear only added to the glorious bounty, but none of these things had seduced him completely. The true lure manifested itself in her eyes, which evoked the dark greens of the northern forests. These magnificent eyes were set in a brown, heart-shaped face. _Men would kill over those eyes_ , he thought; he knew _he_ would anyway.

Caddoc lit his clay pipe, which was packed with the Krellin headbash he'd purchased in the last hole of a town he'd visited. The seven ales he'd just imbibed had done a job on him, so the headbash would even things out nicely. He hoped to reach a state of mind where even this poor excuse for a tavern would begin to look good. Truthfully, the tavern resembled most others: full of untrustworthy bastards and wenches who'd kill you as soon as look at you. It was true what some folks said: people just weren't respectable anymore.

Other men in the tavern ogled the barmaid as well, which Caddoc did not appreciate; he wanted her all to himself.

He waved his hand, and the barmaid left a group of loudmouthed soldiers and approached his table.

"Do you want another ale, friend?"

"Gods, woman. I want much more than ale, or your friendship for that matter. Instead, what say we go upstairs and get to know each other better?"

"No one has ever asked me _that_ before," she said, rolling her mesmerizing eyes. "What makes you think you're so special?"

"This," Caddoc said. He stood up, yanking his breeches down.

Her eyes widened, and all grew silent within the tavern. Caddoc smiled haughtily and swiveled his hips, allowing everyone an eyeful. Squinting through the smoke from his pipe, he said, "You've never seen one this big, have you?"

The barmaid's eyes went round with wonder. Perspiration dotted her upper lip.

"Hey, there," a soldier from a nearby table said as he pulled his broadsword from its scabbard. He had no hair and a scar that would have run across his left eye had there been an eye present in the socket. "Put that thing back in your breeches before I slice it off you, you drug-addled dog."

Caddoc's smile transformed into a scowl. "Drug-addled dog? Who do you think you're calling a 'drug-addled dog'? You!—who has a face like a beast most uncomely?"

The soldiers' companions made angry noises at this insult, then stood and drew their swords.

"Maybe," Caddoc said, "instead of making love to this wench, I should make love to that gaping hole in your face."

Without further banter, the soldiers rushed Caddoc.

Caddoc drew up his pants in one swift motion, then reached for his mace which he had leaned against the wall.

Scar-face shoved the barmaid out of the way and swung his sword.

Caddoc brought up his mace and deflected the blow as he kicked the edge of his table. It slid across the floor into the other soldiers, toppling them to the ground in a jumble.

Someone yelled for them to stop, but his opponents had all Caddoc's attention. He swung his mace horizontally at Scar-face's head, but the soldier ducked out of the way with mere inches to spare.

The soldier jabbed his sword toward Caddoc's groin.

Caddoc fell back, his back slamming against the wall, knocking loose a painting of brown cows in a green pasture.

The other three soldiers had risen from the floor by now and were scowling at Caddoc. They inched forward.

Scar-face raised a hand for them to stop. "I can handle this stinking piece of offal myself. You men sit back and enjoy the show."

A few of the other tavern patrons had their weapons out, apparently caught up in the excitement and wanting their own piece of the action. Or perhaps they wished to start their own private melees among themselves.

But when the three soldiers stood down as commanded by Scar-face, the others in the tavern stood down as well. Yet they continued to watch, thirsting for blood and not caring whose.

"Why'd you stop them?" Caddoc said. He kept the mace's head high in front of him. "I can defeat four weaklings as well as one, even when I'm drunk and dizzy."

Scar-face growled and chopped at Caddoc, who blocked the sword with his mace's metal handle. Sparks flew.

Caddoc spun under the locked weapons and disengaged before the soldier could slide his sword down the handle of the mace and slice Caddoc's fingers off. As he turned back to face the soldier, he kicked the man in the groin with his heavy boot.

The soldier grunted and his eyes bulged. He doubled over and forgot all about his sword as it slid from his fingers.

Caddoc thought the back of Scar-face's head made an ideal target, so he brought his mace down, two-handed. _Crack!_ went the soldier's skull. The mace-head displaced Scar-face's brains which squirted in all directions—lumpy gray and runny red. The soldier's corpse dropped to the floor like a sack of cheap grain.

"Bastard made me lose my pipe," Caddoc said, looking around, the mace in his hand plopping gore onto the filthy tavern floor.

The other three soldiers rose and approached Caddoc cautiously, vengeful yet wary of the dangerous man.

"You girls want some of what he got? Be my guest," Caddoc said, taking one last glance around for his pipe.

Then, with a massive stride, Caddoc drove into them, his mace swinging. A howl, as if from the more undesirable depths of hell, poured from his throat. He swung his mace into a soldier's midsection and something cracked and gave way. He brought his boot heel down on another soldier's foot, applying his full weight as he swiveled about.

The third soldier swung his blade at Caddoc's head, screaming something about "avenging the captain."

Caddoc ducked the blow and drove his shoulder into the soldier's stomach. He had plowed through all three men in a matter of moments. He turned about to survey the damage.

The soldier felled by the mace did not move from the floor, nor did he move at all. But the other two were up and ready for more.

"I'll give you weaklings a chance to leave now while you still have brains in your skulls," Caddoc said, with a demonic smile. "No one has ever said that I do not fight fair. Or _fairly_ fair, anyway."

The barmaid stepped in between Caddoc and the soldiers.

"Stop!" she screamed. "This fighting must end. My father does not want murder committed in his tavern."

"Out of my way, wench," a soldier said. He shoved her against a table, where she banged her leg. The beautiful woman flopped into a chair, rubbing her wound. Tears of anger and fear wetted her cheeks.

"You dirty son of a bitch," Caddoc said. "For your cruelty to this kind lady, I'm going to show you no mercy."

He charged the soldier, and as his opponent brought his sword 'round, Caddoc sidestepped and clipped the man's hip with the mace. This sent the soldier spinning until he fell hard across the barmaid's table.

The barmaid grabbed a handy wine bottle by its neck, still half full, and cracked it across the back of the soldier's head. The bottle burst open, leaving her holding the jagged neck.

Despite the beating, the soldier on the table began to rise, his head soaked with wine and covered with shards of glass.

Caddoc swung his weapon sidearm, firing the top of the soldier's head across the room where the moist missile landed in a surprised drunkard's lap. He turned to confront the final soldier just in time to see the coward scurry out the door.

"Gods!" Caddoc yelled. He wiped the gore from his mace with a tablecloth. "Now I'm thirsty all over again. Do these soldiers think I'm made out of silver pieces with which to purchase ale?" He fell back into an empty chair at the barmaid's wine-drenched table while a pair of patrons removed the dead soldier.

The barmaid wept. "Perhaps if you had not exposed your manhood earlier, none of this would have happened. Look at this mess, and I'm the one who has to clean it all up. Do you know how difficult it is to remove blood stains from a tablecloth?"

Caddoc thought she seemed more concerned about her chores than the recently deceased. He liked her more and more by the minute. "What are these soldiers doing in this spittoon of a town, anyway?"

"Taryn is not a spittoon, you filthy rogue. It is my home, and those soldiers you fought had arrived from Goldwall to help protect us."

Caddoc knew Goldwall; it was a city-state. Civilization flourished there, not like out here in the wilds. He had visited Goldwall many times, and had enjoyed its wine and women—had even been involved in the occasional fight that made this fresh melee look like child's play. "Protect it from what?"

" _Drakuli!"_

The name sent a chill through Caddoc's soul even though he knew the drakuli were mythical creatures evoked by frustrated mothers to scare their misbehaving children.

Eat your vegetables or the drakuli will get you.

"Drakuli? You're not serious."

The barmaid shook her head. "No. They are very real, and an army of them have been murdering and pillaging in this area. Just last week, they attacked Whiteseer, which is one town over. They killed nearly all of those they didn't enslave for their own foul purposes. They are vile, vile creatures with red eyes, and—"

"Fine. I understand," Caddoc said, waving a hand, looking around for his pipe again. He licked his lips, recalling that all this activity and talk had made him thirsty. "You wouldn't mind fetching me an ale, would you? Then we can go upstairs and make love, if it pleases you."

The barmaid rose to her feet. "I am no common whore, you blood-spattered scoundrel. Go find your fun elsewhere. There is a whorehouse down the street where you can have all the girl-flesh you desire."

Caddoc smiled. He admired her spunk. "You're one of those difficult wenches, aren't you?" he said. "By the way, I never did find out your name."

"Geniece."

"Caddoc," he said, pointing to himself with his thumb.

With a fawning smile, a fat tavern patron brought the adventurer's pipe over. Caddoc nodded to the obese man and inspected the clay pipe for any damage.

Around them, activity at the tavern returned to normal. Many of the patrons pointed at the ruffian and the barmaid and whispered behind their hands, excitement plain on their faces. They drank their ales and retold the tale of how Caddoc had handled the soldiers as if they were mere oafs.

"Beautiful Geniece," Caddoc said, "what must a man do to win your favor? You are a gorgeous and delightful creature, and I'd gladly slay a dragon for you, if I could but find one handy."

A sudden glint shone in Geniece's green eyes, and her depressed frown transformed into a sly smile, a transformation that brightened her whole face, making her even more desirable—if that were possible.

"We had better go elsewhere and talk," Geniece whispered. "Soon, more soldiers will come to punish you for what you've done here."

"Me? What do they want with me? I merely defended a lady's honor!"

"You are a strange man, Caddoc. One minute you show me your manhood, the next you are 'defending' my honor. One minute you're asking me to go upstairs to make love, the next you want to slay a dragon for me."

The large man shrugged. "I am a man who knows what he wants. And I've grown accustomed to getting it."

"Let us go, then. And I will tell you how you can earn my undying gratitude and love."

Caddoc lit his newly filled pipe and smiled. "Sounds like an excellent plan. Lead on, my lady."

They wove their way through the tables toward the exit.

A stout man with fiery hair and a stained apron appeared before them, blocking their exit. "Geniece, where are you going with this scoundrel? He's a plain murderer, and I do not want a daughter of mine accompanying him out of my sight, especially at this late hour."

"Move out of the way, old man. We have private business outside your shabby tavern," Caddoc said.

The man scowled, planting his fists on his hips.

Geniece kissed the angry man on the cheek. "I'll be fine. Caddoc has agreed to help me with a personal problem, father. Do not worry. I can handle myself and will return soon enough to help clean up."

Her father looked skeptical.

"Don't worry, friend," Caddoc said. He patted the shorter man on his thick shoulder. "I'll have her back here in no time, and despite what you have witnessed this evening, I'm an easy-going fellow who would never harm a woman, especially one as beautiful as your daughter. In fact, from this day forward, I feel it is my duty to protect her from anyone, or any _thing_ , that would cause her harm."

"A fine speech from a drunkard and drug-abuser," the tavern owner growled. "Go on, then. But you'd better have her back within the hour, or I'll come after you with the sheriff."

"Done," Caddoc said. "Come, Geniece, so I may have you back in time for bed, and so your good father does not worry overly much."

Outside the tavern ran a road of trodden mud, trash, and sewage. Few people walked here at this hour, and most of the shops along the road were closed, their windows dark. Somewhere far away, a dog yelped as if it had been kicked. The man and woman held their hands to their noses to block the town's odor.

She led him into a dark, narrow alley that ran alongside the tavern, the foul muck beneath their feet nearly sucking off their footwear.

"Your town smells like an outhouse, so it should be well protected because if I were the drakuli, I would do anything to avoid its horrible stench."

She frowned. "Drakuli are like pigs, Caddoc. There is nothing they would like better than to rape and eat a woman who was coated with filth."

The well-traveled man still couldn't believe drakuli were real because he'd never seen one with his own eyes. Trolls and goblins, yes. They were common enough. But drakuli?

When they reached the rear of the tavern, the barmaid stopped near a stack of wooden barrels and looked around to ensure no one was listening. Crickets chirped and a wolf howled. A half-section of moon hung yellow in the star-studded black sky.

Caddoc gripped Geniece's shoulders in his coarse hands. "Now, my love, what must I do to win your heart? Please tell me, for my own beats eagerly in my chest."

The woman laid her delicate white hands on her suitor's much larger ones and held them there. "To the west, past the edge of town, lives an old wizard called the Collector."

The big man looked off to the west, as if he would be able to see this wizard from where he stood. "The Collector? What does he collect? Toads? Bats? _Magic weeds_?" Caddoc drew on his clay pipe, making the bowl glow red, then exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke.

But Geniece did not laugh at his little joke. "He collects _souls_."

It was as if a cold wind had blown up Caddoc's spine. He did not like wizards, especially ones that had the backbone to collect other people's souls. "Please don't tell me I must challenge this fellow. I like my soul exactly where it is, thank you."

The beautiful barmaid pressed her firm, young body against Caddoc's own. "All you must do for me is steal one small green gem. Just wait until he falls asleep, sneak into his hut, and grab it. That's all I ask in return for my eternal gratitude and love." Then Geniece pretended to stumble and, in the process, rubbed herself against Caddoc's loins.

The adventurer's head swam upon contact and he grew lustful, reaching out to grab her, but she was already disappearing back down the stinking alley.

"Remember," she said, her voice fading with distance. "Retrieve the green gem and I'm all yours to do with as you please."

Then she was gone.

**Read the rest in** _HELLFIGHTER_

### THIS HAS BEEN

### AN

### BOOK

