Hacked (10 page)

     Rodney reached up and grabbed for the gun, but she pulled it back. He took a swing with the hammer into the cab as she fired another shot. Keeping his head down, he swung the hammer wildly. Finally, he pulled the hammer back and waited. The truck swerved again as the road suddenly smoothed out. Sticking his head up a bit, he saw they were now on the highway. He had to kill this bitch before she got to the police.

     Putting his head back down, after a few seconds he saw the barrel of the gun coming through the broken window. Quickly he reached up and snatched it from her hand. The gun was his! He jumped to his feet in the bed of the truck and pressed the gun to the back of her head.

     “Check mate you fucking cunt!” He yelled as he pulled the hammer back. Abby stomped on the break, sending him flying over the roof of the truck, over the hood and hitting the pavement face first. He felt his forehead crack as well as his ribs and his jaw.

     Everything went blurry as he skidded to a halt. A trail of clothing and skin went on for several feet. Glancing back he could see the tan pickup stopped a dozen feet behind him. He was able to look up ahead just in time to see the SUV coming straight at him. Before he could scream, it ran over him. His body bounced beneath the undercarriage both sets of tires rolled over him. Finally, Rodney stopped moving.

                                                    ***

     Abby looked out at the road at the greasy smear that was once Rodney her tormenter. There was no doubt he was dead now. His body was flattened and his head had been popped like a giant zit, with his brains squirted all over the asphalt. Motorists were coming to a stop as one of them walked up to the pickup.

     As a crowd gathered round, they all had looks of horror on their faces when they saw Rodney’s body, Abby looking bloody and beaten, and Erin’s dead body in the passenger seat. Abby got out of the truck and walked to the center of the road. Dozens of cars had come to a stop with even more onlookers at the macabre spectacle. Looking up to the sky, clouds had rolled in as the morning sky darkened. She sat down in the middle of the road and looked up to the sky as it began to rain. As she closed her eyes and let the rain pour over her, she knew no matter how long she sat there, she’d never be clean again.

Special Bonus!

Sample of Tim’s Upcoming book:

Part 3 in The Hand of God Trilogy.

Prologue

     Jorge sat at the table trying to concentrate. The
thud thud thud
of the music from the club below made the floor vibrate. He hated working out of this place. It was always too hot, and smelled like sweat and booze. However, this is where the boss wants them to be. The sound of crying came from behind him. He stood and walked over to the door in the back of the room, yanking it open. One of the girls had worked the duct tape off her mouth and was sobbing.

     The little Mexican girl looked to be twelve or thirteen. She muttered something in Spanish as she cried. Jorge pulled his switchblade from his pocket and stuck it in her face, cutting down her cheek.

     “Shut up,
puta
or I’ll cut your heart out and let the other girls play with it,” he said.

     She looked up at him, trying to hold in her sobs. Jorge grabbed the roll of duct tape and placed a strip over her mouth. This time, he tore off several long strips of tape and wrapped it all the way around her head several times. He tossed the roll behind him, and looked over the rest of the girls. There were ten of them stuffed into the large closet, all bound by duct tape around the hands, feet, and mouth. The truck would be arriving in the morning to deliver north. Jorge wasn’t sure where they go from there, and didn’t care. Some would be prostitutes; some would go work on farms or sweatshops. None of this matter to him, he got paid the same regardless.

     Jorge had hoped that after surviving fifteen years working for the cartel, that he’d have a more respectable job than babysitting a bunch of pre-teen girls. Yet, this wasn’t exactly an organization you retired from. As he closed the door, he noticed the thudding of music down below had stopped. He listened carefully but heard nothing, absolutely nothing. It’s never that quiet down there this late. It was just after midnight. The place is usually jumping. He headed for the stairs when he heard the screams. Horrific, blood curdling screams. Drawing his gun, he ran down the stairs and cracked the door just enough to peek through. The crowd was surging in all different directions. Through the strobe lights, he could see blood spraying through the air as bodies collapsed all around.

     A woman threw herself against the door pushing it open. He pushed it back, but she was halfway through wedging it open.

     “Help me! Please! Help!” She screamed. “He’s killing us! Stop him! He’s killing us!”

     “Who? Who’s killing you? What do you mean?” Jorge asked.

     Before she could answer, she let out one final scream as the flesh tore away from her body. In an instant, she was a living, breathing pile of blood, muscle, bone, and tissue. Her naked, wide eyes bore into Jorge as she screamed, grabbing him by the shirt and falling over dead.  Looking out into the club, he saw the other bodies looking like the woman’s. Totally skinless, all of them. The screaming died down as the last of the patrons fell. There was one man standing in the middle of the club. The man turned and looked right at Jorge.

     Jorge ran up the stairs and began to pry the window open. It was stuck shut, since they kept the air conditioning on most of the time, no telling last time it had been opened. He got it halfway open when he saw a reflection coming up behind him. When he spun around, the man was standing several feet from him. The man was white, maybe five foot nine or ten, medium build. He had a friendly face, not scary looking at all. Yet, he had torn apart an entire night club in minutes.

     Jorge took the gun and fired three shots at the man. The rounds each hit him dead center in the chest. The man looked at him and smiled as the bullets protruded from his body and fell to the floor. Jorge pointed the gun back at the man, but this time it wouldn’t fire. The man put out his hand and the gun jumped from Jorge into the man’s hand. The strange man looked at the gun as if it were an object from mars, and crumpled it into a ball as if it were a piece of notebook paper.

       Jorge turned and began to work on the window again. The man grabbed him from behind and dragged him across the hardwood floor, tossing him onto a small couch in the corner.

     “Who are you?” Jorge asked.

     “Jorge, we need to talk.”

     “About what? What is this? You gonna kill me?”

     “I’ve come for the girls, Jorge. What you’re doing to them is wrong. I’m here to free them.” The man said. His voice was smooth and calm. There wasn’t an ounce of tension to indicate he’d just shredded a club full of people.

     “You won’t get away with this. My bosses will kill you!”

     “Oh, I doubt that.  You won’t be around to see what happens anyway.”

     “You gonna skin me like you did the others?”

     “Probably.”

     “Will it hurt?”

     “Oh yes, it will hurt. It will be pain like you’ve never experienced before. But only for a minute, then you’ll spend eternity listening to other people’s screams while feeling all of the suffering you’ve caused.”

     “What are you talking about? Who are you?”

     “They call me
El Diablo Blanco
, but you can call me Charlie.”

Chapter 1

     Pastor Charlie sat staring out the apartment window. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular, just listening. Since absorbing the ghost’s powers, and even the Ghost himself, he found he often heard things, lots of things. He was still trying to figure out just who he was. For one, he wasn’t a pastor anymore, not by any stretch. Nothing was stopping him technically, but after having done battle with two-thirds of the holy trinity and winning, he wasn’t sure what he’d preach about.

     He’d run into some fringe groups that knew what he knew and even who he was. One group had tried to worship him, which he supposed he was at least part god-like, now that he had absorbed a god into his own being. It just felt weird. In the two years since all that happened, he’d been keeping a low profile. Other than a recent raid on a human trafficking ring he’d taken down on his own, the most he’d used his new powers for was cooking toast and he once made a running back during a University of Texas football game he was watching trip and fall in an open field just by thinking about it. That was just from watching it on TV.

    There was probably lots more he could do, to live up to his nickname, El Blanco Diablo or The White Devil. Some Mexican drug lords had called him that after seeing him in action. So he had a few tricks up his sleeve, but Maria was afraid of him. The Ghost had once possessed her and was using her as some conduit with which to come into this world and destroy its own creation.

      It didn’t help that Charlie had pissed him off a year or so before by killing Jesus himself, or at least the man known as Jesus. He was nothing like in the stories that was for sure. It was kind of like finally getting to meet your childhood hero only to find out he was an asshole.

     Needless to say, those events were a bit disheartening for Charlie. His plan had been to go after the Father who was apparently the head mother fucker in charge when it comes to deities, but he hadn’t yet. Mainly, he just was too tired for another cosmic fight. Though the Father spoke to him. He had this almost robotic voice, like Siri except it was gender neutral, very plain.

     “Charlie, Charlie my son. Why have you forsaken me?” The Father would say.

     “You’re kidding right? You just tried to kill us all, twice.”

     “I have only tried to kill that which is flesh. Surrender yourself to me and you shall be spared the coming trials. Your soul shall absorb into my being, into eternal bliss.”

     “Thanks, I’m good,” Charlie would reply. It went the same way every time. He wasn’t sure what the old man’s angle was other than to mind fuck him. He had no doubt that he’d be coming for him soon, but he’d cross that bridge when he got to it.

     “You coming to bed?” Maria asked. She was standing in the doorway looking out at Charlie. After all she’d been through and even just wearing a baggy t-shirt, she still looked stunning. If he were honest with himself, he had no idea why she was with him. The girl was a Latina goddess. She could have any guy in the world, yet she chose him. Granted he rescued her from an angry god, and jumped off the Tower of the America’s in San Antonio while holding onto her, but still.

     “I have some things to do tonight. Work called me in for a while,” he lied. His job was as a stocker in an overnight warehouse. He was a fill in, so they usually called him in. Most nights though, he was out doing an old hobby.

     “Again?”

     “Yeah, again. We need the money.” No they didn’t, but it got her off his back. He loved Maria, at least he thought he did. Though part of him was never sure he was capable of love. Before he was slaying unruly deities, he was not only a preacher, but a serial killer. Though he only killed evil sinners that God told him about, he later learned God had nothing to do with it. He was just sick. Then, there was the part about his ancestors were fallen angels, so he could also turn people into zombies if he chose, though he hadn’t done so in quite a while.

     Which was ok, being sick helped him to not care about getting hurt or how big or powerful his opponent.

     “Will you be working long? I hate being here alone,” she said.

     “I hope not. I’ll do my work and leave as soon as I can.”

     “Ok. Good night Charlie. I love you.”

     “I love you too,” he said as she disappeared into the bedroom. Since her possession, she’d been near zombie like herself. He’d taken her to some doctors who tried to prescribe her medication for depression, but she wouldn’t take it. Said she never wanted anything else messing with her mind again. Charlie couldn’t really blame her.

     Once she was in bed, he went into his man cave which was really a study, except there was only a beanbag, TV, and some bookshelves. Behind one of the shelves was a small compartment he’d cut out that contained his bag. He grabbed the bag and put the book shelf back against the wall and headed out to the car.

     Even though he had all these new and amazing powers, there were some things he preferred to do the old fashioned way. Though he used his power for smaller tasks like information gathering, since his brain was now faster and more accurate than google. It hadn’t happened yet, but if he ever needed to make himself disappear, he was sure he could do that too.

     He parked the car just across the street from his target’s home. A young, slick douchebag named Ronny Richards lived there. Ronny was a UPS driver, but he also happened to be a rapist. Ronny would check out women on his routes and scout the ones who lived alone, then come back later for his own special delivery. For some reason, despite his gift for violence and madness, Charlie always had a soft spot for women and children. Maybe it was because as a serial killer, he took out other predators, and now with his new powers, he was at the top of any and every food chain.

     Monsters who preyed on the weak and helpless were the worst kind. Though he didn’t have any illusions of doing God’s work. That was all in the past. He watched the quiet house until Ronny’s car pulled into the garage. It was just past midnight. The usual time Ronny gets back from the bar. Charlie knew his every move and every thought.

     If he wanted to, he could just make Ronny’s brain explode inside of his own skull. It might be fun to watch, but was too quick and not near messy enough. He preferred the old fashioned way. Once Ronny was inside the small house, Charlie got out of the car and grabbed the duffel bag. There was a smile on his face as he crossed the street. Time to do Charlie’s work.