The Devil Next Door (35 page)

They found something.

They bristled with excitement, chattering their teeth, making low moaning sounds that were nearly orgasmic. All three had their hands in her now, ripping, jerking at something, cutting at it with the knife, finally working it free as they cried out with a strident communal baying. Doris saw it. Saw that great fleshy mass they yanked from inside her…a heavy, pinkish-brown slab of blood-dripping meat that could only be her liver.

They held it up like a prize.

Growling and grunting, they brought it to their mouths and bit into it.

This was the very last thing that Doris saw before the darkness took her…

56

Night came then to the Greenlawn.

It came over the rooftops and from cellars, from dark corners and alleys, crawlspaces and attics and graveyards…all the places it had been tucked away and coveted during the hours of daylight. It came with teeth and intent and degeneracy. The darkness concealed a thousand sins, a thousand terrible deeds, wreckage and corpses and packs of men and women and children that were no longer human, just creeping night things running wild and insane and loathsome through the narrow streets and weedy backlots, the dusky arteries of the town. These were the ones that welcomed the night, that understood it and worshipped it and called it their own. With fixed eyes, primal appetites, and a yawning malignancy where their souls had once been before a certain dormant gene was activated, they returned to the dawn times. Repressed demons and parasitical desires that had long clung to the undersides of their psyches were released with gruesome abandon. In Greenlawn atavistic evil was brought to term and was allowed to bear its pestilent fruit. And the growing season was rich.

Heeding the primordial call of the wild, filled with an archaic killing instinct born in the pre-Cambrian slime, overjoyed to return to the jungle at last, they took to the streets in wolfpacks, hunting and maiming and devouring.

And the night went on forever…

57

Although she was sore from being raped repeatedly, Leslie Towers was nothing if not completely connected to her surroundings. Though bound as she was, tossed into the grass, she was alert as any animal, sensing the night around her and the things that hunted it. So while Mr. Kenning and Mike Hack slept off their meal of dog—both greased slick with yellow dog fat, Setter hairs and leaves stuck to them—Leslie heard the hunters circling beyond the light of the fire. They had been out there in the darkness for some time.

Now they were coming.

Leslie was tense, ready. Her wrists were tied behind her back so there was no chance to gnaw her way free. Trussed-up as she was, she could only lay there, an unwilling victim. She longed to run free and wild through the grim, silent night. She also longed for a knife to protect herself with.

The hunters crept in closer.

Mr. Kenning slept on as did Mike Hack.

Silence.

Heavy, pregnant with foreboding and dread.

Soon now.

They were closer.

She could smell the stink of them: gamey, rich, hot. There were males as well as females.

Now she could see them…hulking shapes, but small and lithe. Children. Children led by a large man who was shaggy and stealthy. Their faces were darkened with tiger-striped bands, bodies slashed with browns and blues. With a shrieking battle cry, they rushed in. Mr. Kenning leaped to his feet and two spears sank into him, one in the belly and the other in the back. A knife slashed his eyes into bleeding holes. A hammer crashed down on his skull with a sickening popping noise. He went to his knees, more spears jabbing into him. Blood poured from him and an insane doglike howl roared from his contorted mouth. Mike tried to help and was put down under a rain of fists and clubs.

The hunters ravaged the camp, looking for weapons, for food. They kicked over the spit that the dog had been roasted on. They scattered the coals of the fire into a heap of dry kindling that immediately began to blaze.

Leslie thought they might not notice her there in the grass, away from the fire. But the rekindled blaze made the yard glow orange and yellow, flickering. Then a form jumped down by her, a girl with long hair knotted with wildflowers and sticks. Her painted face was like that of a wild boar…fat, puffy, greasy, her eyes glistening black. She stank like shit and blood.

She dragged Leslie by the ankles over towards the fire.

The other girls snarled and snapped at her, kicked her and spit on her. The boys rushed in, gripping her breasts and the globes of her ass. One of them bit into her shoulder. They fought over her, yanking her in all directions, their dirty nails scratching into her back. They were all hard and she could smell the brine of their balls.

She screamed.

She hissed.

Fingers groped her face and she bit one of them to the bone.

Then the huge shaggy figure waded in, tossing the boys aside, screeching at all of them until they drew back and away. Leslie looked up at him. He was a huge man, shining with sweat. His hair was white and bristly, his face set with deep-hewn wrinkles and ruts. He wore a shaggy fur coat with the arms torn off, his chest on display. He had many tattoos. There was a hatchet and a knife in his belt. A necklace of blackening ears was strung around his throat.

Leslie recognized him for what he was: the baron of the pack.

He pulled her to her feet, sniffed her face, then licked it. His breath was foul like he’d been chewing on rotten meat. “Did they take you, child?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Did they force you here?”

She nodded.

“Would you hunt with us? Kill for us? Be with us?”

“Yes,” she said in a dry, cracking voice.

The man spun her around, pulled his knife and cut her the binds from her wrists and ankles. He shoved her away towards the other girls. They touched her hair and face. They sniffed her breasts, between her legs, and especially her ass. This was how they would know if she could be one of them. They were sniffing for the telltale trace of adrenalin, which would indicate fear. They smelled none.

A spear was thrust into her hands.

She liked the feel of it. She would use it. She would bring down prey and her simple little animal mind wanted nothing more.

Mike Hack, forgotten in the grass, leaped to his feet and tried to escape. Three of the girls jumped on him, took him down. He fought madly, but they bit and scratched and hit him, beating him into submission. They tore at his eyes and worried his testicles until there was no fight left. He was pulled to his feet. The pack did not like runners. It respected those who stood and fought; it despised cowards. While five or six of the pack held him, another cut the tendons behind his knees, the others behind his ankles. He flopped uselessly in the grass, blood rushing out of his wounds.

Mr. Kenning was lifted up, hoisted by the half dozen or so spears sunk into him. He could barely stand. He was wet with his own blood, gagging and grunting, a spray of vomit at his chin. He was pushed over to the tree where he had earlier hung the carcass of his Irish Setter, Libby. The noose was still there. It was looped around his throat, drawn taut. The spears were pulled from him, blood gushing out of the holes. Six of them took the rope and pulled on it, yanking him up off the ground by the noose around his throat.

The pack baron pulled out his knife and began to slash Mr. Kenning, hacking and slicing with wild abandon until he was flayed open, slabs of flesh dangling by threads of red gristle, his intestines hanging in slimy loops. Laid raw, Mr. Kenning was still alive.

Leslie, excited by what he had done, rubbed herself against the girl next to her whose flesh was hot and slippery.

All were watching, all were breathless, all excited sexually.

With a few deft movements of the big knife, the Baron slit off Mr. Kenning’s balls, then his penis. He threw them into the grass and the girls went after them, fighting over the scraps, biting and clawing each other. The boys went after the viscera, yanking it out in coils that they chewed on.

The Baron turned towards Mike Hack. He put away his knife and took out his hatchet. Bleeding, broken, Mike squirmed in the grass as the Baron towered over him, his eyes filled with a primordial malignance.

“Mr. Chalmers,” Mike moaned. “Please, Mr. Chalmers…”

The Baron let out a piercing cry and brought the hatchet down. Again and again and again. Such was the punishment for disobeying the rules of the pack…

58

He ran because there were too many of them. He shot and killed two, wounded a third, and as the others set on them to feast and three more went after Doris, Louis ran into the back of the store and out the rear entrance. He cut down the alley, moving through the shadows. He waited for shapes shaggy, meat-smelling and vaguely human to jump out at him…but none did.

He made it onto the street.

There were bodies everywhere.

Had there been that many before? Two or three were lying by the car. He couldn’t remember if they’d been there before. Carefully, he stepped forward and then he knew. Maybe one or two them had been there, but not these others. If they had, he would have run right over them. These bodies were dirty and ragged, but they were alive. Crazies playing dead and setting up an ambush.

Very clever.

Louis scanned the darkened buildings, the rooftops, the shadowy storefronts. Even with the streetlights on, the main force could have been just about anywhere. So many places to hide. He moved forward, pretending not to notice the ones on the pavement…a man, a woman, a teenage boy. But he gave them a wide berth. He heard one of them stir behind him and swung back with the gun.

“You can get up now,” he said, “nap time is over.”

The boy made it to his feet first, bringing out a carving knife. Louis pulled the trigger and the kid took a round in the chest that knocked him flat. He twisted and thumped on the pavement, hissing and gagging and that was it. The man ran off, but the woman came right at him. Louis fired point-blank at her. The slug caught her in the belly and she went down, a river of blood running from her hands which were clenched over her stomach. She had no weapon. Just fingers and teeth. Her face was smudged with dirt, her eyes huge and glistening, staring black holes. She was gutshot and she wouldn’t make it. She squirmed around on the ground leaving a blood trail, coughing and wheezing.

Louis was sickened by the killing he had done, yet exhilarated. There was power in holding a gun, using it. He could feel the darkness welling inside him then, something huge and organic and clutching, the beast within clawing up, scrambling for hold, wanting to own him. It
liked
the killing. It fed on it like an engorged leech at an artery.

He fought it back down.

He would kill to survive. Not for pleasure. That was the difference, that was the difference between civilization and the primal call of the jungle.

Louis stared at the bodies. They had thought him easy prey and now he had shown them different. There was a satisfaction in that.

“All right!” he called out, his voice echoing off the buildings. “You wanted me and here I am! Come and get me! You hear me? Come and get me!”

He heard sounds from between the stores, from alleys and shadowy tangles of shrubs. Rustling sounds. They were there, but they did not want to show themselves.

Sure, not much more than animals, but certainly not stupid animals.

“DID YOU FUCKING HEAR ME?” he shouted now. “SHOW YOURSELVES! WHERE’S THE GIRL? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER? YOU LET HER GO AND WE’LL DRIVE OUT! YOU CAN HAVE THIS PISSING TOWN!”

More rustling, some subdued voices, nothing more.

The woman on the ground was still squirming. Louis was suddenly filled with a hatred he had never known before. The blood, the carnage, none of it could touch him.
Macy, dear God, poor sweet Macy.
He walked right over to the woman and
kicked
her. She grunted and rolled to the side. When she tried to get up to crawl, he kicked her in the ass. When she turned to bare her bloody teeth at him, he kicked her in the face. Her eyes rolled back white and she flopped to the ground.