The Redeemed (7 page)

She raised both hands so they were level with his gun hand.

“Be cool,” she said. “I was just clowning around.”

“What you want with Mercedes? Stupid bitch didn’t come into work tonight. You have something to do with that?”

“No.”

“Then why you here?”

“We wanted Mercedes for a three-way.”

His hand tightened on her hair as he smiled.

“I hate liars. If that was true, why attack Stevie? Why go after my girls?”

“I didn’t. But that doesn’t matter because you’ve already made up your mind.”

“That’s right.”

His hand tightened again. Her eyes watered. Now it was bordering on serious pain. This was no longer fun.

“Be cool,” Sarah said, “or I will break your nose.”

An M1911. The slide stop can be depressed from the reverse side to incapacitate the weapon.

Sarah knew enough about guns to know exactly what that meant. No longer flustered by the foreign thoughts, she stared down at the gun below her face and saw the slide stop on the side of its barrel, right above the grip.

Miles talked through his teeth, “I got the gun on you and you want to threaten me?” He laughed deep in his throat.

Cars approached. Tires screeched. Maybe the police had arrived. Maybe someone inside the restaurant had called them.

“I think it’s time to teach bitch girl here a lesson.” Miles released her hair.

With her left hand, Sarah grabbed Miles’ gun wrist, shoved the gun a few degrees up and to the left, away from her and Parkman, and dropped her head the opposite way. As her right hand grabbed the top of the gun to jam the slide back, the gun fired.

Chapter 10

When Mike entered the room, Evelyn was right where he’d left her. Only this time, her wrists were bleeding.

“What have you been up to?” he asked.

She grunted, the gag held firmly in place by the duct tape wrapped around her head. She would have to pull out hair to remove the gag.

“You’ve been hurting yourself with those cuffs.” He looked at her sidelong and pointed. “You’ve been a bad girl.” He spread his hands wide. “Where’s the gratitude? I pulled you away from that disgusting, vile life.” He moved to the end of the bed. “No more dealing with pimps. No more random men with their random cocks. Only me until we both die in the explosion.”

Eve bucked on the bed and screamed behind the gag which came out as a deep-throated moan.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you that part.” He pulled the handcuff key out of his pocket and released the cuffs from the metal headboard. “The fastest way to hell is through fire. Once you’re already burning, it doesn’t hurt as much when you fall into the lake of fire. And since I’m Satan’s chosen one, which means I’ll be stoking the flames throughout Hell, I want to get used to burning.”

Evelyn’s eyes widened. She pulled away and curled into a ball. The cuffs dangled from her wrists, but she made no attempt to escape.

“Because you’re my sacrifice, you need to burn with me.” He stepped away from the bed and stopped in the doorway. “It’ll be okay. You’ll enjoy Hell. The explosion will be quick, then boom, there we are. It’ll be like taking an express elevator to Hell.”

Evelyn cried, her shoulders hitching with sobs.

“Oh, come on. It isn’t so bad.” He stomped the floor twice to get her attention. “Come downstairs. We’ll cut a hole in your gag and get you something to eat. But first, I have a surprise for you.”

 
She stayed on the bed, naked, whimpering.

“Eve, get up and come with me. Do as I say. You know I won’t spare the rod.” She moved, but not fast enough. “If you don’t get up right now, I will hurt you so bad you won’t be able to walk for a week. Do you understand me?”

She nodded subtly. Her body unraveled and she straightened out on the bed.

“We haven’t got time for this. Get up now and come to my side.”

Eve sat up and wiped her face with her hands, the cuffs bumping her cheeks. She got to her feet, wobbled, caught herself, and started around the bed toward him. He waited. When she was two feet in front of him, he slapped her face.

She went down as the slap sucked the life out of her legs. He grabbed a wad of her hair and lifted. She screamed behind the gag, her breasts bobbing as she shuddered under his grasp.

Eve’s pain and suffering delighted him. It reminded him of his youth, his parents, and all the torture he endured under their hands, their rods that weren’t spared. In a curious way, hurting someone else was a form of release.

When he got her up and on her own feet again, he released her hair.

“You haven’t eaten since I brought you here, have you?”

Her glazed bloodshot eyes found him. She was afraid to answer.

“That’s right. You’ve been gagged because we have neighbors. Couldn’t allow you to call for help.” He shoved her through the door. “Follow me downstairs for my surprise and then I will get you something to eat.”

She managed the stairs relatively well, leaning into the railing until she reached the bottom where she stopped walking and used the wall to stay upright.

Mike stepped around her and led the way down the corridor to the next stairwell. He looked back once. She stayed close behind him, her naked form tight, sinewy.

A floor below, at the small window he installed in the wall, Mike looked in at Father George. The man was on his knees in the center of the room, a rosary wrapped around his clasped hands, head tilted back, praying.

Mike slammed the wall and yelled, “Where’s your God now? You think whispering words and looking skyward will save you?” Mike roared with laughter. “If there really is a God, I would love to see him.” He turned to Eve. “Do you believe in God?”

She shook her head.

“Good girl. Smart girl.” Back at the window, George was on his feet. He mouthed something, but the room was too sealed to hear him.

“What’s that?” Mike shouted.

Father George’s mouth moved but nothing came out.

“To hell with you, George.” He pointed to a small lever in the wall beside Eve. “Push that down, will you?”

Eve complied.

Mike pressed his face up against the glass and watched as dense smoke emitted from the vent on the wall.

Eve stepped closer and peeked inside the room, too. She frowned when she saw Father George.

“Let me explain,” Mike said. Eve’s pleading eyes met his. “This room is sealed off and the walls are lined with asbestos. Encased inside the room, I filled a holding tank with concentrated sulfuric acid. That lever you just pushed,” he pointed at it again, “released cyanide pellets into the sulfuric acid which turns it into hydrogen cyanide gas. Basically, it’s an asphyxiant gas, similar to the kind used in the chambers where they gassed people during World War II.”

Eve’s forehead glistened and her eyes widened as she struggled with what he was telling her. She peeked through the small window again. Mike followed her gaze.

Father George held his throat, his mouth wide, gasping for a clean breath.

“Take a couple large breaths, Father George. Get that gas deep inside. You’ll die faster and avoid a painful, prolonged death. Hurry up the process.” Mike looked at his watch.

Eve looked away. She gagged as she bumped into the wall.

“Hey, take it easy. Don’t you go throwing up on me.”

Mike took one last look at Father George. He had moved to the vent in the wall. He ripped at the homemade seal around it, even as his body was convulsing with death.

“Nooo,” Mike yelled. “Leave that alone.”

If the seal broke, some of the toxic gas would enter the corridor. He would need an oxygen mask to survive. But the only oxygen mask he had was in his van at the rear of the building.

Father George’s body bucked and kicked as the gas took over.

Eve gagged behind her sealed off mouth.

Everything was coming apart too fast, unraveling. He needed Eve to finish his mission. Eve was there in the beginning in the Garden of Eden with Adam and he needed Eve to be there at the end.

Father George was still now, the contortions over, life finished, death accomplished.

Mike grabbed Eve and slapped her. Her bladder released and the strong scent of urine filled the hallway. She was devolving in front of him, her throat convulsing.

The only way to save her was to get the duct tape off her mouth. He grabbed it around the back of her neck and pulled. Eve moaned louder than at any other time before. None of the tape came away, only hair.

He pulled again but only succeeded in lifting Eve up a couple of feet.

Everything he had worked for with Eve, the risks he had taken, the money spent on her, unraveled as she vomited in her mouth again and again.

“No, no, no …”

Her cheeks distended as her mouth filled with bile with nowhere to go. As her stomach clenched and more vomit shot upward, Eve had no chance to swallow it back in time. As she choked on her own liquids, he released her. She dropped to the floor in a fit of seizures and her eyes rolled back in her head.

Tan-colored stomach contents spilled out her nostrils, cutting off all airways and after another seizure, she stilled on the floor at his feet.

“Mother Mary! Now what?”

If he had known she would throw up at the sight of Father George’s death, he wouldn’t have brought her down for it.

“Dammit.”

He kicked her naked corpse.

“What a waste. I was just thinking we could have more fun before the fireworks later.”

He looked in at Father George’s body. It didn’t appear that George had much success in breaking the seal on the vent, but it was hard to tell as the interior was mostly filled with the white gas.

Mike made up his mind. There was no way he was vacating this building without his African Rock Python. He would take Eve upstairs for one more bout of love making while she was still warm and then leave her to rot.

Instead of pulling her upstairs by her hands and being too close to her putrid vomit, he grabbed her ankles.

“I’m so sorry you had to die like this. I had much better plans for you.”

On each stair, her head bounced with a thud. Vomit dripped from her nose, leaving a grotesque trail, a reminder of his mistake.

“This is all because of the Catholics. I had to do this because of what the Catholics did in Croatia.” He spoke to Eve as if she could still hear him. “Back in the forties, a man named Anton, a practicing Catholic and regular visitor to the Vatican, ran several extermination camps. One of them was headed by a Franciscan friar. They were called the Catholic Ustashi.” At the top of the stairs, he paused and looked back. “Are you listening?” After not getting a response, he started up the last set of stairs dragging Eve’s body behind him.

“The Catholic Ustashi burned their victims alive.” He glanced back again. “It’s a true story. I wouldn’t lie to you. That’s why Father George had to die this way. You understand, don’t you? The eye-for-an-eye thing, live by the sword, die by the sword doesn’t work for humans and for God. But it works great for my boss. In the end, he just gets more souls.”

When he got to the bedroom, he dragged her body over to the bed where he set her feet down. Careful to keep her vomit-leaking head near the pillow area where he wouldn’t spend much time, he lifted her front half up first, then her feet up. He pulled her feet to the end and spread her legs wide. Her neck was craned in an odd position but that didn’t matter. He had no use for the upper part of her body. The urine glistening along her inner thighs aroused him.

He began to undress.

“Have you ever heard of Herman Mudgett?”

Eve didn’t respond.

“I didn’t think so. His other name was Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. He’s referred to as America’s first serial killer. In Chicago, he built a huge mansion, which he called ‘The Castle.’”

Mike had his pants off and worked on the buttons of his shirt.

“Inside this mansion, there were trap doors, secret passageways, fake walls, and hidden staircases.” He held up a finger. “But here’s the best part. He lined rooms with asbestos so they could be turned into homemade gas chambers.” Mike removed his underwear. “He was my inspiration for what happened to Father George.”

Mike crawled onto the bed. Then he pulled on Eve’s hips, raising her buttocks to better suit him. Her skin was clammy and already cool to the touch. He would have to hurry or she would get too cold too fast for his liking.

“Good old Herman was accredited for twenty-seven murders, but they think there were a lot more.” He stroked his member until he was ready. “I want to beat that number. That really turns me on. To be known for such atrocities does wonders for the self-esteem. Counting you, I now have seven deaths at my hand. Seven, count them.”