By Kevin McClintock
Copyright 2008
(5,189 words)
For a majority of the hours of the long days and even longer nights, they sat invisible from the prying eyes of men. And there they remained, cocooned, inside a tiny claustrophobic spat of sweating granite. Only when the sun initiated its daily descent, and only for a window lasting roughly forty minutes or so, did the crude pictures come to life.
During those precious few minutes each day, the images grew animated by lazy swirls of dust and playful shadows of racing clouds marring the face of the sun. Most of the dozen drawings were large, gobbling up huge amounts of space. Others were much smaller. But the major ones — the four dominant ones — cleanly stood out from the others.
The first crude sketch was that of a human. A human woman, to be exact, her head topped with a splash of platinum blonde hair.
The second drawing showed a long wall of black — slightly rounded, but equally unyielding.
The third wasn’t a single entity at all, but a scattering of stick-figured humans, seemingly kept at bay behind the crudely drawn wall of black.
The final fourth depicted a dark thing, something running on four legs, with shiny white teeth and red tongue.
There were other pictures, of course. Mushroom clouds and wispy figures sporting evil orbs, as well as a splash of red that could only represent coughs of spilled blood. There were also sloppy representations of human corpses — some that moved, and some lying silent and still.
But it was these four dominant pictures — the blonde woman, the wall, the shambling undead, and the black thing on all fours — that drew all eyes to them, and only them.
The pictures on the wall of this cave told a story.
And this is that story.
*** ***
I slowly wake from a deep slumber. Even inside my cage, with my back kissing the stony rock floor, I still manage to sleep like the dead.
I finger from a cardboard box at my side a half-dozen animal crackers. Chewing them one by one by one, I utilize a patch of rust on one of the iron bars to purge a nasty itch between my tanned shoulder blades.
The first cracker is a giraffe. The second one a raccoon. The third a squirrel. A fourth an elephant. And the fifth and last one? A dog — I think. You can’t really tell with these things — they’re way too lumpy, and all of ‘em have mushy legs that tend to break off over time. I used to eat them religiously as a weight-watching snack, way back before right went wrong and good went bad, before the dead walked and stalked the Earth. Now, these nearly tasteless cookies are the only food remaining from the two-ton cargo crate the United Nations airdropped into my paddock four months ago.
I seriously doubt there will be a second one anytime soon.
*** ***
The nasty things — that’s what I call the bastards trying to kill me.
By the thousands, these nasty things roam the paved pathways snaking past my sunken cage. Sometimes they move north to the enclosed “World of Reptiles,” or race around the bend to the polar bear sanctuary, or stalk south toward the enclosed “World of Darkness.” Yet they are always here to greet me when the sun peeks over the edge of the world.
Moments after I wake, with my brain suddenly “on” and active following a sleep, the moans and growls begin to collect and swirl above me — ebbing and flowing like schizophrenic locust swarms. And all along the vine-clad and glass-roofed pergolas I can hear their pounding against the reinforced glass wall, sluggish limbs and hands and feet — even teeth and tongue. I wake up to this noise each morning, as precise as Swiss clockwork.
There are men — of all shapes and sizes. There are women, and children, too — lots of children. They all stare at me with those dead and black-scribbled eyes. Frantically, they claw at the glass; gunk from their decaying bodies smearing the glass and distorting my view from within. Bits of teeth and fingertips snap off and pepper the ground like discarded cigarette butts. Some attempt to climb the wall. Others hope to dig beneath the cement. Nearly all make running leaps, usually at full ramming speed. The wall won’t give, of course. It’s much too solid for that. Still, the undead try — bastard nasty things.
*** ***
The paddock, surrounded by its glass walls, is now my home. Not too long ago, it had been the popular Big Bear exhibit, and home to three very popular, very giant Grizzly bears — Archie, a male, and two females, Betty and Veronica.
The night it all went down, a few of the animals managed to escape both the cages and the clutches of the dead things. Dozens more were torn apart by the latter. I should know — I was there. The screams of the trapped animals had filled the flame-stained night until my ears had nearly bled, as New York City on all sides of the zoo burned to the ground. But a good majority of the animals — the giant elephant, the gentle panda, the noble tiger — had wasted away inside their fenced-in exhibits, from dehydration, thirst and neglect.
So had my three little bears.
No doubt they’d hung on for weeks, bellowing hungrily for the keepers who were no longer there to care for them. Cruel fate would not be denied. They were long dead when I made their home my own. There isn’t much left of them now, except scattered bones, the gnawed remains of a Christmas tree, and a tan ball which had been Archie’s favorite toy.
All in all, a truly horrific way to go — I’m glad they no longer suffer.
*** ***
Scratching at my matted hair that hasn’t seen a scoop of shampoo in more than three months, I crawl down to a large pool of tepid water. When I first came here, the heated rocks had severely burned the soles of my bare feet. But like everything about me — physically and psychologically — they’d toughened over time. Now, the calluses lining my feet were like thick wool socks, impervious to both the mid-afternoon heat and jagged rocks.
I wade into the large pool. There, knee-deep in the muck, I begin to splash the foul-smelling liquid across my naked body. First I cup and fling water into my face and over both shoulders, the latter of which still bears the brunt of the sun’s constant hammering. I next saturate my breasts and flat tummy — it’s amazing what starvation can do to one’s figure. I then run dripping fingers over each buttock, and down between the legs. I finish things off with a quick scrub of each tanned leg.
This “stand-up shower” is something I do each morning. I’d long turned indifferent to the look, feel and smell of the water. Too bad none of the eyes watching me from above care for such things — like moist thighs and dripping, tanned breasts. I always put on one hell of a peep show.
*** ***
There were two pools of water inside the walls of my home. The first is the foul smelling bathing pool. The second is my one and only drinking source — located to the right of the polished and grooved rocky outcrop laced with beautiful, erratic glacial.
Deciding which was which hadn’t been up to me. Rather, it had been determined simply out of necessity. See, big grumpy Archie — starving, feeble, with ribs showing — had curled up and died on the edge of his favorite watering hole; rump and hind legs submerged, the rest of the body sprawled drunkenly across the stony slab. As the huge body decayed to bleached bone, the process had putrefied the water beyond any sort of use, save bathing.
Because of this, I try to keep the drinking pool as neat and clean as possible, checking it every hour, and removing any scattered debris from its surface.
Now, at the top of this outcrop mound of rock sits my “attic,” as I like to call it — a smoothly polished slab of stone. It’s a place I go when I need a breath of fresh air. I often sunbathe up there. Sleep there, too — particularly when the cave below grows too cold or damp for me. Sometimes I scan the skies for exhaust trails from flying United Nations aircraft. But mostly I use its advantageous height to keep an eye on the nasty things collecting around the outside of my exhibit’s walls like a mob of peeping toms.
With the various lumps of concrete, stone, boulders, wall recesses, scrub brush and leafless trees saturating or downright dominating the landscape, the paddock had proven quite the luxurious digs for three full-sized bears. Was it sufficient for humans? No — it sadly lacked the comforts of home. But there is one perk, I’ll admit; something that most triple-story Victorians with white picket fences and multi-car garages lack — zombie-proof walls. There is no way any of the shambling monsters outside could claw their way inside. Not unless I want them to, that is. And I’m not there yet…
Yet…
*** ***
A faint crack of thunder reaches my ears. Even from here, on the very edge of all things, it’s a rumbling growl, low and rather menacing.
I jump up and down, whooping. My actions stir up the dead even more than usual. Many among the throng take their agitation out on the fence, using teeth and talons.
Above me, a battle line of bruised clouds oozes toward the Bronx Zoo from the west. Among the ranks are several towering, purple-colored Cumulonimbus clouds. Anvil-shaped and rearing fifty thousand feet into the air, the line smears the skyline from horizon to horizon with a hazy black. It’ll probably mean rain by sundown, which is a blessing beyond belief. First off, it will provide me my first “clean” shower in two weeks. Second, a fresh supply of drench from the heavens should restore my water supply, replacing much of the water that has, over the long days, become rather tepid.
Plus — and I can’t believe I’m admitting this — I love to lay atop the attic rock, with the falling rain causing an almost sexual thrill. Twice I’ve masturbated in the open for everyone alive or dead to see, the rain tickling all the good and secret parts of my flesh.
*** ***
The zombies watch my every movement. I’ve long grown accustomed to their stares. Still, I can’t help but sympathize with how the zoo animals felt day after day, ignoring the milling crowds peering down from the fencing.
Poor things.
*** ***
I’ve been a zookeeper here at the Bronx Zoo for nearly seven years. At first, when the dead came to life, we thought the city was rioting. An east coast version of Watts, you know? Possibly something brewing from the immigration laws passed earlier in the week by Congress.
We stayed inside the zoo that first night, watching New York City burn. But with each passing hour, the violence outside escalated — explosions and gunshots by the thousands, and escaping airplanes and helicopters stirring the air above us. The animals sensed the trouble, too. We could hear their cries floating up to the full Moon.
I hid behind locked gates with twenty others near the “World of Darkness” exhibit. We were there for a total of five days. One by one, folks began to bug out, concerned about loved ones living elsewhere in the city. None were ever seen again.
I finally bugged after the animal cries had morphed into keening pain and terror. There had been a breach along the northern end of the zoo, I was told, and the walking dead were quickly spilling into the area by the thousands. I tired to escape by one exit, and was almost killed. I tried to make my way across the park to another exit, but was stopped there, too. I would have been caught between two rampaging groups had I not climbed a tree, teetered on its edge over the bear paddock’s fence, and jumped. And I made it, for what it’s worth.
Sometimes I wish I hadn’t…
*** ***
I was thankfully snoring atop my top rock, and not inside the cave below, when I was almost killed.
Why was I sleeping up top, despite the cold wind? I don’t know. Guess I’ve been spooked down there lately, inside the cave. I hear things. When I sleep, I mean. Or when I close my eyes. Scratching sounds from deep within the walls, it sounds like. Something’s burrowing around in there — somewhere.
Turns out I was right.
A sound near my face tore me awake. I spied through ground-hugging mist a small shadow — about the size of a child’s shoe — moving stealthily toward me. I slapped at it instinctively with my hand, sending it over the edge of the sleeping rock.
The thing squeaked as I did this, and that’s when I knew it was a rat.
I scrabbled my way to the ground, ignoring the loose gravel and shifting sand. It was the first living thing I’d seen in weeks, other than a few scattered birds high up in the clouds. For that matter, it was the first source of meat I’d seen in weeks. Instinctively, my mouth watered.
When I raced around to the east side of the rock, however, the rat was gone. I could still hear it, though, somewhere off inside the cave. No doubt rooting around for a place to hide.
Thinking I had the thing trapped, I made my way inside — kicking aside an old smelly tarp and my nearly empty supply of animal crackers. There, in the back, and with the aid of some moonlight glint, two crimson pinpricks of light flashed — and flashed again.
“C’mon over here, buddy,” I hissed at those shining orbs, kneeling now, moving slowly forward, fingers reaching for my prize. I tried not to let my hunger bully my methodical actions.
And that’s when I screamed.
From either side flashed two more shoe-sized shadows, each emitting siren-like shrieks. Gasping, I snatched back my hand just in time.
Falling atop my ass, I watched with bugged, horrified eyes as all three rats — the two on either side, the third directly in front of me — approached, snapping and hissing.
I grabbed at a rock and flung it at them. It missed.
I picked up another rock and, with a shriek, slammed it down atop them all, until the pointed edge tore the bodies into bits and pieces. Strangely, none of animals ever tried to flee. Even in my terror, I found this behavior rather odd.
I dashed from the cave, out into the moonlight, and deep into the bathing pool. I waited there, shivering, staring hard into the cave, relying on peripheral vision to detect any darting movement.
I didn’t see any. And none of the three ever moved again.
Only when the sun had breached the eastern skyline did I find out why. The rats were dead, but not in that way. Not in the normal way. They’d been dead long before the attack inside the cave. Sloppy sores, still oozing pus, were rimmed by squirming maggots, and despite more than a week’s rot, the trio had still moved. Had still burrowed. Had still attacked.
So they’d been dead. But living — living, but dead, like the humans bumping against the perimeter wall.
Animals.
Undead animals.
Jesus God Almighty…
*** ***
A mundane mutt of a dog found its way inside my compound overnight.
Its whimpering first woke me up. Atop my rocky perch, with breath hitching, I reached for the pile of throwing rocks I’d collected next to my sleeping blanket. I’d learned my lesson after the dead rats’ attack.
Following a long and careful stare below, I determined without a shadow of a doubt that the dog wasn’t a living corpse like the rats had been, or the numerous humans stalking the barrier outside. The dog was like me — living, but scared completely out of its wits.
The dog finally took notice of me when I rose to my feet. It yelped, and running back behind the bathing pool, each falling paw creating wavy cascades across the water’s murky surface. Back against the wall on the other side, it warily eyed me.
“Hey boy,” I called to it, scrambling down to the paddock’s floor. “Here boy.”
The dog was a mix. Looked to have a greyhound’s body, but the face and head of a lab. Big brown sad eyes, too. And a dark pelt, with a patch of white stamped to its chest.
“I just want—”
The dog was barking at me, growling, its hackles pimpled and ropes of spit spraying the ground.
Behind the dog, one of the undead attacked the glass wall, hoping to reach it. I’d grown accustomed to such movements. But the dog apparently hadn’t. The sudden movement from behind absolutely spooked the dog. It bolted back across the pool. I made a lunge for it, hoping to snag it by its neck. But the animal was too quick, slowed as I was by starvation. With a yelp, the dog shifted fluidly around me, and then scrabbled through loose grit into the shadowed interior of a rocky overhang near the eastern fence. There it shivered, rump against the wall, terrified.
I approached, cooing to it. Only when I was within a dozen feet or so did I realize I gripped had one of my throwing rocks. Why? Why did I have this rock in my hand? It was simple. I was hungry — God awful ravenous, in fact. I’d be dead within a week unless I swallowed something more nutritious than stale crackers.
The dog feinted a move to my right, but I blocked its way. It then backed away, a whine deep in its throat, a baffled look crossing its face.
“It’s okay…” I lied to the animal, keeping my voice steady and soothing, as if speaking to a child. And I guess that made some sense. The dog, after all, was really nothing more than an overgrown puppy.
I watched the dog as she — yeah, I could see “he” was actually a “she” — gave me another long, throaty whine. It sounded almost imploring, as if she were questioning my intentions. Maybe she hoped I’d be good, perhaps like a previous owner, and nothing like the things lining the wall outside.
Finally, the dog took a tentative step forward. Again, those large brown eyes were wide and pleading. But she shied away at the last second as the shadow of my fingers traced delicate patterns across her snout.
“It’s okay,” I whispered again. Ceasing movement, I instead crouched on my haunches. My other hand retightened its grip on the rock. I would grab her neck with my extended hand, see — just long enough to bring down the pointed end of the rock between her eyes. If the blow didn’t kill her, it would certainly stun her. I could then pummel her to death, much like I’d done with the rats inside the cave.
“C’mon girl — you can smell me. Here girl — take a sniff? Yeah, that’s a good girl. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”
The dog mewled, taking another half step forward. My fingers were less than an inch from its moist nose now, which was working overtime inhaling my sweaty scent.
“You can trust me,” I whispered to her. I tried to sound like I meant it.
And it worked. She took another step forward, bumped up against my fingers, shied away from contact, froze for a second or two, inched her nose forward from the bottom-up — nose quivering — and nuzzled the knuckles of my right hand with her nose. She looked into my eyes and held my gaze for a few spare moments. It was the first time she’d done this. Looking into her brown eyes like that was like peering into open wounds.
I lunged, grabbing at the scruff of her neck — the parts momma bitch’s used to pick up their pups. I moved in, smothering her, bunching her up against the wall, so she couldn’t escape. Pushing her down with one knee, I raised the rock — pointing the sharp end at the spot between those two brown eyes. I would make it as painless as possible.
But then the dog did something I didn’t expect her to do. She went down in a boneless heap in a complete show of submission. Her large tail tucked up beneath her rump, and she peed on herself. There was suffering there, in her brown eyes, suffering, fear and confusion — but mostly just fear.
I had the rock poised above her. Just one quick slam of my arm, a pained yelp, and there’d be fresh meat for several weeks, maybe even longer.
….
In the end, I couldn’t do it.
I flipped aside the rock and flopped down next to the cowering mutt, crying stiffly into my hands. With the pressure off, the dog bounded away from me, tail still tucked. I didn’t try to stop her. I was too sickened and ashamed for what I’d almost done.
*** ***
One of the undead nearly made it inside the paddock last night. How the thing managed to climb the tree and fall in, I’ll probably never know. But it did. And as it came down, the cadaver’s weight snapped the thin sapling with a gunshot-like crack.
It was that crack which attracted my attention to the falling corpse, or a part of it, that is.
In my weakened state, it took me a few minutes to crawl from the top of the cave to inspect the remains of what looked to be an obese man in his late 40s. Scraps of a business suit still clung to the shoulders, hips and legs. One piece — the upper half, I mean — had fallen back on the zombie side of the fence, with the rest of the milling monsters. Or I assume it did, I didn’t really see it. That’s because I was too busy eyeballing the other half — the bottom half — splattered between the two water pools. One of the thing’s legs had been sheared off.
I picked the limb up with a scowl and chucked it back over the fence. I grabbed the other leg and prepared to do the same thing.
But then I paused.
Moments later, I dragged the leg and attached abdomen back to the sleeping cave’s entrance. Inside, I rummaged through my dwindling supplies until I came up with a box of matches. I gathered up some dry leaves and twigs, scooped it into a sizable heap, and struck two matches. Soon, the fire was roaring and huge. The flames forced the corpses to stagger and stumble in blind confusion.
I inspected the leg. Its owner had only recently been dead, thank God — there were only a few traces of rot and spoil ranking the sinew. So with a sharpened stick, I gouged out the decayed spots, leaving bloodless red patches dotting the limb’s length. As I worked, a few toes dipped into the flames. The smell of singed flesh flooded my mouth with sticky salvia, and it was all I could do from chewing on the raw flesh right then and there.
The aroma of cooking flesh brought the dog padding over, hunger overriding instinctive caution. She crouched just out of reach; tail thumping, tongue lolling and eyes never straying from the roasting leg.
I again used the stick to slice off a thin strip of meat. I held it up to my eyes, shaking off a few clods of sandy dirt. I sniffed it. I touched the tip of my tongue against it. In the end, I threw it over to the dog. The lab stared at the roasted flesh for a second or two before wolfing it down in a single, splashy gulp.
The dog looked up and gave me a throaty woof.
I couldn’t help it — I grinned down at her.
“You approve of the taste, I take it?”
A second bark.
I stuck the leg back into the flames, purposely concentrating the heat on the thick thigh meat and bone. But hunger soon overrode everything else, and I took it out of the fire, peeled off a sizeable hunk of meat, and chewed. It was mostly raw. It was chewy. It was extremely gamey, with just a hint of rot. It was also the best tasting meat I’d ever sampled.
A piece for me and a piece for the dog, a second piece for me and a second piece for the dog, and so on and so forth, until what had once been a human thigh resembled the remains of a Thanksgiving Day turkey, all ripped up from within. And us? Hell, we were stuffed, with stomachs slightly distended — like a pride of Serengeti cats.
And we both slept very well that night.
*** ***
I woke up. It was still night outside, still dark and deadly silent. So why was I awake? My mouth was filled with sticky sleep, and the aftertaste from the roasted foot thick on my tongue. That was the worst part about eating the undead — the aftertaste.
I didn’t want to open my eyes, though. It’s how I’d been feeling lately, with a full stomach and untold more energy. My body was trying to catch up on all the lost sleep. Now none of the limbs wanted to move.
But I couldn’t. I was hearing a strange noise again. It sounded almost stealthy — out near the cave entrance, or maybe just inside my cave. Still, I didn’t want to lift my head. Didn’t want to open my grimy eyes.
Besides, I had a pretty good idea what it was — Velvet. That’s the name I’d given the dog, because of her coal-black fur. She curled up with me most times during the night, for warmth or companionship or maybe a bit of both. I certainly didn’t mind. We’d both come a long way since I’d tried to brain her for food.
Another sound.
Closer now.
Was that Velvet?
“Over here, girl,” I whispered, lazily rolling over, eyes still closed. “Come curl up with me. I’m freezing.”
The sounds drew near.
There was a grunting sound, or something.
I opened my eyes.
Two reddish eyes flashed in my face.
I screamed.
A decayed hand snaked out to clutch my arm, and again I screamed. It was the zombie, or the other part of the zombie that had fallen inside the paddock — the part with the head and arms and hands and most of the torso.
Whimpering, I kicked at the thing’s head and face. It leered at me, its mouth twisted grotesquely. Parts of the face were missing or completely melted off. One of the eyes was missing. The mouth was a bunch of piano keys, ivory stained with black rot. Its tongue mimicked a bloated worm, probing for warm, soft flesh.
I kicked at the face, hoping to decapitate it, but such monsters were impervious to pain. Despite my frantic motions, one of its hands wrapped around my throat — beginning to squeeze.
And that’s when Velvet struck the thing from behind. With its powerful jaws, it grabbed the monster by the nape of its neck and bodily pulled it away from me. The hand around my neck loosened and scraped clean. I immediately scrambled over to my bedroll to grab up my throwing rock. I jumped atop the hissing, spitting zombie and smashed the rock down atop its head — again and again and again — until its head was little more than liquid mush.
I lay there, gasping. Beside me, Velvet was rubbing its nose in the red muck. All I could think about was food. We had enough food to last us at least another month.
Outside, the monsters howled. Luckily, it’s all the bastards could do.
*** ***
I picked up my throwing rock, inspecting it. It had killed three undead rats and parts of an undead human. It had also almost killed Velvet, but I didn’t want to think about things like that.
Now, the bloodstained rock would be used for an entirely different purpose.
Facing the cave’s wall, I kissed its tip against the wet rocky wall, carving out a sloppy sphere.
I stepped back to inspect my work. It was bad — I’d never been much of an artist. Still, I was committed, so I poked and peeled and prodded the tip here and there, until I had marks strung out across one wall.
“It’s you,” I said to Velvet, gesturing at the four-legged stick figure of a dog. “See?”
Velvet just grinned and thumped its tail.
Turning back to the wall, I drew a human. That one was me. A bit skinny perhaps, but I would resemble a stick figure for real soon enough.
I then drew walls and some of the zombies and other things, like airplanes and zoo cages and buildings aflame. But my eyes kept coming back to the zombies.
I guess I could maybe make a run for it. Climb the tree out of the paddock, carrying Velvet on my back, and somehow avoiding the undead beyond the perimeter fence. I could cut across the zoo’s African plains, and then scale the bearded fuzz of barbed wire spanning the top of the outside fence.
But then what? Where would I then go?
Grab a car and get the hell out of dodge. Go into the surrounding countrywide, where I could lose my pursuers in the muddy pastures north of the city. From there, maybe head to the kinds of places where the dead couldn’t follow? Like mountains or islands just off the coast or—
But then what? Where would I go? Into more caves to hide — caves like this one?
Maybe I would. Maybe I’ll just end up doing in some distant cave what I was doing in this one — etching pictures on the walls with a rock and cheap lipstick to teach future generations about life outside the cave walls…
This is the Sun God. This is the Sky God. This is a tree. A rock. This is an undead bastard overcoming its human victim.
Grimacing, I shake my head. I would likely die here, despite Velvet and a never-ceasing supply of roasted, rotted meat shifting just outside the paddock walls. In time, my drawings — nothing more than engraved lines and circles in stone — will become my life’s story.
Just like the cavemen of long ago…
By Kevin McClintock
Copyright 2008
(12,662 words)
Look4Luv: Hey, how r u?
15&Proud: good. u?
Look4Luv: Signs?
15&Proud: w/f/15. u?
Look4Luv: w/m/16
Look4Luv: bummed
15&Proud: yah
Look4Luv: girl broke up w/me
15&Proud: 
Look4Luv: Been crying
15&Proud:
Look4Luv: mr. tuff guy, lol
15&Proud: like it
Look4Luv: 
15&Proud: need shoulder?
Look4Luv: Need *more* t/shoulder
15&Proud:
Look4Luv: Name?
15&Proud: samantha buldger
Look4Luv: U live in mizzouri?
15&Proud: yah
Look4Luv: city?
15&Proud: joplin
Look4Luv: Ur addy?
There was a pause, a long one — stretching for more than two minutes. In the days of high-speed Internet, this was an eternity.
Look4Luv: Hello?
15&Proud: 313 south Zora
Look4Luv:
Look4Luv: thanks
Look4Luv: all I kneed to no
“Sure it is,” Deric Thomasson whispered at his computer screen, taking a small sip of coffee. All he now had to do was toss out the bait and wait for the son of a bitch to swim up and take a nibble…
Look4Luv: Hello? U still there?
15&Proud: brb
Look4Luv: U leaving?
15&Proud: Putting nightie on. Hold.
Look4Luv: Can I help?
Oh, you’d like to, wouldn’t you?
Deric often compared cyberspace to that of a small, Midwestern town. It’s cheerful and friendly in most places, with people politely waving and asking about your day. Yet every town, no matter how small, has a dark side — grimy alleys and creepy establishments where parents warn their kids never to approach. Well, like those towns, the Internet has plenty of dark and eerie places, as well, where kids should never dare enter.
Like this place right here…
Before him, Deric’s screen flickered.
Look4Luv: Hey. Whr u go?
Wanting Look4Luv to chill a bit longer, Deric turned to access his laptop, which sat next to the larger desktop computer. He quickly typed “Look4Luv” into a search engine and pressed ENTER. A dozen entries instantly materialized, which didn’t much surprise him. “Look4Luv,” after all, was a rather common nickname, used by numerous folks trolling sex-based chat rooms.
He scanned the entries. There was a “Look4Luv” registered to a dating love service in London, England — no help there. Another was the nickname used by someone regularly viewing a free-streaming porn Web site. There were other entries, too — most of them from love-match Web sites or individual MySpace pages.
Deric sighed, slipping off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. Problem was, there were hours of work here, and no guarantee of a 100 percent match. The bastard he was talking to online could be any of these assholes, or none of ‘em. What he needed was information. And there was only way to get that.
Deric turned back to the keyboard to click more keys.
15&Proud: Ur name?
Look4Luv: Y?
He let loose a predatory chuckle. There’d been a noticeable, sizeable pause between his question and the pervert’s answer. Funny, how the little fucker had no qualms about digging for personal information from innocent 15-year-old girls, yet reverse those roles, and they puckered up tighter than assholes inside penitentiaries.
15&Proud: just want to no
Look4Luv: What if I dont want u to no
15&Proud: I gave u my name
He never tried to talk dirty to the bastards. That would put him on par with the scum he was stalking. And he certainly never stooped to have cyber sex with them, in order to obtain the information he needed. Thankfully, a predator’s lust would often do the dirty work for him. But it didn’t always happen that way. During those rare occasions, Deric would be forced to give them a “taste of the goods,” so to speak. It was a very fine balancing act. On one hand, he wanted the bastards to choke on their own noose. On the other hand, if he didn’t give them something in return, they’d sign off in search for more promising and easier prey in some other chat room, which of course defeated his whole purpose here.
Look4Luv: y do u want my name
15&Proud: so I can call ur name when u cum inside me
Look4Luv:
Deric shivered, feeling a bit sickened for writing something so crude. But it got the bastard’s attention — he’d liked the sound of that. It was amazing what the hint of dirty sex could do to a pervert.
He quickly typed in a happy smiling icon of his own.
Look4Luv: What if i dont wanta give u my name?
15&Proud: ill put u on ignore
He chewed his lower lip. Would that be enough of a threat?
The pause continued to stretch. It wasn’t a good sign.
You’re losing him.
Deric was still learning the ropes here, despite his three years hunting online. It was an excruciatingly delicate matter. One had to think and talk and even type like a child. But at times, when emotions overcame his senses, he forgot to be 12 or 14 and morphed into the 41-year-old he truly was. It was a constant battle that never seemed to grow easy. Most of the perverts were natural spooks. One wrong word or phrase would arouse suspicion, and they’d be gone, like a startled buck escaping into the forest mist. Other times, he pushed too aggressively for personal information, which inevitably would send up red flags. It was a delicate art, really — attempting to trade tiny hints of sex for a predator’s personal information. And about a third of the time, he won, the idiots all too often thinking with their small heads and not the big ones bobbing atop their shoulders.
He glanced at the clock in the upper right-hand corner of the computer screen. “Look4Luv”’s silence had reached the two-minute mark.
Not good at all…
Deric’s fingers punched at the keyboard.
15&Proud: hello?
Look4Luv: ben
Look4Luv: ben miers
15&Proud:
Ben Miers. Ben Miers. Ben Miers
He turned to the laptop and searched for the name. Yeah, it could easily be a fake name. Just as easily, it could be the real deal. Hormones, after all, did all kinds of kooky things to a rational, normal mind. It never ceased to amaze him how often perverts coughed up their real name to him. All for a faint hint of sex.
Deric scanned the search engine results. There weren’t many, which may be a good thing. Luckily, the “i” in the last name “Miers” made the spelling a bit more unique than the more typical “y” spelling.
The first entry was a Web site dedicated to horror novelist Ben A. Miers. The second was a drummer for a Seattle-based punk band — Putrid Ooze. The third was a 31-year-old elementary teacher in Wales. Others followed — an aging chiropractor in Arizona, the owner of a used car lot in Spokane, a nursing student in Wichita.
“Shit.” This was going nowhere. He needed something more than just a random name.
Keep digging…
15&Proud: live far from me?
Look4Luv: bout 2 hours
15&Proud:
Look4Luv:
Okay — two hours. Two hours. Two hours.
It still didn’t help him much. Springfield was about two hours east of his Joplin home. For that matter, so was Fayetteville, Arkansas, to the south, as was Tulsa, out west in neighboring Oklahoma. Hell, even Kansas City was a quick two-and-a-half hour jaunt north from his front porch. The little bastard could be anywhere. He had to get a state — a state or a city.
And a social security number wouldn’t hurt, either!
Despite his growing angst, he grinned. He turned back to the keyboard.
15&Proud: do u still want me?
Look4Luv: hell yea!
15&Proud:
15& Proud: when?
Look4Luv: weekend?
15&Proud: my daddy works night shift 9-7 am sat & sun
Look4Luv: sweet. Ur mom?
15&Proud: nah mom. just daddy & me
Look4Luv: No bros or whos?
15&Proud: nah.
Look4Luv: dad leaves u alone?
15&Proud: Im a big grl
Look4Luv: bet you are
15&Proud:
Look4Luv: what d you look like naked? Ur tits and puss.
Shit. The little ped’s hormones were starting to bubble over the brim like brewed coffee. Had to move fast now — to get the information he needed, or he’d have to bow out and start the process over again in another chat room.
15&Proud: i look hot.
15& Proud: where will u b coming in from
Look4Luv: ?
15&Proud: directions. So i can look for you satrdy
Look4Luv: why
15&Proud: i want to be ready. 
Look4Luv: cuming from north
15&Proud: wow! Kansas city? U drivin from KC to c me?
Look4Luv: lol. Nevada – much closer
BINGO!
Derek whooped and slapped his hand atop the glass surface of his computer desk. He went back to the search engine and typed in Look4Luv, Ben Miers and Nevada, Missouri, before mashing the ENTER button with his thumb.
Seconds later, not only did an individual MySpace page pop up, third from the top, but also a home address for one Ben Miers of Nevada, Missouri.
Derek eased back against his seat and shook his head in amazement. There was simply no end to what a person like himself could discover about a stranger using a name, a physical address and a simple, run-of-the-mill search engine. It certainly explained why the Internet was a sexual predator’s hunting paradise.
15&Proud: im in bra and undies
Look4Luv: touch yourself. Call out my name when y do it
15&Proud: ok
Look4Luv: u rubbing
15&Proud: yes. Oh yes.
But he wasn’t rubbing. Rather, he was typing — efficiently cutting and pasting information from Ben Miers’ My Space site onto a blank Word document. He also fired up Google Earth. When the blue and white planet was up and rotating, he typed in Mr. Miers’ address. He watched the camera rapidly zoom in on the North American continent until the small, sleepy town of Nevada was sprawled out across the screen. Within seconds, he’d pinpointed Mr. Miers’ two-story house in the southern part of town, just off the Interstate.
Fucker’s probably inside there right now, in front of his computer. Can you see me, shithead? Hello? I know who you are!
Through gulps of coffee, he briefly scanned the man’s MySpace page, and what he read made him bark out loud. It seems Mr. Miers wasn’t a 16-year-old horny teenager like he claimed to be. In reality, he was a 55-year-old hydraulics manufacturer manager with a college degree, a wife of 23 years, and two kids in high school.
Look4Luv: talk dirty to me. Cant wait to see u. cant wait to cum in u. I want u to suck me dry. Want to suck ur—
Christ, this was almost embarrassing to read — written as a 16-year-old by a 55-year-old’s hands. The world was truly a sick, sick place.
15&Proud: Plz. Keep talking.
Within minute, Derek thankfully had enough evidence to pop the fuck’s cherry. He just had to organize it all into a nice and tidy bundle. He printed out a few more documents on his speed printer. He also opened jotted down the man’s personal e-mail address from his MySpace page.
Next, Derek opened up one of his numerous free e-mails and attached to it the transcript of their talk as well as various documents he’d found online. He also carbon-copied the e-mail to Nevada’s hometown newspaper and police department, the two Joplin television stations, even the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which had an extensive sex offender registry.
Then, with a shit-eating grin, he turned to his laptop and fired the e-mails off. This was the part that always made the long nights and frantic searches more than worthwhile.
Look4Luv: —and then i want u to reach over and grab my—
15&Proud: Uh huh
Look4Luv: u still there?
15&Proud: right here.
Look4Luv: u cuming yet?
15&Proud: Actually, I’m going to help throw your sick ass in jail, you son-of-a-bitch.
Look4Luv: ???
15&Proud: You get your thrills preying on underage girls, Mr. Miers?
Look4Luv: wtf?
15&Proud: The job of our agency is to hunt down men who prey on little girls and boys.
Look4Luv: dude im like 16.
15&Proud: Really?
Look4Luv: Yah. Just fuckin’ around here so chill
15&Proud: Really?
Look4Luv: didn’t mean anything. Wasn’t gonna visit ya. Just kidding around
15&Proud: So you’re not Ben Miers of Nevada, Missouri, who owns a house at 143 North Berry Street? Not married to an Edith Steins Miers? Don’t have two daughters, Sandra (18) and Shea (15)? Don’t work for Clandestine Hydraulics as a section manager?
A long, pregnant pause followed. Derek sat there, patient, tapping his foot as the seconds slowly crept by.
Look4Luv: Who are you?
15&Proud: Call me an angel, Mr. Miers. And you’re a sick man. You should be locked up for a long time.
Look4Luv: How did you get this information?
15&Proud: Does it really matter at this point?
Look4Luv: Listen… I was just kidding! Just bored — having some fun.
15&Proud: You’re definition of fun is soliciting a minor for sex?
Bastards always said that, Derek thought. If only he had a penny every time a pedophile typed in those exact words.
Look4Luv: Look I wasn’t going to hurt anyone I’m a family man, I don’t do those sorts of things. You gotta believe me! Listen. Are you the girl’s father? I’m sorry if you are, sorry, so so sorry. I’m drunk and not thinking straight and it was an accident and I swear to God it will never happen again for as long as I live. If this is about money, then maybe something can be arranged.
15&Proud: It has nothing to do with money, so shut up and read this. I just sent you an e-mail, Mr. Miers, so go to your personal e-mail addy at Bmiers@yahoo.com — you should have it by now. If you don’t, you will shortly. I suggest you open and read it. You also might take a look at some of the other places I’ve sent this e-mail to. It should open up your eyes.
Derek paused here, easing his aching fingers up from the keyboard. He’d found himself pounding the keys at the end of his message, venting his rage through the keyboard. He gulped down the last of his coffee; giving the bastard enough time to check and read the e-mail he’d sent him.
Two minutes later, Miers finally responded, a new conversation window popping up on the screen.
Look4Luv: How did you get this information?
15&Proud: I’ll give you some advice. You shouldn’t put personal information on your MySpace page, Mr. Miers. Hell, even little kids know better than to do that.
Look4Luv: Did you send this shit to my work?
15&Proud:
15&Proud: You’ll probably get a call from your work’s Human Resources department on Monday.
Look4Luv: Why are you DOING this? I DIDNT DO ANYTHING GODDAMMIT!!! ITS JUST A FUCKIN CHAT ROOM!!!
15&Proud:
Look4Luv: Fuck you!
15&Proud:
Look4Luv: I’LL SUE YOUR ASS!
15&Proud: I just sent this entire transcript — specifically highlighting where you attempted to solicit sex from an underage girl — to the Nevada Police Department, Missouri Highway Patrol, and local media outlets in Nevada and Joplin. With this being such a slow news week, there’s a good chance your little face will be headlining Monday’s 6 p.m. broadcast.
Look4Luv: LISTEN JESUS IM SORRY. SO SORRY I WAS JUST KIDDING AND DIDNDIT DO ANYTHING TO HER GODDAAMIT!
Derek signed off from the chat room with a drawn-out sigh. Leaning back in his chair, he shut down his computer. He balanced a notepad on his laps, bridging his legs on the edge of the table. He leafed open the first page titled TROPHIES. Inside was a long list of names. He slowly scrolled through them.
Adam Phillpot, Webb City, Mo.
Chase Williams, Joplin, Mo.
Ryan Tial, Siloam Springs, Ark.
Luna Hector, Rolla, Mo.
Grant Toffleson, Waynesville, Mo.
Clay Morgan, Coffeyville, Kan.
Trey Moehller, Ft. Scott, Kan.
Brenda Lesmeister, Joplin, Mo.
Bobby and Minnie Halstead, Joplin, Mo.
Using a pink ballpoint pen his daughter had once used, Derek neatly wrote Ben Miers, Nevada, Mo. at the bottom of the list.
He sat there for a spell, staring first at the name on paper, then at a stain on the wall. All the while, his fingers twisted about a cheap mood ring, resting on his left index finger. Like the pink pen, the ring had once belonged to his daughter. He glanced down at the trinket, touching it. The small set stone was blue, like warm, Caribbean waters.
Blue.
Based on body temperature, the tiny stone allegedly changed colors to mark his moods. Blue meant he was relaxed and at ease — calm. And he was. Calm, that was. Happened quite a bit, in fact. Happened nearly every time he bagged a new predator trophy. The sense of satisfaction was almost as quenching as sex itself.
Rising to his feet and stretching until joints popped, Derek shuffled his way into the bedroom and the empty Queen-sized bed rumpled on just one side. He collapsed atop it.
He’d wind up having a well-rested night of sleep — for once.
*** ***
Daughter: Help me!
Daddy: Where are you?
Daughter: I’m dying! Plz help me!
Daddy: WHERE ARE YOU?
Daughter: In my room!”
Daddy: Who’s hurting you?
Daughter: Bad man.
Daddy: Bad man?
Daughter: Friend turned bad.
Daddy: Ur friend? Honey, I don’t understand.
Daughter: Jake. I met him on computer. Fell in love.
Daddy: What?
Daughter: Talked to him for 3 months. I went to him. When you were in Philadelphia.
Daddy: Casey! Listen to me!
Daughter: He loved me.
Daddy: Casey!
Daughter: Were going to go to Vegas.
Daddy: Casey!
Daughter: Going to marry when I turned 16.
Daddy: Oh GOD CASEY PLZ LISTEN TO ME!
Daughter: But he wasn’t Jake.
Daddy: Get out of the house Casey!
Daughter: He was old ugly man. Broke down the door
Daddy: I know, sweetie. You gotta get out! Go out the back door right NOW and call 911.
Daughter: He grabbed me, daddy! Did bad things to me, daddy!
Daddy: Casey!
Daughter: Used a knife on me, daddy.
Daddy: …
Daughter: Why did you let him do that to me???
Daddy: I’m so sorry Casey!
Daughter: He strangled me, daddy. I called your name but you never came to rescue me!
Daddy: Sorry sorry goddammit I’m so fuckin’ sorry!
Daughter: Why daddy?
Daddy: Casey caasey caaasey casey
Daughter: goodbye daddy
Daddy: No, wait Casey wait…
Daughter: bye…
Deric woke up screaming out his daughter’s name. The lined sheets were wadded into a tight bundle and heaved across the bedroom carpet. His body was filmed with a clammy sweat, and he kept ripping portions of his damp T-shirt away from the sheen covering his chest. By the time he’d rolled off the soggy bed, he was weeping. He stayed that way for a while — head buried in hands — before finally coming up for air.
He had the dream almost every night. And almost every night, he woke the empty house with his screams. To purge his mind of his murdered daughter, he wept away the mounting frustration and anguish.
Pawing at his eyes, he padded into the bathroom to splash his face with water. Looking through the foggy reflection of the bathroom mirror, he spied the upper left corner of Casey’s closed bedroom door. He looked away. Looked at it again. With his guts churning, he clicked off the bathroom light, eased his way out into the hallway, and gingerly opened the door.
Moments later, as the air between the two rooms mixed, he gasped aloud. Despite two agonizing years, the smell of his daughter was as fresh as if she’d just brushed past him. It was a combination of perfume, scented body wash, peach lipstick and Downy fabric softener. The smells birthed a dizzying array of images inside his head — Casey sucking on her rubber binky; a fistful of cake at her first birthday; the first wobbly ride atop her tricycle; first day in school; long walks in the nearby park; first softball game over on Cryler street…
“Oh Casey…” he said, sinking down into her bed and struggling to hold back the tears. “I’m so sorry, baby…”
Sometimes he had trouble thinking about Casey — what she looked like, the tiny details of her face and hands. God knows why. Perhaps it was in self-defense, since the thought of her often heaved up twisting, agonizing memories. Perhaps it was better for his sanity to simply bury her smile deep down inside, beneath a rusty, iron lid.
But not now, not this time, surrounded as he was by a swirling, colorless wine of his daughter’s scent. He could clearly summon Casey’s face, in nearly every detail: The timid smile, the slight frame, the bony butt, that look of anxiety in her pale blue eyes when she was uncertain; her furrowed brow when she played her Nintendo Wii. And he could clearly picture his daughter’s walk, leaning forward and slightly to one side, as if struggling against a stiff wind, the opposite extended for balance. And just as clearly, he could hear Casey’s laugh, a rich contralto, or her ability to suddenly break into song with a flick of a few fingers.
But no longer — his daughter’s passing had, for so long, left him feeling useless and isolated, life driftwood in an ocean. Grounding himself in the present, it seemed, was his only sane recourse.
His dear Casey had met a boy online — by the name of Jake. She’d fallen deeply in love, as most 13-year-old girls new to hormonal changes tended to do. After three months of chatting and picture exchanging via the Internet and cell phones, she climbed atop her bike and pedaled four miles to the bus station on a Friday night when Deric was forced to fly to Salt Lake City at the last moment on business. Casey was a clever girl, see, and she’d timed her trip perfectly. Just as he was heading west on a 767, she was rolling east inside a Greyhound bus, which whisked her three hundred miles to a small, sleepy town in western Illinois. There, she met the love of her life — 15-year-old Jake.
But the boy wasn’t 15.
And his name hadn’t been Jake.
Only later, much later, did Deric find out his daughter had somehow clung to life for more than two days, despite injuries from tortures that would have killed kids twice her age in far less time. At least he’d refused to view the Polaroid pictures “Jake” had taken of Casey after she’d been stripped and strapped to the couch…
The pain spawned by Casey’s death had dulled over time. Now, it was little more than a constant but distant ache. It was still with him, would always be there — at least until he joined her in death. But he no longer burst into tears when he smelled a certain scent or glimpsed a girl with her features or overheard one of the songs she used to listen to inside her room. At least out in public he didn’t, that is. Here inside his quiet, empty house, it was an entirely different matter. Here, he still held imaginary conversations with Casey; still set a place for her at the kitchen table; still made her favorite PJ&J sandwiches for school.
The tears were flowing by then, and he collapsed atop his dead daughter’s bed, curling into a fetal position and clutching at one of her numerous teddy bears.
If only he’d stayed home that weekend, had refused to leave Casey home alone for the weekend. If only he’s paid a little more attention to what Casey was doing inside her room during those last few months, eyeballing the phone bill a bit more carefully, maybe listening into one of her phone conversations with him.
Eventually, the tears ceased, the dry heaving stopped, and he stirred soundlessly from the bed. After smoothing out the wrinkles, he closed the bedroom door behind him without a second glance. He numbly made his way back toward the master bedroom. Instead of bed, though, he shuffled over to his desktop computer instead. He fired up the machine to check his e-mail.
The first e-mail was from Mr. Ben Miers of Nevada, titled “PLEASE OPEN!!!!” — no doubt the 55-year-old manager was experiencing a similar sleepless night. He deleted it without opening it. He’d read similar pleas for mercy in the past.
Have a nice life, Mr. Miers.
Cheeks still stiff from the flushed tears, he began cycling through various sex sites, jumping into and out of bookmarked chat rooms with brief visits. Things were hopping, which wasn’t very surprising at all. The wee hours of the morning marked the preferred time for pedophiles to stalk lonely and depressed youth.
But he wasn’t here to hunt. He was here to shed his old identity and assume a new one. After each “kill,” he retired that specific user name, since word of his true identity — not a young girl but grieving father with a fetish for humiliating pedophiles — would spread like a venereal disease if he kept using the same name over and over again. So out went “15&Proud.” Born anew was “Sweet&Sexy.” He spent a good hour registering this name to fifteen sex chat rooms and thirteen adult forums.
He glanced down at the ring on his finger. The mood ring’s color, he noted, was green. That meant he was still relaxed, though not as relaxed as “blue.”
Too soon to hunt.
True. It was. Sounded rather stupid, he knew, but he never initiated a hunt unless Casey’s ring bled a shade of gray, brown or black — particularly the latter color, with black indicating a high level of stress and anger. But not tonight, not with her ring grinning green He would poke around the corners, like a sniffing dog — kicking the tires, scouting about, book-marking a few new sites, and preparing for a future hunt. But that would be it. Just preparing…
He found himself on “Chatters,” an adult sex talk Web site — and entered the “group orgy” room. It was filled with 38 people. Chatter indeed. There were so many messages being posted, it was almost too difficult to read any one message, let alone try to read them all. Luckily, he could ignore the words being typed. He was focused instead on the three or four female users listed at the top of the screen. Those users and the room’s participation numbers constantly ebbed and flowed, as members checked into a private room for cyber sex or checked out to visit other sites. But three “females” stayed in the room. Two of them — “Sweetchk66” and “Marie2050” — were carrying on a spirited conversation concerning various naval piercing locations. But the third girl — “14&Virgin” — never replied on the main screen or joined into any of the ongoing conversations. This meant “14&Virgin” was either watching the conversations scroll by without commenting, or she was in private conversation with another of the room’s users. He’d bet his house mortgage on the latter. It’s how initial contact was often established between two individuals in places like this. Because a private conversation took place inside a special “room,” only those “invited” by those inside could read the words being typed.
The mood ring on his finger flashed a dull green. It wasn’t time to hunt. Still, Deric lingered, unable or unwilling to turn away from the computer.
Why? Because “14&Virgin” had been Casey’s username, the one she’d used the first time, and subsequent times, she met “Jake” inside an online chat room. He knew this particular “14&Virgin” wasn’t Casey. Such a notion was too absurd to even consider. Regardless, this girl could be as young and impressionable as his daughter had been. Because of this, Deric could not force himself to log off from the computer. Rather, he leaned back in his chair and waited for “14&Virgin” to make a comment inside the main forum, ignoring completely the steady comings and goings of the other anonymous users. He jotted down the users who remained tight-lipped and never entered into a public discussion. Slowly, one by one, he marked off these names when they finally commented. But there were three masculine names who remained silent throughout: “Boise99,” “RippedPecs” and “Cumshot.”
He doodled on his pad for several minutes. A window soon appeared on his screen — an invitation to a private room.
Boise99: Signs?
Boise99: w/m/22
Boise99: Sex?
Deric rolled his eyes. He simply wasn’t in the mood.
Sweet&Sexy: Fuck off.
Boise99: U fuck off dildo
He chuckled. A second window had appeared by the time Deric had drifted into the kitchen to refill his coffee cup. At first he thought it was “Boise99.” He was wrong.
14&Virgin: Signs?
Signs. It was the universal request for a user’s sex, skin and age. Some requested additional information, such as sexual orientation, hair and eye color, that sort of thing. But most simply wanted the bare basics.
Sweet&Sexy: w/f/16. U?
14&Virgin: w/f/14.
14&Virgin: Good to c a gurl on here
Sweet&Sexy: Hear u. Too much dick tonight.
14&Virgin: LOL!
The girl was only a year older than Casey had been at the time of her… Jesus. Here it was, the wee hours of a Sunday morning, and a 14-year-old was trolling an adult sex site. Apparently, parenting was a dying American institution.
14&Virgin: Not a lesbo tho
Sweet&Sexy: No biggie
14&Virgin: Noticed you were quiet. You getting laid?
Sweet&Sexy: Nah. 2 bitchy. Im on the rag.
14&Virgin: ROFL!
Sweet&Sexy: U?
14&Virgin: 3 of them.
Sweet&Sexy: Wow be sore in the morning!
14&Virgin: lol! I like u. Ur funny.
Sweet&Sexy: Who r they?
14&Virgin: Boise99
14&Virgin: RippedPecs
14&Virgin: Cumshot
Sweet&Sexy: Boise99 wanted sex w/ me
14&Virgin: Really?
Sweet&Sexy: Yep. Told him to shove it.
14&Virgin: That’s kewl. Ill say something
Sweet&Sexy: U do that!
This was apparently some sort of a cyber sex ethics thing — go figure. He’d never really figured it out. Really, it was more of a girl thing than anything else. Here you had complete strangers faking sex by typing in commands via their keyboards, and yet, if a guy was cyber cheating on two different girls simultaneously, and those two girls found out about it, they didn’t start trading cyber blows like most chicks did. Rather, they teamed up and cooled out the dude. And girls could get away with this, when guys in sex sites outnumbered the girls 20-to-1.
Yawning, Deric drained his coffee and glanced over at the clock.
4:23 a.m.
He laid his hands atop his hands and rubbed at his eyeballs. A long shower, shit and shave sounded pretty damn fine to him right about now. That would eat up an hour or so. Then a quick breakfast of oats and buttered toast, on top of several more gulps of coffee. Then—
A new window appeared with a musical PING.
Boise99: Back off on her or Ill cut ur tits off
Boise99: bitch is mine
Boise99: fine ur own bitch
Boise99: U don’t want to mess with me ill fuck u up
Boise99: lesbo bitch
Deric gleefully chuckled. The idiot thought he was a girl — horning in on his testosterone action with “14&Virgin.”
He leaned back in his chair. The prudent thing to do here was to quietly slip out of the chat room, shut down his computer and go take his shower. But he didn’t do it. He didn’t move. Didn’t get up from his chair. Didn’t even switch off the computer. What he did was get mad. There was too much Jake in this “Boise99.”
Sweet&Sexy: Don’t see your sig. on her ass, little boy. Fuck off and find someone else.
Boise99: ill kill u both
Sweet&Sexy: always amazes me how badass u little boys are when u hide behind ur computer.
Boise99: fuck u
Sweet&Sexy: all bark no bite
Boise99: Fuck U FUCK U FUCK U FUCK U FUCK U
Sweet&Sexy: mommy will be in soon to put u back in ur crib.
No reply.
Deric noticed one of the three silent users — Cumshot — had just signed off. Had Boise99 scared him off with similar threats? Was he now doing the same with Mr. RippedPecs?
A new window appeared.
14&Virgin: what r u doing?????
Sweet&Sexy: Playing games
14&Virgin: Ur upsetting him. Stop it.
Sweet&Sexy: Hes an ass. Y u even want him?
14&Virgin: what r u, my mom?
Now dickhead popped up.
Boise99: lol bitch. Im winning
A few moments later, RippedPecs signed off.
Boise99: If you leave, I wont hunt ur ass down
Sweet&Sexy: She just told me likes me. Think she likes a girls touch
The grubby little bastard didn’t respond.
Deric sat there on the edge of his seats, fists clenched, cheeks burning with anticipated anger, heart pumping in his chest, staring at the screen. He could feel himself sliding deeper and deeper into a place he really didn’t want to be at right now. Yet he simply couldn’t bring himself to disengage. More and more in his mind, this faceless, nameless “Sweet&Sexy” had Casey’s face, Casey’s mannerisms. He jumped when a new dialogue box popped up on the screen.
Boise99: U just kilt her.
Boise99: Got her name & addy.
Boise99: Shes mine.
He could almost hear the smugness bleeding through the typed words.
Sweet&Sexy: U can get in a lot of trouble talking like that.
Boise99: Fuck U
Sweet&Sexy: What’s her name?
No response.
Sweet&Sexy: Wht do u mean?
Still nothing.
Sweet&Sexy: Answer me!
Nothing.
Shit!
Deric instantly private messaged “14&Virgin”
Sweet&Sexy: Hey
14&Virgin: Kinda busy
Sweet&Sexy: That asshole Boise99 just said he has ur name and addy, and hes going to get down on u. True?
14&Virgin: Yah.
14&Virgin: Y do u care?
Sweet&Sexy: Cause thats not kewl. Put u in lots of trouble
14&Virgin:
Deric leaned back into his chair, flabbergasted. He leaned back over to type her a new message.
Sweet&Sexy: U gave ur info to that asshole?
14&Virgin: i did. hes sweet. hes in college. Dad owns a BMW.
Un-fucking-believable…
Sweet&Sexy: U gotta break it off with him
14&Virgin: jealous?
Sweet&Sexy: Hell no. Just dum to give info out like that.
14&Virgin: says he loves me
Sweet&Sexy: U believe that shit?
14&Virgin: whats it to u?
Sweet&Sexy: cause hes an asshole. Hes nasty. Said hed hurt u bad
14&Virgin: Guy talk — they do it all the time
Sweet&Sexy: I don’t think so. Not this 1.
14&Virgin: he thinks ur a dude
Sweet&Sexy: who?
14&Virgin: him
Deric wiped at his face He then jabbed at the “down” button on the keyboard, scanning the previous entries made into the board’s rambling conversation. He cursed when ach new entry would automatically send him back up to the top of the screen. But from what he could gather, he hadn’t said anything overly “mannish.” So how did that little asshole know he was a guy? When and where had he slipped up?
14&Virgin: So r u?
Just turn off the machine, he told himself. Just turn the damn thing off and go take your shower. This stupid girl doesn’t want your help anyway. Most of ‘em don’t. Most of ‘em were like… Casey.
Casey
He sighed, sitting there, frozen with doubt. He only stirred when he reached out to the keyboard and typed in his answer to the girl’s posed question.
Sweet&Sexy: yah
There was a short pause before a new window popped up on the screen.
14&Virgin:
Despite himself, Deric smiled to himself — Take that, Boise, you fuck!
14&Virgin: So y u say u a chick?
Deric paused, fingertips poised above the keyboard. He hated lying. Hated deceiving. Above all else he absolutely detested playing someone he wasn’t. Wasn’t so bad when he used such deception tactics to snare pedophiles. But this was an innocent girl. A stupid and delusional girl, true, but innocent nonetheless — someone who didn’t know any better. And her utter stupidity — her utter naive demeanor — would lead her to a very dark and nasty place.
Much like Casey…
14&Virgin: y u say u a gurl?
Sweet&Sexy: don’t know.
14&Virgin: do u like me?
Sweet&Sexy: don’t want u to get hurt
14&Virgin: but do u LIKE me?
Sweet&Sexy: what if he hurts u?
14&Virgin: he wont. done this before.
Sweet&Sexy: Boise99 aint normal.
Sweet&Sexy: Is he still talking to u?
14&Virgin: Yah. Having sex.
Sweet&Sexy: And you gave him ur name and addy?
14&Virgin: Yah
Sweet&Sexy: And he’s coming to see u?
14&Virgin: Yah
Sweet&Sexy: Tell him to fuck off
14&Virgin: No way. Its more attention than what I get at home
A new window appeared. It was him.
Boise99: Bitch is mine. Know ur a dude, so fuck off or Ill fuck u up bitch
With an audible snarl, Deric closed out the window with a click of his mouse. He then opened up a new link to the girl.
Sweet&Sexy: But he could hurt u.
14&Virgin: lol. That’s how they all talk. He just wants to fuck me
Sweet&Sexy: What if he wants to do more than to fuck u?
14&Virgin: if u want to stop it so bad, come and fuck me instead
A new window opened in the far-right corner of the screen before he could begin digest what the girl was saying and formulate a reply.
Boise99: I have her phone number address. everything. I no where she lives.
Boise99: Little bitchll pay!
Boise99: ROFL!!!
The son-of-a-bitch seemed real enough to him — some kind of psychopath stalker. Not even a teen with an ego would consistently say such things unless he was truly, deeply deranged.
Something inside Deric — a buried instinct he’d relied upon during all those long and lonely months — warned him that “Boise99” meant business; that he was similar to the type of man who had lied to, seduced and tortured his baby girl to death. That he would do the same to “14&Virgin,” if given the opportunity. Unless he stopped him, that is — somehow intervened. A tiny part of him felt sick to the stomach. A tiny part of him had wished he’d shut down the computer and crawled back into bed. But he’d done that once before, turned a blind eye to a serious situation, and it had cost him the most important thing in the world. If he did the same thing this time, this “14&Virgin” would likely wind up in a shallow grave, as well — at the least mentally scarred for life. Worse, this girl’s nameless and faceless father would be forced to live inside the hell Deric had presided over the years. It was a fate no man should have to live with.
So he would have to lie to this girl — as a means of protecting her.
14&Virgin: do u want me ?
Okay, Deric — here we go.
His fingers danced across the keyboard.
Sweet&Sexy: Yah. I want u.
14&Virgin:
Sweet&Sexy: Whats ur name?
14&Virgin: Pamela. Pam for short
Sweet&Sexy: Where do you live?
14&Virgin: SE Kansas
Sweet&Sexy: Addy?
14&Virgin: P.O. Box 322
Rather reluctantly, Deric fired up Google Earth and tapped in the address. The camera zoomed down atop a flat, boring slab of Kansas real estate just south of Pittsburg, Kan. The house — a blurred two-story rural farmhouse with adjacent barn — was about an hour’s drive away from his front porch.
Simple enough.
Sweet&Sexy: When is Boise99 meeting u?
14&Virgin: Thurs.
Tomorrow was Wednesday.
Sweet&Sexy: Time?
14&Virgin: 6 pm
Sweet&Sexy: Ill be there 5.30.
14&Virgin: Would like that. A lot.
Sweet&Sexy: Parents?
14&Virgin: Not around.
Sweet&Sexy: Working?
14&Virgin: Yah, Gotta go. See u Thurs. XOXOXOXOXO
And with that, she logged off.
*** ***
It was less than an hour’s drive, but he left three hours early. And he took the long way, too, motoring through the congested heart of downtown Joplin. He never exceeded the speed limit as he motored through Galena and Baxter Springs, Kan., then veered north on Highway 69.
It was 5:03 p.m.
From this point, the farmhouse was twenty-two miles away.
He stopped at burger stand for three cheeseburgers and an extra-large fries — chasing murdering bastards and saving little girl’s souls always made him ravenous. He pulled over to the side of the road to suck down the grease-slicked patties and fistfuls of fries. Done, he gunned the engine and eased back onto the highway.
5:13 p.m.
He kept easing periodically off the gas while driving down the two-lane road.
His eyes roamed from the pavement in front, down to the speedometer, back up to the rearview mirror, and then over to the dashboard clock between the two seats. Those four stops, over and over again.
Road.
Speed.
Mirror.
Clock.
5:19 p.m.
Cresting a small hill, he spied a dusty intersection on the right side of the highway. Deric’s hands involuntarily tightened on the wheel. It was her road — Pamela’s road — Village Lane. About a mile to the west would be the farmhouse he spied with Google Earth — P.O. Box 322.
By the time the clock read 5:29 p.m., he was braking at the end of a long and snaking driveway in front of the farmhouse. Staring up at the house, he hadn’t smoked in three years, yet the urge to light up was damn near overpowering. He could almost taste the butt between his lips, the spicy flecks of Nicotine spattering across his tongue.
He opened up the window and let the cool blast settle him down. He turned on the radio, flipped through the various channels, stopped on a country/western channel, listened to the twangy voices for a second or two, and then shut it off with an audible click.
5:31 p.m.
He had to either go or stay.
If he went, he could be home in less than an hour, safe and sound. If he went, nobody would ever know he’d been here. He could delete “Sweet&Sexy” from the one particular site he’d met Pamela on, and he’d never go there again.
But he didn’t go. Rather, he climbed from the car, locking the doors behind him and pocketing his keys. With a sigh, he trudged up the long and dusty driveway. The house was stained a urine-yellow, with pieces of it blown off by the merciless Kansas wind and dust. The front porch sat lopsided, and one of the colorless wooden window frames hung like a lynched victim.
He didn’t see any other cars in the driveway, or anywhere near the road. He hated to admit it, but it didn’t look like anyone was home. The look of the house — even the feel of it — screamed abandoned. No dogs. No toys in the front yard. No rocking chair on the porch.
As he was about to step up onto the porch, a sound reached his ears. He turned, shielding his eyes from the setting sun’s glare. In the distance, just turning off the highway, was a moving glint of metallic green.
His blood ran cold.
Boise99.
The fucker was early. He wasn’t supposed to be here until 6 p.m., according to what Pamela had told him online. A frantic glance at his watch told him it was 5:36 p.m.
What the hell?
The car was slowing, since the long and trailing cloud of dust was slowly catching up and enveloping the vehicle. It had to be him. Had to be.
So what was he going to do? He could try to flag the bastard down somehow, distract him maybe. Maybe even confront him. But what if the son-of-a-bitch had a gun in the car with him? He could also hide and wait for the bastard to pass him before leaping out and subduing him from behind. But that could easily put Pamela at risk, which was the reason he was here in the first place. No, the best thing to do was to get inside the house, convince Pamela of the dangers, and either escort her out back or lock up the house and dial the county sheriff.
He leaped up onto the porch and rapped on the door five or six times.
A reply came almost immediately. “Hello?” It was a young girl’s voice.
“Hey! It’s me!”
The car was now accelerating toward the house.
“Who’s me?”
He hesitated. The engine sound behind him was growing more loudly with every passing second. “It’s Deric.”
“Deric?” Her voice sounded perplexed
Stupid shit, he scolded himself. He’d never given her his real name during their cyber conversation. “Uh… Sweet&Sexy, I mean. We talked on Tuesday. We had a… 5:30 appointment.”
He felt so foolish standing there, gawking, that he actually blushed. He had a surreal moment that he was checking in for a doctor’s appointment.
“Oh! Hey!” came the reply. The door in front of him was unlocked and opened, and there Pamela stood. She was tall with blonde hair, and soaking wet, as if she’d just stepped from the shower. In fact she had, since she was dressed in a torn terrycloth robe. All in all, she was stunning for a young teenager, with a woman’s body, particularly through the chest. No wonder guys drove for hundreds of miles to sink themselves into her.
“Um… nice to finally meet you, Pamela,” he said rather lamely, pushing his way into the house and quickly shutting the door behind him. Glancing over his shoulder as he did so, he saw the green Impala come to a stop, showering dust and grit across his own Ford Taurus. He couldn’t make out who was behind the wheel, due to the tinted glass, but he could easily guess.
Pamela startled him by stepping forward, pressing her chest against him, and planting a full kiss on his lips. He instinctively reached out for her, but then snatched his hands back, as if burned. He then pushed her away from him.
“Huh?” she asked. The girl honestly looked confused, her face hardening considerably as Deric turned, glanced through the door’s peephole, and clanked the bolt lock home.
“Listen,” he said, turning to her. “That car out there — the green one, the one that just pulled up? That’s that bastard you were talking to when you and I were talking — remember? I think he’s here to hurt—”
But the girl made a move with her body — a shrugging-like motion — and the bathrobe slipped from her shoulders. A thin, strapless shirt covered the buds of her breasts, with a skirt riding well above mid-thigh. “Did you bring condoms?”
Deric just stared at her. She apparently hadn’t heard a word he’d said to her. He could hear the man’s footsteps crunching across the gravel outside. Soon those footsteps would be climbing the porch steps, then bumping up against the front door.
“Listen to me, Pamela — please. Remember that bastard, Boise99? I think he’s outside, and he’s here to hurt you. I’ve driven here to—”
The doorbell rang.
Pamela looked past him, and then moved toward the door.
“Wait…” Deric said, reaching for her, turning with her toward the front door, “Please don’t—”
There was rushing movement from behind him, as well as a blur of something colorful that his peripheral vision picked up but couldn’t quite process fast enough into a shape his brain could recognize. He felt a blinding, agonizing pain at the back of his skull, and for a moment he saw nothing but retina-searing white. His vision then funneled, and rapidly bottomed out into a smothering blackness.
*** ***
The first thing Deric did when he woke from the smothering dark was to glance down and check the color of his mood ring. But he couldn’t see his finger, let alone his hands. And the movement of head and his eyes launched a spear of pinkish nausea straight up from the guts. Seconds later, he was spitting up the remains of those triple cheeseburgers onto the nearby floor, which was strangely covered with dirty straw. He let his head fall back against the grain, hoping to ease the sharp jab of pain thudding like a heartbeat just above the bridge of his nose. He sat there, immobile, until the dark void beneath his closed eyelids ceased its spinning, and the little fuzzy white dots faded, and he was strong enough to open his eyes unto the world.
He was in a large building. He was tied to something, most likely a chair. His arms were behind him — they wouldn’t move, numb and dead like brained fish. His legs were lashed to the chair — they wouldn’t much move, either. And facing him, lashed to a wooden chair, slumped a headless man.
He was, in fact, inside a barn. The smell of it was unmistakable, a faint trace of straw and unwashed animal and manure, as if the stench has slowly seeped its way into the very paint and wood of the walls. But he ignored the loft and wooden ladder and film-covered windows — he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the headless body before him. It was a man, or had been at one time, dressed in white tennis shoes, holed Levi’s jeans, a blue button-down, yellow undershirt and light-green jacket. His lifeless hands and legs had been lashed to the chair, just as Deric had been.
A hand, coming to rest on his right shoulder, made him jump and yelp out loud.
“So you’re Sweet&Sexy, eh?” a girl’s voice said from behind him. Her words were slick with naked amusement. “Nice to finally meet you. In person, I mean.”
Deric tried to look up at the girl behind him, but that damn spear of pain poked at his brain, and he slumped forward with a hissing grunt. He didn’t have to look at her face, however. He knew by voice alone that it was Pamela.
Behind him, a door opened and closed. There were heavy footsteps — steady and determined. Pamela’s hands lifted away from his shoulder.
“How is he?” a voice softly called out to her. The voice was deep and cold.
“He’s awake.”
There was an audible grunt.
The footsteps moved directly up behind him. Deric instinctively tensed and ducked. Several seconds clicked by before a beefy fist smashed him in the back of the head. His head whipped forward, neck cracking, until the ropes threading his chest flexed. Slumping back against the chair, Deric blinked back tears and swirling spots of blinking light.
“Which one is this one?” the man asked.
“Sweet and sexy.”
Another grunt.
Rapidly blinking back tears, Deric watched Pamela move slowly around to face him, smiling. She continued on, until she stood a good twenty feet away, standing behind the decapitated corpse.
“Pamela—” he whispered, but he clamped up tight when the man slowly walked into view. He was leering at him.
He wasn’t a big man, though he was muscular in a wiry sort of way. He was also bald, with a snake tattoo visible across the length of his right forearm. He had a wide nose — the nostrils flared like bellows as he breathed — and his eyes were little dots of blackened coal. Each time he grinned at him, Deric spied sharp, yellow teeth, like those of a feral rat. The man was chewing smartly on a toothpick, and he clutched a twisted length of chain. He kept bending and flexing it, wrapping and coiling it around his arm, as if it were nothing more than a harmless rubber band entwined in his fingers. Yet Deric somehow knew the steel links could easily crush every bone in his body.
“Boise99,” Deric said to the man, giving him a slight, sarcastic nod. His eyes flicked over to Pamela, who was staring at him with wide, bright eyes. “Nice little racket you guys have going here.”
The girl’s eyes clouded with confusion, while the man standing over him just chuckled. “Boise 99? No. Boise 99 is sitting in the chair in front of you.”
Deric glanced up at the corpse. He then looked at the man. Right then and there, it all clicked together. “You’re Pamela’s father, aren’t you?”
The man nodded. He turned to give his daughter a wide grin. The girl returned it, and Deric could suddenly see the strong resemblances between the two, particularly with their grins.
“Are you going to kill me?” Deric asked.
It was a question, but truth be told, it sounded more to his ears like a statement of resignation. He reached up to wipe the bleeding from his face, but the ropes prevented such movements. He sagged against his bonds.
The man chuckled softly before nodding. “Reckon I will.”
Deric nodded to himself.
“Any last words?” the man said, tightening the slack in the chain.
“I just want you to know — both of you — that I never intended to do anything to your daughter.”
“Is that so?” the man said, wrapping and unwrapping the chain in his fists. He suddenly turned to Pamela. “Why do these pervs always say that, honey? How many times have we heard that now?”
Pamela shrugged. “Lost count, pops.”
“Yeah, ain’t that the damned truth,” the man said, still pacing between Deric and the headless corpse, still wrapping and unwrapping the chain in his knotted fists. He wrapped the chain around a fist and eased it against Deric’s left cheek.
“I could pound you until your face collapsed and all the tiny bones shattered and poked out through the skin of your cheeks.”
He backed off a step, unraveled the chain from his hand, and swung it a few times over his head, lasso like.
“Or I could whip ‘ya — like a slave — until the pain grew too great.”
The man silenced the chain, bled out its momentum, bit off a two-handed length, and brought the chain up beneath the man’s chin, choking him. The voice speaking in his ear was just inches away and smelled of raw meat. “Or I could choke ‘ya. Wouldn’t be much sport in that, though.”
He must have gestured to his daughter, because the girl skipped forward. The chain was passed between them, links dragging across his sagging right shoulder.
“Or I could let my daughter have her way with ’ya. Maybe pull down your pants and let the chain get some cracks at your cock and balls. I reckon that way, you’d still get some use out of ‘em today, like you’d intended?”
Deric swallowed hard, but he didn’t break eye contact with the man, even when the man winked at him and said, “I suspect this wasn’t how you were hoping to spend your Thursday evening, now was it, Mr. sweet and sexy?”
Deric shook his head no.
The father beamed. “I suspected as much.”
He moved over to the corpse, took out a knife from a pocket and slashed the binds. With a gentle push, the body sloppily slid to the dust-covered floor. The chair would have followed the body overboard, but the man turned it around to face Deric, interrogation style.
“Do you have it, honey?” the man asked.
Behind him now, the girl nodded. She reached into her back pocket and brought out a wrinkled piece of printer paper. He grabbed it from her hand, roughly unfolded it, scanned it for a second or two, and then looked up at Deric. His eyes were shiny.
“You’re Sweet&Sexy?”
Deric nodded.
“You talked to my girl a couple days ago?”
Again, Deric nodded.
“Where do you live? And what’s your name, partner?”
“I live in Joplin. Name’s Deric Thomasson.”
“And what do you do, Mr. Deric Thomasson?”
“I’m a consultant.”
“Consultant to what, Mr. Thomasson?”
“Media publications.”
The man turned to glance back at his daughter. “First time we’ve had that sort here in the barn, huh?”
“Yes daddy.”
Grunting, the man turned his attention back to Deric. “According to this here paper in my hands, you came here to have sex with my 12-year-old daughter. That true?”
Deric shook his head no.
“The truth now, or I’ll hav’ta snap your left leg in two with this chain here.”
Deric repeated his denial. “I didn’t come here for your daughter. I came here to stop someone else from having sex with your daughter. Or from doing worse to her.”
The man’s eyes squinted. “Who?”
“I don’t know who he was. He went by the username Boise 99.”
The father grunted. It sounded like he’d agreed with Deric. He drew hope from this. All the same, the man standing over him nonchalantly rattled the chain.
“You told my daughter you were a woman.” He paused to scan the papers in his hands. “Yep, you first told my daughter that you was a 14-year-old girl. Then you somehow, someway, go from a girl to a boy. And now here you are, sitting here before us, and you’re now a grown man. Care to ‘plain such miracles?”
“I can’t… I mean — I did what I did because I wanted to save your daughter from getting hurt.”
The man grinned rotted teeth. “From this Boise99 guy?”
Deric slowly nodded.
The father grunted. “Okay, I git you, but this still sounds pretty damned strange to my ears, mind you. According to this here transcript my daughter printed out the other night, you — and I’ll quote directly from it, Mr. Thomasson — you wanted my 14-year-old daughter in a sexual manner, Mr. Thomasson.”
“I don’t think I ever said—”
The father cut Deric off. “Let me read this, maybe freshen your memory. My daughter asked if you wanted him, and you typed, and I’m quoting here, Mr. Thomasson — ‘yah. I want you.’”
He looked down at Deric, grinning again. “Remember now?”
“I… I had to say that, sir, so I could find out where she lived—”
“So you could fuck her?”
“So I could help her.”
“Why didn’t you type that? Why lie about the sex?”
“It was the only thing I could think of. It—”
“So you don’t deny it?”
“You’re implying that I—”
“I’m implying nothing,” the man said, throwing aside the scrap of paper. With that, he was whipping his arm forward, the chain unfolding from his hand and the weighted end snapping through the air and cracking across Deric’s left thigh.
In the chair, he gritted his teeth and clamped shut his eyes for a second or two, hoping to contain the pain inside. But that lasted for just a second or two. The agony mushroomed, growing far too great for him to physically bear, and he ended up screaming up at the dusty barn rafters. Moments later, he vomited into his lap. It felt like the chain had snapped his femur. The pain threatened to black him out.
Standing around him, father and daughter watched Deric’s writhing movements in silence. The wait went on for a good ten minutes before Deric was finally able to open up and hazily peer at him through sweat-slicked hair. His panting was like that of a winded horse.
“Mr. Thomasson?”
“No more,” Deric whispered, a spit bubble popping at the corner of his lips. His vision was melted, his face slathered with dusty sweat, his left leg a spewing, lava melt of flame.
“Mr. Thomasson?”
He closed his eyes.
“Open your eyes, Mr. Thomasson.”
Only Deric’s breathing kept the screaming inside. He yearned to sink into a swampy mess of numbing blackness.
“Open your eyes and look at me, Mr. Thomasson, or I’ll cut your head off.”
Deric did as he was told.
“Mr. Thomasson. It’s real simple. Just tell me the God’s honest truth. Why are you here?”
Deric spat out a bloody stream of saliva and fought hard to control his breathing. “I’m here… here to save your girl’s life. From a man I met the night I spoke… with your Pamela. He said he was… going to kill her. Had to stop him.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. He exchanged a look with his daughter. “Why, Mr. Thomasson? Why would you do a thing like that?”
“Casey.”
“Casey?” He again glanced toward Pamela, who only gave him a puzzled shrug in return. He cocked his head at Deric. “Another girl you’ve visited in the past, Mr. Thomasson?”
Deric shook his head.
“Who is Casey?”
“My daughter.”
Neither said a word. Spitting blood from a lacerated lower lip, Deric continued.
“Casey was my daughter. She met a boy online — years ago. Went to see him—” he broke off here, coughing, and wincing at the agony it caused in his leg. “But he wasn’t a boy. He was a man. Tied up my daughter. Then he tortured her. Cut off… certain parts. She somehow lived for days. And then she died.”
Drained, Deric began to cry. It was a really hard one, too — the type a small child might create, with huge soggy sobs and hitching breaths and head lolling from side to side. It took him minutes to compose himself.
“They — the police, I mean — finally found the bastard. He led them to where my daughter had been… buried. Within a year, I’d lost my daughter and then my wife — she couldn’t take it here,” he said, nodding down at his heart, “and so she took her own life. So I now hunt pedophiles online. I find them, and expose them, help arrest them or, at the very least, embarrass them off the Web. When I can, I try to steer kids away from these people and the places they lurk. That’s what I was trying to do with your Pamela.”
“So how did you end up here?” Pamela’s father asked him.
Bleary-eyed, Deric stared up at him. “I lost my Casey. Didn’t want the same thing to happen to her.”
The father stared at him for a second or two. He then nodded. He glanced at Pamela. The girl had tears in her eyes. Moments later, she nodded at her father.
Turning back to Deric, he pulled a gutting knife from the back of his belt.
“Oh Jesus God,” Deric whispered, clamping shut his eyes.
The man loomed over him.
He grabbed Deric’s right arm.
And freed his bonds.
Deric’s eyes flew open.
“Relax brother,” the man said, slicing away at his bonds. The man’s voice sounded different now, softer, and much less menacing than before. First Deric’s arms were freed, and then his legs.
“Why?” Deric finally gathered the courage to gasp aloud. He was still too stunned to believe he’d been set free.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” was all the man could say, sheathing the knife back into his belt at his back. Then, in an almost dead voice, the man told Deric about Sarah. Sarah, he said, had been his first child, and Pamela’s eldest sister by three years. Sarah had met a 61-year-old man online. But she hadn’t known that. She thought she was talking to a fellow 15-year-old girl, who shared her love for horses and Nancy Drew novels. When she met her new friend for a non-romantic “date” down at a nearby local mall, two men who loved long knives abducted her. Sarah was brutally raped and buried alive inside a plot of Wisconsin forest.
“They found her head,” the father said simply, shrugging, “but little else.”
Deric easily could taste the man’s pain, had tasted it himself for years. “What’s your name?”
“Jim.”
Deric reached out a shaking hand. Nodding, Jim reached over to grasp it. “Nice to meet you.”
“I’m sorry about your loss,” Deric said to Jim. The man just nodded.
Deric gestured at the decapitated corpse.
Jim grunted at his gesture. “That would be your Boise99. Got him after I whacked you atop the head. Found a knife on him. That’s a death sentence in this household.”
“What happened?” Deric asked with a thin voice.
“When Pamela opened the door, I had just dragged your ass into the kitchen cupboard. I heard a commotion from the foyer, and Pamela began screaming. I came around the corner with my knife here,” he patted his belt, “and the big dumb bastard already had her on the floor — was trying to straddle her. So I got behind him, grabbed him and—” he made a throat-slitting gesture with his index finger.
Deric shuddered.
Jim spied the shudder and grinned. “Shit happens.”
“So… why do you invite men here?” he pointed a shaking finger at the headless corpse.
Jim chuckled. “Why do you wage your online war? Same reasons, different ways doing it, I reckon. We lure ‘em here. Then we kill ‘em.”
“But we torture them first,” Pamela said, her eyes wide and bright again. “Like the bastards did to Sarah.”
Jim gave his daughter a warm grin.
“How many?” Deric whispered.
“What would you say, buttercup?” Jim asked. “We up to seventy?”
“Seventy-eight,” the 14-year-old answered. “I keep count.”
Jim laughed. “She keeps a tooth from each one. Just like the fucker who done in my Sarah.”
Deric buried his head in the palms of his hands. “What about the bodies?”
“Fertilizer,” Jim said. “Put ‘em out in the corn. Got a helluva an annual bumper crop, too. What ain’t used is put into the pig’s slop. Sure as hell nothing left when they’re done with things. They ‘specially love the brains. Dogs love the bones. Nothing goes to waste here.”
“The vehicles?” Deric was thinking about dead Boise99’s dark metallic green car out front.
Jim grinned dead teeth. “Got a honest-to-fuck car crusher down in the ravine. Brother of mine used to own a salvage yard before his heart attacked him. Got it for keeps that way. It’s an old 671 Detroit engine with blower. Cylinders have 8-inch bores, with a 6-inch solid shaft that’s pulling seven strokes, with cylinders tested at 3,000 pounds input pressure and ‘bout 800 pounds output pressure. Walls and floor are half-inch thick steel plates, reinforced with six-inch beams, and the crusher plates—”
“Daddy,” Pamela said.
Jim stopped, shrugged. “Sorry. I helped him build it. Mighty proud of the beast, though it’s a rather long answer to your short question. We sell the metal scraps for a tidy profit.”
Deric tried to stand, but his smashed left leg bent dangerously. He grabbed the chair to steady his wobbly balance. He looked at the man and his 14-year-old daughter. “What are you gonna do with me?”
Jim stood silent for a moment, his face a blank mask. “I don’t rightly know. You lost a girl, like I did. That makes us almost kin — like brothers in arms, you know? And you tried, in your own way, to save my daughter’s life from this scumbag here.” He looped a kick at the decapitated corpse. “Not too many men would do that. Again, that makes us almost kin, you know?”
Deric cautiously nodded. He watched Jim pick up his discarded length of chain and curl one end around his right fist. He turned toward Deric.
“On the other hand, you know what we do out on our farm here. You could shut us down — help strap me onto an electro-chair, and put poor missy over there in a foster home. Couldn’t have that happen, either.”
Their eyes met.
Jim took a step toward Deric, paused, and slowly unraveled the chain. It fell at his feet like a metallic coil of spilled intestine.
“But you won’t say anything, will you?”
“No. Hell no.”
Jim nodded. “Some mornings you’ll wake up wanting to. You’ll look up at the calendar and see several weeks have gone by and your mind will wonder over to that piece ‘o-shit farm in Kansas. Maybe you’ll even wonder what — or who — is being splashed into the pig slop on that particular day. And I reckon the urge to reach for the phone and dial 9-1-1 will be mighty powerful pull, Mr. Thomasson.”
The two men continued to stare each other down.
“But you won’t do it,” Jim said, his voice shattering a long, silent pause. “No, you won’t do it because of what that scumbag sum-bitch did to your Casey. What another sum-bitch did to my Sarah. Or what any of the sum-bitches out there would like to do to Pamela, if given the chance.”
Deric slowly nodded.
As the two men stood there, Pamela suddenly strolled over to Deric to give him a soft peck on the cheek. She then clutched his hand, turned it palm up, and pressed down into it a pearl necklace.
“It was my sister’s,” Pamela said. “You’ve got sad eyes, Mr. Thomasson. Maybe this will make you happy again.”
Jim just grinned, standing back and watching.
Deric suddenly discovered his face was slathered with wet. Wiping away the tears with a snotty sniff, he reached down, twisted off the mood ring, and gave it to Pamela.
“This was Casey’s. It’s a cheap ass thing, but she always loved it. I want you to have it. You don’t have sad eyes like mine, and maybe this will ensure you never will.”
He lifted himself up from the chair to brush a kiss against the girl’s forehead. He then ruffled her hair, like he used to do with Casey.
In the distance, there was a sound of an approaching truck. It sounded like one of the big diesel types — the kind that smelled bad and rattled the bones as it drove by.
“Is that…?” Jim asked his daughter.
She nodded. “Our 7 p.m.”
Jim nodded, patting Deric on the back. “Best you be headed on home, Mr. Thomasson.”
Father and daughter gingerly helped Deric to his feet.
*** ***
They left behind the two-story barn and entered the back door of the yellow house. By the time Deric made it into the kitchen, he could walk without aid from the others. The leg wasn’t broken, though it would be bruised like hell for the next two weeks or so.
“Through the front door and out you go,” Jim instructed. He stopped, opened up two floor-to-roof sized pantry doors in the kitchen, and stepped inside. Peering inside, Deric spied an ax leaning against a shelf.
A humming Pamela, mood ring now sitting snugly on her left index finger, was at the fridge. She brought out a glass jug of lemonade and set it on the kitchen bar, next to a tall crystal glass. She then went to her father, who gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
Outside, the sound of the truck rumbled to a throaty stop. Seconds later, there sounded a door slam.
“Remember, I’m right here,” Jim said. He hefted the axe.
Pamela smiled and nodded.
As the girl moved off into a side room, Deric reached out to again shake Jim’s hand. Their eyes met briefly, and each gave the other a silent, knowing nod, the way only two fathers could do. Deric turned and made his way through the front door and out onto the porch.
The sun was down, with only a few rainbow traces of color left to splash the western skyline. Bugs played lazy games around the single, naked bulb. Deric stood for a second or two, shuddering from the cold wind howling with aggressive spurts across the opened porch. His leg howling, he slumped down atop one of the steps, closing his eyes as the Kansas wind blew a scattering of dust into his face and eyes. From his other pocket he fished out a bent cigarette from a crumpled package.
Thanks to the gloom, the man from the truck didn’t spy Deric sitting there until the cigarette’s end flared to life. The footsteps shuffled a beat or two, hesitating before him. He was tall and muscular through the arms and chest, thanks to the wife-beater he wore. The stranger’s greasy hair was wadded up into a single tail, and barbed wire tats graced each bulging bicep. He was chewing tobacco; a big wad ballooning his left cheek, and his tattered blue jeans was supported by an ugly brown belt and a huge Cowboy-like silver metal buckle. The buckle was identical to the metal tips marking the pair of cowboy boots he wore.
“Who’re you?” The man was glaring down at him.
“Who’re you?” Deric responded in kind. He wasn’t scared of the man or his type, despite a poised hostility surrounding him like a cloud of bad cologne. His ordeal inside the barn had made him immune to dangers posed by muscular rednecks. Still, the man possessed an air of lethal confidence; the kind usually won the hard way inside a penitentiary.
In answer, a messy spill of tobacco splashed near Deric’s left foot.
Deric ignored him, puffing and blowing smoke.
“You live here?”
“Nope.”
The man didn’t answer him right away. He just stared, rocking back and forth, his buckle and boot tips reflecting the yellow porch light.
“Got a spare cig?”
Deric tossed him one. The man thrust it into his lips and leaned down. Reaching up, Deric singed its end. The man took a deep suck, held it, and then farted smoky streams through each nostril.
“Going in?” he asked, following a second huge inhale.
“Nope,” Deric answered. “Coming out.”
The man grunted, breaking eye contract to look up at the house. He looked back at Deric and grinned, flashing crooked teeth.
“Was the bitch a good fuck?”
Deric nodded. Took a drag. Nodded again. “It was an eye closer.”
The stranger nodded at his words. “Fuckin’ A.”
He took a last suck, flicked away the butt and bumped past Deric, leaving in his wake a cloud of tobacco, unwashed body and cheap cologne.
“Hey,” the man said, rapping hard on the front door. “Anybody home?”
“In the washer, putting in a load,” Pamela replied from inside the house. “C’mon in. Door’s unlocked. Got lemonade for you in the kitchen.”
The man’s boots made thunderous sounds as he walked through the foyer and into the kitchen.
“Where the fuck are ‘ya?”
“Be right there,” Pamela called.
Deric sat quietly on the front porch with his cigarette, listening. The asshole hadn’t even bothered to close the door behind him.
From the kitchen came the crackling sounds of ice cubs as the man poured himself a drink. Seconds later, he heard Pamela say something in her singsong, chirpy voice. The man grunted something back; his words rough, and Pamela’s laughter filled the air. Deric could almost imagine the man towering over Pamela, flashing those broken teeth, his hard eyes roaming her young body and imagining what those covered parts looked like.
Then Deric heard the unmistakable sounds of wet kissing, with lots of sucking sounds and tongue. There were more muffled exchanges. More kisses. And then a grunting “Huh?” Muffled sounds followed. Those muffled sounds quickly morphed into struggling sounds. There was a loud and meaty “thwack,” immediately followed by a clipped scream. A second “thwack,” and the screaming ceased, followed moments later by a body falling to the floor, punctuated only by a frantic flopping and kicking of the feet.
Seconds later, Deric heard Pamela’s chuckle.
On impulse, Deric reached into his front pocket and slipped out Pamela’s pearl necklace. Dangling it between each hand, he rapidly tied the ends around his neck, linking it together at the back. He immediately felt better. He then made the long trudge up the darkened driveway toward his parked car.
He had a long and lonely drive ahead of him.