The Devil Next Door

He hit her, forcing the spear in deeper and she cried out, clawing at him with rage. The buckshot that hit him was basically scattershot. The real blast took out a cardboard standee of Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie. The scatter that hit him peppered his thighs and belly, but did not penetrate deep enough to do any real damage. Regardless, by the time he hit her, he was wet with blood. Her fingers could get no real purchase on him, they scraped over his bloody belly and his chest and face that were painted up with earthen reds and browns in a thick grease. He grabbed the spear shaft and yanked it to pull it free, but it was wedged along the inside of her scapula, the barbed tip caught on a slat of bone. When he yanked it, she came with it. He threw her to the floor, then pulled her back up again and bounced her off display cases, the wound below her collarbone ripped wide open and spouting blood by this point.

With a growling animal cry, he put all his weight behind the shaft and slammed her up against the counter, the spear point scraping over bone and puncturing out her back. He withdrew it and Doris went down in a shuddering heap, barely conscious.

She looked up through blood-glazed eyes, seeing him above her with the spear raised to strike.

Standing over her, he brought it down again and again, sinking it into her belly and thighs, hip and breasts. Then he brought it down into the original wound. He put his bare foot on her throat and yanked with everything he had. There was a wet snapping and the barbed point came free, snapping out a shattered section of collarbone in the process that broke through the skin in a bloody shard. Then the spear came down again-right into her open screaming mouth. It sheered her tongue in two and went through the back of her throat, punching into her cervical vertebrae She was dying and nothing could help her.

The hunter brought up the spear and let out a wild yelping cry of victory.

Then there was thundering sound and his left eye blew out of its socket in a spray of tissue with most of the socket itself. He fell over straight as a board, his upper jaw catching the sharp edge of the counter with a violent thudding, teeth scattered over its surface. He folded up, already dead.

Doris, through a mask of blood and a haze of pain, saw Louis standing over the thrashing body of one of the savages. He had the 9mm in his hands. His eyes were wild, his mouth hooked into a manic sneer…

55

Somehow, Doris’ mind cleared and she felt the agony that threaded through her body. Her heart leaped, then leaped again. Her mind swam in and out of the darkness, trying to focus, trying to maintain. She had lost so much blood by that point and suffered so much trauma that she hovered on the edge of shock. She heard more gunfire, heard screams, heard running feet.

And when her eyes did focus, Louis was gone.

They must have gotten him.

The air stank of blood, smoke, and voided bowels. She saw two men standing there with a woman between them. All were naked, all painted-up and covered in something viscous and shining like grease. Their eyes blazed with a flat animal hunger. Light reflected off the filed points of their teeth. They looked like Mesolithic hunters.

Realizing she was indeed alive, they crept forward, soundlessly.

Oh God in heaven, no more, no more, just let me die…

But she did not die. Blinking away the dreams that pushed into her skull, her body felt like it was on fire. Every inch of her flesh was laid bare, it seemed, everything inside ripped and gouged. She tried to swallow the blood that filled her mouth, but her damaged tongue was like a flap of rubber. She was in so much pain that she was literally beyond pain…notched up a level into a place of floating emptiness where she could feel her pain, yet did not seem attached to it. Such is the magic chemical bath of endorphins.

A grunting, a snarling, a fetid animal stink…

When Doris again opened her eyes, the three savages were crouching down by her. The woman had a knife, a damn big knife, and, grinning, she jabbed it into Doris’ belly just below the navel, putting her weight on it until it cut deep and sure. As they stared down, the beast-woman sawed the knife clear up to Doris’ sternum.

They looked pleased.

With filthy fingers, they pulled the cleaved flesh apart.

Doris could see what they did, feel the pressure and pulling, yet not the pain. It was divorced from her. They pulled the wound wide, tearing at yellow fat and pink strands of connective tissue. She could see the glistening bulge of her stomach, the coiled ropes of her entrails. She was aware of only the pressure and the pulling as the grunting, drooling creatures yanked things out of her, rooting around in her abdomen, searching, digging, probing.

They found something.