The Devil Next Door

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

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

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

She nodded.

“Did they force you here?”

She nodded.

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

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

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

A spear was thrust into her hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

58

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

He made it onto the street.

There were bodies everywhere.

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

Very clever.

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

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