Deadside in Bug City (6 page)

Josh tugged on his shirttail.

James pulled off his headphones. “What?”

“Check those dudes in front of Starbuck’s,” said Josh. “I think they’re about to get into it.” James looked and saw a middle-aged guy with a pot-belly poking his finger into a younger man’s chest. The younger man, wearing khaki shorts and a knit pullover, tossed the contents of his Starbuck’s cup into the other man’s face.

“Hot damn!” said Josh. “There they go.”

James and Josh leaned over the railing and watched the two adults scuffle in front of the coffee shop. “Kick his ass!” Josh yelled at both men.

Passersby gave the men wide berth as they took turns shoving each other.

“Shit,” said James. “That all they got?”

“Give ’em time,” urged Josh. “This is gonna be good.”

Muzak played from hidden speakers, cutting the balls off an old Rolling Stones tune and making it sound like a harmless children’s ditty.

James wanted Josh to be wrong. He didn’t want the shoving match to turn into a knock-down-drag-out. For all his gangsta posturing and his professed belief in the superiority of the meanest motherfucker in the valley, James didn’t like violence. In fact, it scared him. He’d seen too many nasty rows between his mom and dad before the old man ran off with a topless dancer when James was ten. He had too many vivid memories of marital violence, like the Valentine’s Day brawl when his old man came home drunk and broke his mother’s nose and his mom fought back with a bottle of wine, cracking it over old Dad’s head. There had been blood all over the kitchen that night, and James had hidden under his bed till morning.

“Fuck those assholes,” he said. “Let’s cruise out to the Crab Shack and look for snatch.”

“Aw man, those chicks are skanky. I wouldn’t touch them with
your
dick.”

“
Hey
.”

“Come on, Slim. We can’t leave now. This is just getting good.” Josh sucked icy lemonade through his straw and watched the hostilities escalate between the antagonists in front of the coffee shop. The older man drew back his fist and drove it into his opponent’s jaw. “Woo-hoo!” hooted Josh.

With a sick feeling in his belly, James pushed off the railing and started walking away. “I’m going,” he told his friend.

“Yeow, he nailed him good,” chortled Josh. “Hey, where the fuck ya going? You can’t leave me.”

“Then get your ass in gear,” James called over his shoulder.

“Shit, man. I can’t believe you.”

Josh caught up with him at the north entrance to the mall and followed him outside to the parking lot. “Next time we’re taking my ride, man. I don’t get how the hell you can just walk away from—”

“Ssshh,” James shushed him and suddenly froze in his tracks. “Listen.”

Josh halted beside him. “What?”

“Hear that?”

An old ’67 Mustang rumbled by in front of them. If it had a muffler, it was completely gutted.

“What? That?” Josh pointed at the passing antique Ford.

“No, you idiot. The bell.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Sounds like it’s coming from Holy Cross Hill.”

“But—”

“Why the fuck is it ringing?”

“Must be coming from some other church.”

“There’s no other church in that direction. Just that one up the street from my house.”

“So? What’s the big deal? A church bell’s ringing.”

“But who’s ringing it? And why? Nobody’s used that place for over a year. Hell, it’s condemned. They’re supposed to tear it down soon.”

“Maybe it’s your old lady,” Josh joked. “Had one too many and decided to play Quasimodo. You know, like in
The Hunchback of—”

“Of course I know. I wrote that book report for you, jughead.”

“Oh yeah. Huh.”

“And my mother quit drinking.”

“Lighten up. It was just a joke.”

“Not a funny one.”

Josh shrugged. “So, we’re going to see who’s ringing the motherfucker, right?”

“Right.”

“Probably some asshole kids with nothing better to do. Bet it’s driving your grandmother nuts.”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t take much.”

They started walking toward James’s car, a secondhand 1989 Honda Civic he’d bought with money he saved from two summers of warehouse work.

“We oughta catch the little fuckers and teach ’em a lesson,” Josh suggested. He made a fist and socked his open palm. “Teach ’em they can’t go raising hell on our turf.”

“Yeah,” James said absently. He was preoccupied with trying to figure out why the distant chiming of the church bell was making his skin crawl and giving him the feeling that something very bad was going to happen.

* * *

Candace Cassidy couldn’t believe this was happening to her. It was like something you saw on TV, especially if you watched that Lifetime Movie Network on cable, LMN. Television for women. Brad always jokingly called it the Lousy Men Network because they showed so many movies about rapists, wife-beaters, child-abusers and any other category of male scoundrels you could name.

But Brad was out of town, and this
was
happening to her.

And the two thugs who had snatched her off the street were definitely not TV actors.

They were real-life hoods.

“Please,” she whimpered, looking up at them from the cellar floor. “Don’t hurt my baby.”

“Shut your hole, cunt,” snarled the bearded one, “or I’ll shut it for you.”

“We should gag her,” said the one with the shaved head and the dark glasses. He was the smaller of the two, but he was clearly the alpha male of this depraved duo. “I can always spot a screamer.”

“Please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded. Then she steadied her voice and said, “I have money. Take me to the ATM and I’ll draw out the max if you’ll let me go.”

“We don’t want your fuckin’ money,” said the bearded one, grinning. “Tell her what we want, Shades.”

Shades wiped a film of sweat from his sunburned head and said, “She’ll know soon enough.”

Candace fought back tears. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Now, see what you started, Woofer? Gag the bitch before she pisses me off.”

The coldness in his voice turned on the waterworks and her tears poured forth. “No, please…”

Shades hit her across the face with the back of his hand. She fell back against the wall. The cellar of the old church went out of focus. The candle flames sported flickering halos. The faces of her abductors took on decidedly demonic casts.

Her vision seemed to pulse with a burst of light each time the bell in the tower above rang and reverberated within the cellar’s walls.

Woofer pulled a roll of duct tape from a utility pocket of his jeans, ripped off a strip with his teeth and slapped it across her mouth. “There ya go, sweetheart,” he sneered. “Don’t say we never gave ya nothin’.”

“Strip her,” said Shades as he pulled a switchblade from his jeans and clicked it open. The blade caught some of the light from the dozen or so candles burning on top of an old trunk in the middle of the cellar floor, making it look like it was made of fire. “Don’t fight it, cunt, or I’ll cut you.”

Woofer started with her shoes. He ripped away the Velcro-and-leather fasteners, then tugged off both shoes at the same time. He lifted her left leg and began to slowly roll the ankle-length sock off her foot. She cringed at the touch of his stubby fingers on her flesh, but she resisted the urge to kick his hands away. He tossed the sock on the floor and seemed to take a fetishistic interest in her painted toenails. Candace thought he was going to kiss them or suck them and she shuddered at the thought.

“Come on, dipshit,” warned Shades. “We ain’t got all fucking night.”

Woofer removed the other sock, then reached under her roomy maternity blouse and unbuttoned her shorts. As he pulled the zipper down, Candace clasped her thighs together. Shades pressed the point of the knife to her throat and said, “Don’t.” Heeding the sharp warning, she relaxed her thighs and let them fall open. Woofer pulled off her shorts.

“Like them panties,” Woofer said with surprising gentleness in his voice. Then his voice turned rough and dirty as he added: “But it’s them big ol’ milky titties I wanna see.”

Candace closed her eyes. She was resigned to the fact that she was going to be raped by the two men. She would let them have their way with her so long as they did nothing to harm the baby in her womb. What choice did she have? If she tried to fight them off, they would respond with violence and probably injure the fetus her body had been nurturing for eight months. She could not let that happen. The old chauvinistic slogan popped into her mind:
If you’re about to be raped, you might as well relax and enjoy it
. She wouldn’t enjoy it, but she knew she had to do her best to relax. She could even pretend to enjoy it if it would keep her unborn infant from harm. She could get medical treatment afterward, including treatment for VD if necessary. Brad would probably have a harder time dealing with it than she would, but they could deal with it. The main thing now was to get out of this with as little injury to herself as possible and
no
injury to the baby.

“Raise your arms over your head, honey,” said Woofer.

She did. He pulled off her top. She kept her eyes closed. The bell boomed above.

When the cold steel of the knife’s blade touched the flesh between her breasts, she opened her eyes. Shades sawed through the thin cotton of her brassiere and her swollen breasts fell free.

“Thank you, Jesus,” Woofer said with unfettered enthusiasm. “Look at them beauties. Didja ever see such a pretty sight? Umm-umh.”

Shades smirked. “All-day suckers for sure. But we ain’t got all day. Get the spikes and shit.”

“Come on, man,” whined Woofer. “You gotta give me a minute with her. At least.”

“Bet you was a real momma’s boy,” Shades said with naked contempt. “Go on then. Suck yourself silly. I’ll get the shit.”

Candace saw that Woofer was actually drooling at the prospect of sucking her breasts, and she shuddered, even as she wondered what Shades meant when he said “spikes and shit.” What
did
they really want with her? If they simply wanted to rape her, why weren’t they already getting it over with? Why were they toying with her when that bell ringing above them might bring someone to investigate? She knew the fire-damaged church wasn’t used anymore for worship—or for anything else as far as she knew. She’d heard the same tales everyone else in town had heard about Reverend Craven’s rapid descent into madness and his insistence that Satan had taken over the church. Before he hanged himself in his jail cell, Craven admitted that he had started the fire in an attempt to drive the devil out of Druid Hills. Were Woofer and Shades psychotic devil-worshipers? Did they have a third companion up there ringing the bell? And if so,
why
was he ringing it? Woofer was on his hands and knees now, leering down at her breasts. He licked his thick lips, then bent down and put his mouth on her left tit and began to suck, moaning appreciatively. Candace closed her eyes and tried to use the same meditative technique she’d used at the dentist’s office during her last root canal. The idea was to mentally block off the pain—or in this case, the sucking mouth of the grotesque fat man—and imagine herself in pleasant surroundings. Imagining herself on an air mattress in a calm sea usually did the trick for her, but this time it didn’t work. The slurping sound of the pig’s mouth on her breast and the hot suction on her nipple prevented her from freeing her mind from the repugnant physical violation. The technique required concentration, but how could she concentrate with that damned bell bonging every few seconds? Her nipple stiffened into a hard little finger and she felt a corresponding tingle between her legs. In spite of her disgust at what was being done to her, her body was responding to the sexual stimulation.

No, no, no.

But her body ignored her nay-saying and she went wet between her legs.

Each time the clapper struck the iron bell, she felt the vibration deep in her loins. A scene from an old horror movie flashed through her mind. Hooded Satanists engaging in group sex. She’d thought the movie was silly at the time, but now—with Woofer sucking her tit and the Devil’s bell sending tingles through her genitalia—a satanic sex orgy seemed anything but silly. She groaned against the strip of duct tape stuck to her mouth.

“Time’s up, tit man.” Shades’ harsh voice rescued Candace from further titillation, but when she saw him pull a rusty iron spike and a claw hammer from a burlap bag, her bladder let go and warm urine soaked her panties.

Woofer fell back on his haunches, grinned at her and said, “Time to crucify the unholy mother.”

CHAPTER THREE

“What the hell are you doing?” Joe shouted. Suzie was tugging on his hand, trying to pull him back through the doorway.

The two cops froze, their hands still on the broomstick stuck in the unconscious man’s anus.

“I’m trying to stop him,” the breathless younger cop said.

The other cop let go of the broom, snapped the baton off his belt and whacked his partner on top of the head. The bristle-end of the broomstick smacked the floor, its opposite end remaining in Rat Face’s ass. The young policeman went to his knees, moaning. The club struck again and he fell forward on his face.

“It ain’t what you think,” said the baton-wielding cop. “The rookie went nuts and jammed it up the guy’s ass. I was trying to stop him.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Suzie whispered to Joe.

“Jesus Christ,” said Joe. He didn’t trust the cop still standing, but he had no idea what to do about it. He gave in and let Suzie Shrimpton pull him outside. The cop shouted after them: “Hey, come back here!”

“No fucking way,” said Suzie. “Did you see the wild look in his eyes?
He’s
the one who went nuts. Come on.”

Joe resisted her tug this time. “Where to?”

“Far away from that crazy son of a bitch. I’m going home. They don’t know my name and address.”

“They know mine. I’m the fucking bookstore guy. Shit.”

An unmarked sedan with a flashing blue light on its dash lurched to a halt in front of the store.