Depraved 2 (22 page)

Fuck that.

Sienna slammed the pot into the back of her head.

And then she did it again. And several more times after that, until she was indisputably dead. The back of her head had turned soft and spongy. After that, she let go of the pot and got to her feet to survey the situation. The little girl was sitting against the wall beneath the shuttered windows. She was conscious but woozy, her eyes on the verge of glazing over. That was good. The girl could keep until she’d dealt with Horace.

Horace was on his back and was wailing like a baby. His face was blistered and red. His eyes looked melted. Seeing this made Sienna feel better about things. She’d almost let the situation get away from her, but she was close to having it under control again. She gave Horace a wide berth as she crossed the kitchen to retrieve the knife. He had probably been neutralized as a threat, but Sienna’s experience with the wife had taught her not to take anything for granted.

Sienna carefully settled herself into position at the man’s side. “It’s funny how things work out sometimes, huh, Horace?”

He flinched at the sound of her voice. His head jerked first to one side and then to the other before the blind bastard got a fix on her location. She thought he looked scared, but it was really kind of hard to tell with his facial features turned all melty like that.

She laughed. “You look scared. Where’s all that big talk about knife-rape now? My, but how the tables have turned.”

She slammed the knife through the crotch of his overalls, sinking several inches of the long blade into his flesh before it met resistance. Horace sat bolt upright as she yanked the blade out and scooted back. He whined and clutched at his crotch, blood staining his shaking fingers.

Sienna savored his agony a moment longer.

And then she stabbed him in the throat. More blood jetted from the wound before the dying man fell onto his side. Some of it got on her dress. But that was okay. At this point she no longer cared about her dress getting bloody. The only other people she expected to run into today would be people she needed to kill. The bloodier, the merrier.

The girl had come around by the time Sienna was standing over her. She looked up at her with hopeful eyes. The poor thing had probably spent much of her time here fantasizing about being rescued. But that flicker of hope drained away when she saw that cold, dead-eyed look of Sienna’s that had been haunting the dreams of her family and acquaintances for years.

Sienna extended a hand. “Get up. We’re leaving now.”

“Where are we going?”

Sienna smiled, but the expression didn’t lessen that deadness in her eyes.

“We’re going home.”

19.

Harley Birdsong drifted in and out of consciousness after the redneck called Floyd dragged him out of the Mustang and slammed his head against the roof of the car three or four times. His hands were tied behind his back and a heavy tarp had been draped over his body. The tarp was thick enough to blot out the remaining sunlight, making it difficult to tell how much time had passed. His nostrils picked up a scent of gasoline and some dumb instinct made him stick out his tongue to taste the dirty metal beneath him. He licked his lips and came to the conclusion that at some point in the not-too-distant past a gas can with a loose cap had gotten tipped over in the back of the truck.

Another lapse in consciousness followed this brilliant deduction. He understood that terrible things had happened. He even understood that the nature of those things was so dire his traumatized mind was trying to protect him from them, cycling him back down into blissful oblivion before he could examine his fragmented memories too closely. But this was okay with Harley. Another person might be trying hard to get his wits about him in an attempt to get out of the jam, but that would mean facing the reality of what had happened to his friends and he didn’t think he could deal with that. Better by far to just drift away and exist forever in that state of blissful nothingness. It wasn’t a whole lot different from being fried on really excellent weed, the kind that could render you insensible and locked to a couch for hours at a time.

But the problem with that was that the last vestiges of his buzz were deserting him. Every time he regained consciousness, he edged a little bit closer to the dreaded state of total sobriety. He began to suspect that a time of psychological reckoning was coming regardless of how desperately he tried to avoid it. This was what he was thinking before he drifted into his next period of unconsciousness.

This time he was only out a few minutes. When he opened his eyes, someone had removed the tarp and he could see again, but the sunlight had faded some. He was still in the back of the truck, but it had stopped moving. He heard voices nearby, Floyd and his buddy, Cletus. They were talking about someone named Delmont. One of them said something about checking out the sheriff’s office, which sounded like a really excellent idea to Harley. Why these scumbags would want to get anywhere near a law enforcement facility was kind of mystifying, but he wasn’t about to try to talk them out of it. He planned to start screaming his lungs out as soon as he sensed they were within earshot of anyone in a uniform.

Because…

Harley’s face crumpled and his eyes filled with tears as reality hit him like a freight train. The last lingering effects of the weed dissipated, leaving him stone sober for the first time in days. There could be no more hiding from what had happened. His best friends were dead. Two of the only people in the world who’d ever truly understood him and had never judged. They were just gone.

Forever.

There was a groan of metal and then a thunk as someone let the truck’s tailgate down. Harley whimpered when he turned his head and saw one of the big rednecks climb up into the truck bed. It was Cletus, the one with the hideously racist T-shirt mocking a cartoon version of the president. Cletus grabbed him and lifted him up, cradling him in his arms as easily as another person would hold a small child. He walked Harley to the edge of the tailgate and unceremoniously dumped him to the ground.

Harley cried out as his body hit hard asphalt. He rolled onto his side and saw that he was in the middle of a street in some small town. His confusion deepened as he spied various businesses on either side of the street. That this was happening at all was mysterious enough, but Harley was especially baffled by why these guys would be doing such a thing in what still amounted to broad daylight. It was like an invitation to get arrested and sent straight to fucking death row. Surely many people would very shortly take note of what was happening and call the cops. These guys were not just crazy and dangerous, they were stupid as hell.

This impression deserted Harley as he began to pick out other details about his surroundings, like how the street seemed completely deserted except for him and the rednecks. Also, many of the buildings were boarded-up and there were no other vehicles anywhere in the vicinity. It was as if he’d blundered into a post-apocalyptic scenario similar to ones from some of his favorite television programs. This place was a ghost town.

Before he could make any guesses about where this place was and why they were here, Cletus hauled Harley off the asphalt and made him kneel in the street. Harley’s throat clenched and he began to panic at the thought of what might be about to happen, a feeling that only worsened when Floyd stepped in front of him.

Floyd had a pump shotgun clutched in his hands. He pointed it at a spot in the street. “What do you reckon that is, boy?”

Harley frowned. “What?”

His teeth clacked together as Cletus clouted him in the back of the head.

Floyd chuckled. “One of these days I’m gonna go into that whole Pulp Fiction bit when one of these fools starts in with that ‘what’ business. You remember that scene, Cletus?”

“Yup.” Cletus flicked a finger against Harley’s skull. “How about you, boy? You remember that?”

“What?”

Cletus cackled.

Floyd pointed the shotgun’s barrel at the spot on the asphalt again. “Take a good look at that stain and tell me what you think it is.”

Harley wasn’t sure what these goons expected of him. It was pretty obvious what the stain was. They were playing some kind of game here. He was the butt of a joke, just as he’d been back in those middle school days before he started hanging out with the burnouts and found his niche, such as it was. Before that happened, he had no friends and was picked on relentlessly by seemingly everyone. His scrawniness made him an easy target for abuse. And now his friends were gone and it was as if time had run backward and taken him back to the bad old days.

And just like back then, he was in no position to fight back. What else could he do but play along with the joke?

He looked at Floyd. “Pretty sure it’s motor oil.”

Floyd nodded. “You know, I think you’re right.” His tone said he’d known this all along, of course. “Is it fresh?”

“What?”

Floyd rolled his eyes as he turned his face to the heavens. “Lord, give me patience.”

Cletus again smacked the back of his head. “Man asked you a question. Answer it.”

Harley’s terror began to get the best of him. His bottom lip trembled and tears welled in his eyes. He hadn’t felt this sober in years and wished more than anything that he could be doing bong rips with James and Big Train right now. But that was useless magical thinking. These guys would kill him if he didn’t play their goddamn game. Hell, they were probably going to kill him anyway, but Harley didn’t want to die and the longer he could forestall that eventuality, the better. So he bent his head toward the ground and took a closer look at the stain.

It looked wet.

He lifted his head and looked at Floyd. “It’s pretty fresh.”

“Are you sure?”

Harley nodded. “Pretty sure, yeah.”

Floyd made a tsk-tsk noise and shook his head. “Son, I’m gonna need you to be absolutely positive. So here’s what you’re gonna do.” A nasty, evil-looking grin curved his mouth now. “Put your ugly mug down there on the street and taste the motor oil.”

Harley groaned. “Oh, come on. Do I have to do that?”

A gun barrel touched the back of his head. “Do it,” Cletus said, his voice low and menacing. “Or there’s gonna be another stain on this fuckin’ street in a minute.”

The gun pushed against the back of his skull. Again, there was no way to resist or do anything other than exactly what they wanted. So he bent at the waist and tried lowering his face to the pavement. Having his hands tied so tightly behind his back made this more difficult than it should have been, even for a normally limber guy like himself. He gasped when Cletus clamped a hand around his neck and pushed his face to the street. The rednecks started screaming at him, exhorting him to lick the motor oil or have his skull emptied.

Harley stuck out his tongue and lapped up motor oil, tears pouring down his face as he did it. Cletus let go of him and both men whooped hysterical laughter. Floyd was so amused he actually slapped his thigh several times.

When their laughter subsided, Cletus hauled Harley to his knees again.

Floyd pointed to another stain some twenty feet farther down the street. “What about that one, boy? That motor oil, too?”

Harley sniffled and blinked away tears. “I don’t know.”

Floyd arranged his features in an expression of mock sorrow. “Listen, son, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. You see, we already know the boy we’re lookin’ for is dead. You can’t see it on account of being tied up and on your knees, but we found some blood stains up yonder.” He pointed to somewhere behind and to the left of Harley with the shotgun. “Trail of blood led right to him. Now, his lady has a temper on her like you wouldn’t believe.”

Cletus let out a low whistle. “Lordy, does she ever.”

Floyd grimaced. “Ain’t either one of us looking forward to breaking the news to Jodi Lynn. We’d like to be able to track down whoever killed Delmont and take the sumbitch back to her for justice, closure, and such.” He turned away from Harley and pointed at the stain down the street again. “We’re thinking these stains are from the vehicle driven by the bastards who killed our friend. What do you say? That strike you as a logical deduction?”

A snot bubble emerged from Harley’s right nostril and swelled to the size of a marble before it popped. His whole body was racked with tremors as he made himself meet Floyd’s gaze. “I…I guess so?”

Floyd’s face conveyed phony disappointment. “I’m sorry, son, but that’s just not gonna be good enough. We need to know for sure, you see?” He stepped aside and waved the gun in the direction of the next stain. “You get on up there and check it out, okay?”