Red Mountain (23 page)

“Don’t you worry baby, I’ll be right back. Give you some time to get all hot and juicy.”

With the aid of his pickup and a length of rope, Marsh next pulled Wilbur around to the back of the barn where he wouldn’t be seen out in the open. The big man had tried his best. He’d stood up bravely to Marsh although it had been short lived. Now he was unconscious from two strikes to the head from Marsh’s rifle butt, but not before he’d been ordered to tie Peggy’s hands behind her back with his leather belt.

Marsh decided it was too early to kill the man. He’d gagged and tied him to a tree instead.

Stupid hick might still be useful later, he thought.

On his way back to the barn he stopped and drank some water from a rubber hose. He was thirsty as hell, and the cool water felt good over his burns. Then he remembered something he’d put in his shirt pocket and smiled as he pulled it out. It was the free boner pills he’d gotten in the mail. He’d been saving them for a special occasion just like this.

He popped the pills into his mouth and guzzled some more water. As he walked toward the barn, the cries coming from the tool shed made him grin. He felt a rush of heat to his crotch, the sense that his pants were tightening.

Oh this is going to be fun…

The faint light seeping into the barn reminded Marsh of twilight. He inhaled the rich aromas of cut hay and manure, reminding him of the first time he’d taken a woman into a barn back when he was still a senior in high school. She’d been a hitchhiker, to be exact. And there hadn’t been anyone around for miles to hear a thing on that stormy night, no one to worry about what had happened to the truck stop whore some had seen him give a ride to that afternoon...

This one he’d treat differently though. She was worth a taste first. Like a delicious new cigar he’d roll her around in his mouth and get her good and moist before he brought on the flame. Hell, she might even turn out to like it.

Before he untied her hands, he fastened the dog collar around her neck and attached it to a chain. The collar was still damp with the blood of Wilbur’s dog. After he was finished, Marsh knocked Peggy forward onto a pile of hay. She rolled over on her back and screamed while he glowered above her with the rifle.

“As soon as you’re finished I’ll need you to strip.”

CHAPTER 43

The highway sign told them Wrath Butte was another fifty miles. Having fallen asleep again, Robert awoke to Will holding a cup of coffee under his nose. He winced as he tried straightening up in his seat. Places other than just his hip were on fire now.

“Take those first,” Will said, pointing to two pills lying in the empty ashtray.

“What are they?”

“They’ll take care of the pain, but they won’t knock you out.”

Robert threw them into his mouth and then took the cup of coffee from Will’s hand. It wasn’t very hot anymore, but the bitterness gave him a nice jolt and sent the pills down his dry throat.

“Do you have any idea of where this farmhouse is we’re going to?”

Will pulled out a map he’d printed off and handed it over to Robert to look. “I had Mr. Frosty point out the area for me. It’s actually a little before Wrath Butte, so we don’t have a lot further to go.”

“Do you know the size of our welcoming party?” Robert asked.

“From what Frosty told me, not a lot. I figure we’ll have Marsh and maybe a couple guards to worry about.”

“That’s if Mr. Frosty was telling you the truth.”

“Oh, I think he was. He wasn’t too sure if I was ever going to pull him out of the freezer. I told him he’d better let me know everything before you woke up from your nap. The threat of dealing with you again seemed to work.”

“Did you get him to tell you what this was all about?”

“Not exactly. But I got the sense Marsh had promised him and the others some big payout if they kept working for him. He wasn’t exactly in the loop on most things.”

“Do you have any idea what we might expect?”

“Since Mr. Frosty has most likely tipped off Marsh already, I think they’ll be ready for us. How do you suppose we should do this?”

Robert drained his cup of coffee and studied the map spread out on his knees. “I think we should circle in a bit slowly and get a handle on what’s happening. It’s going to take more time than I want but it’s the best way I can think of.”

“And if Peggy and Connor are still there?”

“Then we’ll have to weigh our options.”

CHAPTER 44

Marsh pressed his burned face between Peggy’s breasts and moaned. His skin felt like a mask of hardened plastic. He reached down with his hand and slipped it under her panties. Then his fingers began to walk slowly over her pubic hair until they came to the cleft between her legs where they began to slide around in large coaxing circles.

Instead of trying to shut down her senses to what was happening to her, Peggy concentrated on every move the man made. She dug her hands down into the dry hay and felt around with her fingertips. When Marsh lowered his mouth over her nipple she felt his body relax as he got more lost in what he was doing.

As he sucked harder he removed his hand from between her legs and tried tugging down her panties. Peggy didn’t lift her waist to help him with the task and the panties came to a halt against her hipbones. Marsh tried pinching the fabric between his fingers and pulling down but his hands kept slipping. He lifted his head from her breast and slid over to her side and stared at her.

“Going to play hard to get, huh?” Pieces of straw stuck to the broken blisters on his face.

Peggy shook her head and closed her eyes. Her fingers had found the thing she’d been looking for in the straw. She grasped it tightly and waited…

Marsh’s hand went back down to complete the task of pulling off her panties. He turned his head and watched the veil of silk inch tantalizingly over her pubis, groaning with delight until Peggy’s hand shot up from behind and cracked him in the temple with a rusted horseshoe.

“You bitch!” Marsh screamed. He made the mistake of turning his head around to face her. This time Peggy smashed him between the eyes before she lost her grip on the horseshoe.

When Marsh sat up electrical sparks swirled at the corners of his vision and every beat of his heart brought with it another shade of darkness. He gazed down at several Peggy’s lying naked on the hay below him and got lost in the shifting kaleidoscope. He clasped his hands together to form an anvil and swung it down with all his weight behind it.

And hit only the bed of straw below him…

Peggy had acted fast. She was swimming across the golden pool of hay now in a shiny pink blur.

Marsh saw the leather leash trailing behind her and reached down and grabbed it. He heard her choke as it snapped back her head. But she didn’t stop moving, not even as the dog collar bit into her skin and the strap of leather burst hotly through Marsh’s hand, taking with it a layer of his palm.

Unable to comprehend what had just happened, Marsh held his hand up to his face and stared at the raw bloody patch. He heard a sound and looked up. Peggy was aiming his rifle at his head.

Is this how the show ends?

He watched as her finger squeezed the trigger in slow motion…

When the thunder boomed inside his head it was oddly anticlimactic. He felt his body become weightless. As he fell forward onto the hay, he imagined he was a crow gliding lazily over golden wheat fields on a hot summer afternoon.

That was until he realized he was being eclipsed by another shadow bearing down from above…

Marsh didn’t have to be reminded who it was.

CHAPTER 45

When Peggy squeezed the trigger on Marsh’s rifle, nothing happened.

The gun was empty. He’d used up everything putting holes in Wilbur’s water truck.

Yet Marsh had fallen on his face as if he’d been struck down. He hadn’t moved.

Peggy finished pulling on her clothes and ran outside the barn into the blazing sunlight. She headed for the tool shed where she could hear the other’s cries.

“Connor. Are you all right?”

“I’m OK. But it’s really hot in here mom. The lady who made us pancakes fell asleep.”

“Don’t worry honey. I’m going to have you out of there in just a few minutes.”

The metal doors were hot to touch, and when she saw the padlock holding them together she screamed out in anger.

She searched the ground for something to pry the padlock apart but came up with nothing except some brittle sticks. What she needed was a crowbar or a sledgehammer. They were probably inside the shed too.

She turned her head and looked back at the barn door she’d left wide open. Marsh still lay on the bed of straw, his burned flesh shining as if covered by embryonic fluid. He looked to Peggy like the stillbirth of some demonic creature.

She ran back into the barn and grabbed a pitchfork from a bale of hay as she went. Being careful not to turn her eyes away from Marsh for very long, she searched the barn for something she could use to break the padlock…

CHAPTER 46

At the moment Marsh had left his body, Horn had come to him again. Not only as a ghost who could tear him to pieces, but what he feared most. The Horn who did terrible things to his mind.

“You’re nothing but a stupid piece of charred meat,” Horn bellowed inside his head. “I’ve asked you to carry out my plans. Now look at you. You’re giving into your degenerate instincts again. I should kill you now.”

Marsh raised his head and stared at the bloody sun of his internal universe.

“Forgive me Horn. You know I’m weak. That woman really hurt me. I deserved a chance to take payment for it.”

Horn swelled with anger, filling the inside of Marsh’s head with a painful light, until Marsh was certain that at any moment it would explode. He reached up with his hands and pressed his temples. His nostrils dripped blood.

“Aw god please stop!” he screamed.

It seemed as if Horn was pressing forever. Marsh’s eyes bulged, nearing the point where they might spit from their sockets. Then Horn pulled back, and the crimson nova in Marsh’s head shrank to a mere pinpoint suspended in utter darkness. He dropped his hands and cried. He thought for sure he was going to die.

“Don’t forget Marsh. You’re just an ant to me and I’m the magnifying glass. Next time I’m not going to pull away until your bones are cinders. Can you get yourself together now and take charge of this situation?”

Marsh nodded, his swollen eyes still pressed shut.

“Then rise to your feet.”

To his own amazement, Marsh could. His mind felt suddenly clearer than it had ever been in his life. The recent injuries his flesh had suffered had unlocked a mystical part inside him. For the first time his saw his black heart and understood how it had become that way.

As a boy he’d learned there were pleasures one could experience from inflicting pain. In order to free him from the pain of what his father did to him, Marsh’s first victims were his weaker classmates and stray animals. And while he was still only a junior in high school he had his first woman…

He’d tried to resist, even attempted suicide. But his need for release only grew stronger. It festered after every beating he took from his father and even after he’d gotten away with killing the old man the taste for it never left him. And then along came the draft and Vietnam—every opportunity Marsh had tried to avoid suddenly served to him on a big silver platter.

Now his ugly heart spoke to Marsh with the voice of a young boy. A young boy scared of being punished again for being bad.

There was no escape from the cycle. He was doomed.

The only thing left to do was to obey and hope that maybe he’d be rewarded soon with more gold than he could imagine. Or maybe Horn would later kill him as promised. The uncertainty churned an icy froth in his stomach, and yet he’d never felt this alive in years, not since his mercenary days.

Marsh sobbed some more as he pulled on his shirt and buttoned it up over his stinging skin. He glanced around the barn, thought about how similar it was to the one his father used to take him to when it was time for punishment. His heart quivered against his ribs like a frightened rabbit.

It’s time to finish this. No more mistakes…