Will Hopkins, pizza delivery guy extraordinaire, was on his last run of the night. He’d hit two of the three houses on the run already, and the last came into view as he rounded a bend on a residential road.
Hot damn, he thought, almost quittin’ time.
He was already considering the array of post-work activities that awaited him upon his return to Casa Hopkins. First, and this was absolutely non-negotiable, he’d pop open a cold Old Milwaukee. Then he’d turn on the tube and hunt down something good and sleazy. Jerry Springer, maybe. Or maybe some soft-core porn on Skin-e-max.
Oooh, yeah...
But first he had to take care of business.
Will drove past the house, made a wide, looping turn in the dark cul-de-sac just past the house, and pulled to a stop at the curb next to the mailbox.
His headlights briefly illumined the back of a van before he clicked them off.
The house was the only one on the street with lit windows. Not too many people were up late in a neighborhood like this. These were working-class people. Responsible people with mortgages and bills to pay. Will supposed he was doomed to one day inhabit a house just like this one. He would have a non-exciting job that required him to get up at an ungodly hour. He would have a reasonably attractive--but not beautiful--wife and a kid or two.
Will sighed.
It was depressing.
He didn’t want to be an ‘average Joe’.
He lifted the pizza off the passenger seat, swung the driver’s side door open, and got out. The strap-on Pizza Zone sign glowed dimly atop the roof of his Toyota hatchback. The cool night air felt good. A gentle breeze ruffled his shaggy hair as he walked down the driveway toward the house.
He ascended some steps to the front porch, jabbed the doorbell, stepped back, and waited for the door to open.
He heard muffled movement beyond the door. A clomp of footsteps, something that sounded like a beanbag hitting a floor, and a metallic rattle that might have been keys rattling on a ring. Or a big pile of dishes shifting in a sink. Or cutlery clinking in a tray. Knives and forks and spoons.
Will frowned.
He took an unconscious, shuffling step back to the edge of the porch. His stomach had that funny, fluttery feeling he got when something didn’t feel right. But he was in a nice neighborhood. Some boozed-up redneck wasn’t about to open the door and start giving him shit. This wasn’t a goddamn trailer park. Nor were there any predators prowling the well-lighted streets.
Well, probably not.
Shit, definitely not--there were too many other neighborhoods more conducive to the activities of petty criminals. Neighborhoods that Pizza Zone, thank God on his almighty fucking throne in heaven, didn’t service.
He heard more movement from inside the house.
The footsteps again, booted feet, getting louder for a moment, then receding, followed by a dimmer sound of something sliding across a floor.
Will breathed an exasperated sigh. “Jesus,” he muttered. “What are they doing in there, moving furniture? Come on, peeps, I wanna go home.”
The door stayed shut.
His mind turned again to the entertainment he had planned for the evening. He was pretty sure Skin-e-max was showing a double feature of Shannon Tweed psycho-slut-from-hell movies. Thinking about Shannon Tweed’s breasts fueled his impatience, and he stepped forward to jab the doorbell again.
Then, for good measure, he banged on the door with the base of a fist.
Tell me you didn’t hear that, fuckers.
The entreaty escalation produced immediate results.
Will heard the unmistakable sound of a deadbolt being thrown back. Then there was a slow grinding sound--metal sliding against metal--as the brass doorknob turned to the left. The doorknob stopped turning, there was a freeze-frame moment of stillness, then the door edged away from the doorjamb.
Will summoned forth his brightest customer-kiss-ass smile and said, “Pizza Zone!”
But the door only opened a crack. The minute opening revealed only darkness. Someone had turned the lights out. He experienced a recurrence of the fluttery feeling in his stomach. Something funny was going on here.
Hushed voices emanated from the other side.
A guy and a gal.
Will grinned.
Because suddenly he knew what the deal was. What we have here, pimps ‘n’ bitches, is a classic case of coitus interruptus.
He grinned, suddenly feeling a need to make mischief.
I’m a naughty boy.
“Yo, what’s up in there? Didn’t you hear me? Your. Pizza. Is. Here.” Will said the last bit slowly, as if he were addressing an assembly of special-needs children. “Hell-low-oh?”
The door edged another inch away from the door. An eye appeared through the crack. The eye was blue and belonged to a girl. He didn’t need to see the rest of her to deduce that. The subtle smudge of eye shadow gave that away.
Then he heard the girl’s voice, a sibilant whisper: “Go away!”
The door creaked.
It was closing.
Will acted without thinking. He jammed a foot through the narrow opening before the door could finish closing. The girl continued to apply pressure to the door, compressing the white Reebok and making his foot hurt. Balancing the pizza on the upraised palm of his left hand, he halted the door’s progress with the splayed palm of his right hand.
The girl’s voice came again:“Go away!”
Louder now, exuding frustration and...what?...fear?
Of what?
“Hey, chill, okay? I’m not a robber. I’m not a rapist. I’m not any kind of bad guy. I’m just a dude with a job to do.”
The girl breathed a sigh of surrender. “I gave you a chance, mister. It ain’t my fault, ya hear?”
Will’s brow furrowed.
Well, this is odd.
“What’s not your fault, baby doll?”
A man’s voice spoke next. “This, motherfucker.”
Then the door was standing open, and a behemoth of a man filled the doorframe. Two beefy hands seized handfuls of Will’s Pizza Zone golf shirt and pulled him inside. His assailant spun around, planted his feet, and launched him into the air.
The pizza box flew away from him, a colorful blip winking in the darkness.
Will glimpsed a blur of motion behind the hulking shape of the man.
The girl, a slender babe with dark hair and big boobs, was closing the front door.
It slammed shut at the exact moment Will’s back collided with an ornate grandfather’s clock. The collision hurt like a mofo. Clattering chimes filled his head with dissonant, anarchic music, little clusterbombs of sound that blotted out any capacity for coherent thought for several moments.
He tumbled away from the clock, then pitched forward with his hands outstretched. His hands met resistance, something solid--the glass door of a curio cabinet that stood opposite the still-reverberating grandfather’s clock. He experienced a moment of perfect clarity, a nanosecond during which his brain analyzed the situation, came to a conclusion about what was going to happen, and informed him there was nothing he could do about it.
His hands pushed through the glass.
He cried out as broken shards sliced up his forearms.
And he kept falling, still powerless to halt his body’s momentum. He plunged through the curio cabinet, his shoulder struck a shelf, and he dropped to his knees.
Blood rolled in rivulets down his arms.
Fragments of glass tumbled off his back and cracked on the floor.
Will wanted to cry.
The pain was immense.
He was reminded, however, of what his mother used to say in times of great stress (such as when the cocaine fund ran low and she was forced to replenish it with money diverted from his college fund): Be thankful for the little things, sonny.
Will heeded his
mother’s words now.
He was thankful for the moment of stillness. He was certain it was to be short-lived, but he was thankful nonetheless. His breath was coming in ragged gasps. A drop of something that might have been sweat--but was probably blood--swelled at the tip of his nose. He watched it fall away and hit the hardwood floor with a wet plip.
Yep, he thought, that’s blood.
He looked up to see his attacker looming over him.
The man was enormous, but that wasn’t the most disconcerting element of his appearance. He wore shiny leather pants, black combat boots, and nothing else. His thighs were as big around as oak trees. He was bald, bare-chested, and more muscular than anyone Will had seen outside of a wrestling arena. A big, distended belly drooped over his belt. A powerfully-built, beer-guzzling psycho motherfucker from hell.
Will felt his balls shrivel.
But the most surreal aspect of the man’s countenance was his well-tended Fu Manchu mustache--well, that or his lack of eyebrows.
Goddamn, Will thought, what kind of freak shaves his eyebrows?
But he didn’t have time to ponder the question any further. Chrome Dome again seized handfuls of his shirt and yanked him to his feet.
Will’s head flopped about on his shoulders.
He didn’t know what the dude had in mind, but he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be pleasant. He mentally braced himself to board another flight of Air Hopkins.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, the man relinquished his hold on Will’s shirt. “Goddamn.” He looked Will up and down. “What kinda get-up is that?”
Will blinked moisture out of his eyes, and his head stopped spinning long enough to allow his brain to compose coherent sentences. “It’s a Pizza Zone get-up. I work for Pizza Zone. I deliver pizzas. That’s my job. I take pizzas to people who want pizzas. So, look, if you changed your mind about the pizza, you could’ve just said so.”
Chrome Dome was still scowling. “And what’s that on the end of your nose.” He squinted and leaned closer. Then he burst out laughing. “It’s a zit.”
Will frowned. “Is not.”
Chrome Dome cackled some more. “It’s a giant, malignant-looking blackhead.” Tears of hilarity leaked from the corners of his eyes. “Ha-ha! The pizza geek has a pizza face.”
Will couldn’t see his nose, of course, but he knew there was no zit there. “It’s not a zit. It’s blood. Are you blind?”
He heard the girl chuckle.
She sidled up next to the big guy.
Despite the direness of his predicament, Will was unable to resist the opportunity to ogle the girl. She was a curvy little thing. She wore tight blue jean cutoffs, a little half-shirt that just covered her jutting breasts, and nothing else. Will saw himself running a hand up a tawny thigh, up higher, moving outward with the sweet swell of her hip, then stopping to cup a handful of that delectable ass.
She was the most mouth-watering piece of girl-candy he’d laid his eyes on in some time.
Her full, pouting lips looked custom-made to provide oral pleasure.
The lips turned up a barely perceptible notch. “He’s sorta cute, Hank.”
Hank scowled. “Shut up, you horny slut.” He clubbed Will upside the head. “Stop checkin’ out my bitch, asshole.”
A fresh blast of agony squashed Will’s libido.
The world went away for a moment, then came back blurry.
“Oh...” He groaned, feeling a tickle of bile at the back of his throat. “Oh, man...I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Hank laughed. “That’s the least of your worries, pizza face. And it is too a zit. Looks ready to burst.” His face screwed up in disgust. “Dude, it’s pretty gross.”
Will opened his mouth to retort, but Hank was done arguing--he pushed Will through an archway into the home’s living room.
The lights were out here, too, but the flickering screen of a large television provided some illumination. Enough illumination to confirm Will’s darkest fears. The room was tastefully decorated. There were two plush sofas, a big recliner, and an oak coffee table with glass insets. Real Martha Stewart stuff. Two hairy guys who looked like bikers occupied one of the sofas. They wore leather chaps over blue jeans, big shitkicker boots, and denim vests over black t-shirts. Their bulging biceps and forearms were profusely tattooed.
Another girl was curled up in a recliner. A blond babe every bit as tasty as Hank’s girl--in that cheap slut sort of way.
Will was sure these people were not the legal residents of the house.
They fell into a category one might generously label “uninvited guests”.
The people who called this once-idyllic slice of suburbia home were present, though. To Will’s left was a kitchen with a long, white-tiled island and an L-shaped counter with a gas-powered stove. A man’s severed head sat in a pan atop a burner. A headless body lay sprawled next to the island. It wore a robe that hung open to reveal a torso punctured by numerous knife thrusts. The TV screen glowed brighter for a moment, and Will saw that there was a tremendous amount of blood.
Splashes of coagulating crimson on the island tiles.
Dark pools of deep red on the floor.
The woman of the house was still alive. Will got a good look at her when he jerked his gaze away from the grisly tableau. She was a good-looking brunette in her late-thirties. A sexy silk nightie that barely reached the tops of her thighs made her look like a Victoria’s Secret model. She was prone on the floor in front of the TV, with a gag in her mouth and her hands and feet bound with duct tape.
Hank slammed the base of a palm into Will’s back, driving him farther into the room.
“Have a seat, pizza face, so’s we can sort this out.”
Will stumbled forward on legs that felt shot full of novocaine. He stepped past the smirking bikers and settled into the empty sofa. Hank stepped into the middle of the room, impeding the view of the TV.
One of the bikers groaned. “Aw, Hank, you’re blockin’ our view of the fat lesbos on Jerry Springer.”
Hank directed a malevolent glare at the insolent biker. “Shut up, Spike. We’ve got some serious business to discuss.” He eyed each of the assembled scumbags in turn, allowing them long moments to feel the fury emanating from him.
They squirmed.
Hank was the obvious leader of this gaggle of wackos.
They feared him.
Will felt a mad impulse to laugh.
Shit, you’d have to be a goddamn moron not to fear Hank.
That, or the Terminator.
“I’m gonna ask a question, and I don’t want any bullshit. Which one of you stupid meth-heads thought it’d be a good idea to order a pizza right smack in the middle of a home invasion?”
Silence.
The bikers and the blond girl squirmed some more, fearing the sure-to-be-terrible wrath of their inquisitor.
Hank was seething. “Answer. Me. Now.” The veins on his bald scalp stood out, his eyes bulged, and his nostrils flared. His voice was low and hoarse, almost demonic. “I’m going to kill all of you if I don’t get an answer.”
The blond girl huffed. “J-Dog did it.”
‘J-Dog’ was apparently the other biker. He shot an angry glare at the blond. “You lying bitch!” He jabbed a forefinger in her direction and turned his distraught face up toward Hank. “She did it, man! I swear ta fuckin’ God, Hank!”
Hank shook his head. “You idiots.” He put a hand to his temple, closed his eyes, and appeared to work at summoning a level of calm. His eyes snapped open again. “I guess I don’t care who did it. What’s done is done. However, we’re left with a dilemma.”
Spike frowned. He looked confused. “Whuh...what’s a duh...duh-lemmer?”
Hank said, “A conundrum.”
Spike’s frown deepened. “A condom...drum?
” Then his face brightened, and he smiled. “Like a barrel o’ rubbers, huh?”
Hank lifted Spike off the sofa, placed him in a headlock, and laughed as the biker thrashed uselessly in his grip.
The blond shrieked. “Don’t hurt my baby!”
Hank snapped the biker’s neck.
The body tumbled to the floor, where it twitched a time or two before going still.
The blond squealed.
She slid off the recliner, knelt over the dead biker, and turned a tear-streaked, beseeching face up toward Hank. “Whuh-whuh...why?”
Hank shrugged. “Nobody that stupid deserves to live.”
Will thought, This is one harsh dude.
His gaze went to the woman in the nightie.
She was looking at him, her eyes wide and full of terror.
Eyes that communicated desperation.
Supplication eyes.
Will looked away, unable to bear the woman’s imploring gaze a moment longer.
Hell, what could he do for her?
He couldn’t even help himself.
Hank seized a fistful of the blond’s hair, hauled her to her feet, and dumped her back in the recliner. “As I was saying, we’re faced with a dilemma. Pizza face has seen some shit we can’t let him talk about.”
J-Dog said, “So? We just waste his ass, right?”
Will gulped.
Hank’s girl entered the living room.
She was carrying the pizza box.
She caught Will’s eye, smiled, and walked over to him.
Will liked the way her hips moved.
She sat down next to him, folded her legs beneath her, and leaned toward him. “Want a slice?”
She opened the box.
The top flap covered his lap.
Which was good, because he didn’t want Hank to get a glimpse of the woody he was sporting. The girl’s bare knees were pressed against his thigh, and his vantage point allowed him an unobstructed view of the tops of her breasts. The plunging neckline of the half-shirt displayed them in a way that made his mouth go dry.
She removed a slice of pizza from the box.
Wedged it into her open mouth.
She chewed lustily, slurping in dangling strands of cheese like noodles.
Hank helped himself to a piece, too. “Yeah, we could waste him.” He wolfed down the slice like a starving animal in the wild. He smacked his lips and belched. “But then he’d never get back to the pizza place. The other pizza bitches would start worrying about him. Pretty soon we’d be ass-deep in cops.”
Nobody said anything for a while. Will surreptitiously scanned their faces. They all seemed to be deep in thought, a process that looked more problematic and painful for J-Dog and the blond. Hank was the only one who maybe had an IQ beyond the double-digit range. And he was pure-ass crazy.
For the first time, Will began to consider the prospect of his death as an imminent event. He supposed that’d been the case from the beginning, but he was only now fully conscious of the reality of it. There’d just been too much else going on, too many grotesque revelations for his brain to process.
Now, however, the likelihood of his own death displaced all other concerns.
What would it be like?
Would it hurt?
He considered the severed head in the frying pan, then willed the vision away, because the answer to his question was plainer than a blackhead on a teenager’s nose: Yep, it’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt like a sumbitch.
He realized he was shaking, but he was powerless to quell his body’s involuntary reaction to possible death by dismemberment.
And what did it really matter?
Shit, he wasn’t supposed to show fear?
He could only hope they wouldn’t take their time snuffing him.
Better to die fast and relatively easy.
A litany of prayers started running through his head: Please, God, forgive me for my sins. I haven’t been such a bad guy. Sorry I knocked over my goldfish bowl that time I was stoned. I loved that fish, man. I didn’t mean to kill him. And I’m sorry about the porn. I know I watch a lot of it. I know it’s sinful. There’s just something about lesbian porn, ya know? But I’m sorry, I know it was wrong. The body is a temple. I shoulda been more respectful of the holy creation that is Woman. Ahh...oh, hell, I’m just sorry, sorry as can be, God.
Hank was scowling at him.
Will blinked. “Uh...was I saying any of that out loud?”
His girl giggled. “I like all-girl porn, too.”
Will’s face reddened. “Er...”
Hank made a noise of disgust. “Stop flirting with the dead-meat, Starlene.”
Starlene mimicked the noise he’d made. “I ain’t flirtin’ with the boy, Hank. I’m just havin’ some fun with him. I like messin’ with ‘em before you kill ‘em, you know that.”
Some of the tension drained out of Hank’s face. He nodded. “Yeah, I know you do, hon. You just get a little too into it sometimes, worries me.”
Her lower lip puffed out. “Baby, you know I only got eyes for you.” She spoke in a tone of mock-hurt. “Don’t you know how much I love you?”
Hank grinned. “Shit, yeah, I know that.”
He reached into a pocket of his leather pants, removed a long folding knife, and snapped open a gleaming blade. Will’s shaking worsened as the big man approached the sofa.
This is it, he thought.
He pictured the blade punching into his throat.
Pictured blood jetting out of the opening.
But Hank didn’t stab him.
He took hold of one of Starlene’s hands, folded the knife handle into it, and kissed the back of the hand. “You keep an eye on pizza face, baby. I gotta take me a shit.”
Starlene’s eyelids fluttered. “Baby, you’re so romantic.”
He smiled, then he kissed her on the mouth and was gone.
The room’s occupants remained silent until they heard a door close in another room.
The blond let out a big breath. “He’s outta control, Star.”
Will watched the good humor seep out of Starlene’s face. “I know, y’all.”
J-Dog said, “I hate to speak ill of ol’ Hank, but he’s scarin’ me. The way he killed Spike...” He shook his head. “That was plain uncalled for.”
Will wanted to say, “Oh, yeah? Unlike the guy with no head, eh?”
But he kept his mouth shut.
The blond said, “So whatta we do about it?”
Starlene sighed. “Dunno. I’m thinkin’.”
Well, this was an interesting development. Hank didn’t have his followers as cowed as they allowed him to believe. He was just a room away, and they were in here plotting his undoing. A flicker of hope flared to life inside him.
“Um...why...” He paused to clear his throat. “Sorry, I’m scared shitless. Why don’t you guys just ditch him?”
They seemed to roll their eyes as one.
Starlene said, “Because he wouldn’t rest until he’d tracked us down and killed us. He is absolutely unrelenting, a fucking human killing machine.”
Will’s eyes became narrow slits. “Say...what happened to the cornpone accent?”
She grunted. “An act. I want him to underestimate me.”
“I’ll be damned.”
The blond chuckled. “Her name ain’t Starlene, either.”
‘Starlene’ glared at her. “Too much information, Crystal.”
“Sorry.”
The muffled sound of a toilet flush emanated from the distant bathroom.
The brunette said, “Hush, everybody.”
Hank ambled back into the room. He seemed more relaxed, less manic than he’d been prior to moving his bowels. He rubbed a hand over his crotch. “I don’t know about you, J-Dog, but my tractor’s about ready
to plow some new fields.”
J-Dog chuckled.
The chuckle sounded forced to Will’s ears; then again, Hank hadn’t been privy to the mutinous conversation, so he probably didn’t pick up on the subtlety of tone.
The brunette said, “Hank, goddammit, I thought you was my man. Now you’re gonna fuck that wrinkly ol’ wifey-poo bitch.” She harrumphed. “Ain’t right, baby, ain’t right at all.”
Hank stared at her.
The stern expression on her face wilted.
“No more lip from you tonight, Starlene. I’m warning you.”
He lifted the bound woman off the floor.
“Excuse me, girls, I’ve got business to attend to.” He leered at the brunette, then his gaze slid toward J-Dog. “Come on, J, let’s show this hoochie mama a good time.”
J-Dog rose slowly from the sofa. “Sure thing, Hank.”
There wasn’t much enthusiasm in his voice.
Hank glared at his girl again. “You and Crystal watch the pizza bitch whilst me and my amigo make proper use of the master bedroom.”
Hank took their silence for acquiescence.
He walked past the sofa on his way out of the room.
Later, when the burst of adrenaline had faded and the violence of the moment was over, Will would try to remember whether there’d been any conscious formulation of a plan on his part.
Not that mattered.
Only the results were important.
What he did was simple--he extended a foot as Hank walked by, and the big man pitched forward, the nightgown-clad woman spilling out of his arms. It was an awesome sight, like watching a mountain collapse.
Will liberated the knife from the brunette’s hand before she knew what was happening. He moved with a speed surpassing anything in his experience.
One moment he was on the sofa.
The next moment the knife was in his hand and he had a knee planted squarely in the middle of Hank’s back.
A fraction of a moment later the blade was buried to the hilt in Hank’s neck.
Hank spasmed.
Tried to rise.
Will yanked the knife out and put it in him again, this time through the ear.
He gave it a twist and yanked it out again.
The knife rose and fell several more times. Hank was dead after the first few thrusts, but Will wasn’t inclined to stop butchering the behemoth’s body. Adrenaline was part of it, but the murderous fury was also fueled by paranoia, by a conviction instilled by a lifetime of watching bad movies on late night TV.
He imagined Hank rising from the dead like Jason Voorhees.
Crazy.
Thing was, Will could just see it.
It would be a defiance of reality every bit as absurd as the notion that he’d managed to successfully vanquish the monster that was Hank.
So he kept stabbing him.
After a while, he rolled the big body over and stared at the dead man’s unseeing eyes.
A chilling sight.
But then Will experienced another flash of inspiration.
He grinned. And he started cutting again.