Short Tall Tales, page 5
She thought about it, began to shake her head negatively, then changed her mind: “You’re… welcome—but I’ll warn you now, there’s three unmarked graves in the corners of this valley. You try anything…I’ll have no more corners left.” She waved him past with the gun, taking a good look at him as he went. He was about thirty-five, forty perhaps. He’d probably put on age fast after the war. Feeling her eyes on his stump, he glanced back over his shoulder.
“Armless, I be,” he said in wry humour, gratified to see her relax a little. Then: “How come you’re up here on your own? You’ve been here some years by the look of the place.”
“I lived in the town on the coast back there, where the walls shine at night,” she gestured vaguely behind her. “That place at the foot of the hills, just a heap of rubble now, you must have come through it to get up here. I was only eighteen then…when the war came. One of the first bombs landed in the sea, threw radioactive water all over the town. When my baby was born he was—different. The radiation…” She faltered, lost for words. “…My husband died quickly. What few people lived through it wanted to have my baby put…they wanted to kill him. Said it would be better for him. Said it would be better for both of us. I ran off. I stole the rifle, shells, some seeds and one or two other odds and ends. Been here ever since. I get along fine…”
“You still got the mut…?” But he knew that was a mistake before the word was out. The air seemed to go hard.
“Mister,” she poked the barrel of the gun viciously between his shoulder blades, “if you’re a mutant-hunter you’re as good as dead!” He staggered from the pressure of the rifle in his back, turning to face her, going suddenly white as he saw her finger tightening on the trigger.
“No …! No, just curious. Christ, I’ve been hunted myself—and it’s obvious I couldn’t be a mutant! What, me? A mutant-hunter! Why, some places there’s a bounty, sure, but out here in the middle of nowhere? I mean…do I look like a bounty hunter…?” He was pathetic.
She relaxed again. “My baby…he…he died! No more questions.” It was an order.
They had crossed the valley and the sun was starting to sink behind the hills. He peered eagerly into the pot hanging over the fire. The cave was a dark blot behind the glowing embers, with a homemade candle flickering at its back.
This was sure a good thing she’d got, he mused to himself, licking his lips.
She motioned with the rifle, indicating he should help himself from the pot. He took up a battered tin plate and heaped it with the thick, bubbling stew before dropping the heavy iron spoon back into the pot. Juicy rabbit bones protruded from the meat in the mess of stew on his plate. Without another word he started eating. It was good.
As he ate he looked the girl over. She had a good face to match her figure. He could hardly keep from staring at the way her shirt swelled outwards with the pressure of the firm breasts beneath it. And it was that above all else—the way her shirt strained from her body—which finally decided his course of action.
He licked his lips and reached casually for the spoon again, crouching with the plate on his knees…
In a second he had straightened and the hot stuff was on her neck. Before she even had time to yelp from the shock he had brought her a savage, whiplash, back-hand blow across the face with the swing of a powerfully muscled left arm. As she spun sideways he nimbly grabbed the falling rifle out of midair and turned it on her. She started to scramble to her feet, a red welt already blossoming on her face.
“Stay put!” He held the rifle loosely in his hand, confident finger on the trigger, daring her to make a false move. “I’ll shoot you in the legs,” he said, grinning wolfishly, “so’s not to spoil you completely. You wouldn’t want to be spoiled completely, now would you?”
She cringed away from him on the ground. “You wouldn’t…you—”
“Get up!” he snarled, the grin sliding from his face.
As she made to get to her feet he tossed the rifle behind him and slammed another roundly swinging blow to her face. She lurched backwards, falling, and before she could recover he stepped over her, planting his feet firmly, tearing the shirt from her supple body. “Thing was ready to bust anyway…”
He licked his lips again as she screamed and tried to cover herself. “Shirt sure didn’t tell no lie…”
He grabbed her left wrist, twisting her arm up behind her back, forcing her to her feet.
“Sweetheart, your feeding’s good—now let’s see what your loving’s like. The good Lord knows you’ve probably waited a long time!”
“Don’t…! Don’t do it. I fed you, I…”
“More fool you, sweetheart,” he rasped, cutting her off, “but you may’s well get used to me; I’m going to be here quite some time. You need a man about the place.”
He pushed her into the cave, noting that the candle at the rear stood beside a heavy black blanket, stretched luxuriously in a hollow on the floor.
The shadows moved in the dimness of the cave as he shoved her towards the sputtering candle. A few feet from the rear wall of rock she twisted under her own arm and pulled away from him. He laughed at the way her body moved as she tried to free herself. “No good getting all hot and bothered now, sweetheart—not with the bed all laid out for us…”
“It’s not a bed!” she screamed, jerking her arm back in desperate resistance. The sweat of anticipation on his straining fingers let him down. Her hand suddenly slipped through his and he crashed backwards, off balance, onto the ‘bed.’
There was instant, horrible movement beneath him.
“No…!” the girl screamed. “No! That’s not stew, Baby, it’s a man!”
But Baby, who had no ears, took no notice.
The edges of the ‘bed’ rose up in thickly glistening, black doughy flaps—like an inky, folding pancake—and flopped purposefully over the struggling man upon it. Subtly altered digestive juices squirted into his face and muscular hardness gripped him. He gave a shriek—just one—as the living envelope around him started to squeeze.
Hours later, when dawn was spreading like a pale stain over the horizon between the hills, the girl was still crying. Baby had taken a long time over his meal. He burped, ejecting the last bone and a few odd buttons. There wasn’t even a back she could pat him on.
That day there was a new grave in the little valley in the hills. A very small one…
NOT A CREATURE WAS STIRRING
But what if it does?
* * *
Not even a mouse—maybe nothing at all—but I had got out of bed anyway just to be sure. And now instead of the sound of Silver Bells jingling away in my head, there were these great gonging brass ones, and some blinding fireworks, too!
I managed to get my right arm untwisted from behind my back where I’d fallen on it, and slowly, carefully put up my hand to touch my scalp three to four inches above my right ear. Just a touch but it stung like the blazes and left my fingers sticky with the blood that was still oozing from the gash. As for my left arm: maybe it was broken—likewise from the fall, I supposed—because even moving it a fraction was painful. What’s more, when I tried to lift my head up from the floor the carpet tugged at a patch of my hair that was stuck down. I always heal quickly and the blood was already drying, which meant I’d only been out for maybe twenty minutes maximum. So at least I wasn’t going to bleed to death.
As the cracked bells and searing fireworks in my head eased up a little, I began to think more clearly. And I wondered about Maria, my lady friend. You might say she was my fiancée, even though we’d made no real plans so far. Maria had been sleeping like a baby when I got up to investigate what I thought was the furtive sound of someone at the front door of the house; definitely not someone coming down the chimney! Whatever, I had told myself, most likely it was only my overly sensitive ears; and it was very wintry outside. Every so often I could hear the rattle of a length of dangling, broken trellising clattering against the frame of the kitchen window, the way it always did when it was windy. However, I had considered it better to be safe than sorry.
But about Maria:
Yes, she was all warm, cuddly and fast asleep in bed, where I should be. But last night—the actual night before Christmas, because it was well into the wee small hours now, which made it Christmas Day morning—had been a very special night. I mean, I don’t usually brag about such, but when we were done she’d been worn to a frazzle and, truth to tell, me too. All of which had been on my mind as I got downstairs, yawning and stumbling and already cursing myself for a fool, because Maria was still in bed and I wasn’t…then cursing myself for an even bigger fool (when I suddenly sensed the shadows stirring as something stepped out of the darkness) I paid for my weariness and customary carelessness in instantaneous pain.
And going down like a felled tree, I had thought: “I should have brought a torch with me, or put on the landing light or something…” But my eyes were usually keen at night—I might say exceptionally so—except when they were full of sleep or booze, or pretty much glazed over from too much sex.
Anyway, there I lay nursing my sore head while the last few Catherine-wheels slowly sputtered to a standstill, still trying to figure out how badly hurt I was without attracting too much attention from our uninvited guest or guests, gradually cranking my head up from the carpet without yanking on too many bloody hairs and starting the bleeding going again. At which point a nervously active electric torch beam quit swinging here and there and went out, and one of the ceiling lights came on.
The fellow with the cosh—a piece of piping tucked in his belt, no doubt with my blood still drying on it—was standing there against the wall with one hand on a light switch while the index finger on his other hand wagged a no-no at me and moved quickly to his lips in a signal that was unmistakable. He had seen that my eyes were open—had probably seen how I was moving, barely—and was telling me to stay still and keep quiet. And while in my dazed and damaged condition there seemed little or no need for him to emphasize this unspoken warning, still he did so by scowling in a sinister fashion, and with his hand falling to his cosh took a single menacing step closer.
Also—and in case I still hadn’t understood the threat he presented, or so I imagined—in a harsh whisper he said: “No noise, no trouble, and there’ll be no more hurting. But if you give me trouble, I mean any trouble at all, I’ll simply bash your fucking brains in! Got it?” In answer to which:
“Got it,” I whispered or croaked back at him. And I didn’t even try nodding.
The light he had put on was one of several whose sockets were sunk in the ceiling. They provided ample illumination when lit in series but were only dim individually. Just this one, however, would be more than enough to allow him to continue with his work…which, quite obviously was to rob me. Well, good luck to him, because there wasn’t a hell of a lot here for him to rob…which probably meant bad luck for me, because he might well want to take his disappointment out on someone or thing or me in a violent fashion. And, since you can’t ever tell about someone like this thug just how far his eventual reaction will go once it dawns on him there’s little or no profit in his night’s work, now I was glad that Maria was still asleep and not attracting any unwanted attention…
As he took another step toward me I finally managed to lift my head an inch or two from the floor without passing out again, and from that angle I now had a somewhat better view of my assailant. I immediately recognized him and remembered where I’d seen him before: that had been late yesterday afternoon, Christmas Eve, at the kennels. We had been down there, Maria and I, handing out one or two small gifts and paying Christmas bonuses to the team of men I have working for me. No Christmas break for them: when you take care of dogs that people have left in your safe-keeping while they go off on holiday or whatever, you’re on duty all day long—nights too, if an animal gets sick. But what with walkies and exercising, cleaning bowls and prepping food, regulating the feeding and watering times, mucking out the cages, making sure the kennels are clean and warm, and organizing medications for any of the mutts with worms or other problems—it’s a full-time job! Not for me, because these are my kennels and I’m the boss, but definitely for my dog-handlers.
And that was where I’d seen this guy before, in the company of a second rough- and somehow suspicious-looking character: at the kennels talking to my foreman. I had taken the pair for potential customers, but since the kennels are always full this time of year I’d known they would get turned away and hadn’t interfered. By then the evening had been drawing in and it was starting to get dark early, the way it does this time of year; so we’d driven home to my converted barn of a place on the edge of dense woodlands, and I’d given it no more thought. But now I also remembered how during that short drive home another car had stayed maybe a hundred yards behind us, driving on dipped lights. As I’d turned into the driveway, however, this other car had sped on by, vanishing up the road. Which was fine and I hadn’t been too concerned; it’s just that it’s a lonely road, that’s all. And out in the sticks like that our home is a lonely sort of place…
But as for now:
Well, obviously I should have been concerned. And now too I wondered: where had this vicious thug’s equally unpleasant-looking partner got to? As if in answer to which the main door opened to let in a single blast of cold night air, along with the very fellow in question, quickly closing the door behind him and none too quietly.
“Aren’t you supposed to be watching the road?” thug number one whispered harshly, as thug number two paced into my living-room and gazed down on me.
“It’s cold out there, Joe,” number two replied, not bothering to whisper. “It could freeze the balls off a brass monkey! Also, I don’t know what I’m doing out there. I mean, there’s nothing on that road in daylight hours, let alone this time of night on a Christmas morning! You think maybe Santa is going to come by? So I decided to come in and find out what’s keeping you. It’s been almost half an hour, Joe!”
“Oh, that’s great, just great! Thanks a bunch!” said Joe, sarcastically. “So now he’s heard my name twice…Freddie!”
“Oh, yeah! My mistake—sorry,” said Freddie, taken aback. And then: “But was there any need for that? I mean, you giving him my name, too? Because what with our form, our names and descriptions…”
“We’ll get picked up before you can say Fanny’s your aunt!” Joe snarled. And because he was angry now, he wasn’t being any too quiet either.
“Which means—” said Freddie, only to be cut off short by the other’s—
“Yeah, we know what that means: we can’t leave any witnesses, so the house will have to be torched. A Christmas bonfire, right? Well, there’s a nice tree in the kitchen. It looks out on the garden and the road, or it would if the drapes were open. But these people—” he scowled at me, “—it’s as if they’re into seclusion or something…and how! Living out here at the arse end of nowhere, and every window heavily draped; not even a chink of light coming in from outside…” And then, more thoughtfully: “As for that tree, it’s all tinsel, decorations and what have you. So maybe the fire should be electrical, right? An electrical fault—you know?”
“Yeah, sure, I can fix that,” said Freddie, nodding eagerly. “And no one will ever know the difference. But…a tree? With expensive presents, maybe?”
“Not a one,” Joe rasped. “I’ve been right through the house, downstairs at least, and apart from that tree—which can only be for show, letting people like us know there’s somebody home, even when there isn’t—this place might as well be a fucking cave! Oh, there’s the usual kitchen shit, a wardrobe full of fairly expensive clothing, most of it the woman’s, and a bureau full of paperwork and bills from his kennels. But as for anything else…”
And now Freddie suddenly came alive, his eyes gleaming (with an almost feral light, I thought) as I chanced moving, stretching and easing cramped muscles, and doing my best to make myself a little more comfortable…at least until Freddie grinned and licked his lips, and said: “Oh, yeah, the woman! I’d almost forgotten about her. But if you haven’t been upstairs yet, maybe I should go up and check it out. She could be awake; she could know we’re here, and she’s just waiting and hoping we’ll go away. But what if there’s a telephone up there? Yeah, I should go on up. And in the event there’s nothing worth taking…I mean, I’d really hate to waste a good looking bitch like her. Oh, sure, let’s waste her by all means, but taste her first, right?” And:
Skinny bastard! I thought. If anyone was going to call Maria a bitch it was me, and even I would have to be careful! That sort of bad-mouthing didn’t go down too well with any female I ever knew, no matter her colour, creed or persuasions. And meanwhile Joe was saying:
“Okay, go on up. But try to remember the rules: profits first—if there’s any to be had—and the, er, bonuses come last. And Freddie, when you’re done you might also remember to give me a call, right?” With which he sniggered, but Freddie was already halfway upstairs…
Well, I wasn’t about to let anything like that happen, so growling my pain and anger I sat up and tried to rise. No use, I was simply hurting too much. And with his cosh in his hand, Joe was on me in a flash; or would have been, but this time I was ready for him. Tripping him with my right leg, I managed to kick him in the groin with my left; it was as much as I could do. He didn’t fall, but as he bent almost double and went staggering and cursing across the room, so, from upstairs came a series of astonished, first questioning, then angry yelps from Maria. Having forgotten the rules, Freddie had woken her up and was trying for the bonus.
