AFTER (10 page)

"Hello!" she called out. "Is anyone there?"

Inside the shed, echoed the sounds of someone eating. Hungrily, almost ravenously.

The noise made Tess's stomach growl. She was so very hungry. May they might have a bite or two to share.

She approached the open doorway and knocked on the doorframe. "Hello?" she said. "I hope I'm not intruding, but –"

Tess stepped inside and, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, all she could do was stand there and take in the grisly scene before her.

A silver-haired woman lay sprawled across a twin bed, her arms and legs dangling limply over the edges. A large white dog was crouched over her, his paws planted firmly on her chest. The Malamute had ripped out the woman's throat. A huge, ugly crater was all that was left in the flesh directly below her chin. Blood dripped from the wound and pooled on the dirt floor beneath the metal bed frame.

Tess studied the woman's face and recognized it immediately. She had seen it constantly on magazine racks and bookshelves for the past few years. It had also graced the wall of her dorm room… pinned to a dartboard that she used quite frequently. She wanted to feel some sense of joy at her nemesis's passing, but she didn't. Oddly enough, she felt absolutely nothing at all.

Sensing her presence, the white dog turned and growled at her with bloody fangs.

"No, boy," she said soothingly. "She's all yours."

The Malamute jerked something loose that resembled a fragment of windpipe and wolfed it down. Then he dipped his head and continued to rip and tear.

Tess looked around, searching for something useful to take. She wanted the gun that lay beside the woman's body, but knew that the dog would attack her if she drew too near. She walked to the table and found the assemblage of culinary articles that had been laid out there.
Who knows?
she thought to herself.
This could come in handy.
She returned the items to their proper places, folded the length of black canvas, and stuck it in her backpack.

Tess returned to the door. She regarded the hungry dog and his silver-haired smorgasbord for a moment. "Enjoy," she said. "And, remember, meat is life."

Suddenly, a laugh escaped her lips – a high-pitched, crazy sort of laugh that scared her. Tess silenced herself in mid-giggle and quickly left that place. She continued along the creek bed, at a much faster pace than before.

Behind her,
Compadre
continued feeding. Bit by bit, he took her into his body, digesting her substance, absorbing her very essence. Like Phyllis had promised him the night before, they would become a lasting part of one another.

He licked her face affectionately, almost lovingly. Then he leisurely resumed his breakfast.

They were burning the Mouse in effigy… again.

Waco and T.P. sat on an upper balcony of the Fortress, enjoying the Florida sunshine and surveying the madness below. Waco peered through the lens of a Bushnell scope, which was attached to a .30-06 Weatherby Mark V. The Texan's grip tightened on the stock as he shifted the crosshairs from the burning mouse to the band of cavorting characters that encircled the fire. The one in charge seemed to be a cocky little duck with obscene tattoos etched into its white feathers in dried blood.

"Who's the unfortunate victim this time?" asked T.P. The nerdy fellow with the taped eyeglasses and a t-shirt that read EINESTEIN: GENUIS OR ALIEN? sat in a folding chair, munching on a bag of stale Doritos he had found somewhere on the grounds. Waco had nicknamed him T.P. – short for Trivial Pursuit – because of the wealth of useless knowledge he spouted at any given point in time.

"I think it's ol' Annie Wilkes," Waco told him. He adjusted the scope a hair, settling on the Mouse's thrashing form. Even from the other end of Main Street, they could hear that harsh, cigarette-hoarse voice shrieking for mercy.

"Their leader?"

"Yep," Waco told him. The lanky Texan with the sun-weathered complexion and a
Semper
Fi
tattoo on his upper right bicep stretched until his neck cracked, then returned his eye to the scope. "I knew she was losing her hold on them. Too much bitching and ordering around. Even
Nutjobs
get sick of that after awhile. And the Duck has been wanting her spot for a while. Besides, he's always in charge of the burnings. The little bastard's got a helluva hard-on for roasted rodent."

"You know," said T.P. "Traditionally, a woman always played the Mouse, due to their slight stature and natural ability for expression."

Waco grunted. "Been waiting my whole damn life to know that tidbit of information, T.P." Annie's screams grew louder and more frantic. "Shit… I can't stand this any longer." He shouldered the Mark V and sighted down on the flaming figure dangling from the flagpole five hundred yards away.

"You're a compassionate man, Waco," said the nerd. "I knew you'd do the right thing."

Waco grinned. "You think so?" He inhaled until the rifle grew rock-steady, then squeezed the trigger. The nylon rope parted over the Mouse's head. The blazing effigy dropped to the cobblestones, thrashing and screaming, spinning on its side like Curly from the Three Stooges.

"You just gonna let her burn?"

The Texan shrugged. "Why the hell not? She never brought me little candy hearts and roses. Just a gigantic pain in the ass."

T.P. nodded and stuffed a fistful of chips into his mouth. "Right. Burn, baby, burn."

Enraged, the Duck turned and pumped his fist in the air.

Waco opened the bolt and shucked brass. He thumbed a fresh cartridge into the breach, then cued in the sights again, settling the crosshairs an inch above the bird's blood-smeared bill. "Suck this, Duck."

The Weatherby bucked and the fiberglass cartoon head disintegrated into jagged fragments, as well as the upper portion of the true head just underneath. Brains and skull filled the air in a vaporous cloud. The Duck dropped to his knees, having cussed his last Mouse… or anyone else for that matter.

The others – a motley crew of dogs, pigs, rabbits, monkeys, and bears – roared in protest and began to run down Main Street, brandishing butcher knives and baseball bats.

When they were halfway to the Fortress, Waco sighed and stood up. "Time for target practice,
hoss
."

T.P. set down his Doritos, took a sip from a Diet Mountain Dew, and stood up,
unholstering
a big-ass Smith & Wesson .44. "Okay… which ones do you want?"

"I'll take the dogs and bears. You bag the three pigs and that frigging white rabbit."

"Shit, I always get the
piggies
and bunnies."

"A man gets what suits him," said Waco. "Me, I'm a dog and bear kinda man."

When the
Nutjobs
reached the circular courtyard, Waco squeezed off his first shot. The jacketed bullet punched through the nose of a yellow dog. In the darkness within, the slug traveled onward, burrowing between two feverish eyes and lodging into the unstable brain just beyond. Without thought, Waco reloaded and turned the crosshairs on a wooly brown bear in a straw hat and blue vest.

The Smith & Wesson bucked in T.P.'s hand, sounding like a miniature cannon. The jacketed hollow point was intended for a heart shot, but found the ball socket of the white rabbit's right arm instead, mangling bone and cartilage into a bloody mess. "Damn gun!"

"It pulls to the right," Waco reminded him. He spat tobacco juice to the side and shifted his aim from the bear's oversized head to its massive belly. The shot tunneled through the
Nutjob's
guts, pulverizing his lower spinal column. "If my old man could split armadillos from the back porch with it, you sure as hell can peg a rabbit the size of a linebacker."

T.P. readjusted his aim and fired again. This time the magnum round hit the rabbit dead center. The bunny flew back a good ten feet with the impact and lay on his back, spouting blood like a fountain. "Bingo!"

After several had fallen, the others seemed to get the message. They turned and headed back down the street. They turned and entered the fire station, where secret passageways took them securely underground once again.

"Damn parasites!" grumbled Waco. He turned his eyes back on Annie, who was dead still now. The scent of cooking flesh filled the air.

T.P.'s stomach growled in response.

"Doritos ain't filling enough for you?" Waco asked him.

A sour look crossed the nerd's face. "Let's go in and see what
Trixie's
cooked up for supper."

As they stood and headed back inside, Waco thought of the bleached blonde hairdresser from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. If you asked her "Who was buried in Grant's tomb?" she'd probably reel off the other 43 presidents before she even considered ol' Ulysses.
Trixie
was the poster child for the classic dumb blonde joke. Cutting hair and cooking was about the only thing useful about her, in Waco's opinion. That and spreading 'em whenever he had the urge. Oh, and she had big tits, too. Boobs the size of honeydews was always an admirable trait in a woman, as far as the Texan was concerned.

The two took a winding staircase down to the big banquet hall on one of the upper levels of the Fortress. The medieval-themed restaurant was empty, except for the other four members of their little group.
Trixie
was setting the table for the evening meal, while the Andersons sat there, waiting to be waited on, as usual. The family hailed from Boulder, Colorado. Roger Anderson – or Numb Nuts as Waco had nicknamed him – had been a used car salesman, which put him in the same league as an ambulance-chaser or septic tank cleaner in the Texan's opinion. Waco called his wife Lady Bird, since she held an uncanny resemblance to LBJ's first lady. The woman was quiet as a mouse and annoyingly agreeable; totally opposite of her husband's triple-dose of loud and obnoxious. They had one kid – a five-year-old boy Waco simply called
Bratzilla
.

"So what kinda gut-busting bomb you got fixed up for us tonight,
Trix
?" Waco asked. He took off his cowboy hat and hung it on the back of the King's chair at the head of the table.

Trixie
set a big casserole dish on the table in front of them. "Well, things are getting sort of scarce in the pantry, so I had to make my specialty, Tuna Macaroni Surprise."

"What's the surprise?" asked T.P.

"There's no tuna in it," she said, giggling.

Waco and T.P. looked at one another.

Dumber than a bag of rocks dancing in a cement mixer.

But she had big tits.

"Ain't we got no meat tonight?" Waco asked her.

Trixie
shrugged her narrow shoulders. "We ate the last of the…uh,
beef
… last night. All we have now is canned food and enough macaroni noodles to feed the National Guard."

When
Trixie
had sat down next to T.P., Waco bowed his head. "Let's all say the blessing for the food now."

Roger Anderson sniffed in displeasure. "I don't think it appropriate that your religious beliefs should be forced upon –"

Waco reached over and shucked the .44 Magnum from T.P.'s holster. "Let's just say the damn blessing… okay, Numb Nuts?" he insisted, pointing the muzzle at the tip of the man's nose.

Anderson swallowed dryly and said nothing more. Looking at Waco brought a lyric from a
Lynyrd
Skynyrd
song to mind. The Texan was lean and mean, big and bad, pointing that gun at him…

The six joined hands and, clearing his throat, Waco gave grace. "We love you, God, how great thou art… please, don't let
Trixie's
cooking make us groan or fart. Amen!"

"Amen," the others echoed in union.

"Why, that was downright beautiful, Waco," said
Trixie
, looking a little choked up.

"I'm a man of faith, sugar," declared the Texan. "Not a godless heathen… like some around this here table."

Numb Nuts shoveled a spoonful of Tuna Macaroni Surprise into his mouth, his face as red as a baboon's ass.

"So, what happened outside today?" asked
Trixie
. "Anything interesting?"

Waco shrugged. "Same old shit. The
Nutjobs
finally burnt Annie today. Lunatics aren't too particular about who they follow… just so they get to eat and screw."

"The Duck was ready to jump in the captain's seat, but Waco took him down," T.P. told them. "Just as well. He'd have been like a Hitler with webbed feet."

"He was a hot-headed little
sumbitch
," agreed Waco. "Don't know what he had against the Mouse."

"Historically, the Duck always resented the Mouse, even in the cartoons," T.P. explained. "The Mouse was the perfect picture of benevolence and good will, while the Duck was a prime example of society's rebellion against authority and order. His anger and impatience with the Mouse echoed the common man's latent distrust of the wealthy and powerful."

"Thanks for that unsolicited commentary of wisdom, T.P. Now eat your, grub. It's getting cold."

Bratzilla
whined and tossed his fork onto his plate with a clatter. "I don't like macaroni and cheese. It don't taste good."