AFTER (13 page)

Waco knelt and grabbed Numb Nuts under the arms. "I got you,
hoss
. We're heading home."

The man simply moaned, his eyes transfixed. He was in shock. His mutilated legs spouted blood in a steady stream. Waco knew there was no hope for him, no way to fix what the
Nutjobs
had done to him. But at least he might get the chance to see Lady Bird and
Bratzilla
one more time before giving up the ghost.

With a cry of exertion, Waco pulled Anderson's dead weight across his back and started, step by faltering step, down Main Street. The
Nutjobs
had thinned out quite a bit, some fleeing, while others stumbled around half blind from the flash bombs.

As Waco made the long, hard journey toward the Fortress, T.P. picked off the lunatics, one at a time.
That a boy, Four-Eyes,
thought the Texan.
You've just earned a lifetime membership in the Society of Bad-Ass Rednecks.

Before he knew it, Waco was at the side entrance. With a grunt, he lowered Numb Nuts to the ground and glanced behind him. There was no sign of the
Nutjob
Brigade. They had really taken a beating that morning. But there were more. Plenty more.

"They'll be pissed and ready for blood, Numb Nuts," he told the car salesman. "We gotta get you well and ready for battle. Then we'll wipe 'em clean once and for all."

He looked down at the man and instantly knew that his words were wasted. Roger Anderson was dead. His face and upper body were ghastly pale. Apparently he had bled out completely between the ambush point and the Fortress.

Exhausted, Waco sat down next to the man's body. "I'm sorry,
hoss
," he said, patting Anderson's clammy shoulder. "I'm sorry I let you down."

Suddenly, Waco felt faint himself. He looked down and discovered that his entire right side was saturated with blood from the ugly wounds in the side of his head. He heard hurried steps running down the stairs beyond the wooden door, but passed out before they arrived.

 
"Does it hurt, sugar dumpling?" asked
Trixie
, heavy on the baby talk.

"Hell yeah, it hurts!" grumbled Waco. "I had my frigging ear hacked off. That ain't no damn paper cut, you know."

"But I sewed it back on okay, didn't I?"

"The second time," the Texan told her. "The first time you sewed it on upside-down."

"Can I get you something? Aspirin? A cold compress?"

Waco smiled. "A nice blowjob might help take my mind off of it for a while."

T.P. shook his head. "Looks like he's back to normal."

"I'd
whup
your ass right now, T.P… if you hadn't saved mine."

"You're welcome," said the nerd, unsure of whether he had been properly thanked or not.

"Why don't you eat some of your barbecue, Sweetie?" suggested
Trixie
, continuing to fuss over him. "I made a special sauce that livens it up right nicely."

Waco scowled at the heap of shredded meat that garnished his plate. "Well, you don't wanna liven it up
too much,
you know." He dipped a fork into the barbecue and took a tentative bite. Not bad. Not too danged bad at all.

Across the table, Lady Bird hovered over
Bratzilla
. "Come on, sweetheart," she urged gently. "Eat your yummy barbeque." After the demise of her overbearing husband, Mrs. Anderson had become more outgoing and less of a stick in the mud. She almost glowed, in fact.

"I don't wanna!" protested her picky son. "It's yucky. It tastes…"

Familiar?
thought Waco.

"Funny. Where'd it come from, anyway?"

Everyone at the table looked at one another.

"It came from a big old greasy pig," said Lady Bird. She shoveled it in like she was half-starved. "This sauce is absolutely delicious,
Trixie
. Could you give me the recipe?"

"Sure, darling,"
Trixie
told her, flattered. "The secret is in the vinegar and brown sugar…"

Waco frowned and continued to eat. He chewed continuously on something tough and gristly. But what the hell was it?

A numb nut perhaps?

"You know," said T.P. smothering his plate with sauce and forking a mouthful of meat into his mouth. "It's a fallacy that you contract sleeping sickness through the practice of
cannib
–"

Waco picked up his revolver and pointed it at the nerd. "Just shut up and eat your damn supper, will you?"

The Texan swallowed the rubbery morsel and belched. And for a moment, he was certain that he detected the distinct aftertaste of Old Spice.

They listened.

"Do you think he's coming?" asked Heather.

"
Shhhh
!" Scott warned. "Just be quiet, will you?"

Together, their ears strained for sound. They hoped and prayed to hear the music. But instead of the heralding of salvation, they only heard the steady approach of damnation. Maniacal laughter and the honking of bicycle horns.

"They're getting closer," she whispered. "What're we gonna do?"

The twelve-year-old thought. He considered ducking into the burnt-out hull of the elementary school, but dismissed that idea. The thought of being trapped in a maze of empty classrooms with those sick bastards didn't appeal to him at all.

The trumpets of doom sounded again.

HONK-A
HONK-A
!
 
HONK-A
HONK-A
!

Loud and urgent. Like
Harpo
Marx from Hell.

"They're gaining on us!" whimpered the nine-year-old.

Scott stopped long enough to grab her by the shoulders and look her squarely in the eyes. "Listen to me. Whatever happens… no matter how bad it gets…
never
cry. Don't give them the satisfaction. If you do, it's like blood to sharks. They'll tear you apart."

The girl's lip quivered a second longer, then stopped. "Okay."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"Come on," he urged, grabbing her by the hand. "We'll stay out here in the open. It'll give us more of a fighting chance… just in case
he
doesn't show up."

Somewhere behind them, something howled. Not a dog… more like someone attempting to sound like one.

Together, they ran across the scorched expanse of the playground, their pockets jingling with the sound of loose coins.

It was a dark time for children.

Following the Burn, every sex offender on the face of the earth had seemed to declare open season. Every child molester who had once masqueraded as an ordinary citizen – daycare teachers, soccer coaches, Boy Scout leaders, priests – had cast off their masks of respectability and took full advantage of the deteriorating situation.

Some worked solo, but many formed tribes; factions like the

Baby Boppers, the
Candymen
, and the Short-Eyes Brigade. You could tell the preference of a Teddy-
Bare
by the collection of tiny teddy bear tattoos they wore on their face: pink for a girl, blue for a boy.

The worse of the tribes were the
Clownies
. Perverted sons of bitches in white makeup, red rubber noses, and multi-colored hair. They weren't only sick, they were damned sadistic. The
Clownies
specialized in prolonged pain and suffering. They used straight razors and battery acid, and got off on begging and pleading for mercy… which was never granted.

Scott Kersey had been dodging those bozos for the better part of a month now. There had been several close calls, especially that horrifying five minutes in the basement of an abandoned church, but so far he had eluded their sick intentions. But it was only a matter of time before they outwitted him. They knew who he was, especially the leader, and he knew they were hungry and gunning for him.

He had come across Heather a couple of days before. She had been wandering the back alleys of the city, scared and dirty, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and toting a pink Hanna Montana backpack. She said she had been on her own for three weeks. Scott had a hard time swallowing that. Atlanta was a hotbed for rape and torture. It was a miracle she had survived for such a long period of time.

But now that time was coming to an end.

Or, perhaps not, if only
he
would come.

The acrid stench of burnt earth filled their nostrils as their feet pounded the across the blackened grass of the playground. There was a rumor going around that a
Clownie
had been responsible for torching Atlanta. A clown named Sherman with a flamethrower and a hatred for Southerners. Scott recalled something his father, a history teacher, had once told him. "History repeats itself." In this case, it sure as hell did.

He drove his thoughts away from his home and family. Scott had been away at summer camp when the Burn had gone down. He remembered how his mother had pouted when they had dropped him off at the camp near Valdosta, how she simply didn't "feel right" about him being there on the Fourth of July. "We should all be together during the holidays," she had told him. He and his father had rolled their eyes and shrugged off her concerns, the way guys did in the face of female intuition.

But then guys can be shortsighted and stupid sometimes.

The morning after the Burn, the summer camp had turned into total chaos. The counselors had abandoned them, leaving to find their own families. Scott and eight other boys headed north to Atlanta. They had lost three of their party to a tribe of violet-hued cannibals – the Purple People-Eaters – near Macon. Before it was over with, Scott had been the only one who had made it there alive.

Just thinking about going home made him want to cry. Scott had found the house empty, the SUV missing, and his mom and dad gone. Thinking that they might have headed into the city for some crazy reason, he had done the same… and had regretted it ever since.

The howl of the Hound jolted him back into reality. They were closer now. Much closer. The tracker was damn good. The
Clownies
had found – or made – a good bloodhound. Obviously, it was due to
Clymaraine
, a cocaine substitute that had a peculiar side-effect… the enhancement of one's sense of smell, a dozen times stronger than an actual dog's.

"Over there," Scott whispered. "Behind the seesaws."

Heather nodded, breathing too hard to speak. Together, they ran passed the rusted swings and slide, and crouched behind a bank of three seesaws. They watched silently as forms emerged from the darkness: tall and short, fat and thin. Some rode unicycles, while the rest traveled on foot. They could hear the
slap, slap, slap
of their big, floppy shoes as they ran.

Scott thought it would have been pretty funny if they had arrived in one of those little clown cars… the kind that gave birth to a dozen or so when it came screeching to a stop. But on second thought, such a spectacle wouldn't have held any humor at all. There was nothing funny about a parade of child rapists popping out of a third-scale VW Bug.

"We know you're there, Scotty Boy," echoed a familiar voice, loud and obnoxious with a hint of a Southern drawl. "Come on out and play."

Scott felt sick to his stomach. It was the leader, a
Clownie
named
Gacy
. He had named himself after a serial killer with a fetish for white greasepaint and young boys. As a bank of clouds moved slowly eastward, the moon shown, casting pale light upon
Gacy
and his legion. He was grossly overweight, perhaps three hundred pounds or more, wearing a long, multi-colored overcoat and candy-cane striped pants. Below a curly rainbow wig, his pudgy face stood out in the moonlight, ghastly pale, one side of his mouth painted into a smile, the other into a frown.

"Come on, boy,"
Gacy
urged. "We'll have fun.
Sooooo
much fun."

Scott shuddered. Absently, he drew an old Bowie knife from a sheath on his belt… a weapon he had found at the Georgia state museum during a scavenger hunt downtown.

Desperately, Heather glanced behind her. A tall chain-link fence separated the school playground from a weedy vacant lot on the other side. "Do you think we could make it over?"

Scott shook his head. "Some of them have guns… .22 rifles. They like to shoot you in the back, separate your spinal cord. Then you can't do anything but lay there while they… well, you know."

Heather was about to say something, when a loud howl startled them from the left. The Hound had circled the playground silently and was upon them.

The man was tall and lanky and completely naked. Except for one article of clothing, that was. He wore a filthy white gym sock upon his erect penis. The end of it had been crudely fashioned into a sock puppet, with button eyes and a mouth drawn with a red Sharpie marker. Raggedy Ann's smiling face where it never should have been.

"
Ooooh
, you're a real looker!" rasped the Hound, licking his lips. He danced around gleefully, like some perverted Chili Pepper throwback.
 
Reaching out, he grabbed a handful of Heather's blond hair and yanked her head back sharply. "Freckled face. Pretty blue eyes. And that sweet, little mouth…"