AFTER (6 page)

He didn't make it. Before he got halfway there, he dropped to his knees and vomited. He did that two or three times, then dry-heaved until the nausea passed. Afterward, he crawled to his bed. He rolled over onto his side and cried himself to sleep, thinking of the girl in the frilly Easter dress… as well as the one he'd shot and left like a dead dog in the middle of the street.

Again, a dream about the boy.

Sam stood in the bedroom door, watching him hurriedly pack a sports bag.

"The sheriff is on his way," he told him. "You hurt that girl. Hurt her bad."

The boy, now sixteen, glanced up at him. "I just wanted to see how many fingers would fit in," he said. He grinned crookedly in that mean-ass way of his. "It was more than five."

Sam shook his head in disbelief. "Why did you turn out the way you did?"

The boy lifted his seven-fingered hand. "What was it Grandpa used to say… that anyone born with seven fingers was the Devil's right hand? So, you see, I never had a choice."

Sam lifted his own hand, also bearing seven digits. "It never stopped me from trying to do the right thing."

"You do your thing, Papa, and I'll do mine." Then he zipped his bag and stormed out the door past him.

That was the last time he saw his son… for a very long time.

The next morning, Sam awoke to the sour stench of old puke. He looked at the alarm clock and was surprised to find that he had slept through half of yesterday and all the night. It was nearly seven o'clock in the morning.

Sam got up and sat there for a long moment. He thought about the events of the past two days, wondering if they had been for real or some horrible nightmare. But he knew that they had truly transpired. The pool of vomit in his floor and the memory of Tina
Mercher
lying, naked and mutilated, in the center of Maple Avenue told him that it had.

He sauntered through the back room to the front of the shop. There was only a single door in the fix-it shop. He had bricked up the two windows in the front, as well as the single one in the back, during the late fifties when the Red Threat was real and paranoia ruled. Sam remembered how his fellow shopkeepers had thought he was crazy for doing so, and so had Estelle. The bricked-up windows and a dozen other quirky devices he had installed for security's sake. Everyone had thought him to be a nut… until the Cuban Missile Crisis scared the hell out of everyone in the country. Then they understood exactly what he had been waiting for.

Aching all over from a bad
day's
and night's sleep, Sam slowly unsecured the front door, then cracked it open a bit.

Rott's
men were painting the fronts of the hardware store and pet shop a dark, ebony black. The group worked slowly and silently, more out of pure fear than anything else. The man they had considered an anti-hero inside the pen was now the Anti-Christ in their minds. They had seen precisely what he was capable of and knew they could end up the same way if they let their guard down.

Sam noticed
Rott
and Pickpocket standing on the sidewalk across the street, discussing something. From the secretive way they conversed, the elderly man knew they were up to no good. He went back into his storeroom, rummaged through the junk and found a device that resembled a pistol grip with a transparent plastic dome at the end. He found an old pair of headphones and plugged them into a jack hole on the body of the device, then slipped them over his head. He stuck the dome to the crack in the door and turned on the power of the contraption's double-A batteries.

What he heard terrified him.

"I want you to gather the troops after supper tonight. Go out into the neighborhoods, door to door. Kill the men and women. Burn the houses. Bring me the children."

Sam retreated and closed the door. Until that moment,
Rott
had been content to carry out his campaign of depravity and evil solely on the avenue of Maple Avenue. But now the entire town would suffer… and suffer gravely.

And the children? What did he intend to do with them? The possibilities were too awful to even consider.

The old man stood there and digested the revelation for a long moment.

Then he turned and entered his workshop. He went to the gun cabinet and found a Remington 1100 twelve-gauge. He examined the semi-automatic shotgun and nodded. Yes, with a few modifications, he thought he might actually be able to pull it off.

On the shelves of junk, Sam found a few things he would need: a couple of aluminum cake pans, some stiff springs, and a handful of bolts and sheet metal screws. He sat down at his workbench and checked the alarm clock. He had a good ten hours before
Rott's
army of bloodthirsty bastards set off on their mission.

Taking a battery-powered Black & Decker drill from a peg on the wall, he hunched over the long, black body of the shotgun and set to work.

On the evening of July 12
^th
,
Rott's
men assembled in the street in front of Millie's Pet Shop. Most of them were tired and hungry, covered with black paint from their day of senseless labor. In turn, their faces were set in masks of cruelty and anticipation for the havoc they would soon wreak.
 

They were armed to the teeth with handguns, rifles, and shotguns from the hardware store, and the big country boy with the Alabama t-shirt had the three Pit Bulls on chains like a pack of rabid bloodhounds.
Rott
stood near the propane grills, pleased at what he saw. He stripped the cooked flesh from a delicate arm bone with his jagged teeth, then tossed it into a pile of gristle and skeletal remains that had once been the daughter of the local grocer.

"Okay, you've got your orders," Pickpocket told them, taking the point. "Search and Destroy. Nothing stays alive… except for the children."

The skinny, little guy with the Nazi tattoos happened to glance across the street. His ugly face showed curiosity at first, then naked fear. "What the hell -- ?"

The others looked toward the porch of the fix-it shop. There stood Sam Wheeler. He held a Remington semi-auto shotgun rigged with an ammo drum fashioned from two cake pans bolted together. The thirty-round drum was linked to the loading port of the scattergun. The weapon in his wrinkled hands looked as cold and deadly as the expression on his aged face.

For a moment, a pall of stunned silence hung over Maple Avenue. Then Sam lifted the scattergun to his shoulder.

"It's time to rock and roll, as you
young'uns
are fond of saying." Then he squeezed the trigger and the modified Remington began to rain fatal fury upon
Rott
and his band of transgressors.

There were fourteen men in the street and three dogs. Sam intended to dispatch them all with thirty rounds of double-aught buckshot. The Remington 1100 jerked and bucked with the continuous recoil, hammering at the flesh and bone of the elderly man's right shoulder. He felt something tear inside – his rotator cuff more than likely – but he didn't stop. He held the weapon firm and steady, sweeping it from one end of the line to the other.

The casualties among
Rott's
brigade were devastating. Heads exploded in bursts of crimson and splintered bone, and craterous wounds pockmarked their chests and abdomens. Several arms were sheared from their sockets. They dropped to the pavement, twitching and flexing, still clutching the weapons they had been toting.

Bubba went down, his green cap collapsing amid the ruins of his skull. Instantly, the Pit Bulls were loose. As they advanced, crossing the street at startling speed, Sam lowered the Remington's muzzle and unleashed a burst of four rounds. One yipped sharply as he took a bee-swarm of pellets in his broad chest, while the other scarcely made a sound, taking a few more steps toward the fix-it shop without benefit of a head before finally falling.

Sam squeezed the trigger again, but nothing happened. The gun was jammed. He struggled to clear the breech, but he was too late. The third dog – a black and white Bull with one blind eye – leapt and knocked him backward into his rocking chair. Sam dropped the 1100 and flailed blindly at the snarling maw of slobber and fangs. The dog's powerful jaws closed around Sam's left wrist. Yellowed teeth punched through ancient skin, shattering old bones and bringing spurts of blood.

The elderly man reached into the right pocket of his overalls, groping, searching for the butt of the Colt. He withdrew the .45 revolver, pressed it against the dog's blind eye, and fired. The animal died instantly, but refused to release its hold. Sam cried out in pain as the weight of the dog did further damage to his wrist, ripping flesh and grinding bone against bone. Sam stuck the long barrel of the Peacemaker between the dead dog's jaws and pried awkwardly until they finally grew slack and let go.

He thought he was out of the woods, when he looked up and saw the Alabama
Hitman
jump over the hood of the shot-riddled Mustang and march toward him. The wrestler's biceps flexed like living things beneath his tanned skin as he clenched and unclenched his huge hands.

"You want I should open a can of
whup
-ass on the old bastard, boss?" he asked
Rott
.

The serial killer and his second-in-command emerged from where they hid behind the black Ford.
Rott
smiled, his eyes glittering meanly. "Go right ahead. Break open a big ol' can."

Sam raised his revolver, but suddenly the
Hitman
was there. He batted the Colt out of his grasp and grabbed Sam by the throat with one vise-like hand. He grinned with professionally whitened teeth as he slowly began to squeeze. "Want him dead?"

Rott
considered it for a moment. "
Naw
, just break his neck. Then he can lie in his own shit and starve to death."

The
Hitman's
grin widened. "Sounds like a plan to me." He placed his other hand against the side of Sam's head and began to apply pressure.

The old man grunted as he felt the bones of his neck begin to give way. Desperately, Sam reared back with his right foot and attempted to kick
Hitman
in the nuts, but he landed a glancing blow to his upper thigh instead. It was enough to throw the big man off balance. As they began to tumble to the porch of the fix-it shop, Sam felt a sharp spike of pain shoot through the back of his neck and heard a brittle
crunch
. He hit the ground hard, fighting against the urge to pass out from shear agony.

He lay there, supported by his elbows, as he watched
Hitman
climb slowly to his feet. "I'm really gonna do a number on you now!" he growled and started forward.

Sam scuttled backward, like a sand crab, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and the wrestler. He made it through the open doorway, crawled a yard or two inside the shop, and stopped. Sam watched carefully as the Alabama
Hitman
stopped within the frame of the door, filling it with his towering bulk.

The wrestler glared at him, then glanced downward. He stood on top of a steel mesh grate. "What the hell's this for?" he asked.

"Clean up," replied Sam. Then he kicked out with his left foot, tripping a lever that protruded from the boards of the floor.

A seven foot plate of quarter-inch steel slid smoothly down its double-tracks from where it was concealed in ceiling overhead. It acted like a guillotine, striking
Hitman
on the crown of the head and cleanly dissecting him, from his scalp to the soles of his feet.

Sam flinched as blood and shredded tissue filled the air. As the plate slammed to a stop against the steel grate, shutting out the evening light, the front half of the Alabama
Hitman
folded into itself and lay in a heap. A second lever opened the grate and what was left of the wrestler dropped into a refuse pit out of sight.

Seeing the rear half of the Alabama
Hitman
crumble outside seemed to hit a nerve with
Rott
. "Get a good night's sleep, old man!" he bellowed from the street. "Tomorrow's your death-day! I'll bake a cake and break out the black candles!"

Sam lay on his back on the floor, the pain in his neck, shoulder, and wrist competing in their intensity. Nearly blacking out, he breathed in deeply and struggled to a sitting position.
Rott
continued to rave outside and he wanted to catch every word of what he had to say.

"After you're gone, I promise it won't end, Pops! I'll burn this damn town to the ground, until only ashes remain. Maybe I'll gather up all the women in town and turn one of your churches into a whorehouse. How would you like that? And the kids…" He unleashed a laugh so hideous and laden with darkness that it made Sam feel sick to his stomach. "Oh, they'll have the best time of all."

Sam slowly got to his feet and stumbled to the back room. His intention was to collapse on the bed and suffer into the night. But
Rott's
laughter caused him to forget his defeat. The murderer's threats echoed in his mind: the burning of Watkins Glen, the blasphemous whorehouse, and the uncertain fate of innocent children. He thought of the accountant's wife and her two
young'uns
and wondered if they were still at the house on Marigold Lane or if they had found the courage and means to move on. He hoped for the latter, but knew that the possibility of them still being there was very real.