Go Kill Crazy! (38 page)

The door to room 2035 opened and Lana popped out into the hallway. She gasped when she saw Echo swing the Glock toward Big Ted. “Don’t!”

Echo grimaced. “Sorry, baby.”

She blew Ted’s brains out as he was backing toward the open doorway behind him. He slumped against the doorframe and slid slowly to the floor.

Echo looked at Lana. “Cora was fucking Casey. I killed them.”

Lana peeked inside room 2040. “Shit.”

“I’m sorry about Ted.”

Lana looked at her. “It’s all right. You had to do it. He would’ve killed you.”

Echo smiled. “Thanks for understanding.”

Doors were opening and then slamming shut again up and down the hallway. For the briefest of moments, it was almost amusing. Guests at a ritzy joint like this were not accustomed to gunfire in the hallways.

The girls exchanged a look.

Echo said, “We should probably go.”

Lana nodded. “Let me grab my shit.”

She disappeared back inside room 2035 for a moment, quickly reemerging with her purse slung over her shoulder and the iPad clutched in her right hand. She saw Echo’s furrowed brow and laughed as they hurried down the hallway. “What? I had to come out of that relationship with
something
.”

Sally Richardson walked east along the side of the highway as the sun began its slow early evening descent toward the horizon. She had been walking for several hours. She had awakened earlier to find herself suddenly sober in a house full of dead people. There was blood everywhere. Some of it was from the people who had lived in the house. And some of it was from Thomas and Joshua, who had cut their own throats.

It was too bad about Thomas and Joshua. They were fun guys. The only problem was they had bought into John Wayne de Rais’ bullshit, whereas for Sally the whole cult thing had never been anything more than an excuse to go wild and live outside of society’s rules. She remained interested in pursuing the same brand of fun, but maybe this time without the expectation of ritual suicide, because that shit was lame.

She heard a car begin to slow down behind her, but she kept her eyes straight ahead and continued walking. A lot of people had offered her rides already today. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. She was a cute white girl with blonde hair. Her clothes were rumpled and her white shirt was stained with blood spatter. Even that failed to put off a lot of people. The only surprise was that some budding serial killer hadn’t attempted to stuff her into his trunk, which was kind of a disappointment. Boy, did she have a surprise waiting for any motherfucker like that.

She smiled, thinking about it.
Hello, Mr. Sex Killer, say hello to Mr. Stabby.

Sally figured this walking thing would get old after a while, but for now it was what she wanted to do, though she was no longer certain why she had set out on foot in the first place. The latest stolen creep van had still been parked at the curb outside the house, but for some reason she had walked right on past it, continuing out to the main road and beyond. Though she was no longer high, she still felt a bit out of sorts, but she supposed anyone would after engaging in such spirited hijinks for so long.

A black Impala rolled up next to her. It was one of the big models from the long, long ago. Big and
long
. The thought made her giggle. The driver’s side window was down. A female voice called out to her. “Hey. You. Blondie. Want a ride?”

Sally stopped in her tracks.

The Impala stopped next to her.

She turned toward the car and stepped close for a peek inside. It was the first time she had stopped to interact with anyone since the beginning of her journey. Even as she did it, she couldn’t say why she was doing it. It was pure instinct.

It felt right.

There were two women inside the car. Both were gorgeous with lots of tattoos, long legs and black hair. The one behind the wheel had Bettie Page bangs and was wearing dark sunglasses. Some kind of heavy rock music was playing at low volume on the radio.

“What is that you’re listening to?”

A smile from the Bettie Page lookalike. “That’s ‘Death Valley ’69’ by Sonic Youth.”

Sally opened the door and slipped into the backseat.

The Impala started off down the road again.

The woman in the shotgun seat turned toward her, grinning. “I’m Lana and this is Echo. What’s your name?”

“Sally.”

“Sally.” Lana drew the two syllables out, as if savoring them. “Nice. I like a good old-fashioned name. Where are you headed, Sally?”

Sally shrugged. “Wherever you’re going.”

Echo glanced at the rearview mirror. Sally glimpsed rows of perfect white teeth when she smiled. “You look like you’ve been walking a while. I bet you were offered other rides. Any reason you got in with us?”

Sally nodded. “You both have black hair. You needed a blonde to balance things out. Also, I was suddenly tired of walking. That shit’s overrated.”

Echo and Lana glanced at each other.

Then they burst out laughing.

Echo put the pedal to the floor and the Impala roared toward the sunset.

About the Author

Bryan Smith is the author of numerous previous novels and novellas, including
The Late Night Horror Show
,
68 Kill
,
House of Blood
,
Depraved
,
The Killing Kind
,
The Dark Ones
,
The Diabolical Conspiracy
, and
The Freakshow
.
 
Bryan lives in Tennessee with an array of animals.
 
He enjoys beer, loud rock and roll, bad B movies, Britcoms, and a lot more of the usual kind of stuff.
 
Visit his home on the web at
www.bryansmith.info
.

Look for these titles by Bryan Smith

Now Available:

The Late Night Horror Show

When the movie starts, the horror becomes real.

The Late Night Horror Show

© 2013 Bryan Smith

It was a run-down old multi-plex in a seedy part of town. But it had a special late-night festival of the cheap horror movies one group of friends loved, movies filled with zombies, vampires and backwoods maniacs.

How could they know it was a very special screening indeed? After the friends split up and their chosen movies began, they found themselves transported out of the life they knew and into the blood-drenched worlds of the films. Worlds where the living dead roam the countryside, the decrepit mansion of a vampire and his minions dominates the night sky, and the shrill scream of a buzz saw is always right behind you.
 

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Late Night Horror Show:

There was something odd about that music. The sound was discordant. Jarring and shrill. But that wasn’t the odd thing about it. What was odd was how tantalizingly familiar it was. The defining element of the music was the sound of seemingly one thousand tortured violins being violently assaulted by an army of escaped mental patients bent on wringing the soundtrack of hell from their undoubtedly stolen instruments. Rapidly repeated, stinging bursts of sudden sharp sounds, followed by longer and more ominous-sounding notes in a lower register.

The overall effect was so like something he’d heard a million times before, with perhaps a couple of minor variations, perhaps wedged between the more familiar notes as an afterthought, a way of warding off a copyright violation lawsuit.

Yet…he couldn’t quite put his finger on why it was so damn familiar.

What the hell
is
that monstrous noise?

John Dorsey stirred from his semidoze and squinted at the fuzzy images on the television in his living room. There was nothing wrong with the picture. And his eyesight was usually fine. The fuzziness was instead a result of the many beers he’d consumed since his breakfast earlier that morning. Wait…was it still morning?

He swiveled his head slowly to the right, squinting harder than ever now.

“Ah.”

Sunshine was visible through the half-drawn blind above the buzzing air conditioner. Didn’t quite solve the mystery. Could be late morning still. Could be afternoon. Could be early evening. But something about the glaringly bright quality of the sunshine made him doubt the last possibility. It was still relatively early, though not so early that he hadn’t had time to put a respectable dent in that case of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Speaking of…

He glanced down at his dangling right hand, which was hanging over the arm of his recliner. The top of the can was held very lightly by the tips of his fingers. Even the slightest lessening of his grip would send it tumbling to the carpeted floor. He frowned and got a more solid grip on the can. He then sat up straight and trained his eyes on the television.

Little less fuzzy now.

Huh. Interesting
.

A woman on the screen was attired in a very skimpy bikini. Nice body. Long, black-as-sin hair flowing over milk-white shoulders. She was screaming and running down a long, shadowy hallway. Someone was chasing her. A dude, naturally. Very large, of course, and wearing some kind of freaky mask. It was easy to see why you’d want to run away from him. Partly it was the ugly mask, but mostly it was because of the huge, whirring chainsaw held high over one of his shoulders.

“Jesus. Not another
Chainsaw
sequel.”

This one looked to be the worst yet. The production values were clearly far below the norm for the series. This one looked like one of those schlocky shot-on-video pieces of garbage that had a tendency to sit unrented for years on the shelves of failing video stores everywhere. And the chainsaw-wielding psycho on the screen didn’t look right at all. The mask looked cheap. A flimsy piece of plastic shit you might buy for a buck at Walmart the day after Halloween. Nothing at all like a mask stitched together from dead human flesh. And the guy lacked the classic Leatherface physique. John’s mouth curled in disgust. Clearly this was a case of some hack with a camera “rebooting” or “reimagining” the franchise. The only question was how in God’s name these obvious amateurs had managed to wrest away the rights to…

He frowned again.

“Huh.”

The woman had reached the end of the hallway. The door there was locked. Of course. It had to be locked. Otherwise, she couldn’t turn to the camera, as she was doing now, splay a hand across her mouth, and scream again as the dude with the chainsaw at last got close enough to begin the butchery.

A title in wavy yellow letters splashed across the screen.

Chainsaw Maniac!

John raised the can of Pabst to his mouth. “The hell is this?”

Of course. Should have been obvious from the beginning. Not an official
Chainsaw
sequel, but instead a cheap rip-off. As the faux-Leatherface character raised his weapon and began to lower the whirring blade toward the cringing babe, the tempo of the music increased again. Now that he’d come out of his beer-induced stupor, his synapses were firing faster and he was able to place why the music was so familiar.

He snapped the fingers of his left hand and jabbed a forefinger at the screen. “
Psycho!
You cheap bastards are ripping off Bernard Herrmann’s score!” He chuckled and raised the can to his mouth again. “Hell, of course you are. So many others have done it, so why not you, right?”

He laughed.

The laughter cut off abruptly as it dawned on him that there was a disturbing lack of refreshing
cerveza
streaming down his horribly parched throat. He scowled at the empty can as he shook it. “Someone has stolen my beer. This offense cannot be tolerated. I declare global thermonuclear war as just retribution.” He chuckled. “Unless, of course, a diplomatic solution is hastily arranged.” He pitched his voice higher and jerked his head toward the kitchen. “Marie! Another beer! Stat! The fate of the world hangs in the balance.”

He laughed some more. Then he frowned. This wasn’t like him. This…jocularity. This delirious good humor. No. No. That wasn’t quite fair. It was what he’d once been like, a lifetime ago, or, in normal people terms, approximately five months ago. Which, imagine this, happened to coincide with his layoff from the well-paying job he’d held for nearly a decade. Yes, a thing like that, especially in today’s barren job market, was enough to crush any man’s spirit.

So…why was he feeling so good?

He kept frowning for a moment. Then he smiled and shrugged. “Whatever. Life is full of mysteries.”

The images on the screen shifted. The wavy yellow letters blurred and spread across the screen, giving way a moment later to new images of horror and destruction. A postapocalyptic world. Burned-out buildings and piles of debris in smoky streets. Hordes of drooling, slack-jawed people in tattered clothes lurching around in the streets, most of them bearing evidence of grisly wounds.
 

The music was different now, too, the derivative symphonic sounds replaced by a bludgeoning, staccato heavy metal beat and rumbling, growled vocals. He couldn’t place the song, but the band sounded kind of like Disturbed. Only it wasn’t Disturbed. It was some sound-alike outfit, some anonymous group of nu-metal douchebags whose tunes were undoubtedly far cheaper to license.