The Greatest Serial Killer in the Universe (3 page)

*****

The next morning, after about three hours of sleep interrupted by Ectozoids whomping on the front door for murder lessons, Luther felt even less enthusiastic about the kill training.

As Boraf shook him awake to face a fresh batch of wannabes, Luther actually felt a wave of dread at the day ahead. Instead of reveling in gleeful anticipation, he wished that the day was over already; the last thing he felt like doing was cranking out another bunch of killer jellyfish.

"
Make more kill,
"
said Boraf, coiling its tentacles around Luther
'
s arms and dragging him up to a sitting position.
"
Save world now.
"

Angrily, Luther batted off the tentacles and got to his feet. Grabbing his smokes and lighter from atop his food locker, he proceeded to draw out a cigarette and plug it into his mouth.

"
Ectozoids need kill now,
"
puffed Boraf, extending a tentacle toward the cigarette.
"
Now not later save world.
"

As the tentacle drifted toward him, Luther froze, the lighter halfway to his mouth. He gave Boraf a look that would have killed it if looks could do that...and as dense or inconsiderate as Boraf was, the
'
Zoid seemed to get the message. The tentacle wavered for an instant in front of Luther
'
s face, then slowly withdrew.

Luther glared at the
'
Zoid for another moment for good measure, then flicked the lighter and touched the flame to the tip of the cigarette. When he released the first lungful of smoke, he was pleased to see the
'
Zoids back away; the one thing they seemed to be more allergic to than waiting was cigarette smoke.

If he had thought he could get away with it, and if he had had enough cigarettes, Luther would have stood there and smoked for the rest of the day.

*****

Around his fifteenth conversion of the morning, Luther began to regret his life as a serial killer.

It was a brand new train of thought, one that had never chugged through him on even his worst days. Even when Lech Bomb had gone bad and the Guild had kicked Luther out, he had never doubted his choice of career. It had been a given practically from day one; he had never felt like he could have been anything
but
a serial killer.

So why, all of a sudden, was he questioning his choice? Why did he feel sadness and shame when he looked back at his achievements instead of the usual pride and nostalgia? And why was he jumping the track now, of all times, just when he was at the apex of his career?

As he guided another
'
Zoid in gutting another victim, Luther remembered the first human life he had taken. The old woman
'
s face came back to him, looking just the same as it had when he
'
d thrown the first shovel-full of dirt on her: weeping and blinking and quaking, buried alive. He had thought of her often through the years, always with secret, dark pleasure...but now, the pleasure had soured. When he conjured her image in his mind (Ida Mae Caldwell, that was her name) he felt a brick in his stomach and a wave of dizzying nausea.

Annoyed at this unexpected response, Luther skimmed through his memories of other victims, seeking more familiar reactions. Not counting the
'
Zoids he
'
d killed, he had 276 to choose from over a 42-year period. Normally, recalling them was like fondling rare coins from a collection--admiring them, wallowing in the selfish joy of ownership; this time, he wanted to put them right down just as soon as he picked them up.

For the first time in his life, his murder memories felt unclean.

He flipped from one to the next, hardly daring to glance at them. Each one intensified his feelings of disgust: Number 12, Julie Kefler, age 33, strangled and minced; Number 37, Steve Parrote, age 41, tortured with pliers for three days and hung on a clothesline; Number 108, Abner Lockjaw, age 74, butchered and fed to his dogs a bite at a time; Numbers 246 and 247, Milo Chapel, age 17, and Peggy Brezini, age 16, cut up and stitched back together into one big mismatched body.

And then there was Number 150, which Luther couldn
'
t even bear to think about for a fraction of a second. Once, Number 150 had been one of his crowning achievements; now, it seemed like the most twisted crime of his entire twisted life.

Contrary to what he had thought up until now, Luther realized that he was a sick and wicked individual. His disgust at the memories of what he had done in the past was equaled only by his newborn self-loathing.

How he could ever have imagined that he was a great man was beyond his current ability to comprehend. Would a great man have come all the way out into space and become the first Earthling to set foot on an alien world...only to murder its inhabitants? Would a great man have failed to see that unleashing the killer instinct might cause more harm than good on Ectos?

Would a great man stand by, arms dripping with pink milk from a punctured head-bulb, as one
'
Zoid trainee fought another over the remains of a murder victim, playing a savage tug-of-war with the limp mess of bulbs and tentacles?

As the creatures squawked and yanked the corpse back and forth, Luther wiped his drenched arms on his black coveralls. Deciding he had had enough, he turned to walk away.

And before he could take a single step, a third
'
Zoid flung itself in front of him.

"
Make kill now,
"
the creature puffed from its forehead blowhole.
"
Now!
"

Luther shook his head and backed away.
"
No more,
"
he said.
"
I need a break.
"

The
'
Zoid reached out with three tentacles at once, and Luther had to back up fast to evade them.
"
Make kill,
"
said the creature.
"
Save world.
"

Luther wished he hadn
'
t handed over the knife to the other two
'
Zoids.
"
Not now,
"
he said, continuing to backstep as the creature pressed toward him.

"
Save world make kill now not later,
"
said the
'
Zoid, extending more tentacles.

Luther took another step and ran into a pillowy obstacle. Lurching away from it at once, he spun around and saw that it was Boraf.

The other
'
Zoid shuffled closer, still reaching. Its tentacles brushed him as he ducked and darted behind Boraf, putting his
'
Zoid host between him and the overeager wannabe.

As Luther got ready to run, the wannabe plowed into Boraf with a sound like wet spaghetti flopping into a
colander
. The creatures hooted and thrashed around, tentacles intertwining, fluid-filled bulbs sloshing against each other.

One of the wannabe
'
s tentacles squirmed out from between them and twisted toward Luther...but he easily sidestepped it. Another wriggled toward him from below, catching him by surprise, but it only managed to graze his leg before he danced away from it.

Then, the wannabe stopped struggling.

It stood there for a moment, huddled against Boraf, breath whistling in and out of its blowhole. Then, slowly, it uncurled its tentacles from Boraf
'
s and drew back, head bobbing from side to side.

Luther watched, expecting the creature to thrust past Boraf and pursue him. Instead, the wannabe shuffled back, tentacles coiling sinuously, head-bulb quivering.

"
Want kill,
"
puffed the creature.
"
Want kill!
"

"
I told you, no more for now,
"
said Luther.
"
You
'
ll have to wait.
"

"
No wait,
"
said the wannabe.
"
No need human.
"

The creature turned and wobbled over to the two
'
Zoids who had been fighting over the carcass. They had resolved the tug-of-war by tearing the corpse in half, and each was now smearing its slimy prize like a washcloth over its body.

The knife the killers had used on their victim lay forgotten in a pink puddle in the street. Flashing out a tentacle, the wannabe scooped up the weapon...and in the same flicker of motion, swung it around and drove it into the head-bulb of one of the killers.

"
Want kill more,
"
sang the wannabe, wrenching the knife from the first
'
Zoid and swinging it around into the head-bulb of the second. As both victims squealed, the wannabe ripped out the knife again and slashed it through the air, pink milk flying, to plunge into another of the first killer
'
s bulbs.
"
Boraf make want kill! No need human!
"

Luther stared as the
'
Zoid lashed the blade back and forth, hacking up two creatures at once. For the first time that he could remember, Luther felt horrified at watching a killing in progress.

Boraf turned and patted his shoulder with a slimy tentacle.
"
Boraf make Ectozoids kill now,
"
said the alien.
"
Luther take break now. Boraf make many kill save world.
"

Luther just kept staring. Whatever had enabled him to transform
'
Zoids into killers--whether it was some fluke of his body chemistry or some warped electrical field in his brain--it had somehow been
transferred
to Boraf. The timing couldn
'
t have been better, because Luther was sick to death of making killers.

And yet, he wondered if it was entirely a good thing that Boraf had the power. He wondered if it would stop with Boraf, or if other
'
Zoids could develop the same ability to implant the killer instinct.

If the killing could be spread by
'
Zoids other than Boraf, he wondered what the world would be like in a week. How much of the population would be left by the time the invaders arrived?

And he wondered if it was just a coincidence that Boraf
'
s empowerment had kicked in just as his own murder drive had fizzled.

*****

That night, no one bothered Luther. No
'
Zoids barged up to wallop the door of Boraf
'
s house-mound, demanding conversion. Luther figured it was because Boraf--and other
'
Zoids, too, most likely--was doing the job just fine without him.

Finally, Luther was alone with time to rest...but all he could do was lie awake and think.

The faces of the many people he
'
d killed kept drifting up out of his memory, filling him with guilt and regret. Number 150, in particular, kept returning again and again, the worst of the lot.

Number 150, Harmony Duquesne, 18 years old.

The harder he tried not to think about her, the more forcefully she surged back to the forefront of his mind. The man he had become could not believe what the man he had been had done to her.

He wondered how he had managed it, how he had managed any of it. Thinking back, he tried to understand what had driven him, what had enabled him to commit such atrocities...and he couldn
'
t. He had the memories, bright and brutal and real, but no grasp at all of the mentality that had brought them into being.

He was a monster, and he finally knew it. Whatever had blinded him to the truth had been leeched out of him by the
'
Zoids; he finally had a conscience and awareness of his nature.

And he wished he didn
'
t.

There was only one redeeming factor, one thing that he might have done right, and he clung to it. By instilling the killer instinct in the
'
Zoids, he might have given them the means to save their world.

Maybe (Luther tried to convince himself) this single act could balance the scales for the past...or, at least, allow him to live with the memories of what he had done. Maybe, with this act of redemption and his newfound change of heart, Luther still had hope for a brighter future free of the demons that had ruled him for most of his life.

And maybe, the evil he had done had had a purpose after all, had all been leading up to this...and in saving the
'
Zoids, Luther had also saved himself.

Rolling over on the sleeping mat, he reached for his cigarettes and fished one out. As he lit it, he listened to the chaos outside--the yips and whistles and squeals of
'
Zoids in frenzy, the splashing of body fluids, the smacking of corpses on the street. It was a
round-the-clock madhouse out there, like a vision of Hell...and he had made it.

He tried not to think about how many
'
Zoids were dying out there as he smoked, how many had died since his arrival on Ectos. Instead, he reminded himself that the death was necessary for the survival of the
'
Zoids, that in order to fend off the invasion, they had to take drastic measures to activate violent tendencies.

Still, Luther worried that it might all fly out of control. Clearly, the
'
Zoids were getting carried away with their newfound murderous impulses; Luther expected a worldwide escalation as the killing gift spread around the planet. He thought it was possible that the
'
Zoids would get so caught up in their collective rampage that they would be too disorganized or depopulated to fight when the invaders arrived.

Which would cancel out any balancing of the scales for Luther. If anything, it would dump him so far into the negative side that he would never even get a glimpse of the positive side again.

He would be to blame. Conquered, the
'
Zoids might have survived, might even have someday overthrown their conquerors. Thanks to Luther, however, the
'
Zoids might kill themselves off on their own.

It would have been the ultimate accomplishment for a death-hungry serial killer, a real work of art. Unfortunately, Luther wasn
'
t a serial killer anymore. He wasn
'
t sure what he was, but he knew he wasn
'
t a serial killer.