Deadside in Bug City

by Randy Chandler

Comet Press Electronic Edition © September 2012

Deadside in Bug City copyright © 2004

by Randy Chandler

All Rights Reserved.

Previously published in Bare Bone #6 by Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2004

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Visit Comet Press on the web at: www.cometpress.us

Table of Contents

- Deadside in Bug City

- Read an excerpt of Randy Chandler's HELLz BELLz

- About the Author

- Other Books by Randy Chandler

- About Comet Press

DEADSIDE IN BUG CITY

Your name is on the lips of the dead.

Draven ducked into a saloon to escape the reeking street prophet. The madman came in after him, but the growling barkeep chased him out with a ball bat. Two burly dockworkers at the bar berated the barkeep for not bashing the prophet’s head.

“He darkens that door again, I’ll crack his skull like a coconut,” the barkeep boasted to his beer-swilling critics. “Religious freaks like him is what’s wrong with this world.”

The dockworker with a dead cigar stub in his teeth said, “Aw hell, he was probably hoping you’d kill him so he could go preach to the Rotties in Bug City.”

“He ain’t gotta be dead to do that,” said the other dockworker. “Slip in any time he wants. And anyway, Rotties don’t talk, you moron. The man dies, his preaching days are over.”

Draven sat at the opposite end of the bar and ordered vodka. The words of the demented prophet echoed between his ears: Your name is on the lips of the dead. Why that insane declaration should bother him so, Draven didn’t understand, but it did, and he couldn’t get the madman’s insistent voice out of his head.

The barkeep set Draven’s shot down in front of him and said, “Ain’t seen you in here before. You come to see the zombie zoo?”

“No,” said Draven, glancing at his Rolex Submariner diver’s watch before taking his first sip. “I’m here on business.”

The barkeep fiddled with his handlebar mustache and gave Draven a naked appraisal. “Kind of business you in?”

“Depends. I’m a contract troubleshooter.”

“What the hell is that? A hit man?” The man smiled with his mouth, not his eyes.

Draven didn’t bother to smile back. “People need things done, I do ’em for the right price.”

“Yeah? Well, I got a shitter backed-up in the john. Think you could fix that for me?” Now his eyes joined his lips in a smile as he glanced down the bar to see if his regulars were paying attention to his witty performance.

Draven said, “I could close this shithole saloon down and end all your troubles.”

The barkeep’s smile fell. He looked hard into Draven’s eyes, frowned inside his drooping mustache, and then retreated to the other end of the bar to join the less menacing dockworkers.

Draven lit a smoke. He studied his dim reflection in the murky mirror behind the bar and wondered why the street prophet had chosen him as a target for his crazy prophesying. His brown bomber jacket and his close-cropped hair gave him a vague military bearing, but he guessed it was probably his eyes the religious psycho had latched onto. People usually saw a steely intelligence in the illusive depths of his eyes and thought they were seeing a depth of soul he didn’t possess; they saw what they wanted to see and extrapolated the rest.

He downed the rest of his drink and walked three blocks to his appointment on Beecher Street. Gusting winds bore the carrion stench of the fenced-off ghetto inhabited by the undead.

Draven coughed into his hand and then announced himself through the intercom set into the stunted stone wall. The iron gate opened with a buzzing click and he entered the small courtyard, went through a green door and took the rickety elevator cage up to the third floor.

A tall, slender woman in a dark business suit and open-collared white blouse greeted him in the hallway. She extended her hand and said, “I’m Melanie Fisher, Dr. Todd’s associate.”

Draven shook her smooth hand. Her sandy hair was parted on the left side like a man’s but there was nothing masculine about her sensuous face and full bosom.

“We’re right down here,” she said, indicating the door to suite 33. She stood aside to let him enter ahead of her.

Dr. Todd stood in front of a tall window overlooking the railroad tracks behind the refurbished building. He was speaking into a cell phone.

Draven scanned the spare surroundings. Four metal desks that might’ve been government-issue formed a rough square in the center of the room. Each desk held a computer terminal and stackable plastic trays crammed with file-folders and loose papers. An old cherrywood desk sat in front of the rear wall of tall windows. Todd walked to the desk and leaned against it, the cell phone still pressed to his ear. He nodded to Draven and held up one finger in a “wait one” gesture.

Draven stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket and waited. Melanie Fisher lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke toward the high ceiling. She crossed her left arm beneath her bosom and held the cigarette high between two fingers of her right hand. “I’ve been trying to quit,” she said, “but being so close to ground zero, I have to smoke to cover up the stench when the wind’s blowing this way.”

Todd suddenly folded his phone and came forward from his desk. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said as he shook Draven’s hand. “Keeping our backers happy is a fulltime job. I do more pimping than a lobbyist on the Hill. Ah, but those days over now. The government tit’s dried up, the cash cow slaughtered.”

“What Glenn’s trying to say in his off-color way,” said Melanie Fisher, “is that we’ve lost all government funding for our research and we must now rely on the private sector. For a scientist, he makes a pretty good politician.”

“I detest it,” said Todd. “But the good news is, we can pay you five thousand dollars for this assignment, Mr. Draven.”

Draven said, “Lay it out for me.”

“All right. This way, please.”

Todd and Fisher led him through another door and into what looked like a small home theater with comfortable seating and a huge flat-screen TV on one wall. Four smaller screens were affixed to the wall on the right-hand side of the big screen. Todd directed Draven to a seat and Fisher sat beside him. Todd stood behind them and dimmed the lights.

The four smaller screens flickered to life. Each one showed a different view of the housing-project ghetto commonly called Bug City. Human figures dressed in yellow jumpsuits moved about the sidewalks and streets with halting, unnatural gaits. Others stood still or sat staring into space, rocking, twitching or wringing their hands.

Draven knew he was seeing the living-dead victims of the bio-weapon unleashed by terrorists six months ago. The genetically-engineered virus had killed close to 40,000 of the city’s inhabitants. 1,400 of those victims had become reanimated corpses—mindless machines of flesh and bone in perpetual motion.

“These are live feeds,” explained Todd. “Our cameras are set up at strategic locations within the ghetto so we can monitor their random behavior. All in all, pretty boring stuff. We’ve been watching the poor buggers for three months now. As soon as the government decided to use this city sector as the main dumping ground for Rotties, we came on board under contract to CDC.”

The woman touched Draven’s arm as she said, “We observe and record their behavior, then analyze it. We’ve logged over 80,000 hours, but until last Tuesday, we saw nothing remarkable.”

“Melanie was watching when it happened,” said Todd with enthusiasm. “She called me at home in the middle of the night she was so excited.”

Draven was growing impatient. He’d already seen enough of the on-screen walking corpses. It was depressing; it made him feel more depraved than a voyeur at a carnival freak show. “Cut to the chase,” he said. “What did you see?”

“We’ll show you,” Todd said behind him. “Watch the big screen.”

The huge screen lit up and Todd cued the videotape. The scene appeared to be the same street corner shown in the live shot on the lower-left small screen.

Draven leaned forward in his seat as a woman with long, black hair entered the frame from the left and walked deliberately to the brick wall of a three-story housing-project building. Her yellow jumpsuit was noticeably cleaner than those of the other milling subjects. The camera was positioned so that both walls angling away from the corner of the building were partially visible. The woman walked up to the wall and began to spray it with an aerosol can of red paint. Given the camera angle, it was impossible to decipher any recognizable configuration or design in her handiwork, but she moved the can and applied the paint with seemingly purposeful intent.

“What’s she doing?” asked Draven.

“Ah, that is the question,” said Todd. “Obviously, she’s spraying paint on a brick wall, but why is she doing it? None of the other victims has ever exhibited such calculated behavior. Some of them walk aimlessly until they run into a wall and then bounce off in another direction like a slow-motion billiard ball until they hit the next obstacle. Others have enough awareness of their surroundings to turn before they hit a wall. But this woman—we call her ‘Raven’ because of her hair color—seems to have retained some spark of intelligence and possibly even a creative impulse. It’s quite amazing, really. And because of her, we’ve been able to secure funding to keep this project going. If the Pro-lifers can show evidence of intelligent life in just one of the subjects, then their lawyers could make a reasonable case against destroying any of the Rotties. The current administration is bent on extermination and doesn’t want things further complicated by any morally ambiguous new data. Which is why our backers will pay you to go in and bring her out.”

Fisher added, “The only thing keeping them alive, so to speak, is what amounts to a legal stay of execution until the court decides their fate.”

On screen, “Raven” lowered the spray can, and stepped back from the brick wall to scrutinize her “art.”

“Look at that,” said Todd. “You can’t tell me that woman is a mindless zombie.”

“Are you sure she’s dead?” Draven asked. “Maybe she’s in there by mistake.”

“Highly unlikely,” Todd answered. “But if she is alive, you will be rescuing her from a living hell.”

“That’s it? All you want me to do is go in and bring her out?”

“And to take photos of her spray-painting,” said Fisher. “I’m dying to know what it is.”

“And if you’re concerned about contracting the virus,” said Todd, “don’t be. The bug mutated rapidly and ceased being contagious three weeks after it was released. That’s not government propaganda. It’s a scientific fact. Apparently, Allah’s bio-engineers weren’t the sharpest blades in the box. And I’m sure they had no idea the virus would have this zombie-making effect.”

“I’m not worried about the bug,” said Draven, “but that place must be a cesspool of bacteria with all those rotting corpses roaming around.”

“One of the surprising findings of the medical team is that rate of decay of the typical victim is unnaturally slow. It seems to be a function of the mechanism that reanimates dead organisms. But so far they’re at odds to explain how it works. And of course, the Rotties don’t eat, so there is no human waste to worry about.”

Fisher chimed in: “And crop-dusters spray the entire area everyday with powerful disinfectants.”

“You will be outfitted with a mask and breathing apparatus, the kind mountain climbers use at high altitudes,” added Todd. “They say the stench is unbearable inside the ghetto.”

Draven looked over his shoulder at Todd. “And if the woman resists being brought out?”

“Then you bring her out by force,” Todd said. “But we don’t want her injured. You’ll be driving an ambulance. You’ll secure her to the stretcher and simply drive out. Drugging her isn’t an option, since she has no functioning biological systems.”

“I don’t get it,” said Draven. “These freaks don’t eat or drink, their organs don’t work, so what keeps them moving? I’m no biologist, but I know muscles and nerves have to burn energy to move.”

“We don’t know yet,” said Todd. “The CDC has some of the victims in an isolation wing and they’ve done all sorts of testing on them, but so far they’ve found no answers. They have discovered unexplained electrical activity in the nerves and muscles, but they have no idea what causes it.”

“Finding her will be the hardest part of the job,” said Fisher. “But she’s revisited her wall painting three times that we know of, so she might show up there again. That’s the area you should focus on. We’ve marked it on the map for you.”

Draven stood. He looked down at Melanie Fisher, then back at Dr. Todd. “All right. I’ll do it.”

“Excellent,” said Todd, suddenly ebullient. “Melanie, let’s go ahead and inoculate him.”

“What?” Draven stiffened.

“Just as a precaution,” said the doctor. “We want to immunize you against things like cholera, typhoid fever. We’re treating this as we would a visit to a primitive third-world country.”

“I’ll be gentle,” Fisher said, smiling as she touched his arm. She left the room and came back a few minutes later with a pressure-gun injector. Draven took off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeve. She put the barrel to his bare upper arm and fired. When she pulled it away, a trickle of blood ran down his arm and she wiped it away with a sterile swab.

“There,” she said. “In three days you’ll be good to go.”

* * *

Just after dawn on the fourth day after his initial meeting with Todd and Fisher, Draven climbed into the driver’s seat of the ambulance and slammed the door. Dr. Todd signaled him to roll the window down. Melanie Fisher stood behind the dapper doctor, smoking a cigarette.

“One more thing,” said Todd. “Try not to run over any Rotties. Passions are already high over this whole situation. We don’t want to do anything to set off more rioting.”

Draven nodded. He put the ambulance in gear and drove off in the direction of the fenced-in derelict housing projects known as Bug City. On the seat next to him was a folder with a color photograph of “Raven” paper-clipped to its cover. Her real name was unknown. Before the undead victims of the Lazarus Bug had been deposited in the condemned projects, they each had been photographed for future reference. The raven-haired woman in the photo had striking features death hadn’t erased, not yet. Her heavy-lidded dark eyes appeared unfocused, and her slack-jawed expression suggested a woman coming off a drunk, but Draven easily imagined how she must’ve looked with the spark of life animating her features. She must’ve been a real knock-out when she had a heartbeat.

As he rolled to a stop in front of the gated entrance, a national guardsman in full combat gear approached the ambulance, his rifle hanging by a canvas strap from his shoulder. Draven flashed his bogus orange security pass in the soldier’s face.

“You bringing one out?” asked the young man.

Draven nodded.

“Be careful in there. The Rotties are restless.”

The soldier opened the gate and Draven drove through the temporary break in the electrified fence. The gate slammed shut behind him as he drove slowly along a narrow street of cracked asphalt that led into the cramped huddle of ugly brick buildings. The mixed aromas of disinfectant and human rot drifted in through the vents. He closed them and turned the air-conditioner on low.

A flash of yellow caught his eye. A dark-skinned man in a soiled yellow jumpsuit shambled along a walkway in front of the first building on the right. Two more Rotties appeared in the doorway of the same building, a woman with a child hanging on to her leg. The undead woman seemed oblivious to the fact that the child was even there.

Draven stopped to consult the map. By his reckoning, the building with the woman’s wall-painting was two streets over, on the backside of the project’s west-end. Something thumped against the side of the vehicle. He glanced at the mirror on the driver’s door and saw a tall ashen-skinned black man hammer his fist against the ambulance in a second blow. The man was bare-chested, the empty arms of his jumpsuit hanging from his waist to the ground.

Draven cursed. Either his employers had lied to him, or they had been wrong about the Rotties’ physical capabilities. Pounding a fist against a vehicle required intent and—at the least—a rudimentary understanding of cause and effect. It was a violent act of will. Draven touched the butt of the pistol snugged in the shoulder rig inside his jacket. He had no idea what effect a .45 slug would have on the walking dead, but he wouldn’t hesitate to find out if things got too hairy.

He gunned the engine and sped away as the Rottie delivered a parting blow. He turned right at the next narrow street and had to come to a complete stop to avoid running over a skin-and-bone zombie crawling across the asphalt, head down and long, dirty hair dragging the street. Much of the dead flesh of the crawler’s hands had sloughed off, exposing bare bones. Draven was filled with revulsion as he watched the crawler encounter the curb and crawl in place, unable to clear the raised concrete.

“These poor bastards need to be destroyed,” he said to himself. Pro-lifers be damned, he thought, this isn’t life.

He drove slowly on. A Rottie fell from a third-story window and hit head-first on the ground below. It lay unmoving a moment, then pushed to its feet and staggered forward, its neck obviously broken, head hanging obscenely to one side. Draven was tempted to get out of the vehicle and shoot the thing in the head to put it out of its undying misery, but he was beginning to suspect a bullet in the brain wouldn’t lay these abominations to rest. Probably nothing short of cremation would stop them. Saturation bombing with napalm might do it, but crematoriums would be much tidier.

His cell phone rang. He flipped it open and answered. It was Melanie Fisher.

“Bad news,” she said. “There are reports of men with guns trying to get to Bug City. The police intercepted a convoy of pickup trucks and turned them back, but there may be more on the way. They call themselves The Exterminators and say they are going to eliminate the Rotties once and for all.”

“Great,” said Draven, lighting a cigarette.

“Draven…?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“Bet your sweet ass,” he said, then shut the cell and accelerated to the next corner, where a naked Rottie walked in place, forehead against a streetlamp pole, going nowhere.

He stopped at the curb fronting Raven’s spray-painted wall. He put on the breathing apparatus (a mask connected to a canister of oxygen worn in a canvas sling on his back), shut off the engine and stepped out of the vehicle. He pulled a digital camera from his jacket pocket and approached the brick wall. The nearest Rotties were milling about in the street twenty meters from him, oblivious to his presence. In the distance behind them, another scattered handful wandered a grassy area near the electrified fence.

Draven stared at the woman’s handiwork. Beneath a shapeless blob of red paint were three crude but unmistakable letters: G O D. Below the letters was a misshapen arrow pointing downward. He raised the camera to his eye and snapped off six shots. He looked around to make sure his flank was still secure, then took four more shots.

He wasn’t a religious man, so he was somewhat surprised by his reaction to Raven’s “GOD” graffiti. Chills prickled his arms and scalp, and he felt a falling sensation in his gut as if he were in an elevator suddenly lurching to a stop. He stared at the wall, trying to fathom the meaning of the down-pointing arrow under God. Did it mean the woman thought God was here? Was it a distress signal to the Almighty, the arrow intended to direct Him here from Heaven? Did it mean God was buried here, entombed beneath the arrow? Did it mean anything at all, or was it only a religious delusion of a decaying brain?

He shot one last picture, stuck the camera in his jacket and walked toward the building across the street—the direction from which Raven originally had come to spray her message on the wall. He didn’t relish going into any of these buildings, but he had to begin his search somewhere, and it seemed a logical choice. If there were 1,400 Rotties within these fences, then most of them had to be inside the buildings; there weren’t that many wandering about outside. Maybe a shred of primitive instinct to seek shelter drove them indoors.

He stopped in the doorway of building F, pulled his Mag-Lite from his back pocket and stepped inside. There was no electricity in any of the buildings and Draven felt as if he were entering a shadowy cave—or a giant tomb. He heard nothing but the rhythmic hiss of his breath in his oxygen mask. In front of him was a stairway to the two floors of apartments above. He clicked on the flashlight and started on the ground floor, going from unit to unit, but to his surprise he found the ramshackle apartments empty. Where the hell were the Rotties?

He took the thin concrete-and-steel steps to the second floor. He kicked a door open and his beam of light fell on a naked corpse standing in front of a TV with a shattered screen. In profile, her partially decayed breasts sagged to her enormous belly. The woman must’ve been pregnant when she succumbed to the virus, and Draven willed himself not to think of the never-to-be-born infant slowly rotting in her womb. She turned sluggishly toward the source of the light beam, her eyes holding the light like cloudy mirrors. Her pregnant belly was unnaturally low-slung, the dark purple head of the dead baby protruding from her vagina. Draven guessed that the walls of her womb had yielded to rot and gravity had brought the infant to its obscene impasse. He left them there and went on to the next unit. Fifteen minutes later he’d completed his sweep of F building, having found only six Rotties—none of them Raven. He decided to go back to Building G, marked by the inexplicable graffiti.

As soon as he went through the doorway he knew he’d hit undead pay-dirt. Rotties congregated at the foot of the stairs, on the stairs and in the doorways of apartment units. Some of them turned in his direction and looked at him with dead eyes. Unlike the living-dead in countless zombie movies, these walking corpses didn’t grunt, growl or shriek “More brains.” With no air in the lungs, they couldn’t vocalize at all. There was only the low murmur of shuffling bare feet.

Draven played his light in their faces, looking for Raven. Some of them backed away from the light, others moved toward it. Remembering the man who’d pounded the ambulance, he warily advanced into the huddle of zombies. The stench found its way into his mask. He ignored it and weaved his way through them and toward the first apartment.

A mummified hand knocked his oxygen mask askew, and he lashed out with the Mag-Lite in a moment of panic. The heavy flashlight thumped into a wide, putrefied face and dislodged the dead man’s nose and caved in his cheek. Another hand latched onto the back of Draven’s jacket and yanked him off balance. He swung around with the club-like Mag-Lite and cracked it against the aggressive Rottie’s skull. The light didn’t go out.

As with one mind, the undead crowd washed over Draven like a relentless ocean wave and took him under.

The dead sea of yellow-clad corpses suddenly parted above him. He was on his back, looking up into the face of the woman he’d been sent to find. Raven had found him.

* * *

She extended her slender hand to him, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch her and stood up on his own. His mask hung below his chin. He left it there so he could speak clearly to her. “My name is Draven,” he said in a loud, clear voice. “I’ve come to take you out of here. Do you understand me?”

Though her eyes were death-clouded, he perceived intelligence behind them. She silently mouthed his name.

Your name is on the lips of the dead.

The other Rotties stood motionless around them, leaning in expectantly. Draven sensed they were watching this meeting with great reverence, as if he were an envoy from the world of the living, here to impart a message of profound import to their leader.

“Will you come with me?” he asked.

Her face didn’t appear any worse for the wear than it had when her photo was taken. The eggheads were apparently right about the unnatural rate of decay. And yet, most of the other Rotties seemed more rotten than Raven, their flesh slowly yielding to the ravages of decomposition, while her skin remained fairly smooth, though deathly pallid. What, Draven wondered, made her different?

He stared into her unblinking eyes, waiting for an answer, a nod, any sign that she understood his question. “Come with me,” he said. “Please.”

A helicopter’s rotors thumped the air above the building. The Rotties stirred, reacting to the sound. A ripple ran through the herd. Raven raised her hands and immediately calmed them. Draven was astounded by her easy control over her dead fellows.

As he was about to reach for her arm to regain her attention, gunfire erupted outside. Draven pushed through the stinking bodies and looked out the nearest window. Outside the rear fence three men with rifles were shooting at the scattered handful of Rotties in front of them. One of the targets spun around and fell to the weed-choked ground, bits of decayed flesh flying from its face.

“Son of a bitch,” Draven spat. He rushed outside, drawing his .45 from his shoulder rig.

The wounded corpse was on hands and knees, trying to get up. The police helicopter hovered over the armed Exterminators, its loud-speaker ordering them to drop their weapons, but the three riflemen continued to fire at the walking dead.

Draven stood in the middle of the narrow street, assumed a two-handed firing stance and snapped off four shots through the chain-link fence. He didn’t expect to score hits with his handgun at this distance. His intention was to scare the shooters off. But they continued to fire. And now they were firing at him.

The cell phone in his pocket chirped and a rifle slug thumped the asphalt at his feet. Draven quickly calculated trajectory and adjusted his aim accordingly, then fired again. One of the riflemen went down. The two remaining Exterminators increased their rate of fire, apparently infuriated by the loss of their fallen comrade.

A high-powered slug ripped into Draven’s left shoulder and a millisecond later a slug drilled into his forehead, cut a fatal swath through his brain and blew out the back of his head.

* * *

Melanie Fisher and Dr. Todd saw Draven’s death on the live-feed screen. Though there was no sound accompanying the picture, Fisher “felt” the devastating head-shot in her belly. She collapsed into the seat and buried her face in her hands.

“Look!” said Todd. “There she is!”

Fisher looked up at the screen. With the enigmatic wall-painting in the background, Raven walked to Draven’s body and squatted stiffly over him. The dead woman cupped Draven’s face in her hand, then bent down and pressed her lips to the wound in his head.

“My God, what’s she doing?” asked Todd. “Is she…drinking his blood?”

After a full minute, Raven pulled away and stood up.

“No,” said Fisher when she saw the impossible thing that happened next.

Draven sat up in the street and looked around like a man waking in unfamiliar surroundings. Raven extended her hand. Draven accepted it, and she pulled him to his feet. He touched his fingertips to the back of his ruined skull, looked at his fingers, and then walked hand-in-hand with Raven toward the building. A small crowd of Rotties assimilated them with welcoming arms.

“Jesus Christ! What the hell just happened?” Todd demanded.

“I’m not sure,” Melanie Fisher said, “but I think she just gave him the kiss of life.”

Read an excerpt of Randy Chandler's HELLz BELLz, now available on Kindle and Nook!

Randy Chandler's out-of-print and hard-to-find novel HELLz BELLz is back in ebook, on Kindle and Nook.

When an ancient bell begins to toll in an abandoned church, the town of Druid Hills descends into a night of unholy hell. To survive, the less crazed citizens must fight for their lives as they battle their own primitive urges to commit unspeakable acts. Before the night ends, some will discover that there are fates worse than death.

Praise for HELLz BELLz

“The tension is built with the skill of a professional, and it is added to by the reader's knowledge that every character is expendable. Hellz Bellz is good fun. There is sex, violence and a hell of a story. This novel reminds me just a little of early-Stephen King mixed with everything Richard Laymon ever wrote. This one, you should read.”

—SFReader

“Oh intellectual horror, how I’ve missed you!! After one too many mind-numbing books, Hellz Bellz is a treat to be both desired and consumed.”

—Horror-Web

CHAPTER ONE

The church bell began to toll at sunset.

Joe Carr lifted his eyes from the steamy sidewalk, turned his head and looked up at the abandoned church on Holy Cross Hill. He shook his head in perplexed wonder and pushed through the smudged-glass door of the Jiffy-Quick Mini-Mart. Crossing the threshold, he felt a fleeting sense of déjà vu.

The cowbell above the door clanged and the clean-shaven Pakistani behind the counter glanced up from a newspaper and gave Joe a wary nod. Joe figured the guy saw every customer as a potential robber, so he smiled to show he was no threat. But behind the plastic smile he was thinking: Just an ordinary Joe, fuck you very much.

“Nice and cool in here,” Joe said as he walked up to the counter. He shivered against the air-conditioner’s chill. Too damn cold, but still better than being out in the hot soupy air of the endless late-summer heat wave. “I need a pack of Benson and Hedges menthol.”

The Pakistani reached to the rack above his head, pulled down the pack of smokes and slapped it on the counter like a Blackjack dealer slapping down a winning ace. “Anything else?”

Before Joe could say, “No thanks,” the cowbell clanged again and the man went into a paroxysm of anger and sputtered, “You get out of here. I call police.”

Joe looked back to see who had set off such an intense reaction from the Pakistani.

A rat-faced man with long greasy hair raised his middle finger and proudly presented it to the storekeeper. His lips peeled back in a gap-toothed grin a hockey goalie would’ve been proud of. His faded grease-stained jeans looked pretty good compared to the ragged Army fatigue shirt he wore unbuttoned to his hairy belly, its sleeves cut off at thick shoulders, his shoulders and forearms etched with violent swirls of skin art.

Joe stared at the muted colors of the man’s tattooed flesh. Things seemed to be moving around there, as if some of the tattoos were alive and crawling up and down his thick arms.

“What’re you looking at, asshole?” the illustrated man asked Joe.

“You are a thief!” the Pakistani shouted. “I don’t want you in my store!”

“Nothing,” Joe mumbled, looking at the floor.

“Bullshit,” the man said as he came forward, knocking over a wire rack of over-priced potato chips.

Joe stepped back and bumped into the counter.

Rat Face stepped on a bag of chips. Cellophane crinkled. Chips crackled. Joe’s heart pounded on his eardrums.

“My money ain’t no good here?” Rat Face yanked the little chain hooked to his thick belt and a greasy-looking wallet popped out of his jeans pocket. The wallet looked like it had been run over by a fleet of eighteen-wheelers with leaky crankcases. “I’m a paying customer, you rag-head goat fucker.”

The storekeeper did some more sputtering, finally getting out the words: “I call nine-one-one.” He had the phone in his hand and was holding it like a weapon.

Joe was close enough to Rat Face to smell his stench, and his stomach did a rollover, sending a hot surge of bile up his throat. He decided to get the hell out of there and do his cigarette shopping elsewhere, but as he took his first step toward the door, Rat Face planted his filthy thick-knuckled hand in the center of Joe’s chest and stopped him.

“Hold up, Bubba,” said Rat Face, “you’re my witness. You see this guy threatening me wid dat phone?”

The Pakistani started punching digits, but before he hit the third number, Rat Face reached over the counter and snatched the phone away, laughing. It was a dirty, rumbling sound, like the thunder of hot-rods on a dusty drag strip.

Joe found his voice and said, “Let’s just—”

“You son of a bitch,” Rat Face spat, dropping the phone. He was talking to the storekeeper who had pulled a pistol from under the counter and was pointing it at him.

There was a long nerve-wracking moment of thick silence.

Rat Face stared at the Pakistani. The Pakistani stared back. Joe’s eyes went back and forth between the two men faced off across the counter.

The air-conditioner hummed.

Up on Holy Cross Hill, the iron bell in the belfry of the forsaken church continued its somber tolling. Who’s ringing that damn bell? Joe wondered.

Then the door opened, the cowbell clatter-clanked and a girl in cutoff jeans and a skimpy halter-top sauntered into the store. She didn’t look toward the three men frozen at the counter, but went straight toward the refrigerated beer on the back wall of the Jiffy-Quick.

“Your damn Skippy,” said Rat Face, smiling at the man with the gun.

Joe took a second to wonder what the hell that meant, then he moved on to the real question: Is somebody going to get shot?

“Give me the phone,” the Pakistani demanded. He had the pistol’s muzzle zeroed on the longhair’s chest.

“Fuck you, come get it,” said Rat Face.

The girl in the red halter-top pulled a six-pack of brew from the fridge, let the glass door shut with the sound of a smacking kiss, then turned toward the counter and froze when she saw the gun in the storekeeper’s hand.

Joe shook his head, trying to signal her away. But her wide eyes never left the gun. Joe’s eyes drifted down to her jaunty breasts. The cold air in the store had puckered her nipples and they poked against the thin halter-top, tweaking the single-minded little soldier in Joe’s pants. The little trooper’s helmet nosed against Joe’s zipper, unmindful of mortal danger.

“You think I will not shoot you?” the incredulous storekeeper asked Rat Face.

“You ain’t got the balls, sand monkey.” Rat Face sneered, flashing his gapped teeth.

Outside, the church bell kept up its ponderous bonging.

Joe had had enough. He was not going to be hostage to this tableau of macho craziness. He moved toward the girl with the six-pack. She finally tore her eyes from the gun and fixed them on Joe as he walked toward her. “We have to go,” he said simply, softly.

She gave him a questioning look, then glanced down at the six-pack of beer in her hand. She had a hard-edged prettiness that reminded Joe of a country & western singer he couldn’t quite put a name to. She was probably in her mid-twenties, with bottle-blonde hair and a tight little body. If he had to guess, he’d say she lived in the run-down tenement building off Old Boston Road, two blocks from where they now stood in dangerous limbo. She looked up at Joe again.

“Forget the beer,” he said. “We gotta go.”

She nodded. She put the beer on top of a stack of soup cans, keeping a wary eye on the two men at the cashier’s counter.

Joe took her hand and they walked toward the door like a pair of mismatched lovers.

The pop of the gunshot made the “lovers” jump, and Joe jerked his head toward the sound.

Rat Face staggered backward, righted himself and pulled a hunting knife from the leather sheath hidden beneath the tails of his fatigue shirt. With a roar of rage he dove over the counter in a graceless parody of a swashbuckling pirate in an old Douglas Fairbanks movie. He and the storekeeper disappeared behind the counter as the pistol fired again, shattering the florescent light in the ceiling and sending down a small shower of glass and shadow.

The girl tugged on Joe’s hand, urging him toward the door, but he resisted, keeping his feet planted on the dirty tile. He was drawn to the violence. He had to see it. To walk out now would be the same as walking out of a blockbuster action movie during the best part. He couldn’t do it. Never mind that this was most certainly not a movie and that he himself might easily become a victim of the violence. He simply couldn’t tear himself away.

“Come on,” said the halter-top girl. “Are you nuts?”

“You go,” he told her without glancing her way. “Call the police.”

She wrenched her hand from his (he had forgotten he was still holding it) and dashed out the door. The cowbell clattered in her wake.

Joe couldn’t see them, but he heard the scuffling and grunting and cursing as the two men grappled on the floor behind the counter. And he heard the steady bonging of the church bell. He was getting used to the lulling sound of the ancient bell, and it somehow gave him courage to approach the counter and peer over its edge, past the Marlboro display, the herbal stay-awake pills, the disposable lighters, the little rack of beef jerky, and all the other junky impulse-items arrayed near the cash register.

The knife rose in a dirty hand attached to a tattooed arm. Joe gripped the counter with both his hands and followed the arc of the blade as it sliced through the chilly air and struck the Pakistani’s throat, sinking halfway to the hilt. Blood gushed from the wound and spurted onto the knife-wielder’s thick knuckles, then dripped down the ragged edges of his fingernails, eclipsing the black crud embedded beneath them.

Joe watched with sickened wonder as the blade pulled out of the punctured throat, drawing a stringy gutted-worm piece of the Pakistani’s inner anatomy (a severed blood vessel?) with it. Then the blade descended again, this time burying itself deep in the storekeeper’s chest. The Pakistani’s eyes bulged from their sockets and he worked his mouth as though trying to speak, but his ruined throat gave him no voice. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. In the dim light, his tongue looked like a tiny cornered creature trying to escape a death trap.

Rat Face jerked the blade free and set to work on the storekeeper’s face, stabbing repeatedly, puncturing both eyes, opening up gashes in the cheeks, the forehead, slicing off an ear, stabbing, stabbing: stook…stook…stook…

The stook..stook…stook was punctuated by the deep-throated bong of the church bell. Joe wondered if the knifer knew he had fallen into perfect rhythm with the bell. Then he wondered why he wasn’t doing anything to stop the slaughter.

I can’t just stand here and watch, he told himself. A weapon. I need a weapon.

He looked around for something—anything—to use to club Rat Face over the head.

He saw nothing heavy enough to cold-cock the madman. And what if the guy was on drugs? Something like PCP, that Angel Dust stuff that could turn scrawny dopers into raging berserkers. Christ, he’d already been shot, and that hadn’t slowed him down. If I don’t knock him cold, or kill him, he’ll start working me over with his knife. I better get the hell out of here and let the cops deal with it.

But then Rat Face did something so totally unexpected that Joe Carr could do nothing but stare at the act of animalistic depravity. The man stopped stabbing the storekeeper, leaned down and began to gnaw the raw wound in his throat, making obscene slurping sounds as he imbibed Pakistani blood.

Joe’s stomach lurched. Lurching seemed like a good idea, so he lurched away from the counter. And tripped over the fallen rack of chips. A twelve-ounce bag of nachos cushioned his face and probably saved him from a broken nose. Slightly stunned, he stayed on the floor for a long moment, wondering if he’d taken a fall, knocked himself silly and imagined the brutal knife attack. But that awful slurping sound and the bong…bong…bong of the church bell brought him back to reality, and he pushed up and got back on his feet. Waves of dizziness were breaking on his brain. He felt seasick, just the way he’d felt on his one and only deep-sea fishing trip. The Jiffy-Quick had somehow set sail and was riding big swells of a stormy ocean. He draped himself over the top of a shelf of canned vegetables and hung on, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

“Your turn, Bubba,” said Rat Face as he hopped over the counter. The lower half of his face was smeared with gore. Blood dripped from the frizzy tips of his wild hair. He grinned the snaggle-toothed grin of a true maniac. His eyes burned with dark fire.

Joe unfolded himself from the stack of shelved cans and tried to run, but the sloshing storm inside his head threw off his equilibrium and he reeled into a tower of canned cola, knocking a life-sized cardboard NFL quarterback on his flat ass.

“Sacked the sumbitch,” said Rat Face, spraying a mist of the Pakistani’s blood. “Heh-hah-hah.”

Joe was still on his feet, but he was swaying and disoriented like a drunk in a funhouse. As the grinning madman walked toward him with the knife, Joe latched onto the pealing of the church bell. It seemed the only sure thing in a world gone mad. No matter what happened, it would go on ringing.

Then Joe looked at the bloody knife in Rat Face’s hand, and he smiled and said, “It tolls for thee.”

* * *

Todd Sarkanian saw her first. She was running out of the Jiffy-Quick Mini-Mart, waving her arms in an obvious attempt to flag them down. “Hold up,” he told the driver, Sergeant Fuller.

“What?” Fuller growled.

“Stop. She’s waving at us,” said Todd.

Sergeant Fuller grumbled incoherently, something about “goddamn rookies” as he eased off the gas and swiveled his big head around to see what Todd was talking about. “Whoa, check them tits. Good call, rookie.”

Fuller cut the wheel and pulled the Druid Hills Police cruiser to the curb. Todd let his window down and leaned his head out to hear what the girl in the red halter-top was saying as she came running up to the car. Fuller was right, she did have nice tits, but Todd could see by the expression on her face that he should get his mind off the young woman’s anatomy and try to decipher her rush of words. The frantic look on her face told him they would have to delay the investigation of the ringing bell in the condemned church—which was fine with Todd, because he knew Fuller would send him up into the belfry to run off the bored teenagers who were likely to be the culprits. Sergeant Fuller delighted in breaking Todd’s balls. The fat bastard’s favorite game was Ride the Rookie. But this was Todd’s last day to be stuck with the sarge; tomorrow the training wheels would come off and he would be allowed to sign out his own squad car and patrol on his own. For now, the girl with the nice tits was a welcome diversion.

“What’s the problem?” he interrupted her shrill babble.

She pointed back at the convenience store, took a breath and said, “Two guys are fighting over a gun. I think one’s been shot. I dunno, I guess it’s a robbery.”

Todd glanced at Fuller. Fuller said, “Call it in. Think you can handle that?” Todd bit back his anger, grabbed the mike and called in their location and reported “shots fired.”

Roger, unit three, the dispatcher’s voice crackled from the radio. Do you need assistance?

Todd looked askance at Sergeant Fuller. “Do we want backup?”

“Don’t need back-up. Not if you do your job. Let’s go.”

“Negative,” he told Dispatch. Todd told the girl to wait by the cruiser, then followed Fuller to the entrance of the store. The windows and glass doors of the place were plastered with signs, so they couldn’t see what was happening inside. They drew their pistols simultaneously.

Fuller said, “That fucking Habib’s always whipping out his gun. If he’s shot somebody, I’m gonna bust his crazy ass. I don’t care if he was getting robbed. You ready?”

Todd nodded.

“Don’t shoot me, rookie,” Fuller said with a smirk. Then he went through the door, shouting: “Police!”

Todd went in on Fuller’s heels, angling the muzzle of his .38 at the ceiling.

“Freeze!” Fuller yelled and pointed his pistol at a bloody wild man with a knife. “Drop the knife, motherfucker.”

Todd stood beside the sarge, for once glad of the man’s company (and his years of experience on the job) and aimed his gun at the perp’s chest. His heart raced. Adrenaline surged into his bloodstream and he tried to relax his trigger finger so he wouldn’t accidentally shoot the knife-wielding man.

A second man stood with his back against an island of merchandise, a bewildered expression on his face. Todd recognized him as the owner of the independent bookstore on the corner of Hawthorn and Vine. He didn’t appear to be wounded. Just scared shitless and witless by the guy with the knife. And the guy with the knife didn’t look very interested in dropping his blade.

The church bell continued to ring. Todd wished those damn juvenile delinquents would give it a rest. The damned bonging was really getting on his nerves.

“Last chance, ass-wipe,” growled Fuller. “I’ll drop you where you stand.”

“Done been shot, shitbird,” the man said. He grinned. His mouth and chin were bloody, but Todd didn’t see a bullet hole in his face. There was a place on his shirt that looked like it might be a gunshot wound.

Sergeant Fuller shot him point-blank in the belly.

The man took a backward step, then looked down at his gut, hugged himself and dropped to one knee. But he still had the knife in his hand.

“Told ya, you son-of-a-bitch,” said Fuller. “Now, drop it or I’ll shoot you again.”

The guy looked up at Fuller, spat a glob of bloody spit on the floor and said, “Fuck you, Freddy.” Then he laughed.

“Ah, fuck it,” said Fuller. He holstered his pistol, popped his baton off his belt, drew back and clocked the poor bastard on the side of the head.

The gut-shot man fell over. His eyes stayed open, but they looked glassy and unfocused.

“Jeez…” Todd said. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“Put your cuffs on him before he gets up again.”

As Todd knelt down to cuff the dazed and wounded man, Fuller shouted: “Habib? Where are you, Pak Man?”

The man propped against the island of merchandise said, “He’s over there, behind the counter. I think he’s dead.”

“No shit?” Sergeant Fuller said with genuine wonder in his gruff voice. He went to the cashier’s counter, leaned over and looked at the floor. “Jesus Christ. I hope he’s dead. No man’d want to live looking like that.”

Todd came over to see the carnage for himself. The jelly donut and black coffee he’d downed an hour ago threatened to make a comeback. He quickly turned away from the bloody ruin of the man on the floor. He swallowed hard, then spoke to the apparent witness—the bookstore guy. “You saw what happened?”

“Most of it, yeah.” He was sheepishly pale, licking his lips a lot as though his last meal was also trying to make a reappearance.

Fuller went behind the counter to confirm Habib’s death.

“You own that book store…” Todd snapped his fingers, as if that would jar his memory.

“Book Haven,” he said. “I’m Joe Carr.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Todd.

“Dead as road kill,” Fuller confirmed. “Gone home to Allah. Get an ambulance for that piece of shit, rookie.” He pointed at the man in handcuffs, who hadn’t moved since he’d whacked him upside the head. “Then call in the ghoul crew. The homicide dicks are gonna love this shit.”

Todd used the two-way clipped on the epaulet on his left shoulder.

Fuller waddled over to the witness and said, “All right, Joe Citizen, spoze you tell me what happened. Give me the short version and save the details for the dicks.”

“Well, I came in for a pack of cigarettes, then this guy comes in and…Habib starts yelling at him, calling him a thief and telling him to get out of his store. They had some more words, fought over the phone, and the cashier pulled a gun on the guy. He shot him, I think, and then the guy pulled a knife and went over the counter after him. He…well, you saw what he did with the knife. And then he started…”—Joe swallowed bile—“biting the man’s throat, eating him like an animal, like a lion on the Discovery Channel. God.”

“And you just stood and watched?” Fuller said with arched brows.

“Uh, well, I looked for something to hit him with, but then he came at me with the knife. That’s when you came in.”

“Uh-huh. What about the titty girl?”

“The…?”

“The girl who came running out to flag us down.”

“Oh, yeah. She came in to buy some beer and I sent her outside to get the police.”

“So you weren’t injured.”

“No, sir.”

“Lucky man. I’d say this moke was definitely hopped up on some bad shit.” Fuller looked down at the killer, then said, “Okay. You go wait outside with the titty girl and make sure she don’t run off. You’ll both have to give your statements to the detectives.”

As Joe Carr went out the door, Todd said, “Ambulance is on the way, Sarge.”

“That should give us just enough time,” said Fuller.

“For what?” asked Todd.

“Watch and learn, rookie. Watch and learn.” Fuller found a broom behind the counter, then took it to the dairy case, pulled out a tub of margarine, opened it and stuck the tip of the broom handle into the margarine and twisted it around. “Got to grease up the old pole, see?”

Todd stared at the wood twisting in the yellow goop in the plastic tub. Remembering a news story of police brutality from a few years back, his face got hot and the back of his neck went stiff with tension. He didn’t want to believe Sergeant Fuller was going to do what he thought he was going to do.

“Bare his ass,” said Fuller.

“What?” Todd swallowed hard, but the lump in his throat wouldn’t go down.

“Pull his goddamn britches down. I’m gonna break him in for the butt fuckers in the joint.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Fuck I ain’t. In case this shit head survives his belly wound, I wanna give him something to remember us by. Hell, if Rhode Island had the death penalty, I wouldn’t be forced to do this, but it don’t, so I gotta dispense a little backdoor justice my own damn self. Now get his fucking pants down, rookie.”

“No way, Sarge. I won’t do it.”

Fuller stopped twisting the broomstick in the greasy goop and looked with narrowed eyes at Todd. “I’m giving you a direct fucking order, kid. You best think long and hard before you go against me. You want your cop career to be over before it starts?”

“No. But this is an unlawful order. We could go to jail for this.”

Fuller laughed. “Nobody can prove nothing if you keep your mouth shut. And you will keep your mouth shut.”

“What about that security camera?” Todd pointed at the camera mounted near the ceiling behind the counter.

“Shit, old Habib never puts tape in that thing. Cheap bastard. You gonna help me or not?”

Todd shook his head.

“You just fucked yourself, rookie. Wait till the guys hear about this. One day you’ll be in deep shit and you’ll call for backup and nobody’ll come. You’re about to become what they call persona non grata. That means your life as a cop is shit.”

Todd clenched his fists. He fought the urge to hit the big man.

Fuller pushed him backward. “Out of my way, asshole. I’ll do it myself.” He bent down, unfastened the unconscious man’s dirty jeans and yanked them down to the ankles. “No fucking underwear. That figures. Punk ain’t had a bath in weeks. And you’re throwing away your career for this shitbucket.”

As the sergeant probed the cleft of the man’s buttocks with the lubricated broomstick, Todd weighed his options. He could walk out of the store to avoid witnessing a classic case of police brutality; he could stay and watch in consensual silence—or he could try to stop Fuller from abusing the man now officially in their custody. It was a tough decision for a rookie cop, and that damn church bell chiming endlessly made it hard to think straight. The sound got under his skin, all the way down to his bones and inside his skull. It was giving him a headache. And the headache made it even harder to think straight. It set him on edge. It pissed him off. It made him want to go at Fuller with his baton.

When Fuller found his mark with the tip of the broomstick, he gave it a hard shove and the man on the floor groaned and Todd Sarkanian made his decision.

* * *

“I need a smoke,” she said.

Joe nodded. “Me too. That’s why I went in there. To buy cigarettes.”

They were leaning on the police cruiser, facing the Jiffy-Quick. The rack of flashers on the police car bathed them in blue. Dusk had turned to night, but the night brought no relief from the New England heat wave. She had told him her name was Suzie (“with a z”) Shrimpton and that she lived in the eyesore tenement off Old Boston Road. She worked as a waitress in Buck’s Tavern on Narragansett Way and nursed dreams of becoming an actress. She had a boyfriend who was a real shit and was not really her boyfriend, and she was about ready to give him the heave-ho, anyway. All this had come out in a nervous rush while they waited for the homicide investigators to arrive.

“What’s with that church bell?” she asked after a short lull in her monologue. “That church has been empty since that fire nearly gutted it.”

“I don’t know, but I wish it would stop ringing,” Joe said, folding his arms across his chest.

“Kinda spooky,” said Suzie. “Bell ringing at night, in a deserted church. Like something out of a Stephen King story.”

“They used to ring church bells when someone died.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe it’s ringing for that dead freak in there.” She jerked a thumb at the Jiffy-Quick.

“But it was ringing before he died.” Joe tried to smile.

She shrugged her bare shoulders. Joe caught a glimpse of the swell of her breast where the halter-top gaped open at her armpit. He looked away and made himself think of his wife. Sara would be wondering why it was taking him so long to get a pack of cigarettes. An ex-smoker herself, Sara wanted him to quit too, but she didn’t nag him about it.

“Gary’s gonna be pissed that I’m not back with his beer,” Suzie said. “And I’m in no mood for his shit tonight.”

“You said you were going to throw him out anyway, right?”

She looked down at the sidewalk. “Maybe. I mean, I want to get rid of him, but I don’t know if I can, you know? Gary’s got a bad temper, especially when he’s drinking. And he was about two sheets to the wind when I left to come here.”

“He doesn’t get violent with you, does he?”

She looked up at Joe, apparently wondering how much she wanted to tell a stranger about her soured love life. “Ah, he man-handles me sometimes, but he’s never hit me. Not on purpose, anyway.” She looked at his hand. “You married?”

“Ten years this September.”

“Wow. That’s a long time.”

“It could be, if you didn’t love the one you were married to.”

“And you do?”

“Yes, I do.”

She looked up the street in the direction of the police station, which was a couple of miles away. “Funny,” she said, “I wouldn’t have figured you for a married man.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

She shrugged again. Again Joe’s eyes involuntarily went to the visible flesh of her breast.

“I dunno. You just don’t look the part. You look too…I dunno. Shit, I gotta have a cigarette. I got a whole damn carton back at the apartment. You think those cops will let me get a pack if I just leave money on the counter?”

“Maybe. Let’s give it a shot. I’m going into withdrawal.”

A siren wailed in the distance.

The church bell rang on.

A dome of yellowish murk hung over the night-lit city. Traffic whispered over the streets.

As they walked toward the door of the convenience store, Suzie said, “Thanks for helping me while ago. Most guys would’ve just been looking out for themselves.”

“I couldn’t just leave you there to get shot. Or stabbed.”

She smiled for the first time since he’d been in her company. “You’re a real gentleman.”

“Aw, shucks,” Joe said, kicking at the sidewalk, surprised that he felt like clowning around after seeing what he’d seen in the store. No doubt about it, he was strongly attracted to Miss Suzie Shrimpton. He had to watch himself with her, or else run the risk of endangering his perfect ten-year record of marital fidelity.

She slipped her arm under his and hooked his elbow with hers, and they walked arm-in-arm through the door. Like the king and queen of the prom, Joe thought, smiling.

“Oh, shit,” Suzie half-whispered.

Joe’s smile fell when he saw the two cops grappling over a broom stuck in the ass of the rodent-faced killer.

CHAPTER TWO

Dora Pellum picked up the little call bell from her bedside table and shook it as hard as she could. The little clapper sent the jingle-bell call to Dora’s daughter, who was downstairs in the den, probably watching one of those stupid lawyer shows she loved. Cops and lawyers, killers and adulterers were all they showed on TV these days, and Dora Pellum was sick of it. But what she was most sick of right now was that damned church bell across the street booming so loud it rattled her windows in their frames and prevented her from hearing half of what was being said on her History Channel show, a detailed account of Queen Elizabeth’s life before she assumed the throne.

Dora had to jangle the call bell five whole minutes before Daisy finally darkened her bedroom doorway. “What do you want, Mother?” her daughter asked, not bothering to mask her irritation at having been called away from her own TV viewing.

Still holding the little bell in her arthritic fingers, Dora said, “I thought you were going to call the police about that damned racket.”

“Yes, Mother, I did call.”

“Well, call ’em again. I can’t stand much more of this.”

“They said they would send a car out,” said Daisy, crossing her arms and cupping her elbows with her hands in a posture Dora read as condescending. “I’m sure they have things more important to do than investigate a bell.”

“Let me tell you something,” Dora said, her voice rising. “There’s something not right about that bell ringing like that. Can’t you feel it? It’s…”

“It’s loud. It’s irritating as hell. But what do you expect me to do about it? I already called the police. You want me to go across the street, climb up in the bell tower and stop it myself? Is that what you want, Mother? ’Cause if it is—”

“Don’t get smart with me.” Dora suddenly felt like throwing her call bell at her daughter. They had been fighting more and more lately, and though Dora blamed herself for being a burden on her only living daughter, she couldn’t help but feel resentment that Daisy resented her. It was a vicious circle she hadn’t been able to break out of, but this was the first time she’d had to check a violent impulse. She set the bell on the table next to the King James Bible, so she wouldn’t be tempted to peg it at Daisy’s chubby face.

Daisy pointed a finger and said, “There’s your phone. If you want to call the police and complain, go right ahead. You’re not helpless. If you’d get up and walk more around like the doctor said, you’d be a lot better off. And so would I.”

“You think I like having to depend on you?” Dora snapped. “Maybe someday you’ll be in this position, then you’ll know how it feels to be a burden on your family and have to live with their resentment every goddamn day. I hope you don’t, but that’s the only way you’ll ever understand the pure hell it is for me.”

Daisy pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “When you’re through feeling sorry for yourself, you can call the cops if you want to. But I’m not gonna stand here and listen to this crap while you’re on your pity pot. I’ve a good mind to take that damn bell away from you.”

Dora Pellum snatched the bell off the table and threw it on the floor. It bounced on the carpet with a muffled rattle. “Take it then!”

The church bell’s relentless ringing seemed to be getting louder. It sounded as if it were right outside the window.

Daisy stared at the little bell. She appeared to be hugging herself tightly as if trying to contain her inner rage.

Dora, on the other hand, was ready to go for her daughter’s jugular, at least figuratively. She knew where Daisy was most vulnerable, and she went for it. “Where’s that son of yours? Do you even know? He’s probably the one ringing that bell, deliberately trying to drive me crazy, the little heathen.”

Daisy uncrossed her arms and took a step toward the bed. “Don’t you start on him. James is a good boy. He’s just going through normal adolescent rebellion.”

“Don’t kid yourself. The boy’s twisted. Haven’t you heard that filth he listens to? I’ve never heard such nastiness in my life. The boy acts like a nigger. And I mean that in the dictionary sense of the word, though I sometimes wonder if he hasn’t got Negro blood in him. Are you sure Ronny Winter was his father, or was there an African in the wood pile?”

Daisy went at her and slapped her hard across the face. “Don’t you ever say that again, you dirty old bitch!”

Dora fell back into her pillow, her jaw stinging from the blow, but she was more stunned by the fact that her daughter had actually struck her than by the blow itself. She stared up into Daisy’s flushed face. Daisy stared back, looking like she might be considering another blow.

“You…sorry…white…trash…bitch,” Dora said, dragging the words out for dramatic effect.

Daisy’s open palm shot out and popped Dora’s cheek. Without hesitation, Dora grabbed the glass containing her false teeth, sloshing water onto her lap, and threw it. The glass hit her daughter in the chest, spilling more water, but the upper and lower dentures stayed, rattling, in the glass as it fell to the floor.

“God damn you,” Daisy said through clenched teeth. She bent down, picked up the glass of teeth and threw it back it her mother, who raised her arms in front of her face just in time to deflect the projectile. The dislodged dentures fell on the pile of extra pillows

Daisy pounced on the bed and landed with her knees straddling Dora’s thighs. She began to pummel her mother with her fists, landing blows on her upraised arms and on the side of her head. As she flailed with her fists, Daisy emitted a steady cry: “Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…”

Dora managed to grab the holy book off the nightstand and swung it sidearm. The King James Bible smacked the side of Daisy’s head, knocking her off balance. The old woman lost her grip on the good book and began to claw at her daughter’s face, going for the eyes. She felt the brittle nail of her middle finger sink into the soft, wet orb of Daisy’s left eye.

Daisy screamed.

Dora didn’t back off. She went for the throat and got her gnarled fingers halfway round Daisy’s flabby neck and squeezed as hard as she could, ignoring the deep pain of her arthritis.

Daisy likewise clamped her fat hands on her mother’s throat and tried to choke the life out of her.

While mother and daughter were locked in their brutal embrace, the bell in the abandoned church across the street kept up its relentless ringing.

* * *

James “Slim Jim” Winter was haunting Druid Hills Mall while his mother and grandmother were trying to kill each other. Of course, he had no idea that the two women were so violently engaged, nor was he aware of the persistent chiming of the bell in the old church. All he could hear was the music flowing from his old CD Walkman to the streamline headphones clamped over his ears. He was listening to the music of his idol, Eminem. The “Slim Shady” CD.

James dressed like Eminem, walked like him and even tried to talk like him. Slim Jim Winter was a Slim Shady clone, a hip-hop white dude with a soul-brother’s soul, a gangsta “dog” roaming free. The funny thing was, he hadn’t liked Eminem’s music the first time he heard it. Until his ears and his mind were pried open in his junior year at Druid Hills High, James had been a hardcore metal head who turned up his nose at hip-hop music and ridiculed the whole hip-hop black-rap scene as a last refuge for soul brothers who rapped their lyrics because they couldn’t sing. But one night after cadging a bottle of tequila from his mother’s booze stash and killing half its contents with his best friend Josh, he heard Eminem’s music with new ears, and the whole world seemed to open up for him. From that night forward, he immersed himself in the music of Marshall Mathers, a.k.a., Eminem, and almost literally overnight, James became Slim Jim, the gangsta hip-hop dog of Druid Hills High.

Now he was a senior and his reputation as a cynical, hip dude had grown, even as his optimist’s outlook and grade-average had tanked. He was a brilliant guy. Everybody said so. His teachers, his mother, his friends, even his enemies—all agreed that he was the smartest kid in school. So why, went the familiar refrain, was he wasting his natural-born smarts on this hip-hop craze and forsaking his studies? Wasn’t he smart enough to see that he needed to further his education in college? His answer to all who posed the question was: “That’s for the sheep, man. I ain’t no sheep, ya know what I’m sayin’?” But of course they didn’t really know what he was saying. Not even Josh, who continued to hang with him just the same. They didn’t understand because he didn’t bother to explain how society was based on the hypocrisy of the Big Lie. Everybody pretended to be civilized and preached the golden rule, but in reality it all came down to the law of the jungle, the survival of the toughest, meanest motherfucker in the valley of the shadow of death. Slim Jim Winter was not about to let himself become a sheep for the hungry wolves that would feast on his bones if given half a chance. No fucking way. He was one of the wolves. A lone wolf not content to run with the pack. He didn’t worry about the future because he was smart enough to know that the future never came. He lived in the Present, in the eternal moment, ever-expanding, canceling the future before it could get to the here-and-now. He lived in a world ruled by laws of quantum physics, laws presupposing parallel universes and infinite possibilities. How could he explain that to the sheep? The mind of a sheep couldn’t wrap itself around that concept, not really. It was all too counterintuitive for their flabby minds.

It all came down to having confidence in yourself, trusting that you would know what to do when the time came to do it and not worrying about the illusory future. He had done some research on multi-millionaires and concluded that the most successful of them were self-taught and didn’t have college degrees. The real trailblazers of the world didn’t give themselves over to academic brainwashers and cookie cutters, no fucking way. And James was going to be a trailblazer. He knew it. He would forge ahead, make his own way and never run with the sheep. His new motto: Push ahead, never look back, and Devil take the hindmost.

He leaned against the railing of the mall’s upper level and looked down at the shoppers who were here to buy their little parcels of happiness (always saving their receipts). Eminem was rapping in his ears about two-faced parents who fucked up their kids with their own sick trips and about kids who wrecked their brains with drugs and stupid shit. James grinned, digging the truth of Slim Shady’s rap. James was dressed in his Slim Shady duds, the go-to-hell bag-rags, the bassackwards cap, the Slim Shady T-shirt, the flashy sport shoes. It wasn’t that he was trying to be Eminem; he was paying tribute to his idol, showing the world that he was not going to be pushed around or hammered into a square hole. He was way too hip for that shit.

Josh tugged on his shirttail.

James pulled off his headphones. “What?”

“Check those dudes in front of Starbuck’s,” said Josh. “I think they’re about to get into it.” James looked and saw a middle-aged guy with a pot-belly poking his finger into a younger man’s chest. The younger man, wearing khaki shorts and a knit pullover, tossed the contents of his Starbuck’s cup into the other man’s face.

“Hot damn!” said Josh. “There they go.”

James and Josh leaned over the railing and watched the two adults scuffle in front of the coffee shop. “Kick his ass!” Josh yelled at both men.

Passersby gave the men wide berth as they took turns shoving each other.

“Shit,” said James. “That all they got?”

“Give ’em time,” urged Josh. “This is gonna be good.”

Muzak played from hidden speakers, cutting the balls off an old Rolling Stones tune and making it sound like a harmless children’s ditty.

James wanted Josh to be wrong. He didn’t want the shoving match to turn into a knock-down-drag-out. For all his gangsta posturing and his professed belief in the superiority of the meanest motherfucker in the valley, James didn’t like violence. In fact, it scared him. He’d seen too many nasty rows between his mom and dad before the old man ran off with a topless dancer when James was ten. He had too many vivid memories of marital violence, like the Valentine’s Day brawl when his old man came home drunk and broke his mother’s nose and his mom fought back with a bottle of wine, cracking it over old Dad’s head. There had been blood all over the kitchen that night, and James had hidden under his bed till morning.

“Fuck those assholes,” he said. “Let’s cruise out to the Crab Shack and look for snatch.”

“Aw man, those chicks are skanky. I wouldn’t touch them with your dick.”

“Hey.”

“Come on, Slim. We can’t leave now. This is just getting good.” Josh sucked icy lemonade through his straw and watched the hostilities escalate between the antagonists in front of the coffee shop. The older man drew back his fist and drove it into his opponent’s jaw. “Woo-hoo!” hooted Josh.

With a sick feeling in his belly, James pushed off the railing and started walking away. “I’m going,” he told his friend.

“Yeow, he nailed him good,” chortled Josh. “Hey, where the fuck ya going? You can’t leave me.”

“Then get your ass in gear,” James called over his shoulder.

“Shit, man. I can’t believe you.”

Josh caught up with him at the north entrance to the mall and followed him outside to the parking lot. “Next time we’re taking my ride, man. I don’t get how the hell you can just walk away from—”

“Ssshh,” James shushed him and suddenly froze in his tracks. “Listen.”

Josh halted beside him. “What?”

“Hear that?”

An old ’67 Mustang rumbled by in front of them. If it had a muffler, it was completely gutted.

“What? That?” Josh pointed at the passing antique Ford.

“No, you idiot. The bell.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Sounds like it’s coming from Holy Cross Hill.”

“But—”

“Why the fuck is it ringing?”

“Must be coming from some other church.”

“There’s no other church in that direction. Just that one up the street from my house.”

“So? What’s the big deal? A church bell’s ringing.”

“But who’s ringing it? And why? Nobody’s used that place for over a year. Hell, it’s condemned. They’re supposed to tear it down soon.”

“Maybe it’s your old lady,” Josh joked. “Had one too many and decided to play Quasimodo. You know, like in The Hunchback of—”

“Of course I know. I wrote that book report for you, jughead.”

“Oh yeah. Huh.”

“And my mother quit drinking.”

“Lighten up. It was just a joke.”

“Not a funny one.”

Josh shrugged. “So, we’re going to see who’s ringing the motherfucker, right?”

“Right.”

“Probably some asshole kids with nothing better to do. Bet it’s driving your grandmother nuts.”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t take much.”

They started walking toward James’s car, a secondhand 1989 Honda Civic he’d bought with money he saved from two summers of warehouse work.

“We oughta catch the little fuckers and teach ’em a lesson,” Josh suggested. He made a fist and socked his open palm. “Teach ’em they can’t go raising hell on our turf.”

“Yeah,” James said absently. He was preoccupied with trying to figure out why the distant chiming of the church bell was making his skin crawl and giving him the feeling that something very bad was going to happen.

* * *

Candace Cassidy couldn’t believe this was happening to her. It was like something you saw on TV, especially if you watched that Lifetime Movie Network on cable, LMN. Television for women. Brad always jokingly called it the Lousy Men Network because they showed so many movies about rapists, wife-beaters, child-abusers and any other category of male scoundrels you could name.

But Brad was out of town, and this was happening to her.

And the two thugs who had snatched her off the street were definitely not TV actors.

They were real-life hoods.

“Please,” she whimpered, looking up at them from the cellar floor. “Don’t hurt my baby.”

“Shut your hole, cunt,” snarled the bearded one, “or I’ll shut it for you.”

“We should gag her,” said the one with the shaved head and the dark glasses. He was the smaller of the two, but he was clearly the alpha male of this depraved duo. “I can always spot a screamer.”

“Please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded. Then she steadied her voice and said, “I have money. Take me to the ATM and I’ll draw out the max if you’ll let me go.”

“We don’t want your fuckin’ money,” said the bearded one, grinning. “Tell her what we want, Shades.”

Shades wiped a film of sweat from his sunburned head and said, “She’ll know soon enough.”

Candace fought back tears. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Now, see what you started, Woofer? Gag the bitch before she pisses me off.”

The coldness in his voice turned on the waterworks and her tears poured forth. “No, please…”

Shades hit her across the face with the back of his hand. She fell back against the wall. The cellar of the old church went out of focus. The candle flames sported flickering halos. The faces of her abductors took on decidedly demonic casts.

Her vision seemed to pulse with a burst of light each time the bell in the tower above rang and reverberated within the cellar’s walls.

Woofer pulled a roll of duct tape from a utility pocket of his jeans, ripped off a strip with his teeth and slapped it across her mouth. “There ya go, sweetheart,” he sneered. “Don’t say we never gave ya nothin’.”

“Strip her,” said Shades as he pulled a switchblade from his jeans and clicked it open. The blade caught some of the light from the dozen or so candles burning on top of an old trunk in the middle of the cellar floor, making it look like it was made of fire. “Don’t fight it, cunt, or I’ll cut you.”

Woofer started with her shoes. He ripped away the Velcro-and-leather fasteners, then tugged off both shoes at the same time. He lifted her left leg and began to slowly roll the ankle-length sock off her foot. She cringed at the touch of his stubby fingers on her flesh, but she resisted the urge to kick his hands away. He tossed the sock on the floor and seemed to take a fetishistic interest in her painted toenails. Candace thought he was going to kiss them or suck them and she shuddered at the thought.

“Come on, dipshit,” warned Shades. “We ain’t got all fucking night.”

Woofer removed the other sock, then reached under her roomy maternity blouse and unbuttoned her shorts. As he pulled the zipper down, Candace clasped her thighs together. Shades pressed the point of the knife to her throat and said, “Don’t.” Heeding the sharp warning, she relaxed her thighs and let them fall open. Woofer pulled off her shorts.

“Like them panties,” Woofer said with surprising gentleness in his voice. Then his voice turned rough and dirty as he added: “But it’s them big ol’ milky titties I wanna see.”

Candace closed her eyes. She was resigned to the fact that she was going to be raped by the two men. She would let them have their way with her so long as they did nothing to harm the baby in her womb. What choice did she have? If she tried to fight them off, they would respond with violence and probably injure the fetus her body had been nurturing for eight months. She could not let that happen. The old chauvinistic slogan popped into her mind: If you’re about to be raped, you might as well relax and enjoy it. She wouldn’t enjoy it, but she knew she had to do her best to relax. She could even pretend to enjoy it if it would keep her unborn infant from harm. She could get medical treatment afterward, including treatment for VD if necessary. Brad would probably have a harder time dealing with it than she would, but they could deal with it. The main thing now was to get out of this with as little injury to herself as possible and no injury to the baby.

“Raise your arms over your head, honey,” said Woofer.

She did. He pulled off her top. She kept her eyes closed. The bell boomed above.

When the cold steel of the knife’s blade touched the flesh between her breasts, she opened her eyes. Shades sawed through the thin cotton of her brassiere and her swollen breasts fell free.

“Thank you, Jesus,” Woofer said with unfettered enthusiasm. “Look at them beauties. Didja ever see such a pretty sight? Umm-umh.”

Shades smirked. “All-day suckers for sure. But we ain’t got all day. Get the spikes and shit.”

“Come on, man,” whined Woofer. “You gotta give me a minute with her. At least.”

“Bet you was a real momma’s boy,” Shades said with naked contempt. “Go on then. Suck yourself silly. I’ll get the shit.”

Candace saw that Woofer was actually drooling at the prospect of sucking her breasts, and she shuddered, even as she wondered what Shades meant when he said “spikes and shit.” What did they really want with her? If they simply wanted to rape her, why weren’t they already getting it over with? Why were they toying with her when that bell ringing above them might bring someone to investigate? She knew the fire-damaged church wasn’t used anymore for worship—or for anything else as far as she knew. She’d heard the same tales everyone else in town had heard about Reverend Craven’s rapid descent into madness and his insistence that Satan had taken over the church. Before he hanged himself in his jail cell, Craven admitted that he had started the fire in an attempt to drive the devil out of Druid Hills. Were Woofer and Shades psychotic devil-worshipers? Did they have a third companion up there ringing the bell? And if so, why was he ringing it? Woofer was on his hands and knees now, leering down at her breasts. He licked his thick lips, then bent down and put his mouth on her left tit and began to suck, moaning appreciatively. Candace closed her eyes and tried to use the same meditative technique she’d used at the dentist’s office during her last root canal. The idea was to mentally block off the pain—or in this case, the sucking mouth of the grotesque fat man—and imagine herself in pleasant surroundings. Imagining herself on an air mattress in a calm sea usually did the trick for her, but this time it didn’t work. The slurping sound of the pig’s mouth on her breast and the hot suction on her nipple prevented her from freeing her mind from the repugnant physical violation. The technique required concentration, but how could she concentrate with that damned bell bonging every few seconds? Her nipple stiffened into a hard little finger and she felt a corresponding tingle between her legs. In spite of her disgust at what was being done to her, her body was responding to the sexual stimulation.

No, no, no.

But her body ignored her nay-saying and she went wet between her legs.

Each time the clapper struck the iron bell, she felt the vibration deep in her loins. A scene from an old horror movie flashed through her mind. Hooded Satanists engaging in group sex. She’d thought the movie was silly at the time, but now—with Woofer sucking her tit and the Devil’s bell sending tingles through her genitalia—a satanic sex orgy seemed anything but silly. She groaned against the strip of duct tape stuck to her mouth.

“Time’s up, tit man.” Shades’ harsh voice rescued Candace from further titillation, but when she saw him pull a rusty iron spike and a claw hammer from a burlap bag, her bladder let go and warm urine soaked her panties.

Woofer fell back on his haunches, grinned at her and said, “Time to crucify the unholy mother.”

CHAPTER THREE

“What the hell are you doing?” Joe shouted. Suzie was tugging on his hand, trying to pull him back through the doorway.

The two cops froze, their hands still on the broomstick stuck in the unconscious man’s anus.

“I’m trying to stop him,” the breathless younger cop said.

The other cop let go of the broom, snapped the baton off his belt and whacked his partner on top of the head. The bristle-end of the broomstick smacked the floor, its opposite end remaining in Rat Face’s ass. The young policeman went to his knees, moaning. The club struck again and he fell forward on his face.

“It ain’t what you think,” said the baton-wielding cop. “The rookie went nuts and jammed it up the guy’s ass. I was trying to stop him.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Suzie whispered to Joe.

“Jesus Christ,” said Joe. He didn’t trust the cop still standing, but he had no idea what to do about it. He gave in and let Suzie Shrimpton pull him outside. The cop shouted after them: “Hey, come back here!”

“No fucking way,” said Suzie. “Did you see the wild look in his eyes? He’s the one who went nuts. Come on.”

Joe resisted her tug this time. “Where to?”

“Far away from that crazy son of a bitch. I’m going home. They don’t know my name and address.”

“They know mine. I’m the fucking bookstore guy. Shit.”

An unmarked sedan with a flashing blue light on its dash lurched to a halt in front of the store.

“That’s the detectives,” Joe said. “We should tell them what we saw.”

“No. Not me. I don’t trust any of ’em. I was never here. And don’t you tell them my name.”

She let go of his hand. They stared at each other a moment, then she turned and started walking down the sidewalk. Her footsteps were in sync with the chimes of the bell. “You’re crazy to stay here,” she said over her shoulder. “Come with me.”

He saw the two plain-clothes detectives climb out of the sedan and march toward the store’s entrance. One of them glanced his way with cold eyes. Joe turned away and went after Suzie. “Wait up,” he called softly. She slowed to let him catch up. He took her hand and they continued along the sidewalk, both trying to look like two carefree lovers out for an innocent stroll.

As soon as they turned the next corner, they both burst out with nervous laughter.

“My God,” he said between barks of laughter, “that was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I know,” she agreed with a guilty giggle. “They had the broomstick up his ass. I mean…shit!”

“Exactly.”

“Shit, there’s Gary.” She realized they were still holding hands and she shook hers free as her boyfriend’s pickup truck pulled up alongside them, one of the big steel-belted radials bumping up onto the curb. “Out of the fucking frying pan,” she muttered under her breath.

Gary flung the door open and bounded out of the truck. He was a tall skinny guy with a ball cap sitting askew on his head and unlaced work boots riding loosely on his feet. He was wearing a faded stretched-out New England Patriots T-shirt. His eyes were so bloodshot that Joe wouldn’t have been very surprised if they started leaking blood like a vampire in a cheesy horror movie. “What the hell is this?” Gary demanded. He smelled like a beer hall.

“It’s not what you think,” Suzie said, echoing the baton-wielding cop’s earlier words.

Gary crowded her space. She backed against the side of the building. Joe stood his ground on the sidewalk.

“I send ya out for beer and here ya are holdin’ hands with this dickhead. Ya fuckin’ slut. I oughta—”

“Now wait a minute,” Joe said. “We—”

Gary shoved Joe with both hands, and Joe stumbled against the brick wall beside Suzie.

“Goddammit, Gary,” she said, “leave him alone. We were getting away from the cops, trying to look like we don’t know nothing about the shooting back at the store.”

Joe’s temper flared. The infernal chiming of the bell up on Holy Cross Hill seemed to open a way for his anger to come roaring out and he pushed himself off the wall and jabbed his finger an inch from Gary’s crooked nose. “Keep your hands off me, asshole,” he said through clenched teeth. Gary’s face flashed a look of surprise, as if he weren’t used to having anyone stand up to him. He quickly regained his angry countenance and cocked his fist.

“Gary, no!” shouted Suzie.

He swung a roundhouse right, and Joe, using moves he’d learned in a PE boxing course in college, bent his knees and ducked to the left. Gary’s fist hammered into the brick wall and he yelped. Joe countered with an uppercut to Gary’s gut. He knew he’d hurt the guy and that he had to hit him again before Gary had time to retaliate. Fear drove Joe’s second strike, a solid right to Gary’s jaw. It made a hollow popping sound, sending Gary into a slow-motion pirouette to the sidewalk.

“Jesus,” said Suzie. “Come on. Let’s book before he wakes up.”

Book, reflected Joe. Did people still use that quaint bit of 70’s slang? He rubbed his aching knuckles and fell in step with the girl as she moved down the sidewalk. “Book?” he said aloud.

“Hell yes. As in haul ass outta here. Do you have a car?”

“Yeah, but it’s…we’re going the wrong way. It’s back by the Jiffy-Quick.”

“Fuck it. Get it later. Too many psycho cops back there.”

“Right. Where can you go? I mean, you can’t go back to your apartment, can you? Gary’ll turn up after he comes to and you don’t want to be there for that, do you?”

“No.” She shrugged. Her brow knitted lines of worry.

“Is there some place you can go? A friend’s?”

“My best friend Joan is out of town for the weekend and I don’t have a key to her place.”

“You can come home with me,” said Joe, already surprised at himself for saying it. “For a little while, I mean. Give the bastard time to cool off.”

“Gary doesn’t cool off. Something pisses him off, he just lets it build and build till he blows up. It just makes it worse when it does happen.” She absently reached a hand behind her back to check the knot holding her halter-top in place. “Bill’s Bar is a couple of blocks over. We could hide out there for a while. Give the cops time to clear out and then you could get your car. I could use a drink anyway. How about you?”

“Yeah, I could. But my wife’s probably wondering where the hell I am. I should’ve been home half an hour ago.”

“Call her from the bar. Explain what happened.”

Joe considered her suggestion. He was hot and sweaty and still charged with adrenaline from his fight with the drunken, irate boyfriend and from the violence in the convenience store. “A drink sounds good,” he said.

“Sure does,” she said. “We could cool off and I can figure out what to do about Gary. The son of a bitch.”

“Who pays the rent on your apartment?”

“I do. Gary buys the beer and an occasional bag of burgers. He’s only been staying there a couple of months. He’s got this construction job, but he doesn’t go in half the time. I don’t know why I put up with him, to tell you the truth. I’m just not sure how to get rid of him. He’s…scary.”

“I noticed.”

She laughed. “You sure decked him good. Where’d you learn how to box?”

“College PE. Many moons ago. I’m surprised it came back to me like it did. I mean, I was pretty good way back when, but I haven’t sparred since then. Don’t even go to the gym.”

“Guess it’s like riding a bike or something. Your body remembers the moves.”

Joe chuckled. “Not bad for an old fart, huh?”

“You don’t look that old. Just…I dunno, the gray around the temples makes you look sort of distinguished.”

“Yeah? Thanks. I think.”

“Like a bookstore guy.” She smiled at him. A smile of unabashed warmth.

He tried to keep his eyes off her breasts jostling inside the red halter-top. He wondered what Sara would think about his keeping company with a scantily clad young woman like Suzie, a tavern waitress who gave off strong vibes of unmistakable sexuality. A young damsel in low-rent distress. He was glad Suzie hadn’t taken him up on his invitation to his home. What the hell had he been thinking? The last thing he wanted was to give his wife reason to be suspicious of him. Sara had a jealous streak as wide as this steaming-hot day was long. It wouldn’t do to set her off with the likes of Suzie Shrimpton. The girl seemed sweet in her own way, even vulnerable, but there was a slutty air about her that Sara would lock onto in a second, and then it was off to the damn races, with Jealousy the heavy favorite to win.

“God, listen to all those sirens,” Suzie said. “They couldn’t all be for the Jiffy-Quick, could they? That one sounds like a fire truck with that foghorn waw-waw.”

“I don’t know. Sure sounds like a wild night in peaceful little Druid Hills.”

“That damn church bell must be driving everybody crazy.”

“I don’t know…we seem reasonably sane,” Joe said.

“Yeah, right. We’re hiding from the cops and a pissed-off boyfriend. I guess that’s sane, considering the circumstances.”

“Absolutely. But that damned bonging is getting on my nerves.”

“Know what you mean,” she said. She raised an arm and pointed at the neon sign ahead of them. “There’s Bill’s. In a minute we’ll be inside with cold drinks and a blaring jukebox and that ol’ bell can go to hell.”

“Amen, sister.”

* * *

The bell called him and he came out of the darkness and into the fogged light. He saw two men in suits standing over him, talking to Sergeant Fuller, the fat fuck. The bastard clubbed me, Todd Sarkanian remembered. He butt-fucked the perp with the broomstick and he clubbed me.

“He’s coming around,” said one of the suits.

“What goes around comes around,” Todd said—or thought he said—sitting up and unsnapping the leather strap securing his pistol in the holster.

“Kid ain’t right in the head,” Fuller said. “He went fuckin’ nuts abusing the suspect and I had to put him down.”

“Lying,” mumbled Todd, getting to his feet. The walls of the store were throbbing in and out of focus. The faces of the two detectives seemed distorted, grotesque, as if they were wearing demonic make-up. His head hurt, and each clang of the bell drove a spike of anger deeper into his brain.

“Hey, he’s—”

Todd drew his .38 and pointed it at Sergeant Fuller.

“Sonofabitch,” Fuller blurted. He fumbled for his own pistol.

Todd squeezed the trigger. The slug slammed into Fuller’s bulging gut. Todd fired again. The second shot tagged the fat fucker’s chest and knocked him on his ass. One of the suits grabbed Todd’s wrist and tried to wrestle the gun away from him. The pistol barked again. The suit’s eyes went wide and he reeled backward, holding his belly. Blood poured through his fingers.

The other detective drew from his shoulder rig and fired three, four times point-blank at Todd’s chest. The breath went out of his lungs, but there wasn’t much pain. Getting shot wasn’t at all like he’d expected it to be. He grinned at the man who’d shot him, then his legs decided to quit holding him up and he dropped to the floor.

The fog thickened. The bell called him back into darkness. Funny, Todd thought, how the ringing of the bell was everywhere, bridging this world with the next…

* * *

Daisy Winter was between worlds, living in a hazy limbo of her own making (or so she suspected, being what her son called “a control freak”), but what better place to be was there after you’d nearly killed your own mother with your bare hands? Daisy raised the bottle of vodka to her lips for another big pull. It burned good going down, burned even better when it got to where it was going, down there in the belly, close to a cunt that hadn’t had any decent action in months, she sadly lamented. That was how she had come to think of it: A cunt. Not her cunt, but a thing living almost apart from her, denying ownership and existing independently, a pariah, an outcast organ denied any semblance of pleasure. Daisy had been the Queen of Denial. She’d denied herself booze for six months. She’d turned down dates with local lounge lizards and had even denied herself the solitary pleasure of masturbation. But now her denial was over and done.

Ignoring the pain of her scratched eyeball, she leaned back in the armchair, hiked one leg over the arm, slipped her hand into her panties and fingered herself. The queen is dead. Long live the queen. It was time to reclaim her cunt the way she had just reclaimed vodka as her drug of choice. Self-medication was the way to go when all else failed. And failed all else had.

Blame it on the bell. Each time that iron bell rang she felt its sonic vibration between her legs. After almost choking her mother to death, she had run out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the cupboard where she’d stashed a fifth of vodka. She chug-a-lugged half the bottle right off the fucking bat. All the while, the bell kept ringing, tweaking her clitoris, making it throb erect. It wasn’t that she was denying what she’d done to the old lady. Not at all. She’d even gone back upstairs to check on the old bitch. Sure enough, old Dora was still breathing, if not kicking. Her eyes were fixed open but Daisy didn’t think she was seeing much of anything. Probably stroked out during the fight. Probably turned her brain into cauliflower. A fucking vegetable. Be better off dead. Then Daisy had picked up the pillow and put it over her mother’s face. After a few seconds, she pulled the pillow away. If she killed her, she’d have to call somebody to take the body away and the coroner would see the bruises on the old bitch’s throat and know foul play was involved. Better to keep her alive till the bruises faded, then give her the pillow trip to heaven—or hell. And in the meantime, Daisy Winter was going to enjoy life, live it to its fullest. That was what the music of the bell was about. Life was as transient as each chime of the iron bell and you had to wring all you could out of your life before you went to your fucking doom. It didn’t make too much sense when you tried to put it into words, but in its immaculate ringing, the bell was saying it all. Without words. The bell spoke directly to her soul. She was not going to be a stupid cunt and deny its mystical message. Her stupid-cunt days were over. She intended to live with cunning, with her revitalized cunt (the word cunt, she knew, had originated from the same root word as cunning, and only in recent history had come to have a negative connotation).

She rubbed the moist button at the mouth of her cunt faster and faster, and cried out when the orgasm rang her like a flesh-and-blood bell.

Then she drifted between worlds, floating on the iron bell’s celestial chiming.

* * *

James “Slim Jim” Winter nearly ran off the road to let the ambulance pass him, and he hooted as his tires kissed the edge of the gully running beside the blacktop. “Hooo-eeee! That was close.”

“No shit,” said Josh. “I thought it was gonna hit us for sure. Where’d the asshole learn to drive?”

“Ambulance school. I dunno. Did you catch my wheel man action? Just like Jeff Gordon.”

“Who the fuck is that?”

“You know, the race-car dude.”

“I don’t watch that crap. Too boring.”

“I don’t either, but my mom loves that shit. Dad used to take her to the track and they’d get tanked up on a cooler of beer and be at each other’s throat when they got home, but while they were there they had a hell of a good time. That’s what she says, anyway. Who knows. She’s pretty fucking weird lately.”

“No shit,” said Josh.

“Shit, is that all you can say?”

“What? No shit?”

“Yeah. No shit.”

“Shit, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know shit.”

“No shit. Shit’s all you do know.”

They laughed. James socked Josh on the shoulder. Josh socked him back, not as hard. James rolled his window down.

“Whadja do that for? It’s hot out there,” said Josh. “You’re letting out all the cool air.”

“So I can hear that bell.”

“It’s just a fuckin’ bell. What’s the big deal?”

“I dunno. I just wanna hear it. And find out who’s ringing it.”

“And you think your old lady’s weird?” Josh reached for the volume button on the radio.

James swatted his hand away.

“Hey! What the fuck, man?”

James said, “I told ya, I wanna hear the bell. Can’t hear it with the radio on.”

“Jeez.” Josh crossed his arms over his chest and sulked against the passenger door.

James turned right at the corner of Vinewood and Willow. A man, completely naked, was crossing the street in their headlights and James swerved to avoid hitting him.

“Holy shit! Look at that crazy fucker,” said Josh, craning his head around.

Both boys howled as they drove past the naked, balding man.

“That’s one way to beat the heat,” James guffawed.

“Yeah, but did you see who that was? That was Bony Berman, the math teacher. No shit, it really was.”

“Nah. He wouldn’t walk down the street naked.”

“It was him. I swear.”

“Must’ve found a math problem he couldn’t solve and flipped his shit.”

“I guess,” said Josh. “Jeez-oh-man, Bony Berman butt naked in the street. What’s the world coming to?”

Before James could answer with a witty comeback, an ice cream truck with its headlights off came barreling toward them down the wrong side of the street. James’s Jeff Gordon moves deserted him. His hands froze on the steering wheel and he did nothing but wait for the head-on impact. Josh yelped and threw his hands over his face. The ice cream truck swerved sharply toward the lane it should’ve been in, but it was too late to avert the collision.

In the final seconds before the crash, James heard the ice cream truck’s bell jangling wildly.

* * *

She was completely naked now, her piss-stained panties lying in a small pink heap near her feet. The man called Shades had pushed his dark glasses up on top of his shaved head, and his dark eyes seemed to smolder with a demented passion Candace didn’t want to think about. The sloppy-fat Woofer showed his teeth in what was probably supposed to be a grin, but looked more like the snarl of a feral animal, a hissing possum. He picked up her panties and sniffed them.

“She pissed herself,” Woofer said with a mirthless chuckle.

“Pregnant cunts can’t hold their pee,” said Shades as he pulled a bundle of black and white cloth from the burlap bag. “Here, put this on her.” He handed the bundle to Woofer, who unfolded it with his stubby fingers.

When she saw what it was, Candace allowed herself a fleeting moment of hope, but that hope was quickly supplanted by hopeless despair as she remembered that they had referred to her as the unholy mother.

Woofer lifted her head off the cellar floor and put the nun’s wimple on her, then smoothed out its folds. The headdress smelled of stale cigarette smoke, mildew and unburned incense—sandalwood.

Candace wanted to plead for her captors to spare her the pain and mutilation of the insane crucifixion, but the duct tape prevented such pleading. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Okay, stretch her out,” said Shades. He had a spike in one hand and the hammer in the other. He bent close to her face and said, “If you fight, I’ll whack your head with the hammer. Got me?”

She nodded. Then she shook her head as if to deny what they were about to do to her. She glanced down at the pale dome of her swollen belly and thought, I’m sorry, baby.

Woofer spread her legs wide, then moved behind her and pinned her shoulders to the hardwood floor. Shades positioned the spike against the instep of her left foot and lined up the hammer for the first blow.

Candace urgently shook her head and moaned against the duct tape.

“Hold still, titty mama,” Woofer cooed close to her ear. “Don’t move your legs or we’ll go ahead and kill you and your baby.”

She froze. Closed her eyes.

The ringing bang of metal on metal accompanied devastating pain in her foot as the spike drove into flesh and bone. Before the second blow landed, she had passed out.

* * *

Suzie Shrimpton raised her frozen margarita from the table, tilted the frosty glass and said, “Cheers.”

Joe Carr lifted his scotch-on-the-rocks and echoed her sardonic toast. “Cheers.”

They sipped their drinks. Joe opened the pack of cigarettes he’d bought from the vending machine by the rest rooms in the rear of Bill’s Bar, shook one out for Suzie and one for himself, then lit them both with a match. The scent of sulfur mixed with tobacco smoke.

“Ah, that’s good,” said Suzie, exhaling as she spoke. She propped her elbow on the tabletop and held the cigarette high between two fingers.

Though he’d never been able to figure out why, the sight of an attractive woman holding a cigarette never failed to send a jolt of sexual excitement through him. “Yeah,” he agreed.

The jukebox in the corner fell silent, and over the buzz of conversation in the bar they heard the faint tolling of the bell on Holy Cross Hill.

“Is that damn thing gonna ring all night?” she asked with a weary sigh.

Joe felt compelled to answer the rhetorical question. “Sure as hell seems like it.”

“I’ll bet Gary’s head’s ringing like a bell from that punch you gave him,” she said with a tense laugh.

“I hope I didn’t kill him.”

“Nah, he’s tough. Bastard gets in a lot of fights. He usually comes out on top though.” She smiled at him with obvious admiration. “He’s not used to having his clock cleaned.”

Joe shrugged self-consciously. The street door opened and a white-haired man in a seer-sucker suit entered the bar. He gave the bartender a casual salute as he climbed stiffly onto a barstool. “Hear that bell out there?” the old man asked.

“Been hearing it all evening, seems like,” the bartender said, drawing a beer and setting it in front of the new arrival. “What you reckon it means, Godfrey?”

The old man took a swallow of brew, giving himself a mustache of foam, and said, “Tell ya what I think. It’s an ill bell that bodes no good.”

“How so?” The grinning bartender seemed to be egging the old man on as if this were their customary style of barroom banter.

“Well, you know that old church has an unseemly history,” Godfrey said. “Way I hear it, that bell’s over two hundred years old. Forged in France before their revolution, it was. Used to hang in a monastery in—”

The jukebox suddenly blared a raucous George Strait song, drowning the old man’s words.

“Damn,” said Joe, “just when it was getting interesting.”

“Huh?” Suzie looked at him with raised brows.

“The old man.” Joe nodded in the direction of the bar. “I wanted to hear the rest of his story.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening,” she said. “Guess my mind was drifting.”

“Oh.” Joe blew smoke toward the ceiling and took another sip of scotch.

“I’m not usually like this,” she explained. “This spacey, I mean. I guess it’s this whole thing with Gary. And what happened in the convenience store.”

“Understandable.”

“You must think I’m a fool. For getting mixed up with such a jerk.”

“No, I don’t. We all make mistakes, especially in affairs of the heart.”

“Hah. With Gary and me it’s an affair without heart. Strictly physical, I’m ashamed to say. Lord, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You must think I’m awful.”

“Far from it. I think you’re just a little mixed up right now. You’re young, trying to make it on your own and Gary comes along and takes advantage of you. Guys like him, that’s what they do. Don’t blame yourself. Just learn from the experience.”

“I guess you’re right. Now I just have to figure out how to get rid of him.” She crushed out her smoke in the ashtray, suddenly brightened a little and said, “You could help me do it. If you could be with me when I tell him it’s over and I want him gone. ’Course, we’ll have to do it when he’s sober and less likely to wanna fight.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Sure it is. With you there, he won’t try to push me around or threaten me.” She reached across the table and clasped his hand. “Will you help? Please? You’ll have a friend for life if you do. I’ll do something good for you sometime.”

The touch of her hand sent a wave of warmth through him. “I…I want to help you, sure, but I don’t want to get in the middle of something that might land me in jail, you know? I mean, this is a volatile situation. What if he flies into a rage? Somebody could get seriously hurt. You never know how these things might turn out. I think you should get a restraining order to keep him away. Let the law handle it.”

“The law? We just saw the law in action. I don’t need that kind of help. They might decide to stick a broom up me.”

Joe blushed. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Damn, I’ve got to call my wife.”

He started to get up but Suzie didn’t let go of his hand.

“Will you think about it? Please?” Her eyes had suddenly filled with tears.

He sighed. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

She brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “Thank you.”

His thigh bumped the table’s edge as he stood. He hardly felt it. He could still feel the warmth of her lips and breath on his knuckles. He made his way through the scattered tables to the pay phone next to the cigarette machine. Though he hadn’t finished his first drink, he felt a little light-headed and his legs seemed a bit rubbery and disconnected from his hips. He fished coins out of his pocket, fed a couple of quarters into the slot and picked up the receiver. He punched his home number. A plump woman with huge breasts came out of the Ladies Room, tugging at the seat of her tight slacks. She smiled at him. Winked a painted eye. He smiled back at her but the corners of his mouth felt sluggish and his smile didn’t feel much like a smile. More like a grimace. The faraway ringing in his ear somehow gave him a sense of dislocation. A movie-like image flashed through his mind: a phone ringing in a tomb; a desiccated hand reaching to answer it. Joe shuddered. How many rings was that? Six? Seven? Why wasn’t she answering? What was wrong? Had something happened to Sara? Maybe she’s out looking for me. No, that didn’t make sense. He hadn’t been gone that long. She was probably in the bathroom, maybe taking a shower. Had she showered before work this morning? He couldn’t remember.

He hung up the phone and went back to the table where Suzie was lighting another smoke. The song on the jukebox finished with a twanging bang. The chorus of distant sirens outside reminded him of a pack of howling dogs.

“Did you get her?” Suzie asked as he sat down.

“No answer. She’s probably taking a shower or something.”

“Let’s have another drink and you can try her again later.”

“I don’t know,” he said with growing concern. He looked at his watch. “We’re usually eating supper about now. Maybe we should call a cab and head on over there. You hungry?”

“She might not like me dropping in unannounced. You go ahead. I’ll stay here till I decide what to do.”

“I can’t just leave you.”

“You’re sweet,” she said, smiling. “But I’ll be okay. I’m a big girl.”

“Yeah, but Gary’s bigger. And meaner.” He winced. “Not that you’re mean. You know what I mean.”

She laughed. “I know. Really, I’ll be fine. You go home to your wife.”

Joe sighed. Then he rubbed his palms together with feigned enthusiasm and said, “What the hell, let’s have another round. I’ll call again in a few minutes. That’ll give her time to finish her shower.”

Even as he said the words, he knew she wasn’t in the shower. She wouldn’t be taking a shower at suppertime. She would be pacing the floor, trying to decide if she should be worried or angry that he was late for supper—if she was home and nothing was wrong.

Something was wrong. He could feel it. He could hear it. One of those sirens out there in the wild night could be screaming its way to his house.

End of Excerpt

HELLz BELLz is available on Kindle and Nook

About The Author

Randy Chandler is the author of the new novels Dime Detective and Daemon of the Dark Wood, and of two previously published novels Bad Juju and HELLz BELLz. He also co-authored Duet for the Devil with t. Winter-Damon (God rest his soul) and has contributed short stories to numerous anthologies. Randy has been a magazine editor/publisher, a freelance book reviewer, a mental health worker, a gas-pump jockey, an ambulance attendant, a soldier in Vietnam, and a funeral home flunky. He often haunts fields of carnage where angels and devils do battle.

Also by Randy Chandler

DIME DETECTIVE

Comet Press

When barroom bouncer Joe Dall’s ex-wife is murdered, he finds himself pressed into service as a novice private eye. Something very dark and deadly lurks in the lush shadows of the sleepy Florida town and if he can’t unmask the killer soon, others close to Joe will die. Working on a powerful client’s dime, Joe Dall’s first case could be his last.

“The new breed of retro authors isn’t getting paid by the word and, therefore, isn’t padding thin stories; instead, they’re crafting their books with considerable care and quality, and this novel is every bit a winner. Chandler introduces PI Joe Dall in a slick, atmospheric work that captures the underbelly of the 1950s with a sharp eye for detail and a flair for the sinister.”—Booklist

“With the publication of his latest novel, Randy Chandler gives modern readers a truly wonderful taste of a bygone age complemented by today’s views on women and minorities … From Dot Barker, a kind of big sister, to Valentine Cooper and her shotgun, Chandler’s characters go beyond the stereotypical dames, dolls, and broads that filled the pulps for a cast of strong, multidimensional, and entertaining characters. Readers can only hope to see them again in a sequel.”—ForeWord Reviews

“To find a wonderful example of hardboiled detective noir today, you need not look any further than Randy Chandler’s latest novel Dime Detective … Dime Detective is both an homage and a love letter to the genre, but in many ways, an interesting and original departure.”—Walt Hicks, Hellbound Times

DAEMON OF THE DARK WOOD

Comet Press

A man who digs cursed earth, uncovers great sorrow. When the women of Widow’s Ridge begin to go missing, a deputy sheriff, a psychiatrist and a community college professor become mired in chilling myth and mystery. When the missing women reappear, the horror of the Helling comes home to roost.

“Randy Chandler writes with apt audaciousness. He seems truly fond of the salacious wenches he has created. Daemon of the Dark Wood deals with loss of control, but the novel’s author is in masterly command.”—Hellnotes

“If the devil is truly in the details then Chandler is a Practiced Master of the Dark Literary Arts.” —Walt Hicks, Hellbound Times

“Chandler wastes no time when it comes to creating tension and his narrative immediately conjures up a world of screams and fear.” —HorrorTalk

"Daemon of the Dark Wood will please any reader who relishes a well-written tale of ancient knowledge and hidden dangers, and those who fight to keep the human realm free of unbridled evil." —ForeWord Reviews

HELLBENT HOUSE

Comet Press

Haunted by a house seen only in her dreams, Ava locates the old plantation house in the real world and makes the mistake of venturing inside. She lands in the middle of an honest-to-goodness ghost story with murderous roots in the Civil War, but in this hellbent house, there are things far worse than ghosts. And one of them is hungry for Ava's soul.

BAD JUJU: A NOVEL OF RAW TERROR

Acid Grave Press

Dark forces are afoot in Vinewood, Georgia, a deceptively sleepy town where the dead don’t stay dead and a sinkhole is as sinister as it is deadly. Violent events both natural and supernatural build to a chaotic crescendo of horrors that will threaten the entire town and everyone in it.

An odd handful of townsfolk put their lives on the line to save the town—but the darkness may swallow them up before they have a chance.

“Hot and thick, the atmosphere reeks of earth, blood, and decay. The astringent air carries with it a sense of malevolence and resentment. No matter where you look, no matter how shallow you breathe, this town will touch you.” —Kelly Tomblin, Horror-Web

DEADCORE: 4 HARDCORE ZOMBIE NOVELLAS

Comet Press

By Randy Chandler, Ben Cheetham, Edward M. Erdelac, and David James Keaton.

“Randy Chandler’s Dead Juju is a wild, graphic ride—a fast-paced array of elements including religion, politics, race relations, news media, socio-economic classism, contumacy—all handled with skillful precision as Chandler gives us deft glimpses of humanity in all its chaotic, whacked out splendor.” —Walt Hicks, Page Horrific

"(Dead Juju) A wild ride and with an ending which leaves the readers as shocked as it does with its opening. Dead Juju opens Deadcore with a visceral thrill which is hard to ignore and equally tough to stomach."—Fantasy Book Critic

“DEADCORE achieves all extremes. Violent, perverse, depraved and, as such, quite recommended.” —Fangoria

THE DEATH PANEL: MURDER, MAYHEM, AND MADNESS

Comet Press

13 Hard boiled, violent tales of crime and horror from Randy Chandler, Tom Piccirilli, Scott Nicholson, Simon Wood, John Everson, and more.

“…be prepared to be blown away by some of the best genre short story fiction written in the last few years.” —Horror World

“With sharp writing and a crisp design to match, the anthology makes a strong case for 2009’s best. It’s only Comet Press’ third release, but already, the small-press label has distinguished itself as a reliable name brand. Pick it up, if you’ve got the balls.” —Rod Lott, Bookgasm

Comet Press is an independent publisher of horror and dark crime.

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