The Late Night Horror Show Read online

  Kira forced a smile.

  Right. Like I had a choice. Jesus.

  Kira had precious little money of her own, but what else could she have done? With the possible exceptions of Jason and Monroe, Lashon was the closest friend she had made since moving to Murfreesboro after high school two years ago. She couldn’t refuse her service or kick her out for nonpayment. Nor could she just let her have the drink on the house. Miss Mildred was funny about that kind of thing, and you could never tell when she was watching you on that black-and-white security monitor in the back. So the money was coming out of her pocket and that’s all there was to it.

  Lashon was looking at the CDs again.

  Kira fumed the more she thought about it.

  Something had to be said.

  “Look—”

  Lashon sighed. “He hit me.”

  “What?”

  “Greg. He hit me.”

  Kira’s expression softened. “Oh.” Then her face hardened again. “That fucking asshole.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kira stared at her friend and thought back over the last month. She couldn’t remember seeing any bruises on her face, but that didn’t mean anything. He might have hit her where it wouldn’t show. “I’m sorry.”

  Lashon’s expression was strangely blank as she removed a CD by Ani DiFranco from the rack, flipped it over, and looked at the back. “Why? You didn’t hit me.”

  Kira stared at her friend. There was something more than a little odd about her demeanor today. The drink thing was out of character. The timing of the abuse revelation was also questionable. It almost seemed as if it’d been meant to distract her. And, perhaps most disturbingly, she knew damn well Lashon Miller didn’t give the first shit about Ani DiFranco or anyone else among the selection of NPR-approved artists on display on the little spinning rack.

  “Will you put that fucking CD back, please?”

  Lashon looked at her again, her expression staying blank a moment longer. Then a corner of her mouth tilted upward in a cautious smile. “Okay.”

  She returned the CD to the rack.

  “Happy?”

  “Yes. Look—”

  “I’m sorry I’m mooching a drink off you, okay?”

  Kira smiled and felt something inside her relax. “Okay.” Then she frowned. “But what’s this about Greg hitting you?”

  Lashon took another sip of her drink, wincing as her lips pursed around the thin straw. She licked her lips after releasing the straw. “Okay. I sort of lied.”

  Now we’re getting to it. About time.

  Kira leaned against the counter. “So there was no physical abuse at all.”

  “Didn’t say that. There was. I hit him.”

  Kira gaped at her. “What? Are you fucking serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  Kira was reeling.

  What…the…FUCK?

  “Why? What did he do?”

  “Nothing much.”

  Kira didn’t know what to say. She just continued to stare at her friend in openmouthed astonishment.

  Lashon’s expression now was somber, instead of carefully blank. “It was all my fault. It was around finals time. I was so stressed the fuck out. And he was just frustrating me, pissing me off no matter what he did or said. Finally I just snapped and hit him.”

  “When you say you ‘hit’ him…”

  Lashon shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking and I’m not talking about a slap or any fucking little love tap. I punched him. In the face. As hard as I could. I mean, I really let him have it.” Moisture brimmed in her eyes. She made no move to wipe it away. “And, shit, I did it more than once. He just took it. I wish he’d hit me back.”

  Kira felt sick. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. I chipped one of his teeth on my engagement ring.” She held up her left hand and wiggled the bare fingers. “Which, by the way, I no longer have.” She laughed softly as a tear rolled down her face. “So, no, I haven’t patched things up with Greg. Or, rather, he hasn’t patched things up with me. And I don’t blame him. I don’t know how to explain it. I just had a…mental break, I guess.”

  Kira couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It went against everything she’d ever assumed about her friend. She would never in a million years have guessed Lashon possessed the potential for that kind of violence. And yet, there was none of that sense of awkward falseness she’d exuded before. Her gut told her this wasn’t just more bullshit. It was the truth. Which was so fucked up on so many levels she couldn’t even begin to wrap her head around it. “I just…I guess I never suspected you had that kind of rage inside you.”

  Lashon wiped tears away. “I’m just lucky he didn’t call the cops. Do you hate me now?”

  Kira shook her head. “I…no. I’ll be honest, I don’t understand this. It disturbs me, but I care about you.”

  Lashon smiled. “At least someone does. Are you…afraid of me?” She laughed too loudly then. “Hell, I know I’d be if someone unloaded a story like this on me.”

  Just say it. What she needs to hear.

  “No. I’m not afraid of you.”

  Lashon looked grateful. “Oh good. I’m glad. That means a lot. You’re the only person I’ve told. It feels good to sort of…confess. Now if I could just stop feeling like I should step in front of a speeding bus and be done with all this misery.”

  Kira flinched. “Don’t say things like that.”

  “Don’t tell how I really feel, you mean?”

  Awkward silence time again.

  Kira glanced at her iPad, noticing the horror festival’s site for the first time since Lashon walked through the door. “Go out with me tonight.”

  Lashon smirked. “What, like on a date?”

  Kira turned the iPad toward her. “I’m checking this out later. Jason and Monroe are going, too.”

  Lashon glanced at the screen, then looked at Kira, a corner of her mouth curling up. “Those guys.” She rolled her eyes, but her attention returned to the screen. She touched the screen and navigated to the page for Blood Lust. That didn’t surprise Kira. One of the things they’d first bonded over was their shared enthusiasm for all things vampy. “Shitty site.”

  “Shitty movies, too, probably. Superlow-budget indie films made by nobodies. We’ll get really drunk and make fun of the movies. It’ll be fun and you could use a distraction. What do you say? You don’t really want to stay in by yourself, do you?”

  Lashon continued to scroll down the page and began to smile. “Maybe not. I, uh, still, you know, don’t have any money.”

  “I’ll pay.”

  Lashon beamed and stood up straight. “Fabulous. I’ll go home and get myself ready.”

  “Pick you up at six?”

  Lashon picked up her book and started toward the door. She raised her latte cup in a salute. “Sounds good.”

  Then the bell above the door jangled again and she was gone.

  Kira stared after her for a long, pensive moment. Then she reached under the counter for her purse and took out her wallet. She extracted a sufficient amount to cover Lashon’s latte and opened the register.

  Hidden behind a corner of the liquor store on the other side of the street, Greg Nelson watched her come out of the coffee shop and start off at a brisk pace down the sidewalk going in the opposite direction. Clad in black tights and a clingy black T-shirt, the willowy, dark-haired girl cut an angular figure against the glare of the bright sunlight. There was an extra spring in her step that hadn’t been there prior to her entering the coffee shop. He’d even caught a glimpse of a smile on her face before she’d turned and gone in the other direction.

  The change in her demeanor wasn’t too hard to figure out. Her closest female friend, a flaky little blonde named Kira Matthews, worked at Mondo Mocha. The apparent lifting of Lashon’s spirits had something to do with an exchange between the two, no doubt. He didn’t like Kira much. She was a little too weird, with her interests in obscure music and movies no normal person had ever
heard of. And—he could admit it—she was a little too smart. He had never been able to comfortably converse with her in any sort of depth on just about any subject. He didn’t hate her, necessarily, but she was sort of like an alien life form. Too different and, ultimately, unknowable, at least for the likes of him.

  He watched Lashon until she turned down a side street and disappeared from his sight.

  His car was parked at the curb.

  He got in and used an alternate route to drive to the apartment building where she lived.

  Chapter Three

  The gun boomed and the bottle perched at a wobbly angle atop the rotting old tree stump exploded in a spray of green glass fragments. Silence descended over the rocky rural setting again as the gun’s report faded in the shooter’s ears. The field was a gentle slope descending toward a line of green trees. It was at the southern perimeter of the many acres of rural land owned by the McKinley family for generations. Tucked away in a remote corner of Rutherford County, the property was just about as private a place as one could hope for in modern America. The nearest neighbors were miles away and not apt to complain about the sound of gunfire even if they could hear it from there, which wasn’t likely.

  Brix Harris took aim at another green bottle. This one was balanced on a large rock some thirty yards down the slope. She dipped her head, squinted down the sight of the gun, and squeezed the trigger. Another spray of green glass fragments suddenly littered the countryside.

  She smiled tightly in satisfaction. “Let the bodies hit the floor.”

  In her mind, it wasn’t green glass flying across the landscape. Instead, she saw red. An explosion of it. Blood and brain matter blowing out of exit wounds, each squeeze of the trigger resulting in a flawless head shot.

  There were more empty bottles spread across the sloping field. Some were propped on rocks. Some were on tree stumps. Others were wedged into various spots on the ground. Until a few minutes ago, a row of gleaming green bottles had lined a slightly warped wooden plank balanced atop two old sawhorses.

  Her bullets had knocked them down with impressive precision. Not a shot was wasted. Again, though, she didn’t see bottles, not in her mind. She saw bodies staggering backward down the slope, crashing clumsily into the ranks of lurching zombies behind them. She imagined the zombie horde slowly advancing on her, moaning and drooling with their hands extended in her direction, their decaying forms moving clumsily up the rocky incline as the relentless hunger that drove them propelled them forward toward their doom.

  She squeezed the trigger again.

  BOOM!

  Again.

  BOOM!

  She heard a crunch of booted feet traversing the rocky ground behind her as she paused to reload. She slapped the fresh clip in and spun on her heels to aim the Glock dead center between the interloper’s wide blue eyes.

  Trevor McKinley held up his hands. “Don’t shoot.”

  Brix didn’t lower the gun. “On your knees, motherfucker. Now!”

  Trevor gingerly lowered himself to his knees and stared up at her. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “Why not, bitch?”

  “Because I love you.”

  She squinted at him. “Something crazy just came out of your mouth. What did you say to me?”

  “I love you.”

  “Wow. You’re pretty dumb. You know that?”

  “Yeah.”

  She lowered the gun and engaged the safety. “Get up.”

  “You didn’t have the safety on?”

  A corner of her mouth curled up in a wry grin. “You ever know me to let a gun go off without meaning to?”

  Trevor got to his feet and pulled her into an embrace. “Not unless you count my dick as a gun. A love gun. I think that’s gone off earlier than you’d like a time or two.”

  She smiled and kissed him. “Yeah. You’re getting better about that, though.”

  Trevor brushed a long lock of her blonde hair away from her face, tucking it gently behind an ear, then he tilted his head slightly and stared at her with that familiar mix of worshipful adoration and intense desire. He was constantly telling her how he couldn’t believe a girl as pretty as her was interested in him, and there were times she detected a quiet desperation in these soulful gazes of his. It was as if he was convinced their time together came with a pre-stamped expiration date and that he had to savor every moment like this one to the fullest, just drink in as much of her as he could before she inevitably moved on to someone more worthy.

  He was selling himself short, but she’d just about given up trying to make him believe that. She wished she could make him understand that, as far as she was concerned, this relationship was for keeps. It didn’t matter that they were so young, with her still a teenager at nineteen and him having just turned twenty. Nor did it matter that most everyone she knew changed partners with a frequency that made her head spin.

  She raised up on her toes slightly and moved her face closer to his, dropping her voice to a breathy whisper, “Brix plus Trevor, together forever.” She kissed him softly on the mouth, eliciting a slight shiver from him. Then she kissed him again, leaning into him. “Forever and ever. And ever and—”

  This time what she elicited from him was a lustful grunt. His arms wrapped tighter around her as he kissed her with an abandon that stole her breath and weakened her knees. But she didn’t let go of the gun the whole time. The hand holding it stayed at the small of his back, aiming the weapon carefully away from him. They made out for several minutes more before she placed the palm of her free hand flat against his chest and pushed him gently away.

  She stared intently up at him. “Your folks home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit.”

  He nodded toward the woods. “We could do it out there.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m not gonna have a bunch of bugs crawling over me while we fuck.”

  “What then?”

  She smiled. “We’ll drive out to the lake and do it in my car, like last weekend. That was nice, wasn’t it?”

  He was smiling, too. “Yeah, it was.” Then his smile faltered. “Um…”

  She frowned. “What? Spit it out.”

  His shoulders sagged. “You remember my friend Monroe?”

  “Your high school buddy.”

  “That’s him. Anyway…he invited us out to Murfreesboro. There’s a horror film festival playing at a theater there this weekend and tonight’s the last night. They’re gonna party and catch a couple of the movies. I sort of said we might do it, but I’ll call him back and tell him—”

  “Hold on. Would I know any of these movies?”

  Trevor was shaking his head before she finished the question. “No way. They all look like FEARNet rejects, barely better than home movies, but one of them’s a zombie thing.”

  “Zombies?”

  Trevor was unable to suppress a reluctant smile. “Yeah.”

  She sighed. “I love zombies.”

  “I know. So…”

  “We haven’t been to Murfreesboro in a while.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And I don’t have to work tomorrow.”

  “And I don’t work at all, which I totally know I need to do something about, but the point is that—”

  “We’re going.”

  “Okay then.” But now Trevor’s brow creased. “But what about…you know…”

  She smirked. “The fucking?”

  “Uh, yeah…that.”

  She pressed the Glock into one of his hands and made him curl his fingers around the grip. “Kill a zombie for me. Just one. And we’ll go do it in the woods, bugs be damned.”

  Trevor’s frown deepened as he moved away from her and took aim at the nearest green bottle, which sat atop the largest rock in the field some twenty yards straight down the slope. She’d intentionally been saving that one for him. Trevor didn’t have her natural gift for sharp-shooting. Even this one gimme shot wasn’t actually a given. He took a deep brea
th and let it out. He was taking his time, making sure of the shot. His arms were as steady as she’d ever seen them. He took one more deep breath, slowly exhaled, and then squeezed the trigger. The bullet went wide and chipped bark off a tree at the bottom of the slope.

  “Shit!”

  Brix smiled. “It’s okay. We’ll do it any—”

  He shifted his weight and swung his arms slightly to the left, taking aim at another bottle farther down the slope. The gun boomed again. The bottle remained intact. His face became a twisted mask of frustration. Brix took a step toward him, concern etching her features.

  He didn’t look at her. “Stay back.”

  She stopped in her tracks. “This really isn’t important. It’s just a game. Let’s go have some fun.”

  He forced his jaw open and let out another big breath. “You’re wrong. It is important.”

  He squeezed the trigger.

  The bottle exploded.

  Brix pumped a fist into the air as a big grin curved across her face. “Yeah! Fuck yeah!”

  She ran to him and jumped into his arms, making him drop the gun in surprise. Then he was grinning, too, as he swung her around one time before setting her back down on the ground. They kissed with renewed hunger and urgency for several moments, until Brix broke the clinch, quickly scooped up the fallen gun, and seized him forcefully by the hand.

  “Let’s go.”

  She started tugging him down the slope.

  Toward the woods.

  “Come ravish me, you badass zombie killer.”

  Trevor required no further prompting.

  Chapter Four

  The theater was adjacent to a little strip mall that had seen better days. Half the storefronts were shuttered. The businesses that were still open included a pawnshop, a car title loan company, and a cash lending service. That most of the current mall tenants were the sort that existed primarily to prey upon the misfortunes of low income families was just one of a number of clues this wasn’t one of the ritzier parts of town. The unpleasantly fragrant homeless dude sprawled out on a bench in front of the pizza buffet next door to the pawnshop was another. Ditto for the used car lot on the other side of the street. It had plenty of colorful pennants flapping in the breeze, but this did nothing to distract one’s attention from the uniformly shabby condition of the decrepit vehicles on display. It was one of those tote-the-note places, where you could get a car without a credit check. Trouble was, all the cars were unreliable crap. Not one of the vehicles on display had been manufactured in this century.