Darkened Page 22

  October 6

  Noon

  Mary Lou’s face was a study in tight-lipped concentration as she worked the can opener’s little crank and steered it along the edge of the lid of canned veggies. Though the opener had still been ‘new’ in the package when she’d swiped it from the kitchen utensils section of the grocery store, it functioned like some decades-old rickety relic. She managed to separate lid from can at last and flipped the tiny silver disc in disgust. “Swear to motherfucking god, Zeke, we ever run across any other living, breathing people, we’re gutting the fuckers and roasting them over a fuckin’ fire.”

  Zeke looked up from his own hearty meal of Spam. “Um…”

  He didn’t know what to say. Mary Lou had changed some for the better since those first harrowing days he’d spent in her company. Had mellowed out significantly. Still, this was the same woman who, at gunpoint, had forced him to mock-copulate with corpses. She was the same murdering lunatic who’d gunned down a family of three for no good reason. So he couldn’t dismiss out of hand the possibility she was dead serious about engaging in cannibalism.

  She sneered and shook her head, bugging out her eyes in an exaggerated way. “What do you mean, ‘Um…’?” She repeated his inarticulate utterance with mocking disdain, making it sound like something said by a drooling, lobotomized idiot.

  They sat facing each other atop two checkout registers in a Harris Teeter grocery store on 21st Ave. Most of the food in the place had gone bad long before their arrival, but the canned goods were still in fine shape. They’d gone through dozens of cans of vegetables, soup, and ravioli in the last few days. Their preference was anything that was ready-to-eat, but they’d cooked some things over a fire in a makeshift pit in the parking lot.

  Zeke cleared his throat. “Um…” He mentally smacked himself. “Well, you’re not serious, right?”

  Mary Lou grunted between swallows. “Fuck yeah, I’m serious. You think I’m gonna eat nothing but this shit the rest of my life?” She held up the can of veggies, sneered at it, and tossed it over her shoulder. “Fuck that, man. I need meat. Something to really fill my belly. I’ve had I don’t know many goddamned cans of processed crapola since the other day, and I still feel like I’m fuckin’ starving.”

  Zeke hated to admit it, but Mary Lou’s rant had struck a nerve. He had a sudden, powerful craving for New York strip, a gnawing hunger a million cans of Spam couldn’t begin to allay. He wished fervently that there was some sort of animal life about, anything he could trap and kill. A dog or cat, or even a goddamned squirrel. But there was nothing alive out there. This new world was one without parallel in the planet’s history. This wasn’t a new stone age. There was no prey to hunt with a spear.

  Mary Lou chuckled. “Yeah, you feel it, too. I can see it in your fuckin’ eyes. You need a good chunk of long pork.” Another chuckle. “I wonder what part of the human anatomy tastes best. Hmm, I reckon it depends on whether you’re chowin’ down on a dude or a chick. How’s a portion of fried tit sound to ya, Zekey-baby?”

  Zeke groaned. “Mary Lou…”

  “Myself, I could go for six inches of roasted tube snake and a side of fried balls.” She grinned broadly. “And maybe a bit of brain soup.”

  Zeke swallowed his rising gorge with great difficulty. “Let’s talk about something else, okay?”

  Mary Lou cackled. “I bet one of these cans of veggie soup would go real good with some fried eyeballs.”

  She was messing with him now, treating the issue of cannibalism like a joke. But it wasn’t funny. Sick humor aside, she’d made it clear she was dead serious. Though it seemed less likely with every passing day, it was still possible there might be other survivors out there. It was even remotely possible they might encounter one or more of them somewhere along the way. And when (or if) this happened, Mary Lou had every intention of killing them. Then cooking them. And eating them.

  And what will I do? he wondered. Stand there while it happens, watching from the sidelines like the ineffectual coward I am?

  The memory of the apartment complex slaughter continued to haunt his dreams. He still felt great shame at having done nothing to prevent the senseless loss of life. Any attempt at intervention on his part would likely have resulted in the loss of his own life, but knowing that failed to make the memory sting any less.

  The humor seeped out of Mary Lou’s expression and she stared silently at him for a time, examining him in the dispassionate manner of a pure sociopath. He’d seen her look at him like this a few times before, and it always unnerved him. Sometimes he dreamed about her coming to him in his sleep, not to rouse him for fucking, but to slit his throat or bash him over the head. He knew this wasn’t mere dreamtime paranoia, that it was very much in the realm of possibility.

  So why don’t I leave?

  A question easier asked than answered. He could do it easily. All he had to do was wait until she was asleep, then get up, grab his traveling bag, and just walk away. He could be miles down the road before she realized he was gone.

  Mary Lou squinted. “The fuck’re you thinking about, Zeke?”

  Zeke shook his head. “Wha…?”

  Mary Lou smirked. “Don’t gimme that innocent shit. You were thinkin’ on somethin’ pretty deep there. You best not be doing any scheming, boy. You try anything you oughta not try, and ol’ Mary Lou’s apt to go off on your ass.”

  Zeke said nothing for a moment while he worked to decipher the threat. It almost seemed as if she’d been reading his mind. Either that, or she was one of the most intuitive people he’d ever met. He decided to divert her attention by changing the subject. “Did you feel anything when you gunned that family down?”

  Mary Lou just stared at him a moment, her expression contemplative. She was seriously thinking about his question. Zeke was surprised. Then a hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Okay, Mr. Fancy Pants. Mr. Shrink. Mr. I-was-on-tv-so-I-know-everything. I’ll tell you what I was thinking about.”

  Zeke swallowed a lump in his throat. “Okay.”

  Mary Lou’s face seemed to crumple. Her brow furrowed, the corners of her mouth turned down, and her jaw trembled. She seemed more vulnerable than Zeke had ever seen her. Hell, she seemed on the verge of expressing genuine human emotion, a development Zeke found at once welcome and disturbing.

  Then she said, “I was thinking about my troubled childhood. I grew up in a mobile home in Huntsville, Alabama. And not one of them doublewides, neither. A real tiny one. I lived there with my mommy, my daddy, my cousin Tammy, my brother Stu, my other brother Emery, my little sister Nadine, and our crippled granny.” She shook her head. “You ever tried living in a itty bitty trailer with seven nasty-ass motherfuckers, Zeke?”

  Zeke shook his head. “No.”

  Mary Lou’s eyes misted over. A single tear spilled from the corner of one eye and rolled slowly down her cheek. She wiped it away and sniffled. “Saying it was cramped up in there is a goddamn fuckin’, whatchacallit, a understatement, that’s what. Anyways, over time I got to hate people. I mean, just flat-out fuckin’ hate the human fuckin’ race, man. Everything about fucking people. The fucking odor of their flabby bodies. Their farts. Their bad breath. The noises they make in their sleep. And lemme tell ya, Zeke, eight people crowded into one goddamn trailer at night make one hellacious motherfucking noise.”

  Zeke felt himself growing numb as he listened to her story. He believed what she was saying, but it was so hard to picture, and so far removed from anything in his own experience. So all he could say was, “Uh huh. Go on.”

  She smirked. “Oh, I’m just gettin’ to the good part.” She heaved a sigh, and another tear squirted from the corner of her eye. “The worst thing was when somebody would be fucking somebody else in the trailer. They’d go in the back room, draw the curtain, but you could hear all the action. And the fucking trailer would rock. It was bad enough when Tammy and Emery would go at it, but when mommy and daddy got to makin’ the beast with two backs, it was
more than I could stand. ‘Specially when I got to be of a certain age. One summer when I was fourteen I hooked up with Skeet Carson, an ex-con who lived in our trailer park. We were getting all hot and heavy, and he started getting all deep and shit. Asked me what I wanted most outta life. So I told him.”

  Mary Lou descended into sobs then, and Zeke debated whether he should go to her, take her into his arms. Ordinarily it was the obvious thing to do when a woman was baring her soul to you this way. But nothing was obvious to Zeke in this situation. He was genuinely curious to know what trauma lay at the heart of Mary Lou’s insanity, and he wasn’t at all certain she wouldn’t clam up—or worse, fly into a psychotic rage—if he were to go to her.

  But the sobs were soon displaced by odd, humorless laughter. “I told that crazy sumbitch the one thing I wanted more than anything else was to see my worthless family dead. Every single goddamned one of them. I told him I didn’t think I’d really be happy until I was free of them.”

  Zeke gaped. Something heavy seemed to slide down his gullet and settle in the pit of his stomach. “Oh, no.”

  Mary Lou nodded. “That evening I fell asleep at Skeet’s place after having some of his whiskey. Didn’t drink that much, but I was out like a light. He doped it. While I was out, he took his shotgun and paid a visit to my family’s trailer. He blew ‘em all away. You should’ve seen the inside of that place the next day, man. Looked like something out of a Halloween haunted house, the kind fixed up with fake props and shit. Big splashes of blood all over the walls. Pools of dried up blood on the carpet. Later, after the police were done checking everything out, I found some teeth Skeet’s shotgun blowed outta somebody’s head. They were on top of the fridge.”

  Zeke said, “Oh my God.”

  Mary Lou grunted. “Yeah.”

  Zeke shook his head. “So…whatever happened to Skeet?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Cops took him down a couple days later. He’d made it up to Kentucky, where he was holed up with kin. He confessed, and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences.”

  Zeke frowned. “Really? In Alabama? That sounds like a slamdunk death penalty case to me.”

  Mary Lou shrugged. “Yeah. Probably woulda been. But I testified on his behalf. You know, as a character witness. Made it sound like my whole family had been taking turns sexually abusing me, and that Skeet did what he did to protect me.”

  Zeke gaped at her. “You’re kidding. Why would you do that?”

  Mary Lou smiled. “Because it was the most romantic thing anybody ever did for me. Still is, I reckon.”

  Zeke shook his head again as his voice emerged in an amazed whisper. “Holy shit.”

  Zeke ran a hand through his greasy hair. “But…how’s this explain why you killed those people?”

  Mary Lou’s head tilted forward and her eyes widened. “Don’t you get it, Zeke? I don’t like other people around me. I told you before, back when I took you prisoner, but you didn’t get it then, either. I told you I was glad the world was ending and that everybody was dying.” She slid off the counter and began to approach him. Zeke tensed, not sure whether he should welcome her with open arms or make a run for it now. She laid her hands on his knees and leaned forward, pressing her bare nipples against the slowly decaying fabric of his shirt. “I only need you, baby. Anybody else is just in the way, far as I’m concerned.”

  Her tongue darted out and flicked against his lower lip. A shudder went through Zeke’s body and he had to fight a sudden urge to pull her into his arms. He drew in a steadying breath. “And what about Earl? Was he your one and only before I came along? What happens to me if someone better comes along? Do I get my brains blown out, too?”

  “No, silly.” Mary Lou caught his lower lip between her teeth, chewed lightly on the bit of flesh for a moment, then let it go. A thin strand of saliva connected them for a moment, but she severed it with another flick of her tongue. “The gun doesn’t work anymore, remember? I’d have to slit your throat.”

  Zeke trembled as she planted a series of feathery kisses all over his throat while her hand went to his crotch and massaged the suddenly swelling bulge there. Though he was on the verge of surrendering to her, he managed to say, “That’s not very comforting.”

  Her mouth roamed higher and she nipped at his earlobe. “It ain’t meant to be, baby.” She began to pull his zipper down. “I’ve got to keep you on your toes.” She chuckled throatily. “Got to maintain that dangerous edge that turns you on so much.”

  Zeke gasped as her hand found the swollen shaft of his cock and began to stroke it roughly, squeezing and twisting it while she continued to nip at his ear. He was very close to not being able to think about anything other than what she was doing to him. And maybe that was the point.

  He sighed—then gripped her by the wrists and reluctantly forced her to stop doing those oh-so-pleasurable things to his body. “I’m going to tell you what I really think, Mary Lou. If that’s even your real name. I think if anything you’ve told me about your life is true, it’s filtered through so much bullshit as to be nearly unrecognizable. I think you’re playing a role. Maybe you really are redneck through-and-through, but you’re a lot smarter than you like to let on.’

  Mary Lou’s grin was sly and mischievous. “Is that so?”

  Zeke nodded. “Yeah.”

  Mary Lou sighed and rolled her eyes. “Whatever, man. You wanna fuck or not?”

  Zeke held her gaze a moment, then shook his head again. “You’re mentally ill.”

  Mary Lou laughed. “No shit. You’re really swift on the uptake, Zeke.” She wrenched a hand free of his grip and grabbed his cock again. “It’s the end of the world, sugarpie. So what’s it really matter?”

  Zeke stared at her for a long moment. He sighed. “I give up.”

  She leaned closer and her hot breath tickled his face. “It’s about fucking time.”

  Then she slithered down the length of his body and took him into her mouth.

  Zeke gasped and gripped the edge of the counter while Mary Lou’s skilled tongue temporarily made him forget all his concerns. He closed his eyes and just focused on the amazing physical sensations for a time. He only opened them again when he felt himself rushing toward a climax.

  And then he nearly screamed. A man standing just inside the entrance to the store. A lean, good-looking guy of average height with his arms crossed over a frayed Ramones t-shirt. He was a young man, maybe twenty-five, with dark hair and a piercing gaze. He was smirking at them, the way a friend would upon accidentally interrupting a roommate’s encounter with a girlfriend. Zeke was so startled by his appearance that he abruptly ejaculated into Mary Lou’s mouth.

  She held fast to him, bearing down on him harder than before, coaxing out every last drop of jism. Then her mouth came away from his cock and she looked up at him with a smile. “Mmm…did you like that, Zeke? Or was your tortured conscience bothering you the whole time?”

  Zeke cleared his throat. “Um…we…have company, Mary Lou.”

  The smile faded from Mary Lou’s mouth, replaced by an expression every bit as cold and lethal as the one she’d worn while gunning down the family of three. She wiped her mouth, stood up, and turned to face the intruder.

  She folded her arms over her breasts and said, “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?”

  The young man laughed and shrugged. “Sorry to barge in like this, but I heard voices.” He shook his head. “I might have loitered outside a while had I known what an intimate scene I’d be interrupting.” He laughed again. “But heck, I hadn’t heard another human voice in going on a week. The silence was starting to drive me crazy, know what I mean?”

  Zeke hopped off the counter, zipped his pants up, and moved into position next to Mary Lou. What the man was saying seemed reasonable enough, but something about him was disturbing. There was something…off about him. Something darkly feral in those intense eyes. And there was the matter of the way he’d stood there smirking and watch
ing Mary Lou give him a blowjob. Zeke was sure he detected a hint of something predatory in those eyes, an impression strengthened by the stranger’s cocksure stance and smug expression.

  Zeke laid a hand on Mary Lou’s shoulder. “Take it easy,” he told her in a whisper. He could feel the tension building within her. He remembered her talk about cannibalism, and thought of a tigress preparing to pounce upon prey.

  The young man held his hands out in a conciliatory gesture and said, “Hey, there’s no need to be uptight. I don’t mean any harm.” He smiled. “I guess maybe it hasn’t been too bad for you guys. You’ve had each other to hold on to. But me…?” He shrugged and moved an ambling step or two closer to them. “I’ve been alone since day one. Surely you can imagine how desperate I must be for human company.”

  Mary Lou shrugged off Zeke’s hand, moved quickly to the counter where she’d been sitting before, and picked up the big hunting knife that had replaced the useless shotgun as her weapon of choice. She stepped around the counter and waved the gleaming piece of metal at the intruder. “You got two choices, motherfucker. You can turn around and leave this place. And this is our place, bitch. We ain’t sharing it. Or you can stay and be dinner.”

  The young man’s eyes bugged out and he put a hand to his chest. “Whoa. Oh, I’m so scared. Please don’t hurt me, little girl.”

  Zeke groaned. “Oh, shit.”

  Mary Lou snarled and leaped forward, raising the knife high over her head. The intruder never stopped smiling, but Zeke saw something flare in those eyes, a hint of alien redness that sent a chill through him. He wanted to call out to Mary Lou, to warn her back, but it was too late. Her hand came down in a vicious arc as she neared the man, and for a moment Zeke had hope that she might successfully rip his throat open.

  But the man’s arm snapped in her direction so quickly it was a blur. Zeke thought of a frog snagging a fly with its tongue. The man’s hand seized her wrist and shook the knife loose. He gripped her by the bicep with his other hand and began to bend her arm backward. There was a sound of snapping bone and cartilage, followed by a shriek from Mary Lou.