“Go ahead and try, Gomer!”
Helton scratched his head. “Why the hail yawl keep callin’ me Gomer?”
Glass shattered. Fists rammed into ribs. When Paulie kicked Dumar’s feet out from under him, the backwoods man had an entire revolving rack of MP-3 players hauled down on his back. Paulie climbed onto a counter, poised himself, and jumped, knees heading for Dumar’s chest, but—
Dumar rolled out of the way at the last second.
“Fooled you, city boy!”
Paulie rocked on the floor in agony, and as he did so—
whisssssssssssssssssss…
Dumar urinated in his face.
Meanwhile, Helton and Argi had rough-and-tumbled their way toward the kitchen appliance section. When Helton heaved a Galantz 0.6 cubic-foot microwave at Argi, the latter man ducked and heaved back a Haier-brand mini-refrigerator. The fridge struck Helton right in the head—
“Have a headache on me, Gomer!”
Helton merely blinked, shrugged, then laughed.
They shambled down the aisle, heaving every conceivable appliance at one another: blenders, toaster ovens, knife-sharpeners, can-openers, even a rotisserie hot-dog cooker. Helton took a Brellville Fountain Elite Juicer right across the sternum, he fell over, sprang back up, and—
WHAM!
—hit Argi right in the exposed testicle with a George Foreman Grill. Argi’s eyes crossed, his cheeks billowed, and he collapsed in incalculable agony.
“Now there’s the ticket!” Helton rejoiced.
Quite bemused, he watched the convulsions of his adversary. The ox-like Argi cringed in a series of caterwauls, shrieks, bellows, and outright baby-bawling, hands clasped to the vandalized organ.
That fella won’t be gettin’ up soon, Helton reasoned. He loped back to check on his son, noticing that the entire phone department was trashed now, every glass counter blown out. Then, like someone at a tennis match, Helton looked left but his gaze swerved right watching Paulie fly through the air and crash headlong into a DVD display that boasted: HORROR MOVIE BLOWOUT SALE! BUY NINE LIVES STARRING PARIS HILTON FOR $1.99 AND GET PINATA: SURVIVOR ISLAND, THE DEVIL’S CURSE, VENOM, THE EMPTY ACRE, THE SANDMAN, JUST BURIED, DEMONESS, BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD, THE HOUSE WHERE HELL FROZE OVER, AND BLOOD SHACK FREE!
Lousy DVD’s flew everywhere.
“Well, hey there, Dumar!” Helton complimented, “That there’s some’a the finest man-throwin’ I’se ever seed!”
“Thanks, Paw,” Dumar said, dusting himself off. “T’was easy.”
They both grinned as a pummeled Paulie crawled dazedly away on hands and knees.
Argi remained shuddering on the floor between the washers and dryers when his boss caromed around the corner.
“Goddamn, Argi! Those rednecks are kickin’ our asses!”
Argi’s teeth chattered when he replied, “You ain’t kiddin’, boss…”
“That skinny kid was throwin’ me around like a frisbee!”
Agri nodded through persistent agony. “And that big one? Fuck, I must’ve punched him in the head ten times—hard—but it was like bangin’ my fist into a rock. I even hit him in the head with a fuckin’ refrigerator and nothin’ happened. Then he got me in the nut with a Foreman Grill—”
”Ouch!” Paulie wiped blood off his face. “We gotta get our guns back—”
“Yeah, but they’re all they way over the in phone section.”
“We don’t stand a chance…”
Chuckling could be heard, then Helton boomed, “You citified fellas cain’t hack a tussle with real backwoods men.”
“Guess they’se need a breather, Paw. We up’n tuckered ’em out.”
“S’fine with me. Go ahead, Paulie, take a breather, then we’ll have another go and finish this. Been dickin’ ’round with you low-lifes fer too long. Yeah, we’ll finish it, all right, and then we’ll fuck both yer heads.”
“I wanna fuck that Paulie in the head fierce, Paw!”
“Yeah, son, we’ll have ourselfs a dandy header with him, and we’ll make a movin’ picture of it and get it to his wife, and then we’ll find her too, and fuck her head.”
“EEEE-doggie!”
Paulie shot his lieutenant a look of total dread. “Fuck, Argi, what we get ourselves into?”
“It’s fucked up, boss. I don’t think we’re gonna get out of this one.”
Paulie sighed. “Well, then we’ll fuckin’ die tryin’…”
“We’se ready when you all is, Paulie,” Helton’s voice echoed.
Paulie and Argi dragged themselves up…
But Helton and Dumar were strangely looking off. They were looking at a row of big-screen, high-def TV’s.
“What gives here?” Paulie muttered.
The weather forecast on the TV abruptly snapped off, and a stolid newscaster was saying: “We interrupt this broadcast for some late-breaking news. Just minutes ago the Pulaksi County Sheriff’s Department reported a break in what local residents have come to know as the ‘Puppy Killer Case,’” and then the screen flashed to a close up of a jowly police officer under which a legend read DEPUTY CHIEF DOOD MALONE. The man seemed to be chewing tobacco as he spoke. “Folks, I’m happy as all get-out to report that we’se finally got ourselves a solid lead in this horrifyin’ case that has just been up’n ruinin’ the holiday season for so many of us. See, what we got is a police surveillance video of this low-down, dog-torturin’ psychopath.” Malone pointed into the camera. “Now I want yawl to watch…”
“What the hell’s this?” Paulie asked. “They caught that guy who was cuttin’ off puppies’ heads?”
“Seems so,” Helton replied. “We done heard about this piece’a shit puppy-killin’ freak just the other day on the radio.”
“Yeah, we heard about it too,” Paulie told him. “Ain’t nothin’ pisses me off more than these sick fucks who like to torture animals. When ya get right down to it, most people are just a bunch of piles of shit who don’t deserve to live, but animals? For fuck’s sake, who could kill an innocent animal?”
“Well, Paulie, it looks like you and me finally agree on somethin’. Only the lowest’a gutter scum do things like that—”
“Look, Paw,” Dumar said. “Here’s that surveillance thing they was talkin’ ’bout…”
The screen changed to a grainy, low-resolution frame of a brightly-lit but unkempt back yard. In odd stops and starts, a jubilant mongrel puppy with huge ears jumped up and down as a male figure crept up. The figure seemed short-haired and wore baggy pants; the back of his t-shirt read CHIT, MANG. He leaned over and picked the puppy up. The puppy licked the man’s face, its tail-stub wagging.
Then the man turned, and technicians froze the tape. The frame pushed in as a zoom application was engaged.
Th perpetrator appeared to be Hispanic, late-‘20s or so. In the freeze-frame, he grinned in a manner that could only be called Luciferic.
But Paulie’s own face twisted into a look of disbelief, and he ran toward the nearest TV screen. “Argi! Tell me I’m seein’ things! Don’t that look like—”
“Ain’t no question about it, boss.”
“That fuckin’ Manuel motherfucker, the kid always wearin’ the Scarface shirts!”
“Menduez I think his name is, boss…”
Helton looked funkily at the two mob men. “What’s that you’re sayin’, Paulie?”
On the screen, the stop-start progress resumed. The man stalked away with the puppy in his arms…