Will’s face reddened. “Er...”
Hank made a noise of disgust. “Stop flirting with the dead-meat, Starlene.”
Starlene mimicked the noise he’d made. “I ain’t flirtin’ with the boy, Hank. I’m just havin’ some fun with him. I like messin’ with ’em before you kill ’em, you know that.”
Some of the tension drained out of Hank’s face. He nodded. “Yeah, I know you do, hon. You just get a little too into it sometimes, worries me.”
Her lower lip puffed out. “Baby, you know I only got eyes for you.” She spoke in a tone of mock-hurt. “Don’t you know how much I love you?”
Hank grinned. “Shit, yeah, I know that.”
He reached into a pocket of his leather pants, removed a long folding knife, and snapped open a gleaming blade. Will’s shaking worsened as the big man approached the sofa.
This is it, he thought.
He pictured the blade punching into his throat.
Pictured blood jetting out of the opening.
But Hank didn’t stab him.
He took hold of one of Starlene’s hands, folded the knife handle into it, and kissed the back of the hand. “You keep an eye on pizza face, baby. I gotta take me a shit.”
Starlene’s eyelids fluttered. “Baby, you’re so romantic.”
He smiled, then he kissed her on the mouth and was gone.
The room’s occupants remained silent until they heard a door close in another room.
The blonde let out a big breath. “He’s outta control, Star.”
Will watched the good humor seep out of Starlene’s face. “I know, y’all.”
J-Dog said, “I hate to speak ill of ol’ Hank, but he’s scarin’ me. The way he killed Spike...” He shook his head. “That was plain uncalled for.”
Will wanted to say, “Oh, yeah? Unlike the guy with no head, eh?”
But he kept his mouth shut.
The blonde said, “So whatta we do about it?”
Starlene sighed. “Dunno. I’m thinkin’.”
Well, this was an interesting development. Hank didn’t have his followers as cowed as they allowed him to believe. He was just a room away, and they were in here plotting his undoing. A flicker of hope flared to life inside him.
“Um...why...” He paused to clear his throat. “Sorry, I’m scared shitless. Why don’t you guys just ditch him?”
They seemed to roll their eyes as one.
Starlene said, “Because he wouldn’t rest until he’d tracked us down and killed us. He is absolutely unrelenting, a fucking human killing machine.”
Will’s eyes became narrow slits. “Say...what happened to the cornpone accent?”
She grunted. “An act. I want him to underestimate me.”
“I’ll be damned.”
The blonde chuckled. “Her name ain’t Starlene, either.”
“Starlene” glared at her. “Too much information, Crystal.”
“Sorry.”
The muffled sound of a toilet flush emanated from the distant bathroom. The brunette said, “Hush, everybody.”
Hank ambled back into the room. He seemed more relaxed, less manic than he’d been prior to moving his bowels. He rubbed a hand over his crotch. “I don’t know about you, J-Dog, but my tractor’s about ready to plow some new fields.”
J-Dog chuckled.
The chuckle sounded forced to Will’s ears; then again, Hank hadn’t been privy to the mutinous conversation, so he probably didn’t pick up on the subtlety of tone.
The brunette said, “Hank, goddammit, I thought you was my man. Now you’re gonna fuck that wrinkly ol’ wifey-poo bitch.” She harrumphed. “Ain’t right, baby, ain’t right at all.”
Hank stared at her.
The stern expression on her face wilted.
“No more lip from you tonight, Starlene. I’m warning you.”
He lifted the bound woman off the floor.
“Excuse me, girls, I’ve got business to attend to.” He leered at the brunette, then his gaze slid toward J-Dog. “Come on, J, let’s show this hoochie mama a good time.”
J-Dog rose slowly from the sofa. “Sure thing, Hank.”
There wasn’t much enthusiasm in his voice.
Hank glared at his girl again. “You and Crystal watch the pizza bitch whilst me and my amigo make proper use of the master bedroom.”
Hank took their silence for acquiescence.
He walked past the sofa on his way out of the room.
Later, when the burst of adrenaline had faded and the violence of the moment was over, Will would try to remember whether there’d been any conscious formulation of a plan on his part.
Not that it mattered.
Only the results were important.
What he did was simple—he extended a foot as Hank walked by, and the big man pitched forward, the nightgown-clad woman spilling out of his arms. It was an awesome sight, like watching a mountain collapse.
Will liberated the knife from the brunette’s hand before she knew what was happening. He moved with a speed surpassing anything in his experience.
One moment he was on the sofa.
The next moment the knife was in his hand and he had a knee planted squarely in the middle of Hank’s back.
A fraction of a moment later the blade was buried to the hilt in Hank’s neck.
Hank spasmed.
Tried to rise.
Will yanked the knife out and put it in him again, this time through the ear.
He gave it a twist and yanked it out again.
The knife rose and fell several more times. Hank was dead after the first few thrusts, but Will wasn’t inclined to stop butchering the behemoth’s body. Adrenaline was part of it, but the murderous fury was also fueled by paranoia, by a conviction instilled by a lifetime of watching bad movies on late night TV.
He imagined Hank rising from the dead like Jason Voorhees.
Crazy.
Thing was, Will could just see it.
It would be a defiance of reality every bit as absurd as the notion that he’d managed to successfully vanquish the monster that was Hank.
So he kept stabbing him.
After a while, he rolled the big body over and stared at the dead man’s unseeing eyes.
A chilling sight.
But then Will experienced another flash of inspiration.
He grinned. And he started cutting again.
Daylight.
The house and immediate vicinity was crawling with cops and evidence techs. The authorities had been summoned by the concerned night manager of a Pizza Zone restaurant. One of their delivery boys had gone out on a run last night and never returned.
Detective Mitch Roth suspected no one would ever see the pizza boy again. He was officially missing, but he had a feeling his body would be discovered in a ditch or ravine sometime in the coming hours.
He leaned against the archway leading into the blood-splattered living room.
He was trying to stay out of the way of the evidence techs—Lord knew they had their hands full with this one.
He heard footsteps on the hardwood floor behind him.
Detective Cooper moved into his field of vision. “Looks like some shit out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
Roth nodded. “Yeah, what they did to the one guy, the big one in the leather pants...you just don’t want to believe people capable of sick shit like that are out there.”
Cooper grunted. “You know they are, Mitch. The world’s fulla scum.”
One of the evidence techs gagged behind his mask.
Another tech leaned over his shoulder, grimaced at what he saw, and looked at the detectives. “You guys should see this.”
Roth and Cooper exchanged wary glances.
Both men started moving toward the techs.
The first tech said, “Careful where you step. Stay off the marked areas.” Roth said, “So what is it?”
They were looking at a pizza box.
The lid was emblazoned with the familiar red and green Pizza Zone logo. Someone had scrawled PEEK-A-BOO across it in big letters with a marker.
A tech lifted the lid.
Cooper shuddered.
Roth could barely breathe. “Oh...Jesus...”
The remains of a barely-eaten pizza were at the bottom of the box. Stretched from crust to crust was something that resembled a mask.