"Went away on business," Adam responded.
Chris puffed on a lit cigarette and blew three perfectly round smoke rings into the air. Adam smiled; he loved those rings.
"She went to Texas on business," Adam said. He felt like crying. He missed her.
"It's a damn good thing she didn't take that jet that crashed just the other day."
Adam nodded.
If he only knew.
"Chris?"
"Yep?"
"Do you believe in God? Heaven and Hell?"
"Why the fuck you asking me that? I don't know. Why? You dying tomorrow?"
"What if all this—this whole world—is just a maze, or a trap, made by some higher force just to weed us out one by one? Like a scientist in a lab examining rodents just to see how much harm they can inflict on the poor little things? What would you do?"
Chris looked extremely confused. This made Adam nervous.
Smoke steamed from Chris's mouth as he laughed. "You're a trip, man. Gotta party like it's 2999, not reflect on weird shit like that."
Adam looked at Chris the same way he had at Erica last night—like he wanted to kill him. No nerve in his face twitched for a smile.
***
Chris left fifteen minutes later. Adam stayed glued to the tube all day, waiting for updates on the murder case. The house was his castle. His dad had not even phoned to ask of his condition. Adam preferred it that way.
"Well, forensics didn't turn up anything," a police officer said on TV. "But we're working on it. We’re questioning everyone who goes to Blake, but nobody says she has any enemies. No disputes, nothing."
The reporter queried, "Did she have a boyfriend? Did-"
"Well, yes, we've questioned him, but he has a solid alibi. And we've questioned all his friends and all the guys on the football team. Nobody knows anything. It's possible that this was a random killing, but with the brutal nature of the crime, it does have many similarities to a psychopathic killer. I hope we just catch him before he does something like this again to another innocent young girl."
"Ha!" Adam barked at the television. "I'm the innocent one, you doughnut-eating fuck."
***
Before Adam went to sleep that night, he did one last thing. He opened his notepad, crossed out the name at the top of the list—Erica's—and circled the second: Pete North, his next victim.
"Tomorrow night... strike two. Hell yeah."
Adam’s Second Victim
Nobody fucked with him the next day at school. He got much gratification from watching some of the students—guys and girls—cry over the girl whose shit actually stank.
The whole day moved as slow as a train car going in reverse. Things happened, but in Adam's mind, he didn't really acknowledge them. He was too busy focused on tonight's mission. Midnight on the dot.
***
All day, Adam followed Pete around the halls, in the cafeteria, and by the bus lines, getting information about where he was going to be tonight, who he was going to be with, and how many people would be with him. This was what Adam overheard: "Yeah, man, my dad fixed it up and shit. You should see it now. My basement used to look like a dungeon or something, and now it's my new bedroom. It's badass as hell, dude. You wanna come over tonight? I'll show you—yeah, I know, school days blow dick. Yaw, Saturday's cool. We'll have to party in it this weekend, for sure. Alcehol, grass, all the trimmings. Man, I got enough Vodka to incassassipate a horse! I'm gonna get so toasted tonight. When twelve comes around, I'm gonna be sleepin’ like a mothafuckin’ baby. Hell, yeah. Oh, I'll get more. See ya!"
Adam had it all written down like a top-notch journalist. He loved the wait before the attack. The anticipation before the deed. It gave him the same high he got when he and his mother had gone to Pennsylvania to meet Erin.
He laughed in his bed most of the day, ecstatic that he was about to kill a young man who'd done even worse things to him than did Erica. Pete was a nuisance, a bully, a bad kid who, Adam fathomed, was probably held high on God's list.
"You're going down, you bastard. And God—Your Bad Book tells us to love our enemies. How do I love people who do bad things, get rewarded, and move up in life, while good people who do good things only get the shit end of the stick and move down in life? Tell me that?" Adam said to his ceiling. "You and your pretty little angels are going
down
."
Tonight, he'd planned it out very scrupulously. He made a makeshift lock-pick out of pieces of scrap metal he found in the basement. Swiss army knife, Halloween mask, pillow for weight gain, Chloroform with rag, wagon, and most important: intent to kill.
The stars were aligned properly. At least for Adam.
***
At 12:37, Adam sealed shut the concrete slab behind him and pulled his wagon through the tunnel. The flashlight was brighter this time, for he had put in new batteries. His heart pounded as he meandered through the sewer, not exactly certain which direction was the right way to go. Rats were everywhere. One was almost as big as his dog. He thought he saw one munching on a piece of human bone, until he realized it was the leg bone of a dead cat.
He scampered through every passage, past every sewer grate and manhole cover. His sense of direction wasn't horrible, but it wasn't good, either. He did know which openings did not lead up to Fredrick's Lane, which was where Pete lived. He just used his intuition—tried to lock onto his enemy the way a heat-seeking rocket honed onto a fighter jet.
The sewer only grew narrower as he went north.
Just when he thought he reached the end of one passage, a new one extended to infinity. Adam had to duck to fit under some of them, and some of them wouldn't permit his body through, they were so small. He saw some pretty weird shit down that shouldn't have been there: a red Ked's tennis shoe; a dented, unlabeled tin-can; quite a few old, used condoms; a broken piece of videotape; and, sitting up against one wall: a very old ax.
Adam put that in his wagon.
He'd been walking for almost an hour now, probably more, uncertain whether he could go any farther. His flashlight wasn’t so bright anymore.
***
Soon, he stopped under a sewer grate and looked up. A drop of rain hit his face. He turned off the flashlight. He could smell nature: trees, grass, mud. The sound of traffic was almost nonexistent. There were hardly any sounds at all.
Adam climbed a ladder and positioned himself so that he could see better. He was impressed with himself as he peered through the grate, for, fifty yards away, through some fog, the back end of Pete's father's rusty 1989 Cavalier was visible. He was
here.
He climbed back down the ladder to get his act together. He paced for about three minutes in the pitch black, trying to get a bearing on his nerves. It wasn’t easy. This was the same mixture of emotions, he figured, an MMA fighter must go through while walking toward the cage. Would he win and defeat his opponent? Or would he get hurt? Or worse—get in trouble? That’s what scared him the most.
"You can do this. You've done it before. This kid
sucks
."
The good thing about this house was that it was the very last one on Frederick's Lane. Pete's closest neighbor lived more than one block away. Nobody would spot Adam if he was wearing a hot-pink bunny suit with a big red bullseye painted on his face.
Adam was blinded by a dense ground fog when he pushed aside the manhole cover. The smell of pine needles and cool air filled his lungs. He wondered what he looked like coming out of the ground and through the mist, had anyone seen him. The mask and the protruding belly would have added to the preternatural effect.
Less than twenty feet away, the North house stood in view. No lights burned in any of the windows. The place looked like an abandoned trailer. The siding was rotten and moldy, one window was busted, and, by the looks of it, it had been broken for some time. A graveyard of car parts cluttered the driveway and most of the yard. A small, dead-for-the-winter pine leaned out of the upper gutter like a dwarf's Christmas tree.
Definitely dirtballs. Adam knew this. He could tell by the way Pete dressed, smelled, and behaved. Tonight it was time for him to meet Satan.
Adam scanned the area for any signs of trouble. The coast was so clear, that it, alone, made him uncomfortable.
Am I still on earth? Are they about to jump out of the shadows and say “Boo! We caught you?”
He readied his gear, climbed out of the hole, and darted noiselessly over to the small basement window by the corner of the house—the broken window. Plastic wrap, held in place with Duct tape, covered the gaping hole. This made things much easier. With just one slice, he could gain entry and be done before he knew it.
Adam removed the knife from his pocket. The blade was sharp as a razor. Kneeling down, he cut the sign of the cross into the plastic sheeting, opening the gate through which to pass. The only problem now was that the room was a pitch black void. There were no glowing lights of a digital alarm clock or a cable box.
Be cautious, Adam
, he told himself. His real concern was how light or deep of a sleeper his victim was. Some people he knew—like his mother—would have woken up if a mouse farted; he, on the other hand, could sleep through an earthquake.
He pulled a jar out of his pocket and unscrewed the lid. Inside was a rag soaked in Chloroform. The smell of the stuff from three feet away was enough to make him dizzy. He took out the rag, put the cap back on, and wedged the jar back into his pocket.
Looking back through the opening, he realized he had to use his flashlight. It was better than fumbling around in the dark, searching for a tainted human being who could break him. Then again, he thought he probably could have found his way to Pete just by following the stench his horrible body odor.
As soon as Adam turned the light-head, the beam landed right on Pete's ugly, miserable face. He was lying on a mattress on the floor, mouth partially open, his tongue hanging out like a dog’s. The boy's face, in Adam's eyes, looked far kinder and far more disgusting in slumber. He didn't look like a roughneck now, but he sure as hell didn't look more attractive. He was already fast into Rapid Eye Movement sleep, as Adam could see by his moving eyelids, probably dreaming of beating him up.
Not tonight.
Adam took a deep breath, held it, and eased his left leg through the opening. His heel brushed against something hard and solid—a desk. He put his weight on it, slowly at first, to make sure it didn't fall apart like the rest of their crumbling house.
Once stable, Adam slid under the arch, light still aimed at the pig-boy on the bed. Inch by inch, the assailant entered. Pete didn't move, but he twitched in his sleep. Adam held onto the light and Chloroform-soaked rag for his life.
There was a sound.
Adam didn't know what it was… someone who’d spotted him creeping in? Pete flying upright and pointing a finger? A bomb going off?
It was him knocking over a cup of pencils on the desk.
Adam clenched his teeth and looked over at Pete.
But nothing had changed … except for a pencil rolling across the table pretty loudly. Adam reached for it in the dark, forgetting he had a flashlight. Instead of stopping the noisemaker, he knocked it off the desk, across the room, where it fell down into an air-vent.
That's got to wake him.
Pete actually snored louder after the fact.
The pit bull upstairs, however, knew something was wrong. It could smell a foreign odor, could hear unfamiliar sounds. It started barking the way Muffy did whenever someone moseyed by the McNicols’ house.
Adam wanted to get out of here A.S.A.P.
Once he stepped onto the floor, he realized he had forgotten one crucial detail in tonight's mission:
How in the fuck do I get this 168 pound stink-ball out to the wagon?
Without stopping to analyze the question, he shoved the pungent rag doused in Chloroform over Pete's nose.
Pete's struggle was far more potent than Erica's. He lashed at Adam like a wild animal, hitting him, poking him, pushing him in the mask-face with his rough hands. Adam was dazed once but fought back. He jumped on and straddled the bully and would not let go.
"G—you mother—fuck—" Pete tried to say. "Get the—I'm gonna—" He swung at Adam's face, but the mask was so thick it absorbed the shock from most of the blows. He was strong. He almost upset Adam's balance twice.
The dog upstairs went crazy now, turning the house into an uproar with its ferocious howls. Adam knew it was only a matter of time before someone would open the basement door and flip on the light.
If only the Chloroform would work! Hurry!
“You stup—I'll—You're—"
Pete's flailing arms were losing power. His eyes started to roll, normalize, roll, normalize, roll. He was going back to sleep, whether he wanted to or not.
The dog ran back and forth. Dust from the upper floorboards fell onto Adam's shoulders. Harder, heavier footfalls came from above. "I don't know what the fuck he's barking at. Shut up, mutt!" Pete's dad shouted from the upstairs. "All right, Charlie, shut up! I'm going to check it out! Fuck sakes, dog."