Authors: Bryan Smith
“So…how does this happen? What’s next?”
“What happens is I make some phone calls and get my people on this.”
Lana frowned as she again studied the scene. She didn’t see how it could be covered up without stripping the place to the bone and replacing everything. And that was just the aesthetic side of things. Getting two adult bodies and a bunch of blood-soaked crap out of the apartment without attracting a lot of unwanted attention seemed like a time-intensive, logistical nightmare.
In fact, it seemed fucking impossible.
Ted patted her shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking, girl, but trust me, my people are pros. They’ll work fast and by the time they’re done, you’d never guess anything happened here. I’ll give you my word on that.”
“What about the kid?”
Ted shrugged. “Not really my area of expertise, but I can get in touch with some folks who should have no problem placing him somewhere.”
Lana thought about that as she chewed on a thumbnail. “I don’t know how I feel about that. Can’t he just anonymously be passed off to next of kin?”
Ted took her by a wrist and pulled her close, wrapping his big arms around her. The move didn’t surprise Lana, nor did it bother her much. She had been expecting something like this all along. A favor this big wouldn’t come without a sizeable price tag, after all.
“Trust me, this is the way to go. It’s better if these dead folks and the little one just disappear never to be heard from again. People will assume the three of them ran off together somewhere. That’s what we want. But if the baby gets left behind, it turns into a big goddamn mystery with a whole lot more questions from the po-lice.” He said it like that, emphasizing the first syllable with a corndog drawl she now recognized as partly an act. “Just let me take care of it all and you won’t have a thing to worry about. That’s a promise.”
Lana allowed herself to settle into his embrace, smiling wickedly as she pushed her large breasts against his chest. “There anything I can do to help, Teddy?”
He shook his head. “You’ve been through enough. We’ll clear out once my people get here and give them room to do what needs doin’.” He tucked the unlit cigar in his blazer’s front pocket. “But there’s something else you can do for me before I make my calls.”
She shifted her weight some and angled a thigh against the erection tenting the front of his trousers. “Does it have anything to do with
that
?”
“It’s got everything to do with that.”
His hands went to her ass and gave her buttocks a rough squeeze as he pulled her harder against him. She responded with a hungry, lustful growl. Ted was a rather large gentleman and wasn’t precisely movie star handsome, but he had come willingly to her rescue, an act that seemed to have supercharged her libido. Before she knew it she was standing on her tiptoes and shoving her tongue into the big man’s mouth. He made a muffled sound that might have been a surprised laugh, but after that her ministrations elicited something closer to a tortured squeal.
Lana clawed at him and pulled at his clothes until the two of them fell backward onto the bed. Ted’s cowboy hat came off his head as he tried to rise up. A look of repulsion played across his features. Lana almost got mad before realizing he was reacting to the proximity of Blaine’s corpse. She belatedly realized her bare arm was touching Blaine’s leg. The revelation should have filled her instantly with disgust, but it did not. Instead it drove her arousal to an even higher level.
She grabbed Ted’s hat and flung it across the room before seizing the lapels of his blazer. “Get your goddamn clothes off and fuck me, Big Ted.”
Ted looked pale. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing I want more. But wouldn’t you rather do it somewhere else? Like out in the living room?”
“You wouldn’t believe how wet I am right now, Teddy.” Lana pushed at his chest and he raised his torso higher as she slithered backward, splaying herself across Blaine’s legs. “I want you to fuck me right here next to my cheating dead boyfriend.” She pulled off her top and tossed it aside, then began to wiggle out of her shorts. “In fact, I want you to fuck me
on top
of him.”
Lana knew what she was doing was sick and wrong. Justifiable homicide or not, clearly there was something wrong inside her, something deeply and fundamentally
fucked up
, something that had always been there, lurking in the darkest shadows of her obviously deranged mind. There was no other way to explain this impulse. Recognizing this might have troubled her any other time, but for now she only wanted to embrace it, to revel in her inner darkness and this profound perversity.
A fleeting look of disgust twisted Ted’s features, but then it was gone and he was shrugging off his blazer. “You dirty little girl. I think I’m in love with you.”
Lana peeled off her panties and slapped them against his face. “Say that again.”
He fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, hurrying to get it off. “I love you, Lana. I love the fucking shit out of you.”
She laughed and spread her legs as she repositioned herself atop Blaine’s body, waiting with feverish anticipation as Ted shed the rest of his clothes. And then he was on top of her. On top of both of them. Then he was inside her. She screamed and screamed as the bed shook and the headboard slammed against the wall. The screams became one long, uninterrupted expression of insane ecstasy, almost like a kind of music, the tortured rhythm of the bedsprings providing a thumping backbeat to her operatic singing.
Chapter Nine
Some Fucked-Up Shit that Happened on the Road, Part Two
They were on the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama, when Echo announced she needed to take a piss. Dez gave her a ration of shit for not getting out of the car at the last stop and threatened to keep going until she felt like stopping. Echo countered with a threat to drop her shorts and piss all over the backseat, which effectively ended the short-lived debate. Dez hit the turn signal lever and pulled off at the next exit, where she pulled into the mostly empty parking lot of a Stop N Go store.
The three of them got out of the Impala and went into the store. Dez infuriated Echo by getting to the women’s room first and closing the door in her face with a smirking expression.
Echo shot an incredulous look at Lana, who was over by a row of coolers checking out the array of beverages on display. “Can you believe the nerve of that bitch? I’m
this close
to pissing myself and she pulls that shit. Fucking unbelievable.”
Lana shrugged, not looking at her. “Just how she is. Shit, you’re lucky she stopped at all.”
Echo made a loud sound of frustration and stamped a foot on the floor before slamming the base of a fist against the closed door. “Hurry up, Dez. Don’t be a goddamn hour in there just to spite me or you’ll fucking regret it. That’s a straight-up promise from me to you, bitch.”
A dim sound of feminine laughter issued from the other side of the door. Echo screeched and was about to bang on the door again when she glanced to her right and frowned at the closed men’s room door. Normally she didn’t like to use the men’s rooms in convenience stores because they grossed her out, but this was an emergency situation. She felt like she might explode at any second.
Fuck it.
She opened the men’s room door and let out a startled gasp, taking an immediate step backward. A young man in his late teens or early twenties sat on the toilet with his pants down around his ankles, but he wasn’t taking a shit. A skin mag—one of the raunchier ones by the look of it—was open on the tiled floor in front of him, and he had a hand wrapped around a throbbing boner. At first he looked angry at the intrusion, but his expression changed when Echo’s curvaceous femininity fully registered.
The young man’s face contorted in a way that made him look like he was having an attack of some kind. He groaned like a movie zombie as he abruptly ejaculated, shooting a silvery stream of seemingly jet-propelled come that struck the opposite wall. His shoulders sagged and he slumped backward against the upright seat cover, his chest going up and down as he panted like a runner at the end of a sprint.
Echo made a loud sound of disgust. “You fucking pervert! What the fuck is wrong with you? What kind of sick fuck jacks it in a public bathroom?”
The man had recovered enough from those first moments of post-orgasm insensibility to direct an accusatory glare at her. “Ever hear of knocking? You might want to try it next time.”
Echo barked an incredulous laugh and shook her head. “You’re gonna blame
me
for this, you perverted motherfucker? Seriously?”
Lana was still over by the coolers, but now her head turned in Echo’s direction. “What’s going on over there?”
“I just watched a skinny perv shoot his wad in a public bathroom.”
“Is he cute?”
Echo glanced at her, scowling. “Shut up if you don’t have anything helpful to contribute. And no, he’s not.”
The guy in the bathroom picked up the skin mag, calmly folded it and tucked it under his arm as he stood and pulled up his pants. He zipped up and flushed the toilet, then moved over to the sink and started the hot water tap to wash his hands. As he lathered up, he glanced at Echo’s oblique reflection in the mirror above the sink. “You’re just saying that because you’re pissed at me. I know I’m handsome.”
Echo laughed.
The man rinsed the soap off his hands, turned off the water and shook off the excess moisture before pulling a wad of hand towels from the dispenser mounted on the wall. He directed a smirking glance at Echo as he dried his hands. “Admit it. You’re just mad I didn’t hold off long enough to stick it in you.”
Echo stared at him for a long moment, her eyes narrowing as a fresh welling of anger simmered inside her. A lot had happened since leaving Casey and her old life behind all those months ago. She wasn’t the same person she had been back then. A wild life on the road with her dangerous new friends had changed her forever. Copious amounts of blood had been spilled. And a lot of people—mostly men—had died by her hands. This smarmy little son of a bitch had no idea what he was provoking. It was equivalent to poking a snake with a sharp stick.
Time to learn the hard way, little man.
She stepped into the bathroom and pulled the door shut behind her, being sure to turn the lock. The man’s first reaction was a surprised frown, but then he began to grin, his hawk-like features making the expression look almost cadaverous. He looked her up and down, licking his lips as he admired her long legs and bountiful curves.
“I knew it. You got a load of the B-man’s tube snake and just had to get some of that for yourself. Am I right?”
Echo smiled but said nothing.
She slipped her purse off her shoulder, pulled it open and began to root around inside it.
The man tossed the wad of towels in the trash and moved a step closer. “I’m gonna need at least a few minutes before ol’ Mr. Snake is ready for action again.” He smiled in that smarmy way of his and came another step closer. “But I could go down on you. Would you like that, baby?”
Echo’s fingers closed around something in the bag. “You called yourself ‘the B-man’. Why?”
He chuckled. “Because my name’s Brad and I’m the man.”
Echo smiled. “Not anymore, you’re not.”
The switchblade clicked open as her hand came out of the bag. Brad’s eyes opened wide at the sight of the blade, but he didn’t immediately back away from her. Echo had killed enough men to understand why. Their brains took too long to process what was happening. None of them ever expected a woman—especially a gorgeous woman—to lash out in a violent way, not unless they had been attacked or threatened first. It was hardwired into them to believe they were the only real predators, which was just one of the many things about their gender that made them undeniably inferior.
Echo slammed the blade into his groin. It pierced his scrotum and sank in deep. Brad shrieked and staggered backward until his back met the wall. Blood rapidly stained the crotch of his jeans and leaked from the hole made by the blade. Echo rushed at him and he held up a forearm, managing to deflect a jab aimed at his throat at the last second. The blade punctured a meaty part of his arm just below the wrist and blood began streaming from the new hole in his flesh. The pain appeared to focus him as he belatedly realized he was fighting for his life. This happened a lot too, and this was when things often got more interesting—and more exciting.
She yanked the blade out of his arm and brought it around to slash at his face. He got his arm up in time again and this time he pushed back at her. She staggered back a step and he came at her, instinct telling him now was the time to press the advantage. Echo grinned as he made a predictable grab for the knife, snatching it away before his hand could close around it. Then she feinted to the right, making him stumble before reversing direction and driving the blade deep into his abdomen. His eyes went wide again and he exhaled a wheezing breath as she jerked the blade out and thrust it into his gut three more times in rapid succession.
At that point it was pretty much over.
Echo stepped back, getting out of his way as he dropped to his knees. He clutched at his bleeding stomach and looked up at her with eyes brimming with tears.
His bottom lip trembled. “Why?”
“Because you’re disgusting.”